Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [106]
He came to a wider corridor, listened carefully for several seconds, then had to brace himself against the wall when the ship suddenly yawed sharply to port.
Data tried contacting Rhea again. Nothing. He was suddenly gripped by fear for her, but he knew he had to keep moving. At the end of the smoky corridor, he found a turbolift. A turbolift would not be safe, not with the ship under such a brutal attack, but there was no obvious alternative.
When the doors opened, the lights were off, so he could just barely make out a single figure. Data immediately saw that it was not one of Exo III androids. This one was too short. “Rhea.”
“Oh, good,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “There you are.”
“Indeed.” He noticed a puncture wound in the artificial skin below her left ear, occasional sparks flashing within.
“Looks worse than it is,” Rhea assured him. “They detected the transmitter, and one of them decided to deal with it by stabbing it with a tool. That’s when they pissed me off.”
“What did you do?” he asked.
“The restraining mechanism they used to hold me to the duplication table was made for organics. Just as they started the table spinning, I put everything I had into the servos in my arms. I broke free.”
“You escaped all three of the androids in the lab?”
“No,” Rhea said grimly. “I destroyed them. I think my breaking free, not to mention the renewed attacks on this ship, caught them off guard. That gave me an advantage. That … and I was worried for you.”
Data wanted to say too many different things at once, but finally settled on the pragmatic. “We must get out of here.”
“No argument from me.” The ship rocked again. “You’d think Captain Picard would try to get us out of here before he blew the ship up.”
“It is not Captain Picard,” Data said as they ran aft. “I reactivated M-5 and gave it access to the station’s defense systems.”
“You what?”
“Under the circumstances, it seemed like our best chance to stop the androids.”
“Yeah, not to mention our best chance to get killed in the process. You know that M-5 is crazy, don’t you?”
“Crazy is an imprecise term. It is … single-minded.” He looked around the corridor for some indication of where they might be. “We must try to find a transporter room or a shuttlebay.”
“Yes,” Rhea said, taking his hand. “Let’s.”
The doors to the turbolift opened again. It had passengers. Neither Data nor Rhea stopped to count exactly how many there were, but instead turned and ran. The Exo III androids were more powerful, but heavier, so though Data and Rhea were unable to increase their lead, neither did they lose ground. Several promising-looking doors flashed by, but if they had stopped to investigate and chosen wrong, they would have been cornered.
Rhea shouted, “There!” and pointed up ahead to the next intersection. Data saw a service tunnel entrance, something like a Jefferies tube. If they could make it into the narrow confines, Data’s and Rhea’s smaller statures and quickness would be a significant advantage in evading capture.
Data slowed for a moment and shifted behind Rhea. She would be faster and should go first. She didn’t question his movement, but only poured on an extra burst of speed, so that Data half-suspected she had been lagging behind for his sake. Three meters from the open access hatch, she leapt forward, her arms flung before her. She was in the tube only a half-second before Data, but she managed to scramble out of his path. The sounds of pursuit ceased. No doubt it would resume soon, possibly from a different direction, but they had bought themselves a few precious seconds.
Fifty meters