Free The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens Page A

cracking noise—the helmet wasn’t going to last much longer.
    He held on with both hands as he kicked at the door, then spotted the button for the video peephole. He touched it and it fitzed to life. Nora’s face filled the screen, knitted with concentration, then jerked back as she tried to pull the door open.
    “Nora!” Cole shouted. “The pressure! You have to equalize the pressure!” She looked up, startled, then nodded, understanding. He watched her search for something, then adjust a dial out of the camera’s line of sight. Air jetted and hissed through vents in the door, and suddenly it gave.
    Cole shouldered his way through the portal and turned to reseal the door just as the helmet caved in and was fired into the void. The sudden vacuum slammed the door shut.
    The ship shuddered. Cole looked through the video peephole. He caught a glimpse of the ruined, twisted cockpit, and then the video feed went to gray static, and then to nothing.
    Had there been any gravity, the three of them would have collapsed, gasping for breath. Instead they did their gasping suspended in the corridor.
    “Well,” said Cole after a longish panting break, “at least things can’t get much worse.”
    Then Bacchi stuck his head out of a heretofore hidden storage compartment and said, “What the
hell
was
that
?”
    It took Cole’s ears several minutes to stop ringing after Nora fired. The high-velocity bullet missed Bacchi and pinged a rapid staccato as it ricocheted along the corridor and all around them, striking sparks, whining as it zipped past one side of Cole’s head and then the other. With no gravity to pull it to the ground it kept going, graduallyconverting its kinetic energy into pockmarks on every possible surface, somehow missing them as they cowered in little fetal balls.
    The pinging finally slowed, then stopped. The lights in the corridor were flickering, a control panel
zzip
ing and
zzap
ing as it shorted out. The bullet, beaten into a grotesque splat, floated at a stately pace down the corridor and came to rest gently between Bacchi’s eyes.
    Everyone took a very deep breath and let it out again.
    Then Nora brought the gun up once more. “Don’t shoot!” said Bacchi. “Cole, tell her not to shoot!”
    Nora kept her gaze focused on Bacchi. “You know him?” she asked Cole.
    “He does!” said Bacchi. “We’re friends. Cole, tell her not to shoot!”
    Cole thought about the request. On the one hand …
    Nora cocked the gun.
    “Cole?” said Bacchi.
    “Don’t shoot,” said Cole. “I know him.”
    Nora lowered the gun. Bacchi exhaled.
    “Cole, what are you doing here?” said Bacchi. “Where’s Teg?”
    “That’s what /keep asking,” said Philip.
    “Is Cole piloting this thing?” said Bacchi. “Oh, great. We’re
farged
. I don’t farging believe this. Cole? Fargin’ farg farg! I can’t farging—”
    “Shoot him,” said Cole.
    Nora raised the gun.
    “Wait! I’m kidding!” said Bacchi. “Cole, please!”
    “Who is this?” Nora said to Cole.
    “This is Bacchi. Remember how I said it couldn’t get worse?
Now
it can’t get worse.”
    One of the shorted wires on the control panel spat out a few more sparks, igniting a small fire. The main lights
kechunked
off, replaced by cold, flat emergency illumination.
    The sprinkler system kicked in. A cold mist sprayed into the corridor from countless nozzles.
    Nora looked at Philip. “The cargo!” she said.
    ˙  ˙  ˙
    Nora and Philip raced through the ship to the cargo hold, as much as one could race in zero G without cracking one’s skull open after miscalculating a turn. Cole and Bacchi followed, not quite as fast, pulling themselves along with handholds and kicking off walls to change direction.
    Cole had reached to switch off the sprinkler system, but Nora stopped him, knocking his hand away. “No! Let it go. Better one hundred percent than halfway. Believe me.”
    Cole, not having the slightest idea what she was talking about,