Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1) (17 page)

“Jacob,” Carmen called through her radio. “Anything explosive in the Hopper? If one was shot?”

“Yes, it uses compressed gas for thrust. It could explode if it was punctured.”

“Shit,” she said. She reached out to the airlock controls, her mind and heart at war. Her mind knew what she needed to do. The boy was still firing. Any moment he might blow the Hopper, which could kill all of them. She remembered the sequence to open the outer door by heart, even if she’d only seen it executed once.

Was this how Patrick had felt? His hand hovering over the control, knowing that he had to kill the man inside the lock, hating that fact and wishing there was something else he could do?

The thought made her understand him with a complete clarity she’d never had before. She owed him an apology.

Her hand pressed the button.

The outer door opened with a snap and a whoosh of air. The boy inside the lock never had a chance. He didn’t even try to grab for anything. One moment he was there, alive, someone she might be able to save. The next he was gone, drifting in space somewhere in the shuttle’s wake.

C
ARMEN LEANED forward
against the panel, hot tears forming little bubbles that drifted away from her face and tangled in her floating hair. She’d been so cruel to Pat, back when she first met him. She’d been furious at him for making what she’d been so sure at the time was the wrong call. He’d looked like a callous monster, and in the back of her head she’d wondered sometimes what she was doing with a man who would execute someone like snapping his fingers.

And now she’d done the same thing. She’d killed someone to save everyone else on the ship, the same as Pat had done. It hurt to have killed the boy, even though she couldn’t see that she had any choice. And it was just as painful that she’d been so harsh with Pat. She wanted nothing more than to see him again right now. For both apology and comfort. She cycled the outer door closed again, and pumps began refilling the inner lock with air.

“Unngggh.”

The groan came from somewhere behind Carmen, back in the hold, and made her jump. This was no time or place to fall apart, and she wasn’t a fall-apart sort of woman, anyway. She turned and looked for the source of the noise. Her instinct said that it was probably Fred. Was he hurt? Had he been hit by the gunfire?

She keyed her radio. “Fred? Where are you?”

“Over here,” he replied over her ear bud. His voice sounded ragged. Carmen saw a hand waving from a pool of shadow behind a stack of shipping crates. She pushed off from the door and flitted to his side. He was keeping himself from drifting by holding one of the crates with one hand. He had the other hand planted firmly against his left calf. Even holding as tightly as he could, some spheres of red blood drifted free.

“How bad is it?” Carmen asked. Fred must have been hit by one of the bullets. Carmen had a sudden and savage sense of satisfaction over spacing the soldier, and then immediately felt a pang of guilt for feeling that way. Too confusing to worry about right now anyway.

“Are you both OK?” Jacob asked over the radio.

“I’m fine, but Fred’s hit,” Carmen replied.

“Went right through,” Fred replied. “Hurts, but wrap it up and I should be OK for a bit.”

Carmen looked around trying to gauge how much blood Fred had lost by measuring the balls of blood floating around. Maybe only a few ounces? It looked like less than a pint, anyway, and a man Fred’s size could generally spare a pint without feeling it too much.

“At least you won’t have to walk on it,” she said. The bullet hole had weakened the fabric in the leg of his ship suit enough that she could rip it off and tear it into strips.

Fred chuckled, then inhaled sharply as she put direct pressure on the wound. He got several shades paler as she wadded cloth into both sides of the wound.

“You sure you’re OK? You’re not going to fall out on me, are you?” she jibed. She hoped he wouldn’t. She needed his help, and the best way she could think of to ensure he stayed with her was to imply he might be too weak.

She was right. He looked affronted, and glared at her. “Took worse hit than this, lady,” he said. “Jus’ patch it up.”

Carmen wrapped the dressing with strips of cloth, and tied the ends tightly over the wound. It wasn’t perfect. Fred really ought to have a proper cleaning and surgical care for his leg. But it would keep him from bleeding to death for now, and that would have to do. Carmen let go of Fred’s leg and he wiggled it experimentally. He gave what sounded like a satisfied grunt and then looked up at her.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to move. I’m surprised nobody else has wandered in here yet. Let’s get somewhere more quiet.”

“Jacob, we’re moving now,” Carmen said. No response came back over the radio. “Jacob?”

“They’re jamming him. Which means they know we’re here and where we came from. Let’s go,” Fred said.

