Chapter 34 - Pressure

The Peregrine's cabin was dim, lit by amber standby lights strung along the overhead struts, and the whole place smelled like packing grease and stale air. Outside the cockpit windows, the Triumph's hangar stretched in every direction, big enough to make the dropship look like a toy someone forgot to put away. Luca knew every corner of this hangar by now, the scuff marks on the deck plating, the way sound bounced off the far bulkhead. Six weeks and the ship had started feeling like his. Which made digging through supply crates on his knees, less than 24 hours from orbit, that much more annoying.

Emily stood a few feet away, tablet in hand, hair pulled back tight, shaking her head at the display like it owed her money. She'd been making that face for the last twenty minutes. He knew that face. That was her "the math isn't mathing" face.

They'd been at this for over an hour, hoping the missing gear might turn up in some overlooked crate or mislabeled locker. It hadn't.

"This is bullshit," Luca muttered, rising to his feet. He gestured at the pathetically sparse contents of the crate. "One armor suit each? What happens if mine gets a tear? Or if yours malfunctions?" He kicked the crate lightly, and the hollow sound that bounced through the hangar just made it worse. "The backup armor suits were still in the jet-bridge when we left the station."

Emily looked at him. Worried, yeah, but still running numbers behind her eyes. She was always running numbers. "We had maybe ten minutes before they breached the docking bay," she said. "The suits are rated for extreme conditions. As long as we're careful—"

"Careful." He ran a hand through his hair, and his scalp was damp with sweat. Gross. "Em, we're about to land on an alien planet billions of miles from home, and half our combat gear is sitting on a space station we can't get back to." He gestured toward the corner where their primary armor sets were stacked, two sets for seven people. "We don't even know who tried to take the ship or why." He bit down hard enough to feel it in his molars. "I should have split the essential supplies between the ship and the station. One redundant locker on the Peregrine and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

She set down her tablet and moved closer. He hated how well that worked, every single time, like his brain just forgot it was mad.

"Luca." She put her hand on his arm. Warm fingers, firm grip. Not gentle, not comforting. Just there. "We've got what we've got. So let's figure out what we can do with it instead of counting what we lost."

That was more like it. That was Emily at her most useful: she didn't do pep talks, she did redirects.

He nodded, but his jaw was still tight. He glanced at the meager stack of fuel cells nearby. "Four planetside trips," he said. "That's all we get. Four chances to explore the damn star system."

"Four guaranteed trips," Emily corrected. "Ryan thinks he can stretch it to six if we cut the payload on each descent and mess with the thrust parameters."

"That still leaves us with no margin for error." Luca pressed his knuckles against the supply shelf until his skin went pale. "This is on me, Em. We had contingencies for sabotage, but I never imagined they'd move that fast."

Something shifted in her face. More like she was deciding whether to let him spiral or yank him out of it. She went with the yank. "Then stop imagining and start planning. You're the captain. So captain."

He almost laughed. She had this way of telling him to get his shit together that didn't feel like an insult. It felt like she meant it. Like she actually thought he could.

But the knot in his gut hadn't loosened since they'd found the gaps in the inventory. They were alone out here, truly alone, with gear that barely covered their minimum needs and a crew of twenty-year-olds who'd never been this far from anything.

"I'm going to have to—" Luca began.

The ship's alarm cut him off, a harsh blaring that drove every other thought out of his head and replaced it with static.

WARNING: STELLAR FLARE DETECTED. X-RAY AND GAMMA SPIKE CONFIRMED. ALL PERSONNEL: PROCEED TO RADIATION SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

---

They looked at each other for one second. Then they ran.

"How long do we have?" Emily shouted over the alarm as they sprinted down the corridor.

"Two minutes, maybe three?!" Luca yelled back. "Proximity depends on the—"

A violent shudder ran through the ship and cut him off. Above them, lead-lined steel shutters slammed closed over the portholes, one after another, bang bang bang, like the ship was boarding itself up. He'd never heard them do that before. He'd never wanted to hear them do that before.

The ship died before he heard it go. The air pressure shifted, his ears popped, and the lights went dim, then dimmer. His hands were shaking. He kept running. Drilling didn't feel like this. Drilling was a joke they all half-assed because the scenario felt fake. This was not fake. This was the opposite of fake.

"Go!" he shouted, shoving Emily ahead of him as they hit a junction. "I need to make sure everyone else gets to the shelter!"

