Safety Zone (Lunar Colony VI #1) Read online

the low, harsh tones of an argument filtered through the channel as she gathered her tools again and moved back to the middle of the skywalk. Eyes falling on the locked door, her exhausted mind began to wander. The thought that Boudri was telling her something to make her feel better crossed her mind. He’d never seen the harm in white lies.

  The gray Face continued to scowl down at her. Unblinking, unmoving, it was a constant and ugly reminder of the situation’s morbidity – and her own brand of odd karma.

  A clicking from behind the door pulled her away from her irritation with The Face and she stared at her warped semi-reflection in the metal doors. Confusion wrote its manifesto in the twist of her mouth and she stood, wondering if this was the end.

  A hot red line raced across the top of the door cutting a sharp horizontal jag before it fell, dropping to the deck plating in a swift descent.

  The jagged square of metal – edges still smoldering a brilliant red – fell forward, clattering. Beneath the broken portal, the threadbare carpet began to smoke and she looked up, incredulous at the man framed by four glowing lines in what had once been a safety hatch.

  Boudri pulled the welding mask from his head, and tossed it down the corridor. His wrinkled brow played juxtaposition to the smug smirk on his lips. “Knock knock.”

  Nala stepped over the smoking line and onto the thick metal door that just seconds before was a barrier to her escape. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  His smile faltered. “That I wasn’t going to let you die in here.”

  Heedless of the welding pack in his hand, she gave him a shove. “And if we can’t diffuse the other bomb and it blows, it’ll take out three sections in each of the towers!”

  Staggering backward, he shook his head at her and gave her his familiar eye-roll. “They’ve been evacuated, and sealed, in case we can’t get this dealt with on time. But we’ve got our best people on the job.”

  Her eyebrow quirked up involuntarily as he took her hand and tugged her out of the tube that had been her prison.

  Angela stood in the deserted hallway staring at them both. Nala’s gaze traveled past the incendiary expert to the sealed pressure doors behind her. An eerie shiver wriggled its way down her spine and she clutched Boudri’s hand tighter.

  “Everyone has pulled back to a safe distance,” Angela said. Her voice was quiet as she blinked at the gaping hole in the wall. “You should have told me that was your plan.”

  Nala let go of Boudri and moved to the panel that was giving Angela trouble. It was one thing to risk his own life, but Angela had a daughter to think about. If she’d had more time, she might have kneed the bozo in the balls.

  The panel was a mess. Tangled wires and loose pipes filled the hole like the squirming tentacles of a parboiled squid.

  “Well, Ethan has cut open a safety door… do you both have flash lamps?” Nala dug out her own as she asked, grabbing out a knife.

  Without answering, they both produced the requested items.

  “Good,” Nala said. “This is going to take me a minute or so. Talk amongst yourself.” She pulled a pair of current diverters from her bag and snapped them around a bundle of wires.

  Behind her, Ethan said, “Don’t look at me like that. I did what I had to do.”

  “What about us? We could die.”

  Ethan shrugged and stepped to Nala’s side as he looked back to Angela. “I told you to leave. You demanded to stay. I didn’t have time to argue.”

  “You said you could handle the problem without me. I thought that meant you had a back door. Some way we could get out of the section if I couldn’t figure this puzzle box out.”

  “There is no back door.”

  “What were you going to do without me? Once Nala gets that panel cleared out…”

  Nala looked up as Angela’s narrowed eyes turned to her.

  “She runs station maintenance… she doesn’t defuse bombs,” Angela said, the doubt was evident in her voice.

  He looked at Nala with an apologetic grimace, nose and mouth scrunched sideways.

  She could see what he was about to say in the lilt of his lips. So, with a sigh, she beat him to it.

  “You’re right. I don’t defuse them. But I used to build them.” Nodding toward the cut open skywalk, she said. “And I’ve already dismantled the one inside the skywalk. It was, unfortunately, one of mine.”

  “You…” Angela didn’t finish her sentence; instead, she looked at Ethan. “And you knew about it this whole time?”

  “We’ve known each other since we were twelve. But if it’ll make you feel better, I didn’t know about it until after she’d quit.” Ethan said. “Her mom was an ecoterrorist until she wound up homebound. Her brothers both died when Lunar Colony Three met with a non-passive failure that sent them into critical. She was raised in it and just needed the time to get her head straight.”

