Destination Europa: Chapter 21

Fire

Sep 20, 2024

Previously, Quill caught up with the stowaway in AiLeifr’s backup server room. AiLeifr has been compromised and an acceleration sequence initiated that will fire the ship into Jupiter unless it’s stopped in time…

“Stay back!”

The dim yellow of the floor-level emergency lighting glanced dully off the weapon Priska was pointing at his midriff. It didn’t shine like metal. Some kind of polymer. Quill remembered the excess consumption of printing powder they’d noticed at the Deck 11 printer. Priska was still drifting backwards towards the door, the flashlight shining at him, and he could no longer make out her face.

He tried to steady himself against the wall behind him with his left hand, wincing as his wrist took the extra pressure. He’d forgotten about the sprain. He held his other hand out, palm up in a placatory gesture. The back of his neck and his armpits felt clammy, and he could smell his own rancid sweat in the darkness.

“Priska, please!”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said again. “But I will if I have to.”

She was halfway to the door. Quill saw a shadow slip in behind her. Tark. He felt his mouth go dry. Tark would have no way of knowing about the gun. Better Pris hurts me than her.

“Pris, stop!”

Priska kept gliding backwards towards the exit.

“You can’t fire a gun in a spaceship!” he shouted, trying to stall for time and simultaneously alert Tark. He hoped she had tweaked her own aural filters to compensate for the alarm, which he could still hear like a too-fast heartbeat in the background.

“Believe me, I don’t want to,” Priska replied. “Though the ship’s going down anyway. I’d just like to be off it first.”

Quill couldn’t make out the immediate details of what happened next. Tark must have launched herself from the bulkhead by the door, because Priska’s backward momentum was interrupted, and the light from her head torch flailed to the side then downward to the floor. There was a sudden flash and the smell of burning polymer, then a sphere of orange flame that expanded from the size of a satsuma to an orange to a grapefruit. There was a cry from Priska, and the glowing sphere flew towards the bulkhead as she jerked her arm. Fingers and tentacles of flame were inching up her sleeve.

He pushed off as hard as he could from the wall of the server room and collided with Priska. His greater momentum sent them both tumbling towards the door. Quill grabbed Priska’s arm to try and put out the flame. At the same time, Tark was diving towards the fireball that had been the home-made gun, wriggling her arms out of her overall sleeves in midair, trying to get something to smother the flame. The automatic fire extinguisher system kicked in, high-pressure fire-retardant foam squirting in jets from the ceiling, filling Quill’s eyes and mouth with foul-tasting goo. Priska kicked off a server rack and they both sailed into the corridor.

Quill wiped the fire redardant from his eyes as he and Priska crashed into the opposite wall. She was coughing and hacking for breath, but as soon as they hit the side of the corridor she shoved Quill away and aimed for the hatch into the central shaft. Quill scrambled to follow. He could barely see, his eyes streaming and sore. She seemed to be hunched at the side of the hatch, a dark amorphous mass, and then she was moving, flailing like someone learning to swim, and then there was the cutout of her head and shoulders passing the red-lit outline of the hatch, and the hard line of the hatch door moving. She had removed the wedge of metal that had kept the door open.

Quill gave a desperate push off a handrail and slammed into the side of the hatch. He grabbed the thick metal edge and pulled his head and shoulders through. The closing mechanism stopped. Inside the shaft, by his head, Priska was tapping on the door control panel with her left hand, her face illuminated like pale red flame. The tight-fitting hood of her flight suit had become dislodged during the struggle, and the head torch flashed behind her, while her braid of long dark hair drifted outward like an antenna. Quill lunged forward, knocking her away from the door control. She half-screamed, a cry of anguish, and flew into the centre of the shaft. Quill turned to the control panel, but the buttons didn’t respond. The hatch door resumed its movement, grinding shut.

“Tark!” Quill yelled, though he knew she probably couldn’t hear him. He hammered the panel again, but Priska had somehow hacked it shut, leaving Tark and the fireball on the other side.

WARNING: ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN 15 MINUTES.

He blinked off the message, cursing, and turned back to Priska. To his surprise, she was floating near the far side of the shaft, apparently unmoving. He kicked over to where she was and grabbed her by the shoulder with his right hand, then used his feet to hook onto the ladder on that side of the shaft. She was unconscious.

“Priska!”

He shook her shoulder, gently at first then a little harder. Her right arm was drifting to the side, and it seemed to be glowing reddish in the dark.

