"Are you hurt?"
"Not at all. Just sitting here sipping lemonade with my feet up."
"Let me rephrase. Where are you hurt?"
"Pretty much everywhere. But I don't think anything's broken. Your precious shields took most of the impact. And my new best friend, Mr. Impact Foam."
"Stay there. I'll come for you when this is over."
"Wrong. You've got at least four Formics coming to your position. I'm on my way."
"No, Imala. You don't have enough oxygen to leave your ship."
"I've got at least fifteen minutes of emergency reserves in my suit."
"You may not reach me in fifteen minutes."
She blinked the command to open the cockpit canopy. To her surprise, it obeyed. The top had caved in slightly, and she had worried it was too damaged to operate. She undid her harness and disconnected her suit from the ship.
"Warning! Warning! You have disconnected life support."
"Override warning," she said. "Silence system. Display oxygen remaining."
The numbers appeared on her HUD. She wasn't sure if it was fifteen minutes' worth. She needed to calm her breathing and make it last as long as it could. She pulled herself out of the cockpit and crawled up the side of her ship. The gamma plasma had seared through everything on the mothership as evenly as a knife through butter. Imala didn't want to touch the edges in case they were radioactive or sharp enough to cut her suit. She hopped into a corridor beside her and landed on the far wall. She couldn't tell which was the floor and which was the ceiling. "Vico, send me the map of the ship. Show me where you are in relation to my position."
"I don't know where you are exactly, Imala. And my map isn't comprehensive. I didn't explore every corner of the ship."
"Send me what you have. Can you see my helmetcam?"
"Yes, but it doesn't mean much. The shafts and corridors all look the same."
"But if I keep moving in the direction I'm going, I'll get closer to you, right?"
"Go back to your ship, Imala. Reattach your oxygen. Please. I've already lost too many people close to me. I can't lose you, too."
That almost stopped her. The pleading in his voice and everything behind it--it almost turned her around. What could she do anyway? She didn't have a weapon.
"Do you have a weapon, Vico? Did Wit bring a gun to the helm?"
"I have my laser cutter, Imala. And I've barred the hatch. I'm fine."
A laser cutter could make a formidable weapon, true. She had one herself, now that she thought about it. An emergency one in the pocket of her suit, for cutting away her harness or cutting away the cockpit canopy in the event of a crash. She unzipped the pouch and pulled it out. It was such a little thing.
She launched up the corridor. A barred door wouldn't stop the Formics. They would find a way in. And when they did, they'd pull Victor apart. If she could find one of the big shafts from the vid, or maybe the main corridor that scooted the garden, if she could find any of those, she could get to the helm.
She checked her oxygen. The numbers had gone down significantly. I'm coming, Vico. I'm coming.
*
Victor listened to the celebrations. The surviving miners were cheering over the radio, singing and shouting in a multitude of languages. They had wiped out the last of the Formic transports and skimmers--including the ones that had landed on the hull of the ship. Lem and a few others had strafed those from above, slicing them in two.
None of the Formic ships had fled or retreated in the end. Instead, they had turned and launched themselves at their enemies. Only twelve human ships had been lost, which was nothing short of a miracle considering how many Formic ships there had been in the swarm.
The Formics were distracted, Victor realized. That's why the miners had won. The Formics were so focused on retaking their ship, so determined to win back what they had lost, that they had been blind to anything else.
Victor removed his laser cutter from his tool bag and severed the rod that held the gamma plasma wheel to the console. The wheel drifted away, leaving a metal stump behind. If Imala was right, if Formics were coming, he would make sure the helm was useless when they arrived. He cut off switches, sliced off levers, slashed every surface of the controls. Lem would go ballistic when he saw the damage--all that alien tech destroyed! But it wasn't destroyed completely. Not really. With a little time, a smart team of engineers could piece it back together and figure out how it all ticks. For now, however, Victor would do what he knew needed to be done: Remove the Formics' last hope and chance. End it once and for all.
When he was done, he looked at the cutter in his hand and smiled. Funny that it would come to this, in the end. It wouldn't be a nuke or another WMD, but a tool every decent mechanic carried in his bag.