CHAPTER 3

EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES

Guardian Bay

Leena stood in the bay the housed Xavier’s core. The Guardian’s chosen face, a chiseled face of hard lines and sharp features, stared out her from the midst of a holographic display tube. His lips parted and the speakers in the room echoed his voice.

‘May I be of assistance to you, sir,’ he said flatly.

‘Yes, perfect. Remember to try to work some smoothness into the tone. It makes you seem more approachable and human.’

‘I am not human,’ he said, with a pained expression.

‘No, but you’ll be working with them for the rest of your days, so being approachable will be better for all of us. You’ll have a better time, us humans will have a better time, everyone will be happier.’

Xavier regarded her for a moment before replying, ‘You aren’t human either.’

Leena sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘That’s also something that one wouldn’t consider tactful. Some things are obvious enough that they need not be pointed out.’

‘That appears to be -’ he stopped.

Leena closed her eyes as her Advocate systems pinged for her attention.

‘Fire alarm has been triggered in equipment storage bay 3, Advocate,’ Xavier said over the link.

Leena quickly called up a schematic of the ship and saw the bay highlighted in harsh crimson.

Leena opened her eyes and bolted from the room, heading for the problem area.

Leena’s communicator chimed, and she flicked it on as she ran.

‘Leena, it’s the Captain, I need you to get to equipment storage bay 3 as quick as you can.’

‘I’m already on my way, Captain, Xavier saw the alarm.’

‘I still don’t know how bad it is, but we’re sending a medical team and a fire team. They’ll meet you there.’

‘Roger that, Captain. I’ll be there shortly.’

She flicked off the communicator and stashed it away. With a thought, she increased the power to her limbs and began to run down the corridor at inhuman speeds. People flattened against the walls as she thundered past, her footfalls thudding loudly as a desire for speed overcame all else.

In a flash, she had crossed the thousand meters between her and the bay. The heavy doors were already sliding open at the command of Xavier.

She entered the bay and came to a stop, looking around rapidly.

The same hulking exoskeleton suits they had been discussing earlier were standing in alcoves along the walls of the bay, while an excavation unit took up the centre of the bay. The unit had been held up by a framework of metal beams, but the beams on the right side of the unit had buckled, and the whole excavation machine had tumbled to that side of the bay, slamming against two of the exoskeletons, and slamming through the wall. Through the crack in the bulkhead, fire raged, licking angrily at the twisted frames of the exoskeletons and the excavation unit.

Two people in work clothes stood near the blaze, their yelling swallowed up by the roar of the blaze, and trying to pull on a piece of debris near the edge of the fire.

Leena crossed the space of the bay and pulled them back.

‘No! Jackson’s in there!’ One of them screamed.

‘Stay here!’ Leena barked, before turning back to the flame.

She looked at the debris they had been trying to move but saw nothing. She grabbed the edge of the debris and lifted, her bio-mechanicals muscles tensing and working with their full force. The hunk of metal lifted off the ground with a screech from somewhere in the fire.

She held the piece with one arm and bent down. She saw a figure under the wreckage. She reached under with her free hand, grabbing a fistful of clothing and dragged the figure out. As soon as the man was free, she dropped the debris again, sending it slamming into the floor. Something deeper in the flames let out a metallic groan.

The man she had pulled out was covered in burns, his uniform blackened and smoldering, but she saw he was still breathing. She dragged him back to the two workers who had been trying to save him and saw a medical team come through the door to the bay.

‘Get him to the medics,’ she yelled over the roar of the fire.

‘Xavier, why hasn’t the fire suppression systems kicked in?’ She asked over the uplink, ‘And why is the fire so large? What am I looking at here?’

‘The Excavation unit punctured an oxygen filtration system on the other side of the bulkhead when it broke through its restrains. It also cut through a command link as it fell. I could activate the suppression systems on the port side of the bay, but the starboard side is where the fire is.’

‘Activate them anyway to limit the spread of the fire. Prepare to vent the oxygen from the bay.’

‘Unable to comply, with the damaged filtration system on the other side, oxygen will continue to be pumped into the fire, and it will drain the ship’s reserves.’

‘Can’t you shut that off?’

‘Processing, please wait.’

Leena moved closer to the fire and looked at what was available to her. Despite her strength, not even she could move the excavation unit out of the inferno.

