“You’re really close right now.” Mac tried not to move as one of Lewis’ elbows found a sore spot on her shoulder. Must have gotten bruised during the turbulence, she thought, trying to keep her mind off the way the air felt thick. Was it dust? Humidity? Or something more lethal? Without the ship’s instrumentation there was no way to tell. But then, without the ship’s instrumentation they were nothing but target practice in the middle of the ongoing battle zone.
“Woah!” An abrupt lack of gravity followed by its return on a completely different axis resulted in Lewis landing on top of her. The unintentional grunt as his stomach was shoved in Mac’s face, his heavier planet-raised body mass knocking the wind out of her.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Are you okay?”
“Get off of me.” Mac scowled. “Damn but you’re heavy.”
“Matter of perspective, Birdie,” he quipped, quickly finding a place to wedge one elbow and his toes. The last thing he wanted was to be brought up on charges for having inadvertently crushed one of his crewmates. “You Celestials are all just a buncha lightweights. There’s no meat on your bones!”
“Contrary to popular believe, being muscle-bound and overweight is a liability in a ship’s low-grav environment,” Mac replied, waspishly. Was it easier to breath because she no longer had Lewis’ body pressing her into the side of the maintenance tube, or were they running out of oxygen?
Twisting carefully, she was able to reach the access panel.
“There’s a burnt out processor. Pass me a replacement?” Micrograv returned the minute she clicked it into place. And Lewis landed on her shoulder, shoving Mac a good two meters down the tube.
“Unph!”
Pressure eased as Lewis grabbed the rungs of the hand and foot holds. Rolling her shoulder, Mac grimaced. Gentle fingers touched the top of her head.
“Are you okay?”
“Still too heavy, downsider.”
Climbing carefully downward, Lewis sighed. “I told you, it was an accident.”
“Make it up to me by losing the weight,” she shot back. “For now, we’ve got bigger problems. Hull integrity is at 40% and weapons systems are dead. Everyone else is either pinned down or too tied up in the battle to come get our sorry asses. Best we can do is get the hell out of the way.”
“Live to fight another day?” Lewis offered, his lips set in a grim line.
“Something like,” Mac affirmed. “Provided you don’t squash me first.”
Managing to get out of the maintenance duct and into the ship’s main spinal corridor wasn’t a huge improvement. True, Mac wasn’t having to fight Lewis for every cubic centimetre any more, but what she could see in the larger space did very little to fill Mac with confidence.
“Aren’t there meant to be lights on around here?” the downsider asked as he looked around.
Biting back a comment about stating the obvious, Mac stuck a fingertip in her mouth and held it up in front of her. A few long seconds passed. Not even the hint of a breeze. Great. Air handling was DOA too.
Grimacing, Lewis moved off toward the forward end of the ship. “You coming?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Why? There’s no way we’re going to be able to get what’s left of this boat to actually do anything from Command.”
A metallic thud echoed through the deck plates under their feet.
“Impact?” Lewis asked tightly, but she shook her head in reply.
“Outgoing. Guess one of the rails is still up and firing.”
“Uh, didn’t you say something about hull integrity being kinda…” He let the question hang in the air, the answer becoming depressingly clear as the far end of the corridor seemed to flex slightly.
“Yeah.”
Reaching for the nearby comm panel, Mac stabbed a finger at the flickering screen, waiting a moment for the chirp that would announce that she’d opened up an all-hands channel. The last thing any of them needed was someone shaking what was left of the ship apart by taking shots with a weapon that kicked like a kiloton elephant – assuming that whoever they were firing at didn’t simply silence the gun by responding in kind.
The chime never came, and she spoked at the console again.
“C’mon, c’mon…” she muttered, frowning at the fizzing sound she got instead of what she was meant to be hearing. An instant later, Lewis’ meaty paw clamped onto her shoulder, still sore from the abuse it had suffered in the duct. She didn’t have time to complain about the pain, however, before she was hauled violently backward just as the panel exploded in a shower of sparks.
“Son of a OWWW!”
“Whine later, Birdie. Unless you wanna be cooked?”
The temptation to kick him somewhere tender for his tone was strong, but he had done her a solid…
The deck trembled again and this time there was no missing the groan of metal as the structure around them flexed alarmingly.
“Fancy a walk?” Mac asked, fighting down the flood of adrenalin that threatened to overwhelm her. From the look on his face, Lewis had come to the same conclusion she had.
No comms.
No engines.
They were fucked.
Hosted and narrated by:
Lillabet Fyre (Firebirdschild)
Started 08/30/22.
Scenes played: 1
License: Community License
18+
