The pods hit without a sound in the vacuum. Inside the shells it was not quiet.
The impact slammed through the webbing, through the ribs, through the teeth. For a second every man in a pod was just a body in a can. The cutter collars bit, the clamps locked, and the hull of 626 took six new wounds.
Smith's board lit. Six contacts. Five on the cargo line, stacked where the brief said they would be. One off the map, hard against the crown of the ship.
Hayes.
The point on the chart held. The pod had bitten hull and stayed. No tumble. No bounce back into the dark.
Smith watched the mark settle and did not let his face change.
Time to see what the kid is made of.
"One through Five, on me. We go in through the cargo wound. Coms stay open. If you lose Hayes on the glass, you do not wander looking. You hold the hole. You do not split. You do not chase noise. Clear?"
"One." "Two." "Three." "Four." "Five."
Smith sealed his mask. The greens did the same. They entered the ship through torn cargo plating, red emergency strips painting the edges of a hole that still leaked cold.
Hayes came to with the pod screaming at him.
Alarms stacked on the small screen until the words ran together. Hull stress. Seal tear. Power drop. Inner rail cracked. The left side of the shell was the side that had taken the burst on the way in. The magnet housing was scored. The cutter collar had still done the work. There was a hole in the deck plating, black at the edges, just wide enough to crawl.
That was enough.
He popped the inner latch. The webbing let him go like it was glad to be rid of him. He shoved the rifle ahead of him and crawled.
The air on the other side was wrong. Cold. Thick. It sat on the tongue even through the mask. He pulled himself out onto plating that had been a bridge deck and was now something that only remembered being one. His left hand found metal and held. For a second he forgot the graft was a graft. It just worked.
Emergency lighting ran the walls in thin red lines. Main power had been dead long enough that even the backups looked tired. Whole stretches of the crown were black. Where the red still lived it made everything look wet.
Black growth owned the bridge.
It webbed the consoles and the rails and the places people had sat. Not mold. Not rust. A wet-looking crust that had hardened in sheets, then pushed out again in ridges, like the ship had grown a second skin from the inside. It climbed the viewports until the stars were only scratches. It framed the command chair in a thick collar. Where it was thickest it shone dull, like oil that had learned to hold a shape. It had no smell the mask would admit, and that was worse than a smell.
Hayes stood up slow and tapped his comm.
"Smith. This is Hayes. I'm on the bridge. Pod's wrecked. Do you copy?"
Static.
He adjusted the tab at his jaw and tried again.
"Smith. Green-One. Anyone. I am not at cargo. Repeat, I am not at cargo. Injection put me in the crown."
The static climbed and broke and came back as noise. No numbers. No old man.
He tried once more, shorter.
"Medical wing is the rendezvous. I'm moving. If you can hear this, hold cargo and wait."
Nothing human answered.
He knew the layout from the sandbox. Smith had made him walk it until the turns sat in his feet. Bridge down through the officer ladder. Cross the mid-spine. Medical sat off the left branch past the sealed labs. Limited light. Bad air. The red strips were enough if he did not get greedy and run blind.
He left the dead crown of 626 and started down, one hand on the rail and the other on the rifle the brace had already claimed.
Behind him, in the red dark of the bridge, something let go of the growth.
Not a footstep. A peel. Then a wet shift across plating.
Hayes stopped.
The sound stopped with him.
He did not turn all the way. The outlands had taught him that too. You give a hunter your full back or you give it your full face. You do not give it the long look in between. He started walking again, slower.
The thing on the bridge started walking too.
He could hear it now. A slipping sound. Soft. Close. Like something wet being dragged and then set down. It kept his pace. When he took three steps, it took three. When he paused at a junction to read the faded deck mark, the slipping paused with him.
The corridor was not empty. Shapes in the path. He stepped around them without looking. A chair on its side. A helmet. Something that might have been a tool belt. He told himself they were objects until a red strip flickered, died, and kicked back on.
A body.
Decorated. Rank on the chest. Pins that still tried to mean a fleet. The uniform was intact enough to read. The man had not been torn apart. He had been emptied. The eyes were black and dry. No shine. The mouth hung wide, and there was no moisture in it at all. Like the air had been pulled out of him and the face had stayed that way on purpose.
Hayes's breath fogged the inside of the mask.
The slipping came again. Nearer. On his side of the junction now.
He did not wait for the light to flicker a second time.
Hayes ran.