Fred pushed off from the cargo, carefully favoring the injured leg but working his way across the hold with an agility that Carmen envied despite his injury. He led them off to the rear of the hold, near the engines, and opened a hatch.

“Inside, quick,” he said.

Carmen ducked in. Lights flickered on as motion sensors picked up her presence. The space wasn’t large, and was mostly crammed full of space suits. It felt positively claustrophobic once Fred joined her inside and closed the door.

“We should be safe here for a bit. Now, tell me how you planned to take on an entire ship full of armed soldiers?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” she replied. “I planned to cure them. I find that people who aren’t in immediate danger of dying tend to do less stupid things. This whole mess happened because people are afraid. Take away the fear…”

“And you take away the reasons for these guys being assholes? Might work.”

Carmen sighed. “It might have, if I’d gotten here a day or so earlier. Now I’m not so sure. The infection is pretty advanced in some of these people.”

“Will it still work?” Fred asked. He looked alarmed, and she felt the same. What if Patrick and her father were wearing already bleeding in their brains? She wasn’t confident that her cure could save someone that far along.

“Maybe,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But they’re likely to be irrational, even violent. They’re not just going to sit down and listen to reason just because we have a cure.”

It was a real mess, and she didn’t see an easy solution. The problem wasn’t going to solve itself, either. In fact, it would get worse, the longer they waited. And every minute that went by dropped the chances that her cure would help the people she loved.

That word was still sending an icy ripple down her spine, but it still felt right. Which made her more determined than ever to find a solution.

“Fred, how do we disable everyone on the ship without killing them?” she asked. There had to be a way, and if anyone knew it, she had a hunch it would be him.

“Well, a few ways. Most of them require a little more prep work than we seem to have time for,” he replied. “But the easiest is jus’ to mess with the air from the environmental control panel. Change the gas mix a bit, and people will likely jus’ pass out.”

That wouldn’t be great for patients already ill, whose bodies were fighting for their lives against the virus. But once they were out, she could get them on oxygen if she needed to. The first aid station on the shuttle wasn’t bad. The aid station back on the moon was even better, of course – but they’d be stuck in quarantine until it was certain that none of them were infectious anymore, so that was out. Earth was the best bet, but it was days away. She’d be stuck with what resources she had on the shuttle – or what could be carried in from the moon base – to keep these people alive until their immune systems could take over.

“We’ll do it. Where is the panel?” Carmen asked.

“Either the cockpit or engineering. The cockpit will be guarded like mad. Engineering is a better bet, but for sure they’ll have someone down there too,” Fred said in a warning tone.

“Who’s sick, and who already knows he is dying from an incurable disease. I doubt he’ll be at his most vigilant,” she replied.

“Fine, we’ll try it,” Fred said. Then he started shucking off the top of his ship suit.

“What the hell, Fred?” she said.

“What?” he asked, tossing the top aside. “Got to be in space suits, otherwise we’ll get knocked out at the same time as everyone else does, right? Space suits are here. Now get undressed.”

Carmen grumbled, but he was right. Someone needed to invent a suit you could just get into with street clothes. She stripped her top off, grateful for the sports bra, and ignored Fred’s struggles to get his pants off over the dressing she’d put on his leg. Carefully not looking his way at all, she shucked off her pants as well so that she could slip into one of the skin tight coolant suits you had to wear inside the suit.

But the tight garment got stuck somewhere around her shoulders. She blushed furiously, knowing what she had to look like. She had no leverage, nothing to push against. No gravity to help her guide the garment down her body. And enough of it was covering her face that she couldn’t see where it was stuck.

“Hold still,” Fred’s gruff voice was gentle but firm. She did as he asked, blushing so hard that she was sure her bare midriff was bright red too. His hands reached up and pulled something by her shoulder, and then pulled down on the coolant shirt. It was magically unstuck now, and slid easily down over her body. Fred’s fingers avoided her skin with the same grace that he glided between cargo boxes outside.

When she could see again she looked up at his face, half expecting to see a leer there, but his face was bland and businesslike.

“There,” he said. “You should be all set. I’ll need your help getting the leggings over this dressing.”

She pulled the rest of the coolant suit on herself, wondering at how badly she’d misjudged the man. He was much deeper than she’d figured. But then, he was a friend of Patrick’s – so deeper made sense.

Helping each other out, they were quickly suited up. Instead of hooking up to large backpacks full of air, Fred connected their air supplies to small bottles of oxygen that could be clipped to their belts.

