The governor of Freehold was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” Amos said. “That’s new.”
Chapter Seven: Bobbie
There was a certain luxury to the thrust gravity of steady acceleration. Hooking your nethers to a vacuum toilet was one of the indignities space travel occasionally forced you into. On the float, with nothing to pull your waste away, it was that or have pee globes sharing your living space. Being able to just sit on a toilet in the crew head and relax for a moment while you did your business was something to appreciate. The fact that it felt like a luxury was also probably not very dignified, if you looked at it too closely.
Bobbie was just reaching behind her for the cleaning-pad dispenser mounted on the bulkhead when the gravity went off with no warning. The momentum of her twisting torso sent her floating off the toilet seat and into the air, pants still around her knees. Thankfully, the Roci immediately fired up the vacuum system on the toilet and spared her having to dodge floating waste.
While she tumbled through the air tugging at her waistband, she yelled, “Roci, get me the bridge!”
“Yo,” Alex replied almost immediately. “Where are you—”
“Not even a fucking warning light? I’m down in the head, taking a leak, and suddenly I’m trying to pull my pants up on the float!”
“Wasn’t my plan,” Alex said. “Looks like … Ah. Hold on.”
The system link picked up Naomi’s voice coming through a different channel. Alex? Everything all right?
“I was about to ask you,” Alex said. “We have a change of plan? Naomi? Um, Bobbie? I think we may have a situation.”
All it took was the tone of Alex’s voice. Bobbie planted one foot against a bulkhead, hooked a handhold with the other, and yanked up her pants.
“Copy that,” she said, the flat, emotionless tones of the old Marine taking over. “On the move.”
She found Holden and Amos floating just inside the door of their makeshift brig when she arrived. They were examining a wall screen that someone had pried out of the wall. The prisoner wasn’t there.
“How long has he been out?” Bobbie asked as she came to a stop with one hand on the doorframe.
“Roci started throwing errors from this door almost an hour ago,” Amos said with a grimace. “This is on me, Cap. Shoulda been paying attention, but I was—”
“Forget it,” Holden said. “Let’s just keep him from doing any more damage.”
“He’s down in engineering, if he was able to kill the drive and spin the ship,” Bobbie said.
“That’s where he is,” Holden said. “Naomi’s working to keep him from making too big a mess, but she’s working remotely, and this guy has demonstrated surprising technical skills.”
“Options?” Bobbie asked. The tactical situation wasn’t optimal. If the prisoner was locked in engineering and had also managed to seal off the machine shop above it, then they’d need to cut or breach two doors just to get to him. Even with Naomi hacking the control systems, physical proximity to the reactor gave Houston options she just didn’t have. And Bobbie didn’t like him having.
Holden drummed his fingers on his leg for a moment, the movement imparting an almost imperceptible spin to him as he floated.
“If he feels like he has no way out, he might blow the reactor out of spite,” Holden said, mirroring Bobbie’s own thoughts. “So a standard breach has to be last choice. Amos, you’re in charge of that. Have Clarissa help you hotwire the door sensor to the machine shop so you can cut it without Houston knowing. Then put a mining charge on the door to engineering and wait for my signal.”
“Got it,” Amos said and pushed off down the corridor. He already had his terminal out, and was saying, “Peaches? Meet me at the machine shop hatch …”
“If I’m not breaching, then—” Bobbie started, but Holden cut her off with a shake of his head.
“I want you using the aft maintenance hatch. You can come in from behind. Keep us from doing a very risky breach.”
“Okay,” Bobbie said, stretching the word out. “But, that access is unusable with the drive on.”
“Naomi will make sure it stays off.”
“And if she doesn’t.”
“You’ll get cooked,” Holden said with a nod. “But we’re playing against the clock here. We don’t know how long we’ve got until Houston decides dying in a fireball is more romantic than jail.”
“Betsy won’t fit into that tight maintenance crawl.”