Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [141]
Must be nice to have so much air to spare, she thought.
Tasia looked over at Robb, giving him a relieved explanation on the suit channel. "Your powerpack wasn't connected right. Your suit wouldn't have pressurized."
The other recruit looked alarmed, then deeply grateful. "Hey, thanks—"
"Don't mention it," she said. "And don't you dare get all blubbery on me. Shizz, if you popped from explosive decompression, the sarge would probably assign me the job of scrubbing all the goop out of your suit."
From across the hangar bay, one of the recruits began howling over the open crew channel, his words indecipherable. Air and mist sprayed from a breach around his wrist, and he flailed his hand, as if that might help. The idiot hadn't sealed his left glove properly. Three recruits pressed around him, trying to help, telling him to calm down—which would do no good, because with a loss of suit integrity like that, he'd lose all his air and body heat within seconds.
Tasia remembered him as one of the spoiled rich kids from Earth, Patrick Fitzpatrick III. He had been rude to her, but she couldn't let him die, even from his own cluelessness. "Tasia to the rescue," she said, mostly to herself.
Pushing off against the floor in the low gravity, she arrived at the scene in seconds and shouldered the others aside. She grabbed the young man's arm and wrestled the glove into place. Fitzpatrick swatted at her, and if his helmet hadn't been in the way, Tasia would have slugged him hard in the jaw just to stun him for a minute. His hand was already swollen purple from the decompression, and the cold vacuum had probably damaged the tissues. Well, he'd be too sore to write postcards to his mommy for a while.
She twisted the gauntlet, snapped the wrist collar into place, and clamped down the seal. The hissing noise stopped and his suit began to reinflate. "There, step one, two, then three. It only works if you follow the procedures." She didn't think Fitzpatrick would lose his hand, but he might have an awful lot of pain for a few months. Maybe he'd even be mail-dropped home with a full disability discharge...and some equally obnoxious kleeb would take his place. Better to keep the problem she already knew about.
Tasia could see in Fitzpatrick's eyes that he was utterly terrified, more stunned than in physical agony. For now. The real pain would hit him later, back in the infirmary.
"You fixed it," Robb Brindle said, drifting up beside her as the drill continued.
"He'll need to get to the medics as soon as the bay is repressurized."
She didn't really expect any acknowledgment or thanks, but maybe they would lighten up a bit. In the barracks, a lot of the trainees had criticized her because of EA, who had accompanied her into the service. Although keeping the talented compy was permitted—designated as "personal property"—having a special servant around gave the other recruits plenty of excuses to give Tasia grief.
But she could hardly put EA back in the Tamblyn family spacecraft and send her back to Plumas alone. Her furious father would probably dismantle the compy in a fit of pique just to get back at his impulsive daughter. Instead, Tasia had enhanced EA's programming to let her perform chores around the barracks and help with necessary tasks on the moon base.
The yawning dome remained open to vacuum for only a few more seconds, then the jaws clamped shut. Air blasted in great coughs from ventilation openings, filling the hangar bay again. When the room was repressurized, the drill sergeants marched back inside, accompanied by a team of medics. They hustled Fitzpatrick away, and one other man whose suit pumps had failed; he had nearly suffocated before one of his companions noticed his distress and cracked open his faceplate as soon as the air returned.
"Regroup and change," called