She was above him on the ladder, which allowed him to set the pace. They were already far beyond Wolfgang’s comfort level of gravity. As they were closer to the outer hull of the ship, they were nearing one and a half g’s; the gravity in the living areas on their floor was closer to a Luna-like half a g.
“Considering what bullets can do to spaceships, it’s probably good they didn’t give us guns,” Wolfgang said as he carefully stepped down another rung.
“No, that’s not it,” Katrina said from above him. “The ship can withstand unavoidable pieces of space debris hit when we’re going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. A bullet isn’t going to have that much force.”
“Our tech can’t take a bullet, though,” he said. “Shoot one of those into a computer terminal and see how well we fly. Or breathe. Or eat.”
“Point,” she said.
He sighed as his feet touched down at the bottom of the shaft. Katrina came to his side. He looked up. It was going to be a very long climb up the ladder. The dizziness increased as his heart struggled to pump blood to his head, making him uncomfortably slow.
Hiro, being Earth-born, would be just fine with the gravity.
Wolfgang went first and opened the door into the thrumming cargo hold.
The first thing that struck him was that the protein goo that was their food source was bioluminescent in great quantities. He had never noticed that before, but he had never seen millions of gallons of it at a time. The goo on the ship was supposed to be more than enough to reclone all of the crew several times, to feed them for over four hundred years, and to bring to life hundreds of their stored passengers once they got to Artemis. A little Lyfe went a long way, as he understood it.
The vat was made of some kind of super-enhanced plastic that held the Lyfe in a kind of aquarium that went around the entirety of the ship. Luckily it had a top to it, else the loss of the gravity would have made a massive mess down here.
“Keep alert,” Katrina said, elbowing him.
The Dormire was three miles long, and one and a half miles in diameter, one hundred feet for most of the five floors, storage and engines taking up the rest. Hiro had described it to Wolfgang as a giant metal jelly roll. The living areas of the cylinder consisted of engineering at the core, with crew’s living and working areas on the next level. Servers, oxygen scrubbers, recyclers, a science lab of biological samples of plants and animal life, and cargo made up most of the rest of the ship, with the biomass taking up most of the bottom, and largest, section.
They walked, alert, using the huge continuous vat of goo as a guide, watching for lights to give Hiro away.
In their immediate vicinity, the motion sensors were only going off where they were—all around them was darkness and the slight light coming from the goo. Farther off, lights flickered, going on, then going off in thirty seconds.
“The motion sensors are going to make it tough to sneak up on him down here,” Wolfgang said, watching the lights play in the distance as if they were taunting him.
“We can turn on all of them. IAN, did you get that?”
“Aye, Captain, all the lights.”
After a moment, all of the lights came on, blinding them momentarily.
“Can you see him, IAN?” Wolfgang said.
“Yes. He’s headed right for you. To your right.”
Wolfgang’s first mistake was whipping his head around to the right to prepare for Hiro’s attack. The dizziness overtook him and he was already falling when the piece of wood came down on the back of his head. He fell hard on his chest, the breath knocked out of him. He heard the sound of a scuffle above him but couldn’t roll over to help, or even watch. A thick thump sounded and Hiro swore. Wolfgang was about to mentally declare triumph when Katrina fell beside him, forehead bleeding.
Wolfgang rolled over, gasping, and saw Hiro for the first time since the so-called yadokari had taken over. At once he was willing to believe Maria; the look on Hiro’s face was pure malice and glee. He wasn’t doing this because he needed to, he did it because it was fun.
He raised the piece of wood, looked to be ripped away from a pallet, above Wolfgang’s head, and Wolfgang managed to bring up his shovel to block most of the blow. He could try to only fend off the attack, though, not fight back. It was all he could do not to vomit from the vertigo.
The makeshift club rose again, and an explosion sounded next to Wolfgang’s ear. He rolled over, holding it as if his whole world had become a bell that an elephant had just rung.
Hiro staggered off, laughing.
Katrina, with blood flowing down her face from her injury, held a small firearm in her right hand. She raised it and fired again, but Hiro was gone.
She dropped the gun and held her sleeve to the cut on her head.
Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing. She spoke again, and the words came as if through a wall of cotton. “He found the weapons,” she said. “I got that off him when we were fighting. I got him in the shoulder, though. He can still run.”
Wolfgang nodded, head still ringing, and they helped each other to their feet. Wolfgang was dismayed when he felt how hard it was to regain his footing. It was going to be impossible to fight down here. Katrina picked up her gun and led the way in the direction Hiro had run, and he stumbled after.
He had to fight, and he had to do it here. His only other option would be to lure Hiro into a higher deck, or to send someone else down here to fight for him. But only Katrina could match his fighting experience, and she was already here.
He gritted his teeth and picked up the pace. Katrina had run ahead of him by several rows now, looking to her right and left with every few steps. He pushed himself to catch up with her. IAN’s voice sounded from Katrina’s pocket, and too late she looked up. Hiro stood above her on a pallet like a vulture. Wolfgang shouted for the captain to look out.
But Hiro was already in midair, falling at a much faster rate than he would a few floors higher. He jumped on her, his hands curled into claws. He didn’t even have a weapon this time, he merely came at her bare-handed like a cat, tearing at her face and hair, snagging his hand on her jumpsuit and ripping it.
Katrina fell backward, and Wolfgang was convinced she was done, but when she landed she kicked her legs up and threw Hiro off her. Unfortunately she launched Hiro straight at him.
The demonlike mind that drove this body had managed to get his bearings in midair, and prepare himself for attacking Wolfgang. He plowed into Wolfgang and Wolfgang went down again, gasping as he hit on his back and his head smacked on the floor.
Hiro tried the same tactic on him, strong fingers curled into claws and tearing at him. He caught Wolfgang’s jaw and sliced, scratching deep into his face. He closed his eyes in defense and tried to roll over and trap Hiro, but with the gravity Hiro was impossible to move. He sat up for a moment, weight on Wolfgang’s chest as Wolfgang tried to get breath. He grinned. “I took down the big bad wolf.” He scratched his chin. “I guess you heard that a lot in your lifetime.”