She groped for the balance of bilocation. It’s been so long! But in seconds, the skill came back and she was hearing with her ears and apperceiving the working realm simultaneously.
“—knowledge, Com Third, this is the Captain. Abandon that Window. You have ninety seconds. Acknowledge.”
She knew the Window’s radiation shielding wasn’t meant to absorb weapons fire, but then neither was the ship’s. Inside, she’d be virtually blind and hardly any safer. “With all respect, Captain, I’ve a job to do here.”
“That was an order, Com Third!”
Then the Teleod telepath caught her attention with a command image. //On my mark, execute.//
As the six ships acknowledged the order, she retreated from the working realm, fumbling for the way to speak to her allies again. //Gita Two, Gita Three, Station Prime, Barkyr, this is Prosperity. I’ve broken their code. The two lead ships will be firing jump-cannon, the next two lightspeed projectors, and the trailing two will lay down a field of proximity devices.//
The jump-cannon was a particularly nasty weapon. The energy knot it fired dived through a space warp and appeared inside the defenses of the target.
//This is Gita Three. Thanks, Prosperity.//
The two fighters fired maneuvering jets in unison, altering trajectory by the tiniest increment. They’re going to ram! Kyllikki didn’t have a tactical display, just the helm tracker with gross estimates on an overlay, but she knew the escort intended to take out the jump-cannons.
Determined to distract the enemy coordinator until it was too late, she retraced her steps into the working realm. The key image she had dismissed still lurked, clean and precise, in her foreconscious, as if she’d never missed a daily exercise at these skills.
She moved into the periphery of the Teleod coordinator’s working awareness, feigning clumsy stealth. He started, and turned on her. //Who—Korachi!// he swore. //A spy! They’ve broken into the realm!//
She retreated, darkening her key image by an act of trained will, simultaneously building a wall of silver bricks around herself, tensing for the mental blow she knew he’d launched at her. Simultaneously, she flung herself under her workstation and curled into a ball.
Before the coordinator’s attack connected, the two escorts smashed into the two lead ships.
Four telepaths died simultaneously, inadvertently amplifying the death-screams of the others who died with them. The four remaining telepaths on the other Teleod ships filled the working realm with magnified pain.
The working realm’s key image floating in Kyllikki’s consciousness, so dark she was not even aware of the outlines, suddenly flared, limned with intense light. It burned itself into her, leaving an afterimage. The echo of the two Metaji telepaths death-screams deafened her. Her body was outlined in pain, shaken by sound, burned by light.
Still, she was aware of the artificial gravity rippling under her. She felt the bulkhead shudder against her back. The air throbbed with alarms. The lights failed, and dim emergency lights flickered on. An acrid tang diffused from the air registers. Curled in fetal position, her muscles locked in spasm, she endured somewhere outside of time.
Eventually, it was over. Her body went limp. She was still breathing, so the Window had to be intact. Smoke had fogged the transparent bubble above her and swirled in the air, though near the floor, she could breathe. She might be radiation-fried, but she wasn’t bleeding. And to her complete shock, she discovered she could move.
Got to go help find the injured. She scrabbled to get her knees under her.
A sign she’d never seen before flashed over the exit hatch. BRIDGE OVERRIDE! The sealed lock clicked open.
//Kyllikki?// Lee peeped around the cowling. Then he was on his knees beside her, one arm over her shoulders. //Don’t move. Understand? I’ll get you to sick bay.//
She humped up against the pressure of his arm. “Don’t shout at me, all right?” Her voice was husky, and her throat felt as if she’d been screaming.
“Shout?” he whispered. What’s the matter with her?
She pulled away, clamping her hands to her head. The key image to the working realm was burned into the back of her mind and would not darken and disappear. Lee’s mind was washing through her, uncontrolled. Barriers. Come on. Image. Make the image. She found the wall of silver bricks, mirror-bright on the outside, half-transparent from the inside, showing the outer world dim but undistorted.
“Kyllikki? What are you doing?”
The edge of panic in Lee’s voice, reinforced by a vibrant mental bleed-through of fear, went right through her.
She wanted to turn on him, to shove him out the hatch, get away from him. “Barriers,” she gasped.
He withdrew his hands and she apperceived the thick felt damper he folded around himself. Sound analogue. They do everything with sound analogues. He was not using an image, yet she apperceived his effort as an image.
With supreme determination, she pulled herself to her feet, coughed and rubbed tears from her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve got it now. We’ve got to go help—”
“Abandon ship. Captain’s orders.” He coughed. “Fires. Damage control in the hold inoperative. We’ve got weapons in that hold as cargo. The Captain was informed by Main Data only after damage control failed.” He urged her toward the lock. “The ship is going to go up in a matter of minutes.”
And he came to pry me out of here.
She squeezed through the lock, which had jammed halfway open. The lounge was a tumbled mess, filled with smoke. They found breathing masks and emergency gear, fastened the belts around them, and forged out into the corridor.
People were moving swiftly, with determination. There was no panic, but the babble of voices that filled the air was edged with terror. In moments, the ship’s uniforms made Kyllikki and Lee the target for the helpless and confused.
They split up, trying to help everyone, beating their way toward their assigned evacuation stations.
Using an emergency lantern, Kyllikki ushered people down dark side corridors and into life pods, stacking them in by the numbers, preventing fatal overcrowding, disregarding species preferences for speed. “That’s all for this one!” she shouted more than once. “The rest of you follow me!” And she forged back through the press to another pod slip.
Even after the three mandatory drills and five extra ones the Captain had required, the passengers couldn’t find their way around through the dim smoke.
Occasionally, she encountered another crewmember, exchanged a quick “See you on Barkyr!” or traded power cells or breathing packs. Not all of Prosperity’s emergency equipment worked. At one point, she provided a bandage pack to a Paitsmun, the very one who had criticized her arrogant manners. He was very grateful for her help in dealing with the wound of a soft-fleshed Zund.
Gradually, the noise diminished, the thump-whump of launching pods ceased, and Kyllikki began to wonder how she, herself, might get off. The standard launch pattern had not been followed. Her assigned pod had probably been launched.
She made her way aft, considering that
