Providence - Max Barry Page 0,87
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.”
He got two words into a reply and something far away went thump. He turned. The door to Eng-1 was not closed. He’d been in such a hurry, he’d neglected it. He moved to the door. He hesitated and stuck his head out into the corridor.
The warning glowlights were cycling, turning the corridor into a rushing train of shadow. In this strobing chaos, something large and alien moved toward him.
He fell back into Eng-1 and worked the manual release. The door hitched closed one maddening inch at a time. There was scrabbling in the corridor and then the golem face of the creature appeared in the gap, blocky and irregular and thick with translucent resin, and the resin split to reveal jaws and lipless teeth, and he yelled and threw his weight against the crank and the door slid closed.
He stood still, breathing.
Jackson was in his ear. He returned to his board. The salamander in the corridor was silent and he could imagine it probing around. Preparing to huk. “You should detach,” he said. Jackson began to protest, but he ignored her, studying the board. Sometimes when he was deep in a puzzle, it wasn’t until he took a break that he saw the answer, and it had been obvious all along. There was something about the act of stepping back that was revealing. It was immediately clear to him: There were thousands of incoming huks and they were going to strike the ship at the same time. He would be lucky to stop half a dozen of them.
“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. Detach so you don’t get hit. I’ll stay here and do the best I can.”
A calmness stole over him. He listened to Jackson curse and finally ignite and detach the jetpod from the ship. She had a plan to circle around and pick him up from a different location, which wasn’t going to work, because the huks would arrive by then.
He worked the board, doing what he should have done in the first place: clear as many obstacles out of the way of the AI as he could, so it could take over as quickly as possible. At last, the display washed clean. “Got it!” he said. “AI is up!”
A section of the door flew inward. He was tossed across the room and landed sprawled on the floor, and when he raised his head, everything was different. Two core housings were shattered. Their boards were in pieces. The air was full of tiny particles of ash like snow. A low wind pulled at him. There was a hole in the door.
The salamander pushed its snout into the hole. It grunted. The door squealed. The salamander forced its way inside, resin falling from its face in chunks, the door bending. Gilly couldn’t find his sense of balance. Around the room, the glowlights went out one after another. There was a solid jolt, and then another, a parade of them. The huks were landing.
“Pak,” the salamander said. “Pak.”
The ship began to growl, a deep, bone-shaking sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The door broke. The salamander entered. The floor tipped and Gilly began to slide across it, toward the salamander, helpless to stop. The ceiling burst in a dozen places.
The floor vanished. The salamander staggered, its legs going out, reaching for purchase that wasn’t there. It was fantastic and funny but everything was breaking apart. His ears popped. The world filled with tearing metal. The salamander’s black eyes fixed on him and its mouth opened and everything disintegrated.
* * *
—
An annoying noise assailed his ears: blaat blaat blaat. A dark purple ball hung in his face. When he swiped at it,