Part 2
I'm thinking that Mansun really means to shoot me here, that he's backing me along a passage so he can do it out of sight of the others. Adrenaline races through me, sharpening everything. The rest of the crew are rallying after us shouting their protests. Before I know it, Mansun shoves me backwards through another doorway and slaps the lock so the door slides shut in my face, leaving me standing there staring at him through a triangle of grimy plass.
Chrizt. I've just let him back me into an airlock.
'You don't want to be doing this!' I yell at him like it will make a gram of difference, yanking the hoody from my head.
He waves his gun at the crew and glances at me through the window.
'Yeah? Give me one reason why not?'
'My mission, you bastard! The Shal!'
Mansun pulls a face. Through the thick plass his scowling, tattooed features are superimposed by a reflection of my own, so that it looks like he's wearing my stubby mohawk. The ex-merc slaps something else and I hear a sudden hiss of escaping air.
He's cycling out the atmosphere. I only have a minute or so to live.
'Hey!' I scream, pounding at the tiny window and barely feeling the pain. Panic surges through me like a herd of fleeing horses. I can see the others jostling out there in the passageway, but Mansun shoves them away and keeps pointing his pistol to hold them back. The big man is panting hard, just as hard as I am in the thinning air.
He won't look at me now. That's how I know he's really going to it.
'Do the maths!' he bellows at his captain and crew-mates. 'It's him or one of us. Anyone feel like volunteering in his place?'
Mansun shoves someone back with a snarl, their shouts drowning each other's words.
Somehow I always figured it would end like this. Thrown to the wind by people frightened enough to turn on the loner outsider. Though I never supposed it would happen like this, way out here in the depths of the High Wild, gasping for my next breath of precious air.
I'm too young to die. I'm only nineteen years of age. But if I don't think of a way out of this right now, it's all over.
Behind me lights start flashing around the outer hatch, the very same hatch that's keeping out the vacuum of space. I stare horrified over my shoulder, realising its about to crack open. Frantic, I glance around the cramped space of the airlock for inspiration, but I can't see anything that might help, not in the few seconds remaining. There's not even time to hack the inner door's keypad.
Somehow, I need to hack the situation itself.
In a rush I slap my hands against the window again and glare out at Mansun until he meets my eye. With my final breaths I yell the first things that come to me. God help me maybe the last words I'll ever say.
'Wait a second! I'll give you a million creds, right now, right here, in instantly transferable crypto-currency, if you let me out!'
'Bullshit you will.'
He's right, it is bullshit. But it's the only lifeline I've got, so I slap the door even harder. 'You know the mission I'm on. You know the Shal are backing me. I've got plenty of funds if you'll just let me transfer them to you. Besides, I can offer a different way to do this. A fair way!'
'This is fair. Damned fair.'
'A million creds says otherwise - just give me a chance!'
I know I've hooked him when he hesitates just long enough to think it over.
'Just open the door!' I try to yell, but it comes out as a squeaky wheeze.
Suddenly the lights stop flashing. Air whooshes back into the chamber and into my lungs. My ears pop.
I nearly start crying with relief.
When the door cracks open I can't stop myself, I'm so angry I get ready to take a swing at him - a good old-fashioned Shal nerve strike to his temple. But Mansun's a pro, and he keeps his stun pistol aimed right at me.
'Knock it off kid. This better be for real.'
---
We assemble in the galley again, where the air is even more stale than before. I stand there shaking and gathering my wits while one of the ship's cats, the young blond one who seems to have taken a liking to me, chews and claws at my trouser leg in play.
'The money,' demands Mansun. 'And then you get to talk for a minute. Tell us this great idea of yours.'
I'm too peeved now to be intimated by this jerk and his gun. So I break the news to Mansun with all the gentleness that I can muster.
'I don't have any money for you. That was all bullshit.'
'You sonofa-'
'Stand down!' warns the captain, and I see that Mayday has her own stun pistol aimed at the big man's head. It's about damned time she took control of the situation. 'You stop this nonsense now or I'll drop you myself. Start acting like a fucking professional for Chrizt sake.'
Her scorn is enough to make Mansun comply, though he doesn't like it.
'Season,' she says to me, because that's my name. Season X. 'What have you got for us.'
'Just an idea I had,' I tell her, and the small crew watches as I step over to the big dining table, dragging the over-excited cat with me. 'When you said we had a dud airpac.'
I slap one of the cubes that sits on the table's surface, making the thing quiver like a block of jelly. I pick up the airpac by a fraction to sample its weight, then do the same with the others. One of the pacs feels lighter than the rest, though not by as much as I was expecting. 'We have seven air-gel pacs and seven people on board, but one of these pacs is nearly dry.'
'Yeah yeah kid,' says Mansun. 'You wanna get to the point before we all asphyxiate here?'
The air really is growing stale here. I notice it when I take a deep breath to settle myself as best I can.
I've never much liked standing in the spotlight addressing people like this. It goes against my natural tendency to seek out the shadows. Feeling their eyes upon me, I force myself to look up from beneath my hoody to meet their expectant gazes.
Young Alt stares at me with saucer eyes. Bodhi looks concerned. The others sway with exhaustion.
'I'm suggesting something more equitable than throwing someone out the airlock like a bunch of space pirates. Something more like choosing straws. Considering the circumstances, that's the least I deserve here, don't you think?'
'Go on,' prompts the apprentice pilot before Mansun can protest.
'Take a gamble with me. We each choose one of the emergency airpacs at random, we lie down and strap on a mask, and then we go into hibernation together for the burn to Aldelphi.'
They're staring at me with open mouths.
'You mean, one of us gets to choose the dud airpac?' asks Hourly, appalled. 'And we won't even know it?'
'Yeah. I mean one of us doesn't get to wake up.'
Continues in Part 3.
Part 1 can be read here.
The High Wild is a passion project based on my love of Space-SF TV shows and fugitive-on-the-run stories. I'd like to release the novella as a free ebook when it's finished.