The Locked Hatch

"That miserable viper," I said.

Lórágy slammed his palm against the steering wheel. The horn gave a short, angry blat against the cavern rock.

"She planned this before we even left Hangar Nine," he said. His voice dropped into that low, dangerous register he used when he was calculating odds. "The sabotaged filter diaphragms on Shelf One. The rush to beat us through the narrows. She wants my team starved of air before we reach Station Four so she can claim sole recovery rights to Dr. Vargha's deep core data."

"She won't get it," I said.

I unclipped my five-point harness, reached behind the driver's seat, and pulled my field pack and heavy canvas tool roll into my lap.

Lórágy turned to me. "What are you doing?"

"We have twelve minutes before the spore count doubles," I said, checking the seal on my rebreather mask. "We aren't sitting here negotiating through a glass window."

"The main bay door is four inches of reinforced structural plate. We cannot ram it with the buggy without destroying our steering gear."

"I am not ramming the door," I said.

I pulled the spotlight handle on the dashboard ceiling, swiveling the beam upward along the face of the granite buttress above the outpost roof.

The white light raked across forty feet of slick, moss-slicked stone until it caught an iron framework bolted directly over the station's primary exhaust stack.

There, perched sixty feet above the concrete apron along the station's drainage flume, was an old oval maintenance hatch. Painted on the rusted iron plate in faded yellow stencil was a single designation: HATCH 4B - DRAINAGE OVERFLOW.

Lórágy followed the beam of light. His eyes widened slightly behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

"That is the secondary slurry vent from the 1904 excavation," he said. "It hasn't been serviced in thirty years."

"Which means Margit's geological crew didn't bother to route a digital lockout to its manual dog latches," I said. "It connects straight to the ceiling crawlway over the main bay. If I get inside, I can drop down to the manual gantry winch and drop the bay override pins from the inside."

"Orsolyzsa, look at the wall." He pointed at the rock face. "The drainage sill is wet with sulfur condensate. The spore plume from the lower fissure vents directly beneath that catwalk. If you slip, you fall sixty feet onto the apron."

"Then I won't slip."

"Your collarbone," he said, reaching out.

His fingers caught the strap of my harness near my collarbone, stopping me. His touch was firm, warm through the heavy webbing. For a second, neither of us moved. His eyes searched mine, stripped of all that stiff academic composure, showing the raw worry underneath.

My pulse kicked in my throat. I looked down at his hand, then back up at his face.

"The butterfly closures are holding," I told him quietly. "And you wrapped them tight, Doctor."

He swallowed. His thumb lingered on the canvas strap for half a heartbeat before he let his hand drop.

"I am coming with you," he said.

"No, you're not." I pulled my military rebreather over my chin, snapping the elastic straps behind my ears. "Someone has to sit in the cab with the engine running. The second I trip the override from the inside, the blast door will lift three feet off the ground and hold for forty-five seconds on the safety cycle. If you aren't behind the wheel to drop the clutch and ram Buggy Three into the bay, the door will reseal itself and lock us both out."

He stared at me, his jaw working as he weighed the mechanics.

"You need thirty seconds to clear the sill," he said.

"Twenty if the hinges aren't seized solid," I answered through the rubber diaphragm of my mask.

I grabbed my forty-foot braided climbing line from the under-seat locker, snapped a heavy steel carabiner to my gear belt, and slid my iron pry bar into the canvas scabbard on my thigh.

I opened the cab door. The cold, heavy subterranean air hit me like a wet towel soaked in vinegar and rotten wood. The smell of the spores was sharp even through the charcoal filter, stinging the corners of my eyes.

I stepped down onto the granite apron. The rock was slick with greasy condensation.

Lórágy leaned across the passenger seat, his face framed in the open door.

"Orsi."

I turned, one hand on the buggy's exterior grab bar.

"Don't fall," he said.

"Don't stall the rig," I shot back.

I turned away before he could answer, marching through the orange glare of the sodium lights toward the rusted iron ladder that ran up the sheer buttress wall.

The ladder rungs were cold as lead, slick with greasy moisture. I hooked my carabiner into the side rail every six rungs, pulling myself upward with my boots and legs, keeping the weight off my right shoulder.

Ten feet. Twenty feet.

Below me, the yellow lights of Buggy Three illuminated the wide concrete apron. The engine let out a low, steady rumble, waiting for the door to move. Behind the reinforced glass of the pedestrian airlock, Margit's pale face appeared, staring up at me in disbelief.

She had realized what I was doing.

I didn't give her the satisfaction of looking down. I reached the forty-foot mark, where the iron ladder ended at a narrow maintenance catwalk that ran horizontally across the sheer cliff face toward Hatch 4B.

The catwalk was two feet wide, constructed of open steel grating that trembled under my boots. Directly beneath it, an active thermal vent blasted a pulsing plume of scalding white steam and orange spores into the gloom. The heat hit my legs through my canvas trousers, baking the wet fabric against my skin.

I inched along the catwalk, my back pressed flat against the cold granite wall.

Hatch 4B was ten feet ahead.

The heavy iron door was sealed with three massive brass dog-latch handles, caked in thick white mineral scale from decades of sulfur exhaust.

I unhitched the iron pry bar from my thigh, took a wide stance on the vibrating catwalk grating, and wedged the chisel tip beneath the top latch.

The climb was over. The breach was about to start.

I set my boots against the iron frame, took a short breath inside my mask, and threw my full weight against the bar.