CHAPTER NINE

Richard pried open a hatch and peered into the darkness beyond. He found himself looking into a black tunnel that dropped straight down into the body of the DropShip like a mine shaft sunk into the earth. Whatever disaster had befallen the Sharp Claw, it had cut off all power to this portion of the vessel.

He shone his flashlight into the long, dark hole. Richard was looking down in a passageway turned over on its side. The corridor extended six or seven meters down into the ship, dead ending into a bulkhead and a spacetight hatch. The hatch was a piece of steel plate half a centimeter thick, painted gray and fitted with a rubber gasket to maintain an airtight seal.

Except this hatch was bent and twisted like a potato chip. “Stravag,” he whispered. He played his light across the bulkhead, looking for clues to what had damaged the hatch. What he saw drew a gasp from him. It was not only the hatch that was warped.

But also the bulkhead the hatch was set in.

What had could have done that to the entire bulkhead? Richard did not know. The Great Father help him, he did not know.

But he was going to find out.

Richard played the flashlight over what should have been the passage’s deck. The beam revealed the dull gray of steel loops embedded in the tiles, spaced a meter apart. They were meant to be used as footholds (or handholds) in zero gee. But in this strange sideways acceleration they would serve perfectly well as a makeshift ladder.

Lowering his body into the shaft, he searched for one of the footholds with his toe. When he found it, he hauled the body bag down with one hand and closed the hatch with the other. He quickly climbed down into the passage.

When he reached the bottom he knelt down and touched the hatch. The steel surface was bitterly cold and slick with condensation. In the cargo deck he had battled fire.

Here he would contend with ice.

“Vacuum,” he whispered.

If the ’Mech Bay had suffered a breach, then opening the hatch would expose him to micropressure and freezing cold. He had salvaged an emergency pressure suit from a passageway locker. The emergency suit would give him thirty minutes of air and protect him from the low pressure. But eventually the cold would seep in. And he was stepping into a space that had to be as torn up as the cargo hold.

If he were to rip his suit on a jagged piece of metal…

What he was doing was perilously close to suicide. And he did not have to do it. He could turn around and go back. No one would question his decision. For a moment, he almost turned to climb back up the corridor.

And then he remembered those eyes looking into his, those blue, blue eyes.

Corinne!

He reached for the door’s long striker arm. How strange that this should be the instrument of his death, a slender rod of steel painted haze-gray.

He pulled it off the striker plate.

Richard had expected that he might have to cut through the door, but the instant he released the handle the inward-opening hatch jerked away from him. The rush of air picked him up and threw him through the opening. He smacked painfully against the deck.

Again he found himself in darkness. Terrible cold cut through his flesh like a scalpel. The deck (which must have actually been a bulkhead) was slick with a thin rime of ice. Vacuum. When the atmosphere had bled off a fraction of its water vapor must have frozen right out of the air.

This was a place of cold, desperate death.

He shook his head. Neg! I will not think that way.Perhaps some of the MechWarriors had managed to get to emergency suits or sheltered in the cockpits of their machines.

I will try.

Richard willed his body to rise. Slowly he climbed to his feet.

And took his first really good look at the ’Mech Bay.

In the instant before he glanced up, he was not sure what he would see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was imagining another cargo deck, wooden crates smashed open, debris littering the deck, cargo jerked out of place. So he was not prepared for what was truly there.

Shock strangled his breath in his chest.

Normally, the ’Mech Bay was a cavernous, well-lit space that sheltered BattleMechs locked in place with giant clamps. A twenty-meter garage door had been built into the space’s exterior bulkhead, so the great engines of war could quickly egress the DropShip and fight their way into the battle for a contested landing zone.

Richard peered up, looking at the place where he should have seen the DropShip’s hull and the garage door. Instead he saw stars.

“Freebirth,” he whispered.

For a long moment he just stared up, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. More than half of the bay was gone, simply gone, torn free by Great Father knew what.

Directly overhead, a shadowy, white wall stretched upwards as far as the eye could follow.

The hull of the Bear’s Den. And beside it, something else.

A mountain of stone tumbling through space.