Chainsaw by David Adams

Author:David Adams [Adams, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: David Adams

Outer hull

ISS Vigilance

For a moment Samarina almost panicked. She was lost on the outer hull of an enemy ship.

Fortunately, a lifetime of training kicked in. No sense in freaking out. She summoned the mental image of the ship. The hanger bay. The outer hull of the Vigilance. How had she gotten here? She had walked to the stern. Which meant she had to walk to the bow. Landmarks… the guns? No. There were too many and they were all pointed in different directions. Unreliable.

The only thing that wouldn’t change was the stars around her. The Aldrin star had been shining in her eyes when she had inspected the guns, so she put it to her back and walked as fast as she could, heading to the bow. That was her best guess. It would have to do. Assuming it wasn’t too late, of course, a thought that gnawed at her.

What if she’d spent too long planting the beacon? If Chainsaw hadn’t stalled them on the inside, or the UE engineers were super quick with their work, they might be done by now. The very thought inspired her to greater speeds. Seconds crept along, agonisingly slow but so precious as to be clung to, their passage mourned. She had to get back to Anarchy before the ship took off. To be left here…her choices were grim. Either asphyxiate on the outside of the hull, or be shot as a spy on the inside.

That was a fate not worth thinking about. She had to get back to the ship. Each step took a second. A precious second before departure. A precious second of oxygen, power, another second her disguise was maintained. Of course, it wasn’t really the lack of oxygen that would get her first. It would be the CO2 buildup from her breath, a situation probably made worse by all the frenzied running she’d been doing. CO2 toxicity was a pretty bad way to go. She’d studied it during her training. Most people imagined it to be a peaceful way to go, but the truth was, it hurt. It hurt the whole body and it triggered primal fears in all humans; instincts would do anything to survive. Some people, in the hypoxic delirium of near death by CO2 poisoning, had taken off their helmets to face certain doom.

Some said it was to end it all quickly. Some said they had lost so much of their mental control that they had no true idea of what they were doing.

Sometimes they laughed as the seals broke, as though the sudden approach of death were some kind of mercy.

Focus. She had to focus. If Chainsaw truly had left, she would have plenty of time to ponder the exact ways hypoxia affected the body. For now, she had to keep one step in front of the other and get back to the Vigilance’s hanger bay. She waddled for all she was worth, vibrations of the magnetised feet travelling through her suit, sounding deafeningly loud in the absolute quiet of space.

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