There must have been a hull breach, because an alarm began to shriek, and from beside her elbow, with a hiss of escaped gas, a cylinder rose out of her arm rest.
“An oxygen mask.” She looked at it longingly, but with her wrists restrained, she wasn’t going to be able to use it.
Ethan was assessing the situation, then he leaned toward her and brushed a finger over the restraint on her right wrist.
It popped open.
“Try it yourself,” he said. “On your left.”
Time to help, she said to the little voices in her head.What do I do?
She touched the left restraint and it popped open, and as soon as it did she was touching Ethan’s, both left and right, before she grabbed up the mask.
She looked around as she pulled the mouthpiece out of the cylinder and over her face, and saw all the Caruso, who had been sitting up front, had been either badly injured or were dead.
Linao was still out of it, and she grabbed up a spare cylinder and crouched beside her to put it on.
“It might be better to keep her restrained,” Ethan said. “That way at least she won’t roll around.”
Velda nodded, but released her ankles, so if they needed to move fast, there was only one set she had to deal with.
“You think the Cores deliberately crushed the front, because they scanned the runner and knew Linao was in the back?” she asked.
Ethan jerked his head up to look at her. “Maybe,” he said, slowly. “Maybe.”
She wondered how long they could last in here, even with air cylinders. The breach was obviously not big, but already shecould see tiny ice crystals forming on the face of the Caruso lying dead up front.
One of the Caruso seemed to come to, flailed about, and then fell back down again, and Ethan moved cautiously forward toward them, then put his foot on a fallen laz, slid it back toward Velda, then reached down and picked up another for himself.
They were both braced for whatever was coming next.
Velda just hoped they’d survive it.
21
Something was happening.
Ethan edged toward the front of the runner, the only place to see out, but the front window had been so badly crushed it was impossible.
There was a scraping sound as something hooked the small vessel, and then they started to move.
The question was, was this the Caruso or the Cores?
He was sure the Cores had been responsible for smashing the front of the runner, but he knew a Caruson warship was close by, and there was no way it wouldn’t have retaliated.
Behind him, Velda crouched beside Linao, who was slowly coming round after her laz hit, the second one she’d taken within a few hours.
Given the Cores had done the same to him, and given the threats Linao had made against him and Velda, he didn’t feel all that sorry for her. Still, they had made her comfortable and given her an oxygen cylinder, and he would bet she wouldn’t have done the same for them, unless there was something in it for her.
Velda rose up and came to join him, crouching down and angling her head to try and find a way to look out, then gave up with a shrug.
The whole runner shuddered as it came into contact with another ship, and they were both forced to press up against the wall to keep their balance.
“Here we go,” Velda murmured, as the ship jerked and then scraped across a bay floor.
They had been physically hauled inside a ship.
Velda put her hands over her ears at the screeching sound of metal on metal, and Ethan realized when it finally stopped that he’d tensed up.
