“There are bound to be mechanical locks—”

“Which I’ve had bots severing for days now.”

Brisbane starts to feel vibrations. “What did you do?”

The screeching of metal, the whine of alarms going off, the rush of atmosphere venting.

Here we go.

The crew of the Ragtime are still holding on. Not a single one is dead. Carmilla fucked up because although the plan seems to have worked in that they now see evacuation and not investigation as a priority, the detached section broke the long-range antenna before falling away, so now Brisbane can’t use the piggyback option no matter what.

There are two ships docked to the Ragtime. Only one can reach atmosphere and land. This is Carmilla’s new aim.

“I can’t fly,” says Brisbane.

“I can. I’m trying to get the schematics and the pre-flight checklist, but the problem is not flying.”

“It’s the manual locks.”

“Yes. You’ll have to get down there and unlock them without being discovered by the crew or the wolf.”

“Can’t you deactivate the wolf the way you did the barn owls?”

“I’m trying. I can’t even get to the IFC. I think they’ve reformatted it and these colonials… well, their software writing seems to have evolved in a different direction. We diverged and it’s like learning a new language. I can do it, but it’ll take time and processing – time we don’t have, processing I don’t have because it takes most of my cycles to control the ship. So I can’t brute force my way in.”

“I’ll need a distraction,” says Brisbane. “And a route.”

“You’ll have both.”

Brisbane is hungrier than he has ever been, than he imagines possible, but he stays upright. He no longer feels pangs.

The belly of the body swells, then ruptures, scattering the contents and a foul smell into the confined space.

Under Carmilla’s command, all the seals for all the bio-experiments open and the contamination spreads everywhere.

“Go, Brisbane.”

Brisbane walks, crawls, slithers through the tunnels the bots drilled for him. There are noises and he imagines conflict between newly emancipated species that were kept separate. His augmentation helps him see further, and ahead there is a tangle of biological material that completely occludes the tunnel. He checks the destination and wonders if he can go around.

“Go through,” says Carmilla.

It’s plant material and it gives way for about a foot, parting and creating a separate tunnel. Then it flexes, collapsing around Brisbane; a flytrap. It secretes fluids into the formed bubble – probably digestive, but the suit can take it. He fights through as best as he can, coming out disconcerted and entangled in tendrils. He snaps these and moves forwards. The artificial gravity goes, and Brisbane hits his head.

He blacks out suddenly, no warning.