Rosalyn nodded, but she could hear the hinges on the manual locks screaming with each hit of the crowbar. They were running out of time. Sulfur compounds and whatever else could wait until she wasn’t facing down a homicidal crewmate.

“That’s a start,” she breathed. “It’s a start, and with your knowledge and mine, we can do something. You can help me. You can help me get back to the Salvager. We can . . . we can incapacitate him together, unlock the thrusters and get to the Salvager to regroup or, hell, just get on it and leave. What’s keeping you here?”

“N-Nothing,” he stammered. “And everything. My head. My head. Mother is . . . I . . . can’t. I can’t do that.” Rayan flinched, gripping his skull again with both hands. “I want to. I really want to, maybe I can—”

Rosalyn heard the manual lock give on the other side. The lockdown sequence would lose priority on emergency settings, the ship relying on good old-fashioned bracketed stops to keep the doors in place. It would do a decent enough job sealing them in if there was nobody tampering with them.

The Servitor hobbled toward them. “Manual lock—”

“Has failed, yes, thank you, we know!” Rosalyn shouted.

She ran to the door and flung herself to the side of it, putting her back flush to the wall and raising the fire extinguisher. This time the crowbar was aimed at the door itself, not the locks, and it only took a few hits and a kick of a solid boot to send it crashing open. Rayan collapsed into a heap, holding his head and rocking back and forth. She could just barely hear him sobbing as a huge man rushed inside.

He was just a blur, but big. Too big. Rosalyn took a deep breath. She had been there before, inside that fear, inside that helplessness. Never again, she said silently. Before the man could spin toward her, she smashed down the trigger on the extinguisher, a huge cloud of white enveloping him. He shouted in confusion and staggered back. Rosalyn pounced, raising the metal canister high before bringing it crashing down.

Through the mist of white and the glowing blue, black blood squirted out to meet her, splattering with a sickening gush across her visor.

11

Piero howled with pain. His ears rang, wet, warm blood running into his mouth as he clawed at his eyes. The bitch. The bitch had blinded him. She would pay for that—she would die for that. There was nothing but fury inside him, fury and anguish. His hands stung from where the crowbar had bit into his palms, and now it felt like she had split his face in two. He wiped and wiped, covered in whatever she had shot him with and his own blood. Clever little thing.