The Boundary Zone Page 3

  And now, it might kill them.

  Dragging him down the corridor by his shirt front, she listened as he barked out orders. Staccato words. He was talking to the station’s computer core, not a living, breathing person.

  She hopped over the lip of an internal airlock and cringed at the dark status lights. No juice.

  Nothing between them and eighteen different ways to die.

  “We don’t have time for you to assess the situation,” she said, pulling the comm out of his ear and shoving it into his hand. “Working five steps ahead is going to get us killed if we don’t run like hell.”

  When he glanced back the way they’d come, she thought about slapping him, but grabbed his jaw instead and forced him to look at her, “What did you tell me when you came back from that goddess-awful mission six months ago?”

  Something behind his eyes flickered, dark and dangerous.

  “I promised Aaron I’d look after you.”

  “Good. Remember that, because I’m too busy making sure you don’t die to take care of myself. Let’s go.”

  She ran, letting the next shower of sparks burn a bright streak across her retinas.

  Four

  Ignoring his hyper awareness of Kenzie’s skin—of the smooth patches where electric shock had damaged her fingerprints—Cable gripped her hand tighter and dodged debris.

  Decommission had been rushed, and scrap had been left where it lay.

  Rounding the bend, he stumbled, trying to stop short. Twisted. It didn’t help.

  Colliding with Bezzon, his curse was drown out by the droning siren.

  They were waiting for the Goddess-damned lift.

  “Get to the emergency maintenance stairwell!” He shouted, forcing Kenzie ahead of him.

  If they survived this, he’d make sure the lieutenant’s next assignment was scrubbing out each of the twenty five hundred lavs on the station.

  Screeching and twisting metal echoed around them as another impact shook the station. Kenzie stopped to drag one of Bezzon’s crew to her feet and pushed her forward.

  Why the Hell someone would fire on a rotting piece of space debris, he couldn’t guess. His superiors would no doubt give him plenty of options when the final report went through.

  If they’d taken his earlier suggestions—evacuated and blown the damn derelict out of the sky—they wouldn’t be in this mess.

  Damn penny-pinchers.

  The same woman stumbled and cable grabbed her by her weapons harness to keep her from pitching forward as a panel blew three meters ahead.

  The emergency lighting finally switched on. Pulsating, sickly green, it triggered that sinking, debilitating fear Cable had only encountered twice before.

  He met Kenzie’s solemn expression as he shoved Bezzon ahead of her.

  The maintenance stairwell loomed, blast doors open wide from his earlier descent. Emergency protocol should have activated them.

  Emergency protocol should have done a lot of things it no longer could.

  The comm band around his wrist vibrated incessantly and he pushed his comm plug back into his ear.

  “Carr.” There was only one voice he wanted to hear.

  “Hull breaches in sectors two, five, and nine, Commander. Deck twelve is going to implode if it takes another hit and the rest of the decommissioned sections aren’t far behind.” Lieutenant Kate Stacy, his second in command, was barely audible over the chaos around him and the commotion filtering through her mic.

  “Who the Hell is shooting at us?” Cable shouted over the din and hustled up the stairs behind Bezzon’s team.

  “Damned if I know. Squadron’s been scrambled, but with the laser defense system taken offline this morning….” She let out a frustrated breath. “Our pilots are in the fight in five. I hope that’s soon enough.”

  Their asinine teardown schedule was going to get them killed.

  No laser defense grid. Half the patrol ships disabled and the others on deck lock unless scrambled. Disbanding the patrol flights had been pure idiocy.

  Clenching his teeth as he pressed the transmitter, he said, “We’re on ten, heading up the maintenance well.”

  “Inadvisable, Sir. If you’re in the wells when--”

  “We don’t have a choice. Coordinate the counter attack, I’ll worry about those of us down here.” He stopped abruptly, grabbing Kenzie’s hand and catching her when she lurched backward with a strange squawk.

