The Bridge: A Science Fiction Survival Story

Chapter 76

The line shattered before Tom as he swam through it, knocking Lear left and right while using their bodies to increase his own speed. He drove through Airomem and Praeter, splitting them apart with enough force to drive them inside the vessel, then crashed into Sitient as his momentum took them both towards the back wall. His hand twisted around Sitient's shirt before he could cry out, twisting the fabric so tight it cut off all circulation, and hurled Sitient down the hallway to crash through the formation of half a dozen Agrarians.

The other Agrarians turned on Tom as he smashed through them, jabbing through his shirt and pants with knives, shrieking as he continued to move past them and reached the back wall. He fumbled with something in his hands for a moment as another knife plunged into his shoulder blade, grimacing as the wielder pulled it out for another blow.

And Tom turned back towards us, blood streaming down his chest, the Agrarians swarming over his body as the Lear looked on horrified.

"This Tom's home!" he shouted to me as a bright white light exploded out of his hand. He raised the Omni-cutter that he had stolen from my hip high, then faced Airomem, who had just recovered inside the doorway. "For my chief – for the Lear!"

"For the Le –" the soldiers roared back, their voices lost as he slashed the Omni-cutter across the freshly repaired wall, cutting a thin straight line across the metal. In most areas, two layers of metal separated us from the outside – but here, where the ship had brought itself back together, only a thin layer was present. A layer that blasted apart before Tom could complete his stroke, and the inside of the ship met the vacuum of space beyond.

The Agrarians had no time to react as the wall ripped itself apart at the welds – unlike the hole Airomem had cut in the window of the apartment, there was a near unlimited air supply on this end of the ship, since I had cut away the door on one end of the hallway. And this was no pinhole like she had created – rather, this was an uncontrolled opening beyond that screamed at the hungry air to escape at full force, and bring anything it could with it.

Mercifully, the sensors on the doors of the departure vessel registered the pressure differential before Tom's body was sucked through the hole he had created along with the nearest pocket of Agrarians. In a blur, the doors slammed shut, cutting off all visual connection with the bridge as wind roared through the hallway, howling through the now several-foot-wide hole that continued ripping through the crumbling metal, the voices of terrified Agrarians joining its shrieking.

For three seconds, we could hear the screams and sliding as people and objects were grated through the hole and expelled as a gift into the space beyond. Then there was only silence, the supply of air exhausted as pressure doors on the Agrarian end of the hallway and within Nectian territory shut, sealing the already determined fate of the Agrarian hold between them.

And once more, the bridge was broken.

Never to be one again.