Air from the ventilation system rushed out the jagged hole in the airlock door.
Jagalchi had hardly any atmosphere, so the greatest danger was having all the oxygen leak out into space.
For the time being, however, we could breathe, due to all the air blowing out the vents.
I was in shock.
Having a loved one's brains splattered all over your face is not something a normal person can easily get over.
Some of it even got in my mouth.
I wasn't sure whether to spit or to keep it there, so it could become a part of me. To preserve the memory of him.
I know, not normal people thoughts, but I was going through a horrific trauma.
I saw Izzy pick up a spanner, charging at the lead gunman. Not the brightest move for an ex-Marine, but he was angry. Izzy and Brett went way back.
To his credit, he did manage to knock the man's helmet sideways, but before he could pry the machine gun out of the leader's grip, the man hit him with the stock of the weapon, and his goons cut Izzy down with bursts of automatic fire.
The leader finished him off with a shot to the head.
My coworkers, at least, the ones who hadn't fled, now stood with their hands raised in surrender.
I suddenly heard Dennis speaking Arabic.
I stared at him in disbelief as he stepped forward in slow, cautious steps, hands raised, mouth forming strange syllables.
The two exchanged words for a few minutes, then the leader chambered a clip, snarling something else.
Dennis retreated a few steps, saying a few other things I couldn't understand.
He whirled around, sprinting out of the room like an Olympic runner.
The goons fired off a few automatic rounds, but they missed, destroying a pair of crates and a door frame in the process.
The leader's men moved to follow, but he raised a staying hand, motioning for only three of them to run ahead.
I screamed as the baby tried to come out again.
The leader stomped up to me, aiming his gun at my head, shouting at me. Behind the glass, he looked like a dark skinned version of that mad scientist from Disney's Black Hole, tar black bushy beard, thick eyebrows, eyes wide and wild looking with mania.
More Arabic spewed out. I would have obeyed if I understood.
I just cried, fighting to keep my breathing stable.
He clicked something on his gun, and I knew he intended to kill me, pregnant or not.
All of a sudden, the man straightened with a look of horror on his brown face, and red liquid splattered across the glass visor of his helmet like syrup inside an out of order Slurpee machine.
A pair of black claws separated his torso from his body, flinging the two aside in a bloody spray.
And then I saw her.
The creature purred as it looked at me, steaming drool dribbling out the sides of its distended mouth.
Heavy breathing, like some kind of creepy pervert.
No, I thought as I cowered on the floor. It was hunger, like I was a microwave, and that thing was waiting for the burrito to finish cooking.
Fighting to keep my breath under control as the baby tried to get out, I crawled backwards on my arms and elbows.
I saw flashes, and the sound of gunfire echoed off the concrete wall as pieces of the creature exploded in a green spray.
With a slow growl, the thing whipped its head to the side and leapt.
I heard a henchman scream, and more gunfire erupted.
The room filled with chaotic activity, feet and legs kicking and stomping all around me in a blind panic to get away from danger. I feared I would be trampled.
"C'mon. Let's get you out of here," I heard Spotted Owl whispering behind me. "We need to get you into the medical bay."
I screamed as pain exploded between my legs.
"Has your water broke yet?" she asked.
"No," I groaned. "And I hope it doesn't anytime soon!"
Spotted Owl sighed. "C'mon."
With some effort, she helped me to my feet, and we hurriedly staggered through the crowd of panicked bodies.
We bumped into the tubby robot doctor in the hallway outside the suit room.
"I just received an urgent summons," he said. "How far apart are your contractions?"
After I had finished screaming out another jolt of pain, I yelled, "I don't know. I don't have a stopwatch, you dumb bucket of bolts!"
I could have been imagining it, but I thought the android seemed amused as he grabbed my other side, helping Spotted Owl carry me.
"You are perfectly justified in your expressions of pain," he said. "Childbirth is a highly stressful and pain inducing event."
"I'd like to see you try dealing with a big creature trying to push itself out between your legs. Give that a whirl and tell me about your fabulous event, you walking encyclopedia!"