  Bezzon and the rest of the crew continued upward, oblivious. And he turned around.

  “What are you doing?” She shouted as he dragged her back the way they’d come.

  Another shudder threw them against the stairwell rail.

  That was going to leave a nasty bruise.

  Tugging at his grip, Kenzie broke free but kept pace with him.

  “Nine’s breached. Twelve is about to blow. Maintenance bots have been glitching and leaving blast doors are open throughout the decom sectors. The air is going to get very thin, very quick if we don’t close this up.”

  “Why not at nine?”

  “If ten vents, it’ll be damned difficult for you to get your precious parts when this is over and you ignore my orders.”

  She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at him and he saw the shift in her eyes. A wicked smile crept to her lips.

  “And here I thought you only cared about our lives, not my pocketbook.” She laughed darkly and pulled her hair into a low, messy bun as she ran. “I guess this is as good a place as any to get sucked out if we couldn’t make it to eight.”

  They could have made it. Cable would have carried Kenzie if he needed to.

  Even with sector nine housing the atrium and thereby requiring an extra three flights of stairs to bypass, he’d run this well twice daily since arriving on station as part of his own PT requirements.

  He could make it.

  He caught himself on the wide-open blast doors, using the jamb to halt his momentum. With a glance toward where Kenzie worked to remove the paneling beside the door, he grabbed hold of the manual close lever on the thick plate. His fingers strained against the hard metal. It didn’t budge.

  A heavy shudder rippled through the station, knocking him around and he fell backward through the doors.

  Toward the stairs leading down to eleven.

  His hold on the lever and the small, pale hand grasping the front of his uniform were the only things keeping him from tumbling to the lower decks.

  “The thing’s shifted into mech-lock. It’s been open too long without juice.” She Pulled him back to the door panel. “I’ll need to bypass a minor system or two to route power down here and get this closed.”

  “Do it. Siphon what you need from primary lighting. Emergency will pick up the slack. I’ll work on this one, just in case they blow ten as well.”

  Kenzie let go of him and dropped to her knees. The indented square delineating the door’s on-site controls popped open when she slammed the side of her fist into it. With her tool kit already unrolled from her belt, she worked quickly. The methodical grace reminded Cable just how alike she and her brother had been.

  A rush of guilt choked him as he turned away from his work.

  If Kenzie knew the truth about Aaron’s death, she’d want him closed on the other side of those airlock doors.

  She cursed a moment before he heard the all too familiar zap of a stray current. How many times had Aaron been electrocuted?

  “Why the Hell are the maintenance bots running down here anyway?” Kenzie asked.

  He wrenched the deck ten blast doors toward each other. They groaned in protest. Harder to close than they’d been to open.

  “That is one problem on a very long list we’ve been ignoring. This place is scheduled for the wrecking ball, who cares about the little things, right? Faulty maintenance bots, irregular heating on sector three, a code string for… well, that’s classified, but it needs to be reorganized. And there is that pesky thief who keeps pulling me away from other things… like fig
uring out who’s needed least and sending them after the maintenance bots still programmed to service these lower decks.”

  She pulled a handful of metal bits and a nerve cluster of wires out, tossing them aside. The noise of disgust she made was almost childlike. “Guess you can scratch the last one off that list.”

  He finally got sector ten’s doors back together, and threw the manual bolt.

  “Can I help?”

  She shook her head at the wires in her hands as she snipped and spliced. “This panel ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

  “Toss me the hex driver? I need the electronic override to secure these.”

  She lobbed the tool across the short distance.

  Stacy’s voice crackled back in his ear. “Squadron got rid of them, but they breached twelve. The internal airlocks are buckling. Bezzon and his team aren’t clear yet. Best guess? You’ve got a minute, at most, before that well vents.”

  He wrenched the electronic lock into its closed position and listened to the heavy clank of the doors seals initializing as Stacy’s warning hit home.