“Less bulky than the big ones, so we can move around faster. But only good for an hour,” he said. “You’ve got to get another before then.” He showed her how to change out the bottle. “You can find these in the emergency lockers all over the ship.”

And then they were out of excuses to wait any longer. Carmen took a deep breath of canned air, the taste odd on her tongue. They had a time limit now, even beyond the one they had before. She was acutely aware of each second passing by as she tucked her clothes away into a cubby. She took out the big injector first, though. She had a hunch she might need it. That, she tucked into a loop on her thigh, and fixed in place with a velcro strap.

Fred opened the door cautiously and peered out. He was moving more slowly than he had exiting the cargo airlock, and it wasn’t just pain from his wound. Carmen realized he was taking the soldiers much more seriously now than he had before. They were a deadly threat. She followed his lead, looking all about for any movement before leaving the suit locker.

“Engineering is right this way,” Fred said. He led the way out of the cargo hold into the rear of the ship. A door waited at the far end of the hall. It was closed. Fred didn’t pause. He tapped a code into the panel. Carmen heard whooshing sounds from the other side, and shouting.

“I pulled the fire alarm,” he said. “Compartment inside is being filled with non-flammable gas. My guess is anyone in there will spill out here about…”

The door snapped open. Two men floated out, retching and gagging. Neither of them was armed. Fred punched the first in the head, hard enough that Carmen felt the crack of the impact. The man went limp. The other saw the threat but was so miserable that he tried to raise his arms in a position of surrender.

Fred seemed to pause a moment as if considering that, and then shook his head. “Sorry, bro,” he said, and slammed a huge fist into the second man’s head.

“I’ll make sure neither of them wake up anytime soon,” Carmen said. She injected each of them with a dose of the cure – mixed with her sedative. They’d be out for hours.

“Let’s go,” Fred grunted. “That fire alarm will alert the cockpit and the rest of the ship.”

Once they were both inside, Fred shut the door and keyed in a code to lock it. “It won’t hold them forever,” he said, pushing off from the door and drifting over to a console.

The door had a glass window, so Carmen kept watch, worried that the enemy might come at them any time. “How’s this going to work?” she asked anxiously.

“I got to override all the safety protocols an’ then flood the ship with the wrong mix of gasses. I’m telling the computer to do something it was programmed not to do. Gimme a few minutes.”

Carmen saw a head peek around the corner down the hall, only to duck back. “I don’t know if you have a few minutes,” she said. “They’ve found us.”

Fred mumbled “Shit,” under his breath, but kept typing away.

She kept her eyes peeled down the short hall, watching for movement. The soldiers knew where they were. What would they do? Storm engineering? If they figured out what Fred was trying to do, they could just get into space suits and changing the gasses wouldn’t even help anymore.

But they didn’t do either of those things. Instead, they shoved two tied up men into view. Carmen sucked in her breath, hard. It was Pat – and her father. Both of them looked all right, although Pat had some bad bruises on his head and her father looked more scared than she’d ever seen him before. It wrung her heart to see them like that, floating at the end of the hall, their hands tied behind their backs, gags over their mouths, their eyes wide.

“Fred,” Carmen said, barely able to speak. “We’re out of time.”

A hand holding a pistol slid into view. The gun was aimed casually toward Pat, and Carmen almost shouted in fear and anger. Then the man holding the gun dropped into view. He was middle-aged, with dark hair that was cropped short, dressed in military fatigues. She guessed this had to be the man in charge of the soldiers who’d taken the ship. The man gestured with his gun toward the door – clearly, he saw her through the port-hole in the door.

She shook her head. There was no way she was going to open the door for him!

The man shrugged, his face almost a little sad, and aimed the gun back at Pat’s head. He said something that Carmen couldn’t hear through the door. Pat closed his eyes. The soldier pulled back the hammer of his pistol.

“Wait!” Carmen screamed, banging on the window. “No!”

She reached down and keyed open the door, pulling it ajar just enough to shout out through the gap. If they rushed, she hoped she could close it again in time. “Wait! You don’t need to hurt anyone!” she shouted. She hoped they could hear her – she knew her suit was muffling her words some. “I have the cure!”

“That’s a bold claim,” the soldier called down the hall to her. But he lowered the pistol a little.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Who are you?” Carmen asked.

“I’m Colonel Pierce. I own this ship now. You must be Carmen Rosa – the good doctor has told me about you.”