He paused. "That would be both a fascinating and novel experience!"
I rolled my eyes. "Just get me to the infirmary before the baby drops!"
And so they half led, half carried me past the gym and the mineral storage bay.
All of a sudden, three men in black spacesuits came up the hallway and surrounded us, pointing guns at our heads.
They could have just killed us then and there, but I guess they wanted hostages.
The man growled something, waving us backwards toward the way we came. We had no choice but to obey.
Suddenly, the one with the gun trained on Doctor Venn had a jeweler's pick embedded in his helmet, an expression of pain frozen on his bearded features. His gun went off, blasting out one of the android's eyes as he collapsed on the floor.
The other two men whirled to fire at the unseen attacker, but they saw no one.
Spotted Owl took this opportunity to grab her captor's gun and point the muzzle at the other man. The owner of the gun was already pulling the trigger, so the target fell to the ground in a spray of blood and suit material.
The Indian slammed the butt of the gun into the remaining invader's stomach and shot him in the head.
I glanced at the robot. "I hope you don't need that other eye."
"My optic sensors and internal feedback arrays are still functional," the doctor said. "Unlike a human, I can perceive depth perfectly well with only one eye present."
"I wonder who threw that pick," Spotted Owl muttered.
"Data insufficient," said Venn. "But the weapon was thrown from the gym entrance."
It didn't matter. The baby was coming, and I didn't want to deliver on the rock floor.
We encountered no more invaders. Our crewmates saw us coming and cleared out a space.
I alternated between puffing and screaming as they led me past the storage rooms and into the med lab.
Spotted Owl and the doctor stripped me to a gown, preparing me for the inevitable.
The doctor injected me with a pain reliever, not enough in my opinion, but we didn't want to kill the baby.
And then I breathed and tried to get things under control.
I really didn't want the baby to come out at such an inconvenient and dangerous time, so I didn't try too hard to push Junior out. I wanted him to stay put for awhile. Choosing between having a stillbirth or a brain damaged kid and essentially providing an alien monster human Pop Tarts is not much of a choice.
If he could only stay put for awhile. At least, until those things were gone, or, even better than that, dead.
I puffed and groaned for what seemed like an eternity on that table. Spotted Owl told me to push, to which I replied, "I don't know if I should."
She had nothing to reply to that.
And then the young man came in.
The same good looking black man who had calmed my baby before.
Spotted Owl looked horrified, but she wasn't screaming. She just cowered in his presence, looking pale, like she were locked in a lion's cage at the zoo, and the young man was the lion.
I waved at him, giving him a desperate smile. "Hi!"
He smiled back, nodding to me.
Spotted Owl seemed to be frantically praying something in Navajo.
I reached out to the man with both hands. "Help me! Like you did before!"
"Ellen!" Spotted Owl cried. "What the fuck are you doing!"
Venn, in the meantime, was just observing us like a lab experiment.
The man shook his head. "It must happen now."
And then he turned to my companion.
In one fluid cheetah-like movement, he leapt on the woman, drawing his mouth close to hers, as if to kiss it.
A glistening black shaft shot out of his throat, tipped with what looked like cobra teeth. He buried this shaft deep in her throat, and for a few moments, she screamed through her nose, thrashing and struggling under the man's strong arms.
The man spat out a huge glob of slime and plastered her body against the concrete wall.
Spotted Owl gasped for air like an asthmatic under the throes of a serious attack, and then the fight left her.
I shuddered, looking away. I was in no condition to run, so I just...tried not to think about it.
Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.
A brown hand offered me an orange bar.
Cinnamon.
I found myself licking my lips.
Without even thinking about it, I took a big bite.
Suddenly the light switch came on in my brain.
The young man was not really a man.
He was that that big faceless creature from the pit. The one that killed Gina.
The beast, with its no eyed face and Triceratops-like head plate stood next to the examination table, offering the rest of the orange bar, like a character in some twisted TV commercial from the mind of a drug addled advertising executive.
That was when I discovered something even worse.
The orange bar was not orange.
It wasn't even a bar.
I was eating a piece of Spotted Owl's arm.