  “Thanks for talking about me like I’m not here.” Nala said, looking over her shoulder at them both. “Flash lamps on.”

  Three beams flicked on and Nala cut the circuit wires. They fell against the bulkhead like shorn hair, leaving the fringe of bangs at the top.

  “Those are still live. Don’t touch. We have to work fast. The lights and environmental systems aren’t going to kick back on.”

  “What about our backups?” Ethan asked.

  “I cut those out of the panel first because they weren’t energized. Shine your light on my bag, please.”

  She pulled out a pair of puffy, insulated gloves and slid them on. The padding went all the way to her shoulders. With a deep breath, she leaned forward and slid her arms through the live wires. Even with gloved fingers, she could feel the incendiary package.

  Not daring to look Angela in the face, she wove the device out of the cramped space and set it on the floor, moving them all away from the live wires. It was the same standard design she’d always used, but it felt bulky. Shaking away the thought, she pulled the gloves from her hands. It was silly to think she’d remember the weight and feel of a bomb she’d made over ten years ago.

  Pulling the wire packet away from the tubular casing of the charges she exhaled a shaky breath. Nala flicked open her small driver set and repeated the motion she’d walked through inside the skywalk. She dropped the cover plate on the floor.

  “You’re crazy, you know that, right Ethan? If you’d followed station protocol….” Nala swallowed a heavy lump in her throat. If he’d done that, she’d still be dead when the bomb went off. “You shouldn’t have cut through blast plating.”

  Kneeling next to her, Boudri shrugged. The movement was exaggerated enough that she could see it in her periphery. “We’re here now. No point in arguing about it.”

  She did look at him then. For a man minutes away from an obvious and painful death, he didn’t look worried.

  Gritting her teeth, she sorted through the tangled wires. Red and blue twisted together… black and white…. The lamp’s light tried to suck all the color from the wires. She should get a medal for patience under duress.

  Every bomb she’d built for The Face was the same—a redundancy that had made her contract extremely lucrative. “Lemon and lime, lemon and lime.” She muttered under her breath, searching for the right bundle.

  She sorted through the wires again, and a third time. “Shit.”

  “That’s never good,” Angela said sardonically.

  “It’s not mine.”

  Ethan stood, and took a couple of steps backward. “I thought they contracted out to you?”

  Pulling her hands down her face, she picked up the cover plate and rechecked the smooth surface.

  “They did. Clearly they were fudging when they said it was an exclusive arrangement.”

  “I guess you do need me after all.” Angela glanced at him with a frown.

  Nala stood, making room.

  Pausing, Angela’s eyes settled on the red numbers counting down. She ran her fingers through her hair and snapped her teeth together as she studied it. />
  Beside Ethan, Nala leaned against the bulkhead and tapped her toe in a staccato rhythm.

  Boudri slid down into a kneeling position beside her, biting his thumbnail as they both watched the numbers. “Right now, I really wish I didn’t know what that meant.”

  Angela worked methodically, pulling tools from her belt, replacing them, clipping off wires. She hadn’t started cutting yet. She pulled a screw driver from Nala’s set and dismantled another part of the device.

  Watching her in silence, Nala couldn’t help but berate herself. She should have realized it wasn’t hers immediately. It was similar, but the differences were glaring now that she knew to look for them. Staring at the copper leads two centimeters apart, she muttered under her breath.

  Angela made a disgusted noise and Nala took a step forward. “Who in their right mind uses a zap terminal ignition?”

  “People who want to get killed by their own work,” Nala said, wishing there was some way she could help.

  Ethan’s eyes were locked on the bomb like it had hypnotized him.

  Taking a step away from Angela and the bomb, she pulled her knife from its pouch. Slitting open the thick gloves she’d just used to handle live wires, she sat down beside Angela. Inside the rough leather exterior, she tore apart the layers of insulation, gathering as much of the cotton fluff as she could.

  “Can we stuff this in between the connections and the brick?”

  “It couldn’t hurt.”

  Angela took the fluff and worked it into the gap between the mechanical ignition’s terminals.

  “Ethan,” Nala said. “Get me the rolled up