  “We’ve got less than a minute, Kenzie. Tell me what to do.”

  “Get me more time, or get any deep, dark secrets off our chest before we get sucked out of this tin can.”

  That was not what he wanted to hear.

  Throwing his elbow into the emergency toolkit bolted to the bulkhead, he knocked away the edges of the shattered glass front. Kenzie shot him a disapproving glance before she went back to work.

  Tossing aside the fire suppression canister, he pulled a harness from the metal frame.

  With a harried glance toward the well above, he clipped the harness on and snapped the safety ring to the wall support. If she didn’t work faster, they were in for a shitty ride.

  A new siren blared overhead as he reached for the second harness.

  With the harsh shriek of twisting metal, his heart and stomach switched places. He tossed the second harness aside and grabbed hold of Kenzie in the same instant the tug of the vacuum yanked him off his feet.

  Anything loose disappeared down the well like bullets fleeing the chamber of an antique pistol. The comm plug was ripped from his ear.

  Kenzie braced herself against him and the bulkhead as her fingers dug through the wires, trying to make that final connection as they twisted and jerked.

  The two in her hands connected with a spark and he flinched at the momentary shock that tensed his muscles.

  A second flash between her fingers and the doors closed slowly, fighting the pressure from the vacuum.

  The moment they closed, Cable hit the floor. Kenzie landed on top of him.

  Dropping his head to the deck plating, he closed his eyes and sucked in long breaths of too-thin air.

  Kenzie was a dead weight on top of him, her breathing out of sync with his. But she was breathing, and her grip on his uni shirt told him she was still conscious.

  “It’s never boring with you, is it?” her laugh was strained.

  He pulled her closer, kissing her forehead, and then let himself laugh too. “Fucking Hell, Kenzie. That was too close.”

  She looked up at him with an oddly amused smirk. “Did your pissy mood get sucked out with my best tools? Or is this just how you react to the survival of life and death situations?” She wiggled against his hold, as if to make a point.

  He couldn’t answer without getting himself into trouble.

  She must have known because she smiled and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. One of her fingertips was a too familiar black and red. Her skin always healed, but the reminder of her dangerous occupation always unsettled him.

  Letting go, he blew out a long breath.

  “Commander, are you alright?” Bezzon’s voice echoed down the stairwell as Kenzie rolled off him and righted herself, glaring at the gutted control panel.

  She reached down to help him up and, for a brief moment, he considered pulling her back to him.

  “We are fine, Lieutenant.” He took Kenzie’s offered hand and stood. “Is everyone else up there nominal?”

  “Bumps and bruises,” he said, glancing at Kenzie. “Nothing to worry about.”

  As with so many times before, Cable forced himself not to react when the Lieutenant’s leer flitted over her again.

  “Tell Stacy I lost my comm plug, but the situation has been handled and I’ll be up top as soon as possible. Get the rest of your crew to sector eight and assist with damage recovery.”

  Bezzon did his best salute at the odd angle and disappeared again.

  Cable unhooked himself from the harness and dropped it to the decking.

  Kenzie’s joke about deep, dark secrets echoed in his mind.

  He’d have to face reality… and the truth had become a cancer in the last six months. He had to tell Kenzie before she left the station.

  But not tonight.

  “I’ll get out of your hair… unless you want to pull mine again.” She rolled up the remains of her tool kit. “Sorry, you know the saying. ‘Old habits need decapitation.’”

  She started up the stairs, pulling the band out of her disheveled, unnaturally colored hair.

  The compartment shrank around him as he watched her go.

  How in the hell was he going to tell her the one truth that mattered once he told her the one truth that would make her hate him.

  She looked back at him before the flight turned back on itself. “You coming? Not much else to do down here.”

  Nodding, he followed her up the stairs.

  “Race you to the top?” Kenzie said, her smile too bright to be genuine.

  She didn’t wait for his reply, and he followed after, happy to see she would have beaten him up the stairs to eight if they’d needed it.

