Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,95

forms waiting with the endless patience of a machine for me to finish cutting my way through the hull. The bridge was small for such a large vessel, surprisingly so for those unfamiliar with space flight, a rough rectangle measuring twelve meters by nine.

Sarah, how many? I asked my agent. She’d have a much better chance of getting an accurate count from the video presented.

One hundred and twenty-seven, came the immediate reply. Estimates indicate that more could fit into the space, she added.

“Leaving room for the actual fighting,” I muttered aloud.

“That’s what we think up here, too,” Shay replied.

“Well, Korben?” I asked. The assassin still hadn’t stirred. Still hadn’t spoken. I was beginning to wonder if his oxygen supply had quietly run out an hour or so ago and I’d been hanging out with a corpse. “There’s a plan for this, right? If not, we’re fucked.”

The polarized mask of the vacc suit swiveled my way. “No need for such language, Mr. Langston,” he said as if he hadn’t been sitting there as motionless as the cyber-zombies for the past four hours. “And yes, there is a plan.” There was a long pause. The man was hard enough to read without the faceplate, but something about that pause held the faintest air of trepidation. Or maybe I was just projecting my own feelings, which burned right past trepidation and were on a collision course with full-blown panic. “I will acknowledge there are a few more than I was anticipating. But it should still work.”

“Great,” I whispered. There was silence from Shay and the rest of the Genetechnic security team aboard the shuttle who were, presumably, listening in. There was no way the shuttle could get close enough to the ship for a boarding action without us taking control of the helm. And unless Korben’s plan could thin out the herd significantly—and without damaging the equipment I needed to bring the ship under my control instead of the AI’s—there was no way that was happening. “Your show,” I said at last.

He was studying the rough oval I’d burned into the hull. It was approximately a meter wide and a little bit taller. I hadn’t pulled the plug of hull from the hole yet and I’d been giving it a bit of a wide berth in case the AI decided it was tired of waiting and came boiling out from the entrance we’d made. But it seemed content to wait, knowing, perhaps, that the only way we’d be able to gain a foothold against so many was by employing a powerful explosive, eliminating any chance of mission success. Some part of me knew that the people—the real part of the people—associated with those coils were already gone, erased by Bliss. Somewhere, they were in a queue to be re-coiled. Maybe they were walking around already. But another part of me struggled with the slaughter. The lives may not have been lost, not by modern standards, but the pain and loss had been real. And now we were going to have to inflict more, take more, of it. It made my stomach churn and I swallowed hard against the unexpected surge of bile that rose in my gorge.

“Can you pull it open about six inches and then close it again?” Korben asked. “And seal it?”

“How long does the seal have to hold?” I asked.

“Three minutes,” he replied.

I considered it. I’d cut through the hull with a beveled edge, mostly from habit rather than conscious thought, allowing the section I’d cut out to be reseated easily enough. Sealing it was another matter. I could tack it with the torch, but I got the impression that once Korben started the party, a certain degree of haste would be called for, and the plasma cutter would take a few minutes. My standard gear included a couple of industrial-strength adhesives and expanding foams, mostly to try and stop small atmosphere leaks before they became major issues. One of the adhesives only took a few seconds to do its thing. It wouldn’t hold against any real force for long, but it would probably manage three minutes against whatever Bliss could reasonably throw at it.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s workable.”

I reoriented myself physically and mentally, walking around until I stood “above” the hole I’d cut relative to Korben’s position. I braced a foot on either side of the cut and pulled a pair of magnetic clamps from the VaccTech. They snapped to the hull, and I concentrated for a