Strangers at the Room of Lost Souls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780615806402
Publisher: WMG Publishing
Published: 2013-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

3

The weapons’ fire slammed into the lower level of the Room of Lost Souls, slicing off the landing area. Bright white light nearly blinded Elissa, and she would have ordered her staff to dim the screen but they were already ahead of her.

The Discovery’s stardrive kicked in, and she let out a small breath. Not only would they get away from the debris field, but they would get away from the transport before the betraying bastard realized that his shots missed their target.

Then something hit her ship, rocking it, and knocking out all the lights. She went from leaning on the console to falling away from it and slamming into the ceiling.

Sudden zero-g. She activated the gravity in her boots—or tried to. Nothing happened.

Things hit her—people, pieces of equipment. She had set down the suit’s helmet and now it had to be among the things floating around in the darkness.

She could breathe, but her chest—her entire body, really—felt odd, as if it had been electrified. Her heart shivered—literally shivered—before returning to its usual rhythm.

Around her, she heard gasps and cries, and echoey bangs as people hit things. She reached up and grabbed onto something on the wall/ceiling/floor nearest her. The first thing she had to do was orient herself.

As she held on, she realized that the ship—the large long ship—was rolling over and over and over again, like an out-of-control children’s toy. She had been floating free, moving with her own momentum, the stuff around her was moving at a different pace, and the ship was moving too.

Only its movements were even less predictable because it had just activated the stardrive, and then the whatever hit them and pushed them in yet another direction. Because Elissa was effectively blind to the exterior of her ship, she had no idea if something big in the debris field was going to hit her or not.

Something big like the Room of Lost Souls itself.

Son of a bitch. That betraying bastard hadn’t missed. He had deliberately targeted Vilhauser, and the resulting explosion had caused this ripple.

The thought hit the forefront of her brain, a grasp for understanding and nothing more. And that was all she needed.

She couldn’t focus on what happened. She needed to focus on what was about to happen.

She had to save this ship and everyone on it.

“Grab something stable!” she yelled. “Grab something stable right now!”

She had to get her crew thinking, because she doubted there was enough time to do much else.

Right now, the ship had oxygen and the temperature was reasonable. The gravity was gone, and so far as she could tell, everything—all of the equipment—had been shut down.

The back-ups on her suit weren’t working, not that she had access to all of them. Some of them were in the stupid helmet, which of course, she couldn’t see.

There was ambient light, however, because the crew had had the portals open. Something was glowing from outside the ship, providing some light inside the bridge.

It had just taken time for her eyes to adjust.

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