“Priska!” he shouted again. She has to wake up. She has to. I don’t know if anyone else can stop this.

The ship’s tannoy system crackled and buzzed, then Quill heard the Captain’s voice, distorted with static and faint, as if from a great distance. He turned off his aural filters but could scarcely hear the words over the alarm, which was still blaring and echoing through the shaft. He turned the filters back on and tried to compensate, but he only caught the last few words of the announcement: Repeat, do not delay. Strand out.

Priska moaned, and her eyes blinked open. At the same time, Quill saw that the redness of her arm was not a reflection of the emergency lighting, but the microgravity smouldering of fire, creeping up the fabric of her flight suit as if it were charcoal. Hardly thinking, he grabbed her arm again to try and smother it, rubbing it in the fire retardant that still soaked the front of his own overalls. She shuddered and fainted again, and as he looked closer he saw that the thumb and three fingers of her right hand were gone, and the remaining flesh was charred black. He heard singing in his ears, and forced down the vomit that had risen to his throat. He could smell it now, beneath the stench of the fire retardant, like barbecued meat. I have to get her to sick bay. She has to wake up.

A shout echoed down the shaft, from the forward direction. It was answered by another voice. Gundarsson, Quill thought. Then there were pencilling beams of white light, suit-mounted flashlights, four or five figures entering the shaft somewhere around Deck 2.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, over here!”

Priska coughed and came round, her eyelids fluttering. Gundarsson and his team were approaching fast, using the ladders to accelerate down the shaft. Quill felt a sudden and awful clarity. If they get hold of Priska, she’ll never talk. And she’ll never get out of this alive. He spun her round, so she faced the wall, and pulled her behind him, into such shadow as he had in the dark. He grabbed her head torch in one hand, wrapping it in his fist so there was nothing but the orange-red glow of his own fingers, and holding it behind his back.

“O’Neill!” shouted Gundarsson as he approached. He seemed surprised to see Quill. “See anything?” The rest were close behind him. Quill recognised Stockinger, the ai tech, and Tasha NiDorn. He didn’t know the others without their aikons, but he thought they were systems techs.

“In there!” Quill pointed at the Deck 5 hatch. “Server room!”

Gundarsson’s team started moving towards the hatch.

“It’s jammed!” Quill shouted. “And there’s a fire!”

One of the techs started working on the door control panel, while Gundarsson signalled for the rest to move towards the Deck 4 hatch. The Security chief turned to Quill then, his flashlight bouncing off Quill’s foam-soaked overalls then hovering on Priska’s leg behind him.

“Who’s that?” he shouted.

“Injury!” Quill’s heart was racing. “I need to get to sick bay!”

“Forget sick bay!” yelled Gundarsson. “Get to a • lifeboat!” The flashlight switched abruptly off him, and then Gundarsson was following the rest of his team into Deck 4.

Quill waited until the last of their lights had disappeared, then unwrapped his fingers from Priska’s head torch and put his arm round under her back, like a lover holding his beloved at a ball, or someone rescuing a drowning swimmer. Then he pushed off the side and aimed for Deck 6.

WARNING: ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN 10 MINUTES.

In the distance, Quill heard another crackled announcement from the Captain. He had hauled Priska into the Yellow Ring corridor on Deck 6. He could hear urgent shouts and footsteps from the direction of the Green Ring. Priska was conscious, but barely.

“Priska,” said Quill, almost gently. He held her face in his hands and stroked a wisp of hair from her forehead. “Priska, darling. Please stop it. Please. You don’t want to do this.”

“Water,” she croaked. Her breathing was laboured. Quill looked around frantically. The tight curve of the Yellow Ring was empty. I guess we’re all going to die soon. I think the Captain’s ordered evacuation. I can go and get water. Maybe she’ll repent before we go down.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

In the Green Ring, he realised that the noise of people was coming from the Blue Ring, from the mess, where the Deck 6 lifeboat airlocks were. Quill swung through into the mess and in the dim light saw a knot of Earther colonists moving fast towards the emergency hatch that had been opened in the floor. An FSS crewman was directing people through. Quill ducked behind a table, oriented himself, then sailed parallel to the floor towards the nearest vending machine. His fingers frantically worked the interface on the machine, which seemed completely unaffected by the emergency. He grabbed the beaker of water that came out, rotated 180º then made for the Green Ring exit, ignoring the shouts of the crewman. Lord, have mercy. Save these people.

