Free The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) by Chad Huskins

is an atmospheric generator behind one door, where the life support systems are housed, along with a shoddy air filter/exchanger.  Behind another door is the engineering bay, and X-rays reveal a badly damaged warbot, one of mankind’s attempts to produce more soldiers, since they were greatly lacking when the Cerebs came.  A fearsome war machine, one that, had the humans been able to produce a billion or so more, could have changed the War completely for them.  But the Conductors conferred with the Calculators early on, and saw this problem well before it got out of hand.  They attacked warbot factories on Shiva, an operation the Leader had helped—
    The Leader suddenly feels something.  A slight change to his environment, but very noticeable.  The porous quality of his armor allows some of the airflow in, so that his skin may judge, yet it mitigates the airflow enough so that it doesn’t overwhelm.  It is a surge of oxygen.  Then, a surge of hydrocarbon gas.
    And all at once, he knows why the Phantom sealed the corridor behind them, and why he reactivated the atmosphere.
    You can’t have fire without an oxidizer .  The horror of the realization almost stuns him to inaction.  He wouldn’t .  He has so much to lose .  He can’t …
    A few seconds before it happens, the Leader listens to his training and turns his particle hand cannon on the door closest to him.  He fires at the keypad, then at the door’s latch, and summons his fellows to help him pry it open.  Via the interface, they all know what he knows—they’re in trouble.
    Pulling and yanking and pushing, they finally manage to open the door just wide enough for one of them to pass through.  The Leader is just about to squeeze through when combustion happens.  The Phantom set fire to the air.  The ball of exploding gas comes churning angrily right at them.  He flings himself through the door, and, knowing that he cannot save himself and his fellows, opts to save himself.  He shuts the door back quickly, just at the fire bathes them in baptizing heat.  With the door shut, he can just hear their screams.  Within five seconds, they aren’t screaming anymore.
    The Leader looks a round.  He now stands in the circuitry bay, which, if his memory of Sidewinder schematics is still accurate, has a ventilation access shaft right about… there!   Wasting no time, he uses the plasma torch from his tactical belt to remove the ten bolts holding the flimsy cover plate on, and then crawls inside.
    We’ ve spent enough time with the Leader and his doomed men.  We need to leave him now, because another drama is transpiring not far from him.  In fact, only about thirty feet directly ahead of him, just inside the cockpit, the man with the call sign “Rook” remains safely behind the solid compristeel door.  On the other side of it, in the corridor, a blazing inferno is still churning wildly, fed by the Sidewinder’s air-exchangers.  Only moments before, he tore a few pages out of the hefty user’s manual for the navigation computer, lit the pages on fire, tossed them into the hall, sealed the cockpit off and increased the oxygen and hydrocarbon outflow.
    Laughing so hard he’s wheezing, Rook decides to let them cook for another minute.  This is a good laugh, probably the funniest thing he’s experienced in five years.  His mind is far afield now, and he knows it.  Accepts it.
    Then, finally, he switches of f all life support systems and opens the emergency door he used to seal in his unwanted guests.  In the span of ten seconds, the entire blazing inferno is jetted out into space, where it is immediately doused.  He turns life support back on, but only in the cockpit and in one other room.
    Rook takes his seat again, and it automatically swivels around to face the console.  He straps himself in, runs a quick systems check, makes sure that most of the lights show green on the trouble-board, then gets underway.
    A sensor chimes.  He has ten