She hesitated for a split second, looking back at him, and he almost grabbed her. Almost said forget the others, just stay with me. Which was a shit thing to think and he knew it but his hands were still shaking and the alarm was still screaming and she was right there.

Then she was gone, around the corner toward the armory. He watched her disappear and turned away before his brain could finish the thought. Then he ran up the stairs.

His feet pounded against the metal grates. The stairs didn't end. His lungs burned before he hit the second landing, the alarm punching through his own ragged breathing. The automated voice joined in, counting down, completely unbothered by the fact that everyone on board was sprinting for their lives.

RADIATION LEVELS RISING. ESTIMATED PROTON WAVE ARRIVAL IN 120 SECONDS. PROCEED TO SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

The lab was empty. Thank God. Danny must have already headed down. Spinning on his heel, Luca bolted back the way he'd come, his brain running through crew locations on autopilot. Joey had been in the infirmary, Zoe on the bridge. Ryan was down in engineering, which meant he'd been right next to whatever was spiking, and Luca did not want to think about that. Chris could be anywhere. Chris was always anywhere.

Metal groaned around him. The whole ship shuddered, worse than the first time, and he grabbed the railing to keep from eating the stairs.

He flew down the last flight and around the corner. The radiation shelter sat at the end of the hall, a reinforced doorway set into the wall behind the armory. Joey was helping Zoe through. Danny was already inside. Emily stood at the threshold, scanning the corridor, and when she saw Luca her whole body sagged with relief.

"Luca!" she shouted. "Where's Chris and Ryan?"

"Haven't seen them!" He reached her side, gasping, and turned to face back the way he'd come. "Get inside!"

She shook her head. "Not without you."

There was no chance Emily Berrow was about to do the smart thing when the stubborn thing was available.

T-MINUS 60 SECONDS TO CRITICAL RADIATION EXPOSURE. PROCEED TO SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

They had sixty seconds, and if they didn't seal the door soon, it wouldn't matter whether they were inside it or not.

Footsteps pounded behind them. They both turned. Ryan came barreling around the corner, Chris close behind him, both of them running full-tilt. Ryan's face was the color of old paper.

"Move!" Ryan shouted, pushing Chris ahead of him. "Fucking move!"

All six, accounted for. Luca counted them twice because his brain wouldn't trust the first number, and then his lungs remembered how to work.

"Get inside, all of you!" He ushered everyone through. Chris went first, stumbling, and Ryan followed, still pale. He pushed Emily ahead of him and she went, which was a minor miracle.

T-MINUS 30 SECONDS TO CRITICAL RADIATION EXPOSURE. ALL PERSONNEL MUST BE SECURED IN SHIELDED COMPARTMENTS.

Ryan's breathing was ragged. "The engine room," he gasped. "We had to shut down the secondaries manually. Everything was spiking."

"Later." Luca did one final check of the corridor, saw nothing but dark, and backed into the shelter. His hands found the massive wheel lock. Ryan grabbed the other side and they spun it together, clockwise, pulling hard enough that Luca's shoulders burned. Each clank of the bolts sliding home punched through the alarm noise.

T-MINUS 15 SECONDS TO PARTICLE IMPACT. RADIATION LEVELS EXCEEDING SAFE LIMITS. PROCEED TO SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

The final turn brought a solid clunk that vibrated through the deck plates.

They were sealed in, which counted as safe for now.

Luca turned to face his crew. Six faces in the red glow, all looking at him. He knew what that look meant. He'd gotten used to it over the past six weeks, the way everyone's eyes found him first when things went sideways. He didn't have a plan for stellar radiation. He barely had a plan for the next thirty seconds. But he had all six of them in one room and the door was sealed, so that was something.

"Everyone okay?" he asked, and his voice came out too thin for the sudden quiet.

The countdown outside fell silent. The flare had reached them.

---

Calling it a shelter was generous. It was a metal box, ten feet by twelve feet, and it smelled like sweat and recycled air before any of them had been inside for five minutes. Luca ended up wedged between Emily and the sealed door, knees drawn up because there was nowhere else to put them. Her shoulder pressed against his chest. Danny's shoe was touching his thigh. Someone's elbow kept catching a ration box every time they shifted, and Luca was pretty sure it was Zoe's but he wasn't about to ask because she looked like she'd kill whoever spoke first. Seven people in a space built for four, maybe, if those four didn't need to breathe.

