Providence - Max Barry Page 0,67

in sixty seconds. You need to be back here before they start landing.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll come get you,” Anders said.

“Negative,” said Jackson. “And stop asking.” The onscreen readout spun lower: fifty seconds, forty, thirty, twenty. “Gilly, don’t want to bother you, but I need an update.”

“Almost done. I’m committing a command sequence now.”

In the doorway, Anders adjusted his footing.

“Shit,” Gilly said.

“What is it?” Jackson said.

“Minor problem. It’s fine. Hold on.”

Onscreen, the red arc began to blossom. Pinpricks of white light appeared, moving toward them. The first timer vanished and a second, measuring time until impact, assumed its place. They had forty-three seconds. “Hostiles firing. Gilly, you need to come back now.”

“It didn’t work. I missed something. But I can fix it.”

“If we don’t move, we’ll still be here when the huks start hitting.”

“You should detach. You can separate from the ship until it’s over. You’ll be safe.”

“Negative. Not leaving you there.”

“If you . . .” Gilly trailed off. They listened to him make mysterious sounds for a moment, bumping and scuffling around, doing who knew what. “Um. You should detach.”

On the screen, white pinpricks everywhere, like snow.

“Thirty seconds to impact. Come back, Gilly.”

“I’ve messed this up,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to run systems manually. It can’t be done.”

“Gilly, come back.”

“I should have prioritized getting the AI back. I’m clearing out some subsystem caches. That might help.”

“Gilly.”

“I can’t reach you anyway,” he said. “There’s a salamander in the corridor.”

Jackson thumbed her board. A floor plan appeared on screen. A section of a middle corridor was smeared red.

“Detach so you don’t get hit,” Gilly said. “I’ll stay here and do the best I can.”

For a moment, Jackson didn’t move.

Then she touched her board. The jet doors slapped closed, almost catching Anders. The jet kicked. Talia felt them detach with a metal clunk. The loss of gravity was instantaneous, her body floating up in the harness.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Anders shouted.

Jackson wrenched the jetpod to the side, rolling them away from the ship. The universe revolved. The engines bit and inertia pressed Talia into her harness. “Gilly, you have a path to Ext-4. We’ll attach there and pick you up.”

“That’s—”

“If you’re not there when we attach, I’m dragging you out, you hear me?”

Anders stowed the rifle and pulled himself along the handles to the front harness. “We can get him?”

“Yes. But it’s going to be rough.”

Onscreen, the pinpricks converged on the blue dot. The timer dwindled away.

“Got it!” Gilly said. “AI is up!”

Jackson: “Brace, brace.”

Over the engines rose a chorus of bleats and tones. The right screen flipped into an engagement loadout and the universe was full of salamanders. They filled the screen like stars. She was amazed at their numbers. She had followed mission stats. She had known they were grains of sand on a beach. But look at how many.

“Our twenty-five ninety,” Anders said. “The ship will block some of them.”

Jackson nodded. The jet kicked. They skimmed along the underside of the ship and sections flew by on the viewport. Ahead was a heavy-liquids tank, and for no apparent reason, it burst, spraying globular fluid, and then not far away came another blowhole, and then another. Her whale, breaching. She didn’t know if it could survive this much damage and was suddenly afraid because it was breaking everywhere.

Anders pointed and Jackson swung the jet around. The docking brace grew on the main screen, a flat section marked with fat white lines. As she watched, it heaved and burst open, spraying debris.

Wreckage thumped the jet, knocking it about like a toy in a bathtub. The screens spun. Jackson and Anders were shouting; she couldn’t hear their words. Jolts reverberated. Jetpods weren’t designed to be hit with debris. They weren’t designed for any of this. On the engagement screen, the salamanders were arriving,