Priska sucked the water thirstily. A couple of droplets escaped her lips and scattered like pearls in the air. She looked at Quill then, her eyes shadowed with pain.

“Pris,” he said. “Please. You can stop this. There must be a way.”

She shook her head. “Too late.”

WARNING: ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN 5 MINUTES.

“It can’t be too late,” he pleaded. “We can open an interface. You hacked the ai. You can control it.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Overrode everything. No way to stop now. Not enough time.”

Quill searched her eyes, desperately trying to read her.

“I’ll get you away,” he said. “Stop this, and I’ll get you off the ship. I’ll help you escape.”

She coughed, a violent rasping sound, and sucked at the water beaker again. Her eyes were conflicted, hovering between pain and hatred and love and sorrow.

“I’ll get you away,” Quill gabbled, frantic. “We can go together, Pris. Save everyone. I’ll take you in a lifeboat. I’ll look after you. I should never have left you. Just stop this. Try.”

Sorrow, or something like it, won. A tear formed like a diamond in the corner of each eye, and she gave a shuddering gasp, almost a sob.

“Quill… ’s too late. But… I’ll try.”

Quill grabbed a handrail and spun himself 90º so he was facing the wall of the corridor, then re-oriented Priska to face the same way. He tried to open an interface. No response.

“AiLeifr!” he shouted, as if saying it louder would help.

“Won’t work,” said Priska. “Renamed it.”

“What’s it called?”

Priska gave a half-chuckle, then coughed and gasped in pain. “Apollyon.”

“Apollyon!” he shouted, a fragment of his mind registering that in other circumstances he would have enjoyed Priska’s wit. “Interface!”

To his surprise, it worked. A basic interface window opened.

“OK, what now?”

“What do you see?” asked Priska.

Quill looked at her in astonishment. “You can’t see it?”

She shook her head. “No chip.”

His head whirled as he tried to process the implications. “Then how can you…?”

“You’re going to have to do it. I’ll tell you. But that’s why.. no time..”

WARNING: ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN 2 MINUTES.

“What do I do?”

“Open a command line,” she started.

“How do I do that?”

“Tell the ai!”

“Apollyon, command line!”

A blinking cursor appeared in the interface.

“Now what?”

“Type…” She screwed up her face in thought.

WARNING: ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN 60 SECONDS.

We’re cooked. Quill looked back and forth between Priska and the interface that she couldn’t see. No chip.. explains a lot.. but now… Lord, have mercy.

59.

“We’re too late,” he said.

58.

Quill put his arms around Priska and held her, pulling her close. She put her head on his shoulder.

57.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

56.

“Me too.”

Quill closed his eyes.

55.

The lights came on. They flickered then stabilised into late-afternoon golden-yellow. In the background of Quill’s hearing, the alarm stopped. He opened his eyes. He turned off his aural filters and could hear nothing but his own and Priska’s ragged breathing. He pulled away a little bit, to look at her face. In the full light, she looked gaunt, smeared with blood and remnants of foam. He looked at her mutilated hand and arm, and tried hard not to retch, then looked back at her face.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The tannoy system crackled into life. “Attention all personnel. This is the Captain speaking. I am more than delighted to announce that our Security team and technical experts have regained control of the ai. Stand down evacuation and return to quarters. Further information will follow. Strand out.”

A new message flashed onto his visuals.

AiLeifr welcomes you aboard the R.G. Leifr, destination Europa!

Quill recognised it. He’d received the same message when his chip had first synced with AiLeifr nearly two years earlier.

“The ai’s rebooting,” he said out loud. He felt light-headed with relief.

“I’ve failed,” said Priska. Quill couldn’t read her expression. She closed her eyes.

The tannoy came on again. “Attention all personnel. This is Gundarsson, Head of Security. Please listen carefully to the following security announcement. We have a dangerous terrorist aboard, identity unknown. A full search is underway. Female, race unknown, last seen wearing an emergency flight suit. She may be accompanied by SymbioNor engineer Aquilla O’Neill, repeat Aquilla O’Neill. Any information regarding either of these individuals should be reported immediately to a member of crew. We expect these individuals to be apprehended quickly as systems come back online, but please remain vigilant. Gundarsson out.”

Quill let go of Priska and looked at her in horror.

“We have to get out,” he said.

← Previous chapter

→ Next chapter

Navigation Index

If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!