Nobody talked for a long time. The only sounds were breathing and the distant groan of the ship's hull as radiation washed over it. Without the usual hums and whirs of the Triumph running, Luca kept waiting for a sound that never came. The Triumph didn't sound like a ship anymore. It didn't sound like anything, just dead air and metal settling.

"How long will it last?" Zoe broke the silence, and her voice came out way too loud for the space. She winced at herself. She sat with her back against the far wall, legs stretched across Danny's lap. Danny didn't seem to mind or notice, which was very Danny.

He pushed his glasses up his nose, lenses catching the red light, and got that look he always got right before he explained something nobody asked him to explain. "Depends on the magnitude. Could be twenty minutes, could be hours." He cleared his throat. "Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf. More prone to stellar flares than our sun. They're smaller but more frequent, and they put out massive amounts of X-ray and UV radiation."

Luca's brain translated that in real time: the star they'd traveled four light-years to study was actively trying to murder them, which was just fantastic.

"Which is extremely bad for human tissue," Joey added from his corner, kit already open on his lap like he'd been waiting for this. "Radiation damages DNA. Cellular mutations, cancer." He paused just long enough for that to land. "Depending on exposure."

So they were sitting in a tin can, billions of miles from the nearest hospital, while a star tried to cook them alive. And the two smartest people on the ship were taking turns listing all the ways they could die. This was going great.

Emily went rigid against him. "How thick are the walls?"

Better question than "how safe are we." Leave it to Emily to skip the reassurance and go straight to the specs.

"Thick enough for this," Ryan said before Danny could. "Radiation-absorbing polymer between lead-titanium alloy plates." He managed a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes. "This is the safest spot on the ship."

"What about the rest of the ship?" Luca asked. "How much damage are we looking at?"

Danny and Ryan looked at each other. Luca hated when they did that, the silent nerd-to-nerd conference that always came before bad news.

"The hull can handle normal cosmic radiation," Danny started, picking his words carefully, which was never a good sign from Danny. "But a direct stellar flare is different. Way more particle density."

"Most systems should be fine," Ryan picked up. "Automatic shutdown kicked in, that protects the sensitive stuff. But anything still running when the wave hit?" He grimaced. "Fried. And if the shields took damage, we're looking at navigation and propulsion going down. Life support too, if the shields took the worst of it. Anything with exposed circuitry is done."

Luca leaned his head back against the door and stared at the ceiling. Navigation and propulsion could go down, billions of miles from Earth with a dead engine and no way to steer. He almost laughed. He would have, actually, if the sound wouldn't have scared the shit out of everyone in the room.

"Good news is, flares from Proxima usually last minutes, not hours," Danny offered. "Once it passes, we run diagnostics. See what we're working with."

Joey shifted, kit still open, hands busy organizing supplies that were already organized. "The human body is less forgiving than electronics. Brief radiation exposure can cause nausea, vomiting, skin burns, headaches." He looked at each of them, one by one, and Luca didn't love the way his eyes lingered. Like he was already triaging. "Anyone starts feeling off, you tell me. Immediately. Not later. Not when it gets worse. Now."

The shelter got smaller with each passing minute. The air was thicker, warmer, and his shirt stuck to his back. Emily was still pressed against him, her shoulder solid against his ribs. Radiation was cooking the ship around them and his brain kept circling back to how warm she was against his side. His brain had priorities, and those priorities were apparently garbage.

A dull thud reverberated through the hull, followed by a high, thin whine that made every person in the shelter freeze at the same time.

"What was that?" Zoe said under her breath.

Ryan swallowed. "Pressure differential. Different parts of the hull heat at different rates, creates stress points." He forced a smile that looked like it hurt. "Totally normal."

Luca watched Ryan's hands. They were shaking. Ryan, who could rebuild a reactor blindfolded, whose hands never shook, was sitting there with his fingers trembling against his knees. Luca nodded at him anyway. No point calling it out. No point making it worse.

He glanced over at Emily and froze.

A thin trickle of blood ran from her left nostril, already reaching her upper lip.

"Em." His voice came out sharper than he meant. "Your nose."

Her hand went to her face. Fingertips came away red. She stared at them.

Joey was already moving, shoving past Danny's legs to get to her. "Tilt your head back. How long has this been happening? Dizziness? Headache?"

"I didn't even notice it," Emily said. Her voice was steady, which somehow made it worse. "No dizziness. Maybe a slight headache, but we've all been stressed."

