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With a yell, she twisted the blade, pouring all her savagery and determination into the thought.
The Ibu-copy snarled as the knife turned, scraping against his clavicle. Laura jerked her ruined foot free of his grasp and tugged herself up through the hatch, with Aya
Aya
The Ibu-copy squirmed through the hatch, his collar still spitting out blue globules.
Laura was barely thinking. Survival instinct had cut in. She just had to get away. At the back of her gibbering mind was the notion of her and Aya
She swept past the lockers and dived up the ladder to the service compartment, slapping the rungs as she went, adding speed and stability to her flight. For once she performed the manoeuvre with a decent amount of agility. Aya
A hysterical scream tore through the shuttle.
Laura turned in fright, and shock locked every muscle. Aya
Aya
Laura threw up.
The Rojas-copy arrived at the ladder. He swarmed over Aya
Aya
ESP showed her a dozen conduits and power lines around the hatch. Her telekinesis reached out and clawed at every one of them, shredding the insulation and the conductors, ripping them apart. The lights went out. Alarms sounded as short circuits blew safety cutoffs. The background whining of several fans faded to silence. Red lights flared on the console.
Laura pushed herself away from the hatch. Aya
She curled up into a foetal ball and began sobbing.
*
It was a feeling that took a long time to register. Not a compulsion, but a sensation akin to recognizing a smell.
Laura blinked in confusion. It was her gaiamotes gently apprising her that someone was wanting to talk to her. Joey – that was the mental scent.
Very cautiously, Laura opened up the gaiamotes’ sensitivity.
‘Laura?’
‘Joey?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know if it’s really you. They . . . Oh, bollocks. This can’t be happening. They ate her, Joey. They ate her! And I left her behind.’ The shame was so overwhelming, she wanted to bodyloss – re-life herself free of all this. Vermillion would break out of the Void somehow, and everyone left behind would be re-lifed using memories in the starship’s secure store. Her life would go on without any memory of Shuttle Fourteen or the Forest. No knowledge of what Aya
‘It’s me, I swear it.’ The surge of emotion that slipped through the gaiafield co
Laura started crying again. ‘Oh, Joey, Joey. What are they?’
‘I don’t know. Some kind of copies.’
‘Where are you? What happened?’
‘I’m still in the EVA hangar – look.’
When she closed her eyes and accepted his vision through the gaiafield, she saw the EVA hangar from an off-kilter angle. She/Joey was looking at it from the airlock end. The emergency blue lighting was on, and there was no sign of the alien human-copies.
‘They fastened me in place. But I did it, Laura. What I said – the same thing you did. While they were busy with Aya
‘Can you move?’
A wash of stoic regret came through the co
‘Can you manipulate a tool? Cut through it?’
‘Laura, please. I’m not sure I’m that accurate. You have to get back here.’
An involuntary tremor ran the length of her body. She let out a pitiful squeak of fear. ‘No. No, I can’t.’
‘They will come for you. You know that. They will find tools. They will cut through the hatch.’
Just the thought of it made tears well up again. Without gravity, the liquid simply swelled up on her eyeballs, distorting her vision. ‘I left her, Joey,’ she confessed. ‘I just left her with them. I didn’t even try to help, I was too scared. How awful am I? She was all alone with them. And she died like that. She died alone, Joey, with those things eating her. Nothing could be worse than that. Nothing! Maybe I deserve them coming for me.’
‘Stop it. They’re strong – much stronger than us. You couldn’t have done anything. It would have happened to you, too.’
‘Have they . . . ? Did they . . . ? To you?’
‘No. I’m intact. I just can’t move, that’s all. Laura, you have to get down here. You won’t have much time.’
‘I can’t get through the hatch; I screwed it up pretty good. But even if I could get it open again, I wouldn’t ever get past them.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t even try to fight your way past them. You have to EVA.’
‘What?’
‘There are emergency suits in the forward cabin. Put one on and break the windscreen. I control the exopod airlock; my telekinesis can reach the control panel. I’ve already opened the outer hatch ready for you. I wouldn’t have suggested this otherwise. Check the network if you don’t believe me.’
It took a long time for Laura to make herself move. Her macrocellular clusters were still blocking the terrible pain from her ruined ankle. Exovision icons were flashing up constant warnings about tissue damage and internal bleeding, which she’d ignored along with everything else as she dropped into a dangerous denial state. She hauled herself along the couches to the curving console under the windscreen. There were several system schematics up and ru
‘I see,’ Laura said.
‘Then come and collect me,’ Joey said. ‘We’ll fly the second exopod down to the planet and find Vermillion.’
Laura gave the windscreen a long look. The remaining hologram graphics blinking inside the glass were mostly warning symbols. ‘Joey, how the hell am I going to break the windscreen? It can withstand aerobrake entry into an atmosphere, and the shuttle is rated for gas giant work. The damn thing is tough – probably tougher than the rest of the fuselage.’