"Interference from the hull breach," he said. His golden-brown eyes met mine, and I saw him making the same calculations I was making. "Or the radiation from the raiders' weapons is disrupting signals."
"So Mothership can't find us."
"They're searching. But with the debris field and energy signatures—" He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
We might drift for hours. Days. Until our air ran out or the structure collapsed completely.
The ship groaned again, more insistent this time. Something exploded in the distance, muffled by bulkheads but closeenough to feel. The deck tilted slightly, maybe two degrees. Not much, but enough to confirm what I already knew.
We were running out of time.
My training kicked in automatically, the same emergency protocols that had kept me functional through countless traumas, disasters, impossible situations. Assess the situation. Identify resources. Develop a plan.
"Medical equipment," I said, moving toward the overturned supply lockers. "Surgical lasers can cut through metal if we modify them. What about your scanner?"
Zorn was already there, pulling equipment from the wreckage with careful efficiency despite his size. "Possible. The energy output isn't designed for industrial cutting, but with modifications?—"
Another explosion. Closer. The lights flickered and died, plunging us into darkness for three heartbeats before emergency lighting kicked in. Red glow instead of white. Warning instead of comfort.
The air tasted thicker now. Recyclers failing.
"How long?" I asked.
Zorn checked his scanner. "Life support? Thirty minutes, perhaps forty if we limit movement and reduce oxygen consumption."
Not enough time. Not nearly enough.
But I'd worked miracles with less. Had saved patients who should have been corpses, had kept people alive through situations that should have killed them. This was just another impossible problem requiring an impossible solution.
I could work with impossible.
"Show me the bulkhead composition," I said, moving beside him. Close enough that I could smell the ozone-and-metal scent that clung to his skin, I could feel the warmth radiating from his larger frame. "If we can identify structural weak points?—"
"Here." He pulled up a schematic on his scanner, highlighting areas where the metal was thinner, where emergency seals had created stress fractures. "But we'll need sustained energy output to breach even the weakest sections. More power than we have available."
I studied the schematic, my mind racing through options. The surgical laser had limited battery life. The scanner wasn't designed for cutting. The other medical equipment was either too specialized or too damaged to repurpose.
Unless—
"The defibrillator," I said suddenly. "The cardiac resuscitation unit. It generates high-voltage electrical pulses."
Zorn's markings flickered, the gold healing patterns catching the red emergency light. Understanding crossed his features. "You want to use it as a makeshift arc welder."
"It's insane."
"It's resourceful." He was already moving, retrieving the defibrillator from where it had tumbled against the wall. "We'll need to reconfigure the output, bypass the safety limiters, and hope the power cells don't overload."
"And if they overload?"
"The explosion will be immediate and fatal." His voice wasmatter-of-fact. Medical professional stating clinical reality. "But we die either way if we don't try."
He was right. We both knew it.
We worked in synchronized silence, our movements practiced from months of medical collaboration. I handled the delicate electronics, bypassing safety protocols that existed for good reasons. Zorn managed the power calibration, his larger fingers moving with surprising precision across the interface.
The ship groaned constantly now. A symphony of structural failure. Metal grinding against metal, systems shutting down one by one, the slow-motion collapse of a vessel that had survived raider attacks and engine failure but couldn't survive the final catastrophic damage.
Sweat rolled down my spine despite the cooling temperature. My hands trembled slightly, exhaustion and adrenaline and the weight of knowing that every second counted, that this jury-rigged plan had maybe a thirty percent chance of working.
