Home Front (Star Kingdom #7) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,147

mother eyed the stunner, Oku’s soggy clothes, and the shaking and wet Chasca. “Are you all right?”

“Chasca was almost murdered, and I was shot.” Oku meant the words to come out matter-of-factly, but they sounded panicked, almost a screech in her own ear. She drew in a shuddering breath and groped for calmness. “I wasn’t hit badly, but I need a vet for Chasca.”

“And a doctor,” her mother said, eyeing her. “So does your bodyguard. Come. We’re all going to have a long talk in the morning.”

She didn’t look pleased as she backed out of view. Again, Oku worried that Finn had been filling her ear with lies. She hoped her mother wouldn’t believe them. But she had stunned his bodyguard and broken into his room…

Oku groaned and leaned her head against Chasca’s damp fur. “This has not been a good day, girl.”

Chasca whined in agreement.

The crushers walked across the hull of the rotating station, the rocky ceiling of the carved out asteroid passing overhead. Here and there, conduits and knots of electronics ran along the rock or disappeared into holes.

The speed of the station’s rotation and the threat of flying off weren’t as great as Kim had imagined, but she did feel the pull of centrifugal force as their odd little group trundled along. The crushers could magnetize their soles so they didn’t float away, whereas Kim was stuck being pulled along by Reuben with her feet out behind her like the kite she’d envisioned. Casmir, a small form even in his bulky combat armor, led the way across the massive exterior station. Intermittent lights embedded in the hull illuminated their route.

“I’m glad I took motion-sickness tablets earlier.” Casmir glanced back, then pressed his satchel down as it tried to float away from his hip.

“Are they proving effective?” Kim asked.

He hesitated. “Mostly. Hopefully. I had to promise not to throw up in this combat armor to get someone to lend it to me. Funny how word has gotten around the entire Twelve Systems—at least three of them—that I have a problem with motion sickness.”

As they progressed along the outside of the station, the rock ceiling dropped lower. As promised, there soon wasn’t enough space for a ship to fly through, but it wasn’t as claustrophobic as Kim had feared. There was plenty of room overhead for them and would have been for small repair vehicles. She even spotted something that looked like a three-foot-tall version of Viggo’s robot vacuums roaming along the surface.

“It’s breaking through the rock,” came an alarmed report over the comm.

“We’re almost there,” Casmir said with impressive calmness.

He turned on a headlamp integrated into his helmet, and the cone of light brightened the lumpy brown surface in the distance. It took him a few head turns to find the spot where a drill bit was breaking through.

Casmir picked up his pace, as much as he could while relying on the magnetic soles of his boots, but Zee held up a hand and pointed for another of the crushers to rush ahead of Casmir. They were out in the vacuum of space now, so Kim couldn’t hear the crushers speak, but he must have communicated wirelessly with all of them, because the others also maneuvered around Casmir and took the lead.

They stopped when they were in line with the drill bit but not yet under it—the station would continue rotating toward that spot. The device was busting through fully now, a few rocks trickling slowly down toward the station as a dusty cloud of regolith formed under the hole. Kim had no idea how much gravity the asteroid had other than it was very little.

The device floated out of the hole, propelled by whatever motor had sent it through the asteroid. It was a bronze-colored bullet-shaped cylinder a little longer than a coffin. Articulating legs that reminded her of squid tentacles trailed behind it, and the huge drill bit protruded from its nose.

“It looks like some metal sculptor’s version of a nightmare sea creature,” Casmir said.

“Actually, it looks a lot like a giant bacteriophage,” Kim said. “Which is disturbingly apt.”

“Hm.” Casmir glanced at Zee and shook his head. “No, if anything we should back up. The body’s big enough to have a big payload in there. A big explosive payload.”

“What did he ask?”

“If I should try to blow it up before it lands. But it’s too close at this point. If there’s a nuke in there, it could blow away half the station—and everybody in it. We