Ishtar Rising (Book 2) - Michael A. Martin [4]
P8 nodded, picking up a small tool kit and a phaser rifle from the locker’s interior. She maglocked the tool kit to her belt and slung the weapon over her hard-carapaced shoulder. “Tank looks to be intact, too. But we’ll need to test it, and quickly. Can you drain it from in here?”
The man looked puzzled, but answered in spite of that. “Yes.”
“Then do it!” P8 couldn’t remember the last time she had pushed her tympanic membrane so hard. But her shout—or perhaps the phaser rifle on her shoulder—seemed to have the desired effect. One of the technicians immediately entered a command into a nearby computer terminal.
If this doesn’t work, we may all be dead very soon.
Another two minutes passed before everyone had completely suited up and checked all seals and connections. P8 then led the group out of the office, with two of them carrying their injured companion. On the main control floor, several inches of water had already accumulated on the deck, flowing down through a hatchway at the room’s far end. From the rush of sound coming from the room beyond, P8 gathered that the bulk of the drainage was headed elsewhere.
Let’s just hope the water inside that tank wasn’t the only thing keeping it from being flattened by the atmospheric pressure out there, she thought.
The group made its way through the hatch and into a room that reminded P8 of the engineering section from some low-tech, pre-Federation Earth starship. From the ceiling, a series of pipes dripped water—the remnants of the contents of the rooftop tank.
P8 shouldered the phaser rifle and trained it on the area around the pipes. The phaser beam cut through the structure, and a neatly circular section of roof about a meter and a half in diameter fell to the deck with a clatter and a splash.
“Get everybody up there,” P8 yelled. “Into the tank!”
One of the men protested, shouting from within his EV suit. “I still say this is crazy!”
P8 nodded. “Maybe. But it’s your best chance to stay alive.”
Using a set of wall-rungs and pipes, the first pair of workers reached the hole and climbed up. P8 could hear a hollow gong sound as they clambered within. Using the flashlight mounted on her middle right arm, P8 shined a light up into the hole. The first two men’s arms emerged from the aperture, and they began pulling up the others.
P8 slung the phaser rifle over her back and grabbed the unconscious scientist, then started to carry him up the walls, bringing up the rear of the party. Balancing carefully, P8 handed the man up to the others, then clung to the lip of the hole for a moment.
A fast search of her toolbox yielded a small magnetic grapnel, which she aimed down at the section of metal she had just cut away. She aimed, fired, and the flukes made contact. Pulling on the grapnel with four of her limbs, she quickly took possession of the metal disk.
Using the phaser to weld the disk back into place took barely another two minutes.
The building shook, as though the molten rock outside had grown tired of being ignored. The already sloping floor suddenly listed even more sharply. Tortured metal creaked and groaned, and P8 could hear a hard wind keening outside. The roof is going.
P8’s combadge crackled. The voice belonged to Commander Gomez. “—ting rough out there, Pattie. How’s it comi—”
Keying her combadge, P8 said, “We’re out of time, sir. Please hit the switch.” And hope my welds hold.
“—ou got it, Pat—” came Gomez’s scratchy reply.
The tank suddenly rang as if something massive had struck it, and then a hum engulfed it, vibrating the polyalloy walls as the Kwolek’s tractor beam—usually used for construction projects—separated the tank from its rooftop moorings.
But there was no inrush of hot carbon dioxide gas. The air was stale but remained breathable. The tank’s seams—including the ones P8 had just created—were holding, at least for the moment. She hoped they wouldn’t fail until after the Kwolek had lofted the tank to an altitude where the temperature and pressure would allow Ground Station