Piero fell on Edison with unnatural speed, grabbing him by the head and lifting him to his feet before using his skull like a rock to break the flimsy shield. Slam, slam, slam. Rosalyn watched in mute horror as a hairline fissure splintered out from the contact point, and half expected the barrier to crash inward and expose her to the corrupted ship’s atmosphere. But then Piero ripped Edison away, his spectacles dropping to the floor with a tiny bounce.

The violence ended as abruptly as it began, Piero flinging Edison into the darkness. Rosalyn scrambled to her feet, floundering in a frenzy of dread and confusion. Her environmental suit lay in a heap near the decontamination chamber and she hurled herself toward it, cursing the number of toggles and seals that had to be meticulously done and redone to ensure total security. And the filters. The filters. By a stroke of luck they had finished their cycle in the decontam pod. She ripped them out, punching the old filters out and into a hazard bin, breathing hard enough through her respirator to faint.

“Fucking shit, fuck,” she mumbled, hands shaking as she switched in the new filters and raced toward the door. But she stopped herself. No. This was panic speaking. This was haste. She had to be smarter than the thumping war drums in her head that said, Go, go, why are you fucking dawdling, GO!

Edison couldn’t sense either Piero or Rayan. Against Piero she stood little chance. Against them both? She needed more than adrenaline to save Edison, if he could be saved at all. Of course she had to try, because three grown men against her spelled quick and total doom. Misato might be helpful, but could she really rely on another person when the infected crew were dropping like flies?

Fight back, she thought. Fight back.

She paced, and then raced to the 3-D extruder, wondering if she could at least print some sort of weapon. Most printers were prohibited by law from doing so, and only a sophisticated hacker could change that. The machines were calibrated to automatically scan schematics for known weapon parts to avoid the rampant proliferation of 3-D printed guns, knives and bomb parts. She didn’t have time to mess around with sorting through the six million available printing formats either. Rosalyn shook out her trembling hands, then smoothed them repeatedly down her legs. Her leg. Her right leg. She gasped, releasing the sealing valve on the right leg of her suit, allowing her to access the plain jumpsuit beneath. Panting, she thrust a hand down into the pocket of her cargo pants.