Free One's Aspect to the Sun by Sherry D. Ramsey Page B

at a dead run.
    My shoulder hit the intruder in the chest with as much force as I could gather. I swung for a neck pressure point, and yelled, “ Intruder!” Strong arms thrust around me in a vise-like grip and started to squeeze. Good thing I'd gotten one good yell out first.
    My right knee came up reflexively and I knew the assailant was a man, since he arched deftly away from the blow. As soon as both feet were on the ground again I squatted low, then sprang up like a coil, twisting away at the same time. He couldn't keep the pressure steady and his grip loosened, enough for me to drop to the floor and swing my leg at his feet, knocking him off balance. He thudded against the airlock door, and the vibration triggered an automatic overhead emergency light. One step brought him close enough to kick me sharply in the solar plexus, though, and my breath whooshed out in a painful gasp.
    I twisted around to try and get a look at the intruder, but a black biosuit concealed him from head to toe. He bent over me swiftly and something cold and sharp pierced the flesh of my upper arm, right through my sleepsuit. I swore, jerking and rolling away from the pain, still gasping for breath. The intruder moved away, back toward the hatchway, although all of this happened in a fraction of the time it takes to tell it.
    I think it was about then that I heard other doors opening and the soft pounding of bare feet in the corridor. Someone was answering my summons.
    I heard a step on the ladder, no attempt to be quiet this time, just as two sets of legs flashed past me. There was a bit of yelling and thumping then, as Viss and Yuskeya attempted to catch hold of the escaping intruder and haul him back up from the ladder.
    Dr. Ndasa emerged from his cabin, inquiring sleepily about the disturbance. A faint metallic scent—confusion and apprehension—wafted from him. I was trying to mumble something reassuring when there was a yell and an ominous thud from far below.
    Viss swore under his breath, turned to me and barked, “Are you all right?”
    “He just—jumped,” Yuskeya said in a low voice. Her eyes were wide and her voice shaky. “Viss had his arm and then— idioto! Did he think he could fly?”
    Still breathless, I crawled over to the open hatchway and looked down the nine meters to the decking of the cargo level below. A dark shadow lay sprawled and still on the unforgiving metal, and I really, really didn't want to be the one to go down there.
    Viss saved me the trouble. “Yuskeya, see why the Captain has blood on her pretty sleepsuit, would you? Doctor her up if she needs it. I'm going down to see what's cluttering up our nice clean cargo pod.”
    I found my voice. “Viss, wait, don't go alone. Here's Baden, he'll go with you.” Baden came down the hall at a run then, shirtless, eyes wild.
    “What the hell—?”
    “Baden, go down to the cargo deck with Viss. There was an intruder aboard, he fell down the hatchway, and we need to know what shape he's in.”
    One thing about Baden, he never asks needless questions. He started down the ladder after Viss without another word.
    Suddenly all the lights went up, and Rei called from up the hall, “All clear, Captain?”
    “Clear, as far as I know,” I answered back, looking up the corridor. Rei emerged from the alcove that led to the head, cradling a plasma rifle and taking in the scene warily.
    It was probably nerves, but I couldn't help it. I giggled and said, “What the hell are you doing?”
    She looked momentarily hurt. “When I heard the racket I didn't think it was a good idea for all of us to run headlong into trouble. I grabbed this,” she said, hefting the rifle, “slipped out of my cabin, went up through the bridge and around through Sensors and the First Aid station. Thought I might need to catch someone by surprise.”
    “They would have been surprised, all right.” Rei doesn't sleep in the nude, but the diaphanous rose-coloured thing she was wearing came