She looked at the exoskeletons and ran to one on the starboard side. As she moved, the suppression systems engaged, spraying retardant foam on everything on the other side of the bay. Her heart was pounding, and her mind was flooded with fear and adrenaline. Her Advocate systems struggled to keep her balanced, but she allowed enough to keep her sharp. It was exhilarating.

‘Xavier, prepare to jettison the bay,’ Leena said.

‘I cannot so long as the excavation unit is lodged in the neighbouring bay.’

‘I’m going to move it.’

‘That is not recommended, Advocate. We do not know what it will do as you pull it out of the wall.’

‘Look if you can’t stop the fire, we’ve got to do something. I can survive vacuum, but the rest of the crew can’t. I’ve looked at the schematics, the main oxygen line runs under this bay, if you run separation sequence, the systems will sever the link, and it’ll reroute through the spine. That’ll take care of the leak from the filtration system, won’t it?’

‘P-processing… Yes Advocate. I will sound the evacuation o-order to the neighbouring bays. I will have the medical and fire teams on standby outside the doors.’

‘Good.’

She grabbed a bar on the lower edge of an exoskeleton cockpit and pulled herself up into the seat in one smooth motion. She sat down heavily and strapped herself in.

‘Send me an operation instruction for this thing.’

‘S-sending…’ Xavier said.

‘Got it.’

She looked over it in her mind quickly, and her perfect memory allowed her fingers to fly over the controls and bring the suit on line. The heat from the blaze was noticeable, and she winced as something went pop out of her sight.

The suit came on line and she shoved her arms into the control harnesses. They were designed like gloves and formed around the shape of her arm. She slipped her feet into matching harnesses below her and started to walk. The suit stomped its way away from the wall. A quick look toward the door showed her that the other people in the bay had already left.

She walked to the centre of the bay and around the back of the excavation unit, its bulk was back lit by the glow of the fire. She grabbed onto either side with the arms of the suit and flicked the magnetic manipulators onto full power. The arms clung to the sides of the machine with an unbreakable grip, and she took a slow step backward.

The unit screeched against the floor of the bay and tore against the jagged hole in the bulkhead. Step-by-step Leena pulled the excavator away from the breech. Too late, she saw the length of it buckle. Too late, she heard the snap that echoed through the bay as a support beam in the wall gave way.

She looked up suddenly as a section of the roof buckled and a portion of the bulkhead plating snapped away. She tried to back away quickly, but the exoskeleton was still anchored to the excavator. The piece of plating tumbled and slammed into the side of the exoskeleton, jagged metal cutting through cockpit of the suit and severing her right arm just above the elbow. The suit buckled to its knees, and the excavator was thrown off balance, rolling to the side and pulling the suit with it.

Leena screamed in pain as the suit slammed into the floor, ramming the stub of her arm against the bulkhead plating stuck in the suit. She twisted her body against the restraints and scrambled to pull herself out of the control systems. With her good arm free she scrambled to undo the safety harnesses, but some of them were now caught on the debris that had taken her arm.

‘A-a-ad-vocate, I m-must cut t-t-the u-u-plink. S-s-omething is wrong.’

‘Jettison the bay first!’

‘Y-y-es Ad-dvocate.’

Her advocate systems let her know that the uplink had gone off line, just as she heard the shuddering thud of the bay cutting itself off from the ship and readying to jettison itself.

She stopped struggling against the restraints as the bay shuddered again, signaling its separation from the ship. The fire flickered wildly as the air from the bay was sucked out of the open hole in the wall. The whistling of wind filled the cockpit of the exoskeleton suit.

Leena’s advocate systems began to supply her with oxygen as the sound of wind died down and the last of the air vented out the hole. The rushing air had given a spin to the bay as it floated away from the ship, and she saw the shape of the ship pass in front of the gapping maw in the bay.

She hoped her plan had worked.

With a chance to think again, she numbed the pain in her arm with the Advocate systems and fished her communicator out of her pocket.

‘Captain?’ She asked.

‘We hear you, Leena,’ his voice was faint, the communicator only designed to work within the ship. It would continue to get weaker as she floated away from it.

‘Did it work?’

‘The fire is out. You did it.’

‘Ahh, good.’

‘Sit tight, we will bring the ship about and try to get you out of there.’

‘All right, I’ll be here. You should bring some cutting gear, I’m stuck in an exoskeleton.’

‘Will do.’

‘How’s Xavier?’

‘He’s… I think you’ll have to see that for yourself.’