Draft 2

Chapter 34

Month 3: The Dead Zone Continued

Helen gripped the catwalk railing, staring down at the primary liquid nitrogen umbilical. The frost-covered pipe ran along the lower bulkhead, pulsing with super-cooled cryo-fuel bound for the engines. Ten feet separated her from the pressure-release valve.

Below her, John scrambled backward through the Cargo Neck, slipping on the frozen puddles. The Kaelen Behemoth stalked him. Amber spores vented from its hide.

“Madam,” Seven said, attached to her shoulder. “If your intention is to manually rupture a line pressurized at three thousand pounds per square inch, I calculate a ninety-nine point nine percent probability that we will be flash-frozen. Furthermore, we will sever the primary coolant feed. The main thrusters will be incapable of ignition.”

“Then I’ll route the feed through the auxiliary manifolds! It’ll take us twice as long to reach Tartarus, but we’ll be alive.”

Helen held the crowbar and measured the drop. She lacked the upper-body strength to snap the valve from a standing position. She needed gravity. She needed her entire body weight.

But first, she needed the monster standing directly beneath the pipe.

Helen tapped her earpiece. “John, back up. Lure it to your left. Get it under the housing!”

Static came through the channel. The ship’s degraded grid blocked her transmission as John kept backing out of the drop zone.

Helen leaned over the railing, cupping a hand around her mouth. “Hey! Look up here!”

The Behemoth did not even pause. It remained fixated on her husband, closing the distance with heavy thuds. It was about to walk right past the umbilical housing.

Helen looked around the catwalk frantically. Her eyes locked on a heavy, unattached floor grate resting near the edge of the walkway—a maintenance hazard someone had lazily left behind. She shoved the toe of her boot under the lip, and kicked it hard.

The heavy steel grate plummeted over the edge. It struck the umbilical housing directly above the beast.

Clang.

The monster stopped its advance. Annoyed by the sudden noise, the creature took two steps backward, positioning itself perfectly under the frozen pipe, and tilted its blunt head upward to look at the catwalk.

“John, brace!” Helen screamed.

She gripped the crowbar with both hands and climbed onto the middle rung of the railing. She threw herself off the catwalk into the dark.

Helen swung the crowbar like a bat, driving all her falling momentum into the strike. The metal connected perfectly with the pressure-release valve. The iron sheared off its threading.

The explosive force of three thousand pressurized pounds of liquid nitrogen did not simply vent. It erupted like a bomb.

The concussive wave of expanding gas blasted Helen backward through the air before she even reached the floor. She flew backward, sailing over the deck. She slammed down hard behind a titanium supply crate just as the geyser of super-cooled liquid erupted. The thick metal crate took the brunt of the freezing spray, shielding her from the lethal liquid, but the landing was brutal. Her right foot caught the edge of a floor plate at an unnatural angle. Sharp pain shot up her calf as her ankle sprained.

Helen groaned, rolling onto her side. The crowbar slid out of her grasp, skidding across the ice.

Cryo-fuel flooded the corridor in a blinding white cloud. The extreme thermal shock hit the predator, but the beast fought the cold. It thrashed blindly in the fog.

The cryogenic eruption plunged the Cargo Neck into a total white-out. Helen was blinded by the vapor. She dragged herself backward using her elbows. She couldn’t see the monster, nor John.

“John!”

All she heard was the shriek of the Behemoth. The sound stretched into a gurgling rattle, and then, finally, abruptly stopped.

Deep within the bulkhead, a metallic thump echoed through the hull. The ship’s automated upstream baffle slammed shut, reacting to the pressure drop. The roar of the geyser instantly cut off, leaving only the soft hiss of dissipating vapor.

Slowly, the ventilation scrubbers pulled the worst of the vapor into the ceiling grates. The white-out thinned.

Helen pushed herself up onto her good knee. Several feet away, the Kaelen Behemoth stood frozen mid-thrash. Its jaws were locked open. The creature was encased in a thick, creeping layer of dark frost. It was a towering, dormant statue of black ice.

“Helen?” John stumbled out from behind a row of crates. His coat was slashed across the chest, but he was whole.

“I’m here.”

John ran across the slick deck and dropped to his knees beside her. He pulled her into a crushing embrace, burying his face in her hair. “You jumped. You actually jumped.”

“I told you I wasn’t ever going to let you go,” she said, gripping his coat.

“Madam.”

Helen looked at Seven who managed to stay attached to her shoulder. The little drone was completely coated in a layer of frost. His blue optic was frozen shut behind a film of ice.

“Madam, I am currently experiencing a catastrophic loss of visual input; I will attempt to thaw my casing. Furthermore, based on the biomechanical sound of your landing, you have suffered a Grade Two ankle sprain. Attempting to walk on it increases your likelihood of permanent ligament damage by eighty-four percent.”

“Thanks for the diagnosis, Seven.” Helen winced as she tried to shift her leg.

“Captain!”

Janet and Ingrid rushed through the aft doorway, both carrying red emergency trauma kits. The doctor slid across the ice, dropping to her knees beside Magnus’s still body.

Ingrid stopped dead in her tracks. She stared up at the frozen monster. “How long is that thing going to stay frozen?”

Janet looked back at the creature. “I don’t know. A couple of hours, maybe. Unless somebody turns the heat on.”

“Nobody touch the thermostat,” Ingrid said.

The deckhand lay crumpled against the bulkhead where the monster had swatted him.

Janet ripped her medical scanner from her pocket and ran it over his chest. She cursed loudly. “His ribs are pulverized. His right lung is collapsing, and he’s bleeding internally.”

Ingrid hovered behind the doctor. “Can you fix him?”

“Not alone.” Janet looked at John across the way. “Captain, I need you. I have to inject a bio-sealant to patch the puncture before his lung collapses. I need you to clamp both hands over the breach and hold it shut with everything you have, or the pressure will blow the patch right out of his chest.”

John scooped the crowbar off the ice, then wrapped an arm around Helen’s waist, hauling her up with him. She leaned heavily against John, taking the steel bar from his hand to use as a makeshift cane.

Helen pushed John’s arm away, shifting weight onto her good leg. “I’m standing. Go save Magnus. I’m going to get Claude before he restarts the thrusters, and vents all oxygen into space.” She gritted her teeth against the pain radiating up her shin. “You are the only one strong enough to help Janet. Do your job, Captain. I’ll do mine.”

John stared at her a moment before sprinting over to help Janet. He looked back at Helen. “Bring our ship back, Mitchell.”

“Always do.”

Helen turned toward the forward corridor. With Seven clinging to the strap of her coat, she leaned heavily on the crowbar and began the agonizing limp toward the logic hub.

Will Magnus Survive?