The surviving tech crumpled forward, a raw, broken moan escaping him.
No—
The sound that tore from her throat wasn’t a scream. Barely more than a strangled cry. But her hand clamped over her mouth a second too late.
Voices shouted.
Coming fast.
Jen sprinted for the engineering stairwell.
Down, not up.
The missile deck was sealed. The lockdown was holding. But if they broke through the airlock, she needed to stop them.
And everything she needed was in the guts of Seven.
4
Boots hammered metal behind Jen.Angry shouts echoed off the walls.
She risked a glance, almost stumbled.
Four men. Arms pumping. Rifles bouncing on tactical slings.
She had maybe a thirty-foot lead.
Not enough.
The men’s grunts reached her ears.
I won’t make it. They’re too fast.
A blinking green light cut through her blurred vision. The bulkhead control panel mounted to the wall, twenty feet ahead. Emergency watertight door—designed to seal sections in case of hull breach or fire.
She put on a burst of speed. Her lungs screamed.
Ten feet from the panel.
Five.
She slammed her palm against the red emergency release.
Please work.
A siren shrieked. Yellow warning lights strobed the ceiling.
The massive steel bulkhead door began descending from its housing in the ceiling. Slow. Heavy. Hydraulic pistons hissingas they lowered two tons of reinforced steel designed to contain explosive decompression.
Jen didn’t slow. The door was halfway down. She’d have to slide.
Behind her, the terrorists yelled.
She dropped and slid—tool belt scraping off the metal deck, her shoulder slamming into the wall as she cleared the threshold.
One terrorist dove after her. His hand reached through the narrowing gap?—
The door sealed with a pressurizedslam.