Nosebleeds were one of the first signs of radiation exposure, and everyone in the shelter knew it.

"Could it be from the pressure changes?" Luca asked Joey. He heard how desperate it sounded. He didn't care. "Or the dry air in here?"

Joey didn't answer right away. He pressed a gauze pad to Emily's nose and didn't look at Luca. "I need to check everyone," he said after a beat. "Radiation symptoms can present fast with high-dose exposure."

For a second Joey went very still, eyes unfocusing in a way Luca recognized. Then his eyes sharpened.

"I'm running triage assistance," Joey said, already moving to the next person. "I need symptom order, onset, and who's most likely to crash first. Emily stays upright. Anyone gets dizzy, nauseous, or confused, you tell me immediately."

Joey was twenty years old and he sounded like he'd been doing this for decades. Luca would have called him a freak if it wasn't the most reassuring thing he'd heard all day.

The emergency lights flickered and died. Luca's hand found Emily's knee in the dark and held on until the red glow came back. One second of blackout. That was all it took to remind him that the walls, the door, the bolts he'd sealed with his own hands, none of it was guaranteed.

"That shouldn't happen," Ryan muttered. "Emergency systems have isolated power cells."

"Unless something's damaged the shelter itself," Danny said, quiet enough that Luca wished he hadn't heard it.

Joey worked his way around the room, checking pupils and pulse on each of them, and nobody said a word. Luca watched him move from person to person and tried not to stare at the gauze on Emily's nose, tried not to think about the word "cancer" that Joey had dropped fifteen minutes ago like it was just another item on a list.

When Joey got to Chris, Luca realized he hadn't heard the guy say a single word since they sealed the door. He looked at him properly for the first time. Chris sat against the wall, his tanned face gone gray, sweat sheening his forehead. That wasn't right. Chris didn't look like that. Chris looked like a guy who surfed on weekends and never had a bad day.

"You okay?" Luca asked.

Chris nodded, barely. "Just hot," he mumbled. "Hard to breathe."

Joey frowned and put two fingers against Chris's neck. "Your heart's racing. Vision? Blurry?"

"A little." Chris swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "And my stomach feels..." He swallowed again. "Not great."

The lights flickered again. Longer this time. Three seconds of darkness where the only sound was breathing, and the breathing was faster than it had been a minute ago.

"How much longer?" Zoe asked when the red glow came back. Her voice had gone up a full octave. "Shouldn't the flare have passed by now?"

"Unless it's a major event," Danny said. "Sometimes they come in waves."

Luca wanted to ask Danny to stop saying things like that for five minutes, just to see what it felt like.

Joey had his penlight out, holding Chris's chin steady with one hand. "Pupils are dilated," he said. "Chris, I need you to follow my finger. Just focus on my—"

Chris's eyes rolled back, nothing but whites, and his body went rigid for one horrible second before he slumped sideways into Ryan's lap.

Luca lunged forward, but there was nowhere to go. The shelter was too small, the bodies too close together. Joey was already there, already had Chris by the shoulders, already calling his name. All Luca could do was press himself against the wall and watch.

"Chris, can you hear me?" Joey checked his neck for a pulse. Adjusted his fingers. Checked again. His jaw clenched. The faraway look hit him, shorter this time, and Luca recognized it for what it was. Joey was reading something only he could see.

"I'm scanning for internal damage." Joey sounded like a different person, and it made Luca's skin crawl. "Don't move him unless I tell you to. If this is heat stroke layered over radiation stress, I treat one way. If he's got internal bleeding or organ involvement, I treat another."

"What's happening?" Emily asked, gauze still pressed to her nose. "Is it radiation sickness?"

Joey didn't answer. He tilted Chris's head back and checked his airway. The lights cut out again. They came back weaker than before.

"Joey." Luca grabbed his arm. "Talk to us. What's happening to him?"

Joey didn't say anything. Chris wasn't moving. Emily's blood kept dripping onto her collar. Ryan's hands were still shaking. Danny had gone quiet.

And Luca sat on the floor of a metal box with his knees in his chest, running through every option he had and coming up empty. He couldn't fix the radiation. He couldn't speed up the flare. He couldn't do anything for Chris that Joey wasn't already doing better than he ever could. The captain stuff, the instincts he'd been building for six weeks, none of it applied here. All he could do was keep his people calm and wait, and he hated every second of it.