Spin State - Chris Moriarty [166]
Twenty meters below her, she heard a click, then the whirr of circuits flipping on to feed power to the turbines. She tried to get her left shoulder forward, protect her bad one, but she didn’t have the space or the time to get turned around. She flung herself at it again, right shoulder first. A lick of cold ran down her arm from shoulder to wrist and her hand went numb . . . but the vent opened. She shot through just as the outer vent opened, and found herself hanging along the wall above an algae tray.
A full atmosphere of air pressure hit the miter seal. It slammed shut behind her like a bear trap, and she dropped into the bright, humid air of the hydroponics dome.
02:53:19.
She crept into a sheltered space between the dome struts and a dripping-full rack of algae trays. She crouched there, panting, waiting for her internals to settle down a little, waiting while she pulled her head together.
Evaluate and adapt, she told herself. Accept what is, and act on it. She was behind schedule. They had somehow gotten bad information. Bad information that could still make or break the mission. Her arm was numb, weak, close to useless. But she was in. She was through the most dangerous part of the run, and the only way out now was through.
She checked the open sunlit expanse of the dome in front of her. Empty. She stepped forward—and slipped on something slick and wet. She caught her balance, looked down and saw blood dripping from her right hand and pooling on the decking.
Her combat-application virucules would break her blood down, destroying telltale genetic evidence, leaving only the sterile universal-type plasma the field medics needed for their IV feeds. But in the meantime, there was still blood on the floor. A lot of it. Rose red drops on the silver deck plating, a glistening gingerbread trail for the guards to follow—straight to her.
She unzipped her pressure suit, pulled up the thermal shirt she wore under it, and ripped, wincing at the loud sound of tearing fabric. It ripped easily though, and it was elastic enough to make a tourniquet. She knotted it around her arm and sealed up her pressure suit again, being careful to activate the reflective visor; it wouldn’t do to get caught on vid there. When she had stanched the bleeding, she surveyed the damage to her suit. It was repairing itself, or trying to. But the tear was so big that she doubted the smart fibers would form a solid seal again. And if the suit wasn’t spacetight, how the hell would she ever get back to the Starling?
She shook her head, forced everything out of her mind but the immediate problem. Get to the lab comp. And don’t bleed all over the floors doing it. She’d worry about the pressure suit and all the rest if and when she had to.
Alba: 28.10.48.
03:12:09.
Getting to the comp was easy. Li had expected to have trouble with the DNA reader at the start of the last corridor, but to her surprise, the field dropped almost instantly to let her through. She shivered with apprehension. Did Nguyen know more than Li had told her? Had she slipped her an ace under the table for her own inscrutable reasons? Or was someone else at work here?
She slipped down the corridor, alert for patrols, scanning the labyrinth of ducts and wires that lined the ceilings for the faint pulses of security cameras. Nothing. Could a high-security lab really be so lightly protected? Or was it just that this was Alba, and the Corps knew that no thief who managed to breach the orbital fortress would ever get out safely? She counted down the doors until she reached the one that separated her from the lab spoke’s mainframe. Here goes, she thought. She slipped the lockpick kit out of her suit’s kangaroo pocket and unrolled it on the deck.
The lock work went slowly; she was used to having Catrall do this. But Catrall was dead. And even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be helping her on this job. Not when it meant selling out Alba to the people who had