Free The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams Page A

dents and scratches on the instrument panels and cabin walls, and even some of the readouts—built to resist heavy accelerations—had been smashed.
    Worse, there was hair, and what looked like blood, smeared over the displays. Sula wondered in shock if someone had murdered Blitsharts. Chopped him up with—With what? What could create such a horror?
    She tried to shove open the hatch, felt increasing resistance. Something had broken loose and was caught behind it, preventing it from deploying.
    Sula groped blindly behind the hatch door with a gloved hand. The obstacle was not within range at first, and she had to float in the airlock while sweeping her hand along the rim of the hatch. The movement was difficult and awkward in the vac suit, and her bruised muscles strained. Her breath rasped in her helmet, and she felt sweat prickling her forehead. Finally she found the trouble, something wet and bloody and hairy, and very, very dead.
    The dog Orange. Not that he was recognizable as a dog; he was a battered mass of bloody meat, and had apparently been hurled like a missile around the cockpit as the boat tumbled, the erratic spin subjecting the poor animal to one ferocious acceleration after another.
    It was the dog that had bludgeoned the interior of the cockpit, battering the instruments and smearing the compartment with his own blood. It was the dog that had hit the thruster controls and triggered the boat’s erratic tumble.
    After seeing Orange, Sula had no hope for Blitsharts. She found the captain strapped into his acceleration couch with his faceplate up, open to the vacuum. It had been Orange who fired the maneuvering thrusters, not the captain. Blitsharts’s face, though smeared with dog’s blood, had been protected by the frame of the helmet and was undamaged. His expression was pinched and accusing. He had been dead for some time.
    It was said that hypoxia was a good way to go, that as the brain slowly starved of oxygen, it gave way to euphoria, that the victim’s last moments were blissful.
    Sula’s memories were different. She remembered the body twitching, the heels drumming, the diaphragm going into spasm as the lungs labored to breathe…
    She remembered weeping onto the pillow as her friend fought for life. The feel of the pillow in her hand, soft as flesh. The pillow drawn over her friend’s face to finish her off.
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    E nderby called Martinez out of Operations Command at the beginning of the shift, but gave him permission to monitor the rescue mission when he wasn’t busy forwarding or filing the Fleet’s communications.
    And so Martinez watched the displays as Sula braked her craft to match velocities with Midnight Runner, as she maneuvered closer for a better view of the tumbling yacht.
    He halfway hoped she wouldn’t attempt it. He didn’t want his plan to kill anyone.
    And then came the message, addressed specifically to him. Sula, her astonishing good looks unimpaired by the faceplate that closed her helmet, saying, “I haven’t ever screwed in quite this way before.” With an eyebrow tilted, and wicked amusement in her green eyes.
    Martinez thought he’d smothered his burst of laughter, but he caught Enderby giving him a sharp look from his desk, and Martinez drew a solemn mask over his amusement.
    Sula’s face faded from the display, and Martinez watched the telemetry signals as she began using her thrusters, matching her boat’s roll to that of the yacht. His hands twitched as they maneuvered imaginary controls. Martinez’s heart leaped into his throat when Runner’s thrusters fired, when Midnight Runner began to roll into Sula’s pinnace like a great whale breaching over a fishing boat… Get out, get out, he thought furiously, and fear shivered along his nerves as he saw the collision. He didn’t breathe until Sula had escaped and stabilized her craft.
    â€œI’m going to try once again.”