The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Forty Two

The sound was like an explosion in reverse.

The inner airlock door hissed open in a flash. The damaged outer door was already open. Suddenly the room was exposed to the vacuum of space. The air vanished in a violent blast of explosive decompression.

The pressure drop was savage and violent, ripping from the room anything not fastened in place or tied down.

And Typhon was gone.

The roar tore Ellie from her feet. Black space clawed at her hair and clothes as she twisted in the cargo webbing she had wriggled into. She screamed, and the sound of her terror evaporated with the oxygen.

Tila and Malachi went horizontal as the void claimed them. Their cuffed wrists bit deep into their skin but held firm.

Tila's staff flew at the airlock. One end caught against the centre console and it spun through the room like a throwing axe. It hit both sides of the airlock frame at once. The pressure change glued it to the wall.

And then there was no more air, and the pressure equalised. The staff dropped to the floor and rolled back into the room.

The hurricane died even as it was born, leaving behind only the stillness after the storm.

And there was no more air.

Released from the cold hand of space, Tila and Malachi fell together, swinging down from their handcuffs. They looked at each other in horror and counted the seconds until they suffocated.

Ellie slumped back into the cargo webbing. Afraid, but not panicking yet. She had been the only one ready to take a breath. She reached out to close the airlock door but couldn't move her hand. The violence of the decompression had pulled her tighter into the cargo webbing. She pulled back, twisting free one shoulder, then one arm, then one hand.

She slammed the button as hard as she could. The door closed and sealed.

Ellie pulled herself completely free and moved across the room in eerie silence. There were still sounds, footsteps, her rapid heartbeat, the deep vibration of the Solar Forge, but they travelled through her body.

From somewhere another sound was starting to make itself known. Something faint, like a thin and distant hissing. The air was slowly coming back into the room.

Ellie took another step and tried inhaling. There was something, the weak oily scent of the ship was back, but thin and light like the atmosphere that carried it. It was not enough to breathe.

Tila and Malachi gasped for air like dying fish. Their diaphragms strained with effort but their lungs hardly swelled.

Ellie reached the console. The button she was looking for was marked 'emergency ventilation. It glowed in response to the low pressure. She pressed it.

Above them hidden ducts responded at last and the dirty oxygen nitrogen mix of the ship flooded the room.

Tila and Malachi could breathe at last. They drew long, greedy breaths. As the pressure normalised Ellie could hear them. The quick change was like hearing someone at a distance suddenly being brought very close.

And they lived.

Ellie collapsed in a heap, the little colour she had in her face now gone.

She wanted to stop, to rest, to sleep, but they were so close now. In a few more minutes they would be away from this ship forever. Answers didn't matter now. She only wanted to survive.

'Ellie? Ellie?'

Tila's urgent call was a jumble of relief and command and fear and disbelief.

Ellie raised her head above the console and gave Tila a weak smile.

'I'm okay.'

'Come here, please, quickly.'

Ellie lifted herself up and walked across the room.

'Tila, you okay?' Malachi asked. He coughed, then groaned at the pain caused by the cough.

Tila nodded, still in disbelief that Ellie had found them and saved them.

'I want to go home,' said Ellie quietly.

Tila pulled her close and crushed her in a hug with her free arm. Tila pressed Ellie's head into her shoulder. Wrapping her tight, keeping her safe, shielding her from the universe.

Malachi leaned into the hug too, putting his own arm around Ellie and resting his forehead against Tila's temple.

'I'll get you home,' she said, and squeezed tighter. 'I can't believe you made it. Ellie, you did so good. So good. I'm so sorry, and proud, and... and... and we're almost done here, I promise, but we just need to go a little further. That's all, just a little more, and I'll be with you every step of the way. I promise.'

Ellie said something but Tila's shoulder muffled the words.

'I'm never letting you go,' Tila said into Ellie's shoulder.

Ellie finally popped her head free. 'I know.'

'Ever!'

'I know, but Tila?

'What? Anything?'

'I can't breathe again.'

Tila relaxed her embrace as little as she dared.

'Ellie-'

'Yes?'

'I'm glad you came, and I'm sorry.'

Ellie put her arms around both of them and said 'It's okay,' said Ellie, smiling into their arms. 'I believe you.'