Honor - Kevin Killiany [5]
Her inclination was to make several spaced micro burns, allowing the surrounding peat to cool away from combustion temperatures between gentle thrusts. However, the rate at which the tunnel was collapsing suggested she didn’t have the time to spare on caution.
Pattie unhooked her safety straps. If she was going to do this, she was going to need to move fast. She’d worry about the hundred and ninety meter drop if and when she felt herself falling. First priority was reaching the hatch.
With that in mind, she triggered the hatch release. Hopefully, when it faced the empty tunnel it would pop open of its own accord, saving her precious seconds.
It was possible all of this was unnecessary, that the EVA pod would simply turn in place and she’d be able to exit at her leisure. But one thing she had learned was to never count on things going well.
A section of the tunnel sagged.
Pattie couldn’t preprogram the attitude thrusters—there was no formula for plowing through peat. She adjusted their angles and triggered the all-fire, holding the contact down as the pod shuddered and began to turn.
Thirty, forty degrees, then it seemed to hang up. Something more solid than the rest of the peat had snagged one of the pod’s few projections. Or perhaps the material had started to collapse, holding it more firmly.
Pattie was already giving the thrusters full burn. There was nothing she could do but keep them firing, the chance of conflagration increasing with every second.
With an abrupt lurch that almost threw Pattie from the couch, the pod came loose. The viewport became a mirror as it turned away from the tunnel.
Pattie released the thruster control as the hatch popped open. A cloud of smoke and a rotting vegetable stench filled the tiny cabin as she dropped to all eights and scurried through the opening.
The pod shifted beneath her as she leapt from the metal sill. There was a sucking, crackling sound and another billow of smoke and stench washed over her as she scrambled up the crumbling tunnel.
The peat was not completely dry, she realized, then as quickly realized her pod wouldn’t have dug a tunnel if it had been. Perhaps in moist peat the danger of fire wasn’t as great as she’d supposed.
She almost slackened her pace at the thought. Then a section of ceiling twice as broad as she dropped, nearly blocking her way.
“I’m arboreal, not burrowing,” she reminded no one in particular as she frantically dug her way over the obstacle.
Past the mound of fallen ceiling was another and a third. But beyond that the last thirty meters looked clear. The ceiling bowed but had not yet broken loose.
She was going to make it.
Then from behind her came a sullen fwump as though someone were dumping a massive load of pillows. Or dirt. A cold gust of escaping air washed up from behind. The tunnel was collapsing.
She wasn’t going to make it.
Chapter
3
“I should have gone with her,” Fabian Stevens said for perhaps the hundredth time.
“What?” Bart Faulwell asked, pulling his attention back from the vista of aqueducts and canals stretching to the horizon and focusing on his friend at the other end of the narrow oval table. “And given up the chance to be Tev’s personal adjunct on Bundinal?”
Stevens growled at the linguist with what was evidently his best impression of an angry Klingon.
“You have the inflection wrong,” Bart pointed out mildly. “Unless, of course, you didn’t mean to call me a muffin, in which case you have the wrong word entirely.”
Stevens sighed heavily and scowled at the view.
The two friends had met for lunch at an open-air bistro perched on the brow of a hill overlooking the township of Brohtz. Though its cheerfully faux rustic decor was clearly aimed at the tourist trade, the Bundinalli librarian Bart was working with had assured him the food was excellent, faithfully representing the regional cuisine.
From this vantage point they could see no less than four canals and three aqueducts. A major hub was a few hundred kilometers west of Brohtz. There was