  Five

  Mack needed a good, cold drink. Maybe ten, after that ordeal. Besides, drinking herself stupid would be an easy way to purge the memory of death’s icy hands on her.

  Speaking of hands….

  She looked down at hers, a new set of scorch marks, middle finger on her left hand, index on her right.

  It was a good thing no one had ever decided she was worth buying jewelry for. She didn’t need more opportunities for zapping.

  But no one bought her presents of any kind. Her ‘friends’ were clients, and all their transactions were performed with cash.

  Most of the people Mack would have shared her last night with were already gone.

  But the place she always drank hadn’t been packed up and shipped doff yet.

  The bar didn’t have a name, it didn’t need one. She slipped in through the half-hidden doorway and shook off the prickles that had followed her up from deck eleven.

  She’d lived on the station long enough to recognize all of the faces scattered at the booths and tables in the dimly lit space. Especially with three quarters of the population having scrubbed out months ago.

  People had fled the chaos and decay the moment the replacement station opened its hatches to a civilian populace.

  Forcing a smile, she slid onto a swivel-stool and slapped the alumasteel bar top. “What’s a girl gotta do for a decent drink on this floating clump of space debris?”

  Gunk’s brows arched toward her perfectly swept bangs as she turned to Mack. Amused smirk on her lips, dirty glass in her hand. Her dark brown eyes glittered under the bar lights as she set her washing down with a heavy clink on the metal counter and walked to her. “Flack! I thought you’d jumped ship through one of our new emergency exits. I’d have guessed one of the new basement hatches.”

  “The only things those breaches sucked out were roaches and glitchy maintenance bots.”

  Her eyes narrowed even as she smiled. “You’re alright, that’s what matters. Though, it’s too bad the parts down there will go to waste.”

  Nodding, Mack hummed an affirmative. “It took out sector eleven too, would have gotten me, Cable, and the security patrol on ten if we hadn’t gotten the airlock doors closed in time.” S
he looked around the bar to see who might be listening and then leaned in closer. “You’ll be happy to know the item you requested is still available… it’s just a little out of the way right now.”

  “You are too good at what you do. Aaron always hated that.”

  “Siblings… Always happy for you until you outclass them.”

  A patron yelled out about a broken pay screen and gunk sent her gaunt dish boy to fix the tabletop before turning back to her with a broad smile.

  Gunk handed her a nearly black, green-ale and leaned on the bar as a low whirring echoed from beneath her.

  “When do you think I’ll have it?”

  “Tomorrow morning before I head for the dock ring.” She turned the beer watching bubbles trail up the side of the glass.

  “I thought you’d go kicking and screaming, last soul off the rig.” The barkeep gave her a suspicious look, but before she could say anything, her dish boy came back and rattled off a long order.

  Gunk poured a round of beers for the men at the broken table and sent them off, safely on a tray in the wobbly hands of the boy whose name she’d never learned.

  Mackenzie pursed her lips, trying to keep them from screwing up in a scowling twist. She failed.

  “His royal highness, Commander Carr has ordered me off station, personally. I leave, or I lose my so-called safety net. How could a girl refuse?”

  “And I thought we’d never see the day you jumped at Whitney’s commands. His official ones, anyway.”

  She glared at Gunk for that.

  “Speaking official ones… are you going to have my payment ready?”

  “I’ve found what you want… I’ll get it tomorrow morning. The less time it’s in my possession, the better off we’ll both be.”

  “You going to keep Cable in the dark about this?”

  “He wouldn’t approve, so I’m not going to give him the chance.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “The only way to stay alive is to know when you have to quit poking the bear. I think Aaron would be proud of how long I’ve survived.” She held up her glass. “To Aaron, Goddess rest his freckly-ass soul.”

  Gunk held up her glass as well, “To Aaron. If I could have been sure my kids would have turned out like you two, I might have had some.”