Something slammed against the glass, hard enough to startle me. When I looked out the window again I saw Tamara with her club upraised, her expression grim. She swung like a batter, the end of the club hitting the glass with tremendous force.

It rebounded, staggering her. She was going to hurt her shoulders doing that. There was no webbing in the glass.

The sound of her beating the glass was weirdly in rhythm with the blood pounding in my head; I let my head drop to my knees, where I panted into the space between my legs and stomach. I couldn’t fill my lungs all the way, and behind me, the grate hissed as it sucked more and more air out of the room.

The sudden cessation of pounding had me blearily lifting my head. My skull had gotten heavier, I was sure; made of metal, not bone. I looked through the window on the other side of the room and saw Tamara standing back, expression blank, and aiming her gun at the glass.

Her club hadn’t cracked it. Her bullet might pierce the glass; more likely it would ricochet, and hit Tamara, and the crack of a pistol firing would call every monster in this side of the ship to her location. I stared at her through the glass and found that I couldn’t even remember the words in any language to tell her not to.

Her expression tightened, mouth going thin; I watched her finger twitch on the trigger—

Then she stopped, turning towards the door. Relief crumpled her expression, so out of character she looked like someone else, and dark blue preceded Indigo into the room.

He looked from Tamara straight at me, and I watched those dark-river eyes go wide. One hand went to his collar light and he flashed a pattern at me in indigo. A quick flutter, a longer hold.

Wait, I remembered muzzily, from his lessons to me in the library. But he’d said it to me in his color, in dark, dark blue.

Politer, then. Not wait, but please hang on.

Something sizzled, hissed. A loud beep tore through my consciousness like a hand through thin paper. The sucking sound behind me stopped, and my next breath brought air, and a strange painful pressure against my face and ears and eyes.

I panted, each breath agonizing, on the floor of the vacuum chamber without knowing when I’d fallen. Indigo was crouched over me, his sword held awkwardly in one hand, the blade still glowing with heat. He’d cut through the glass. Something was ringing, wailing, or else my ears weren’t working right.

“Is he all right?” Tamara called, her voice oddly muffled. I lifted one heavy hand to my ear, thinking to remove whatever cotton was stuffing it.

Indigo caught my wrist and set it back down. “He’s fine,” he said, and his voice was muffled, too. “Sean. We need to get out of here before the ship’s autorepair comes to investigate the damage.”