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face
first against the wall. A spray of blood coated the yellow paint.
Monroe dropped the man.
    And leveled a tiny gun at her.
    Rue took an involuntary step backwards, knees
nearly buckling under her.
    Muscles rippling under the fabric of his
coveralls, Monroe stepped over the engineer's body. "Shall we
dance?"
    The comic book villain line popped her out of
fear and into blind, red rage. Whatever he thought he was going to
do to her was so not going to happen. Rue pressed the redial button
on her PDA.
    In her left hand, Dr. Chia's PDA burst into Also Sprach Zarathrusta again . Monroe's gaze jerked down to
the machine, and Rue threw her own PDA at him.
    He flinched and she ducked out the door, not
waiting to see if it had actually hit him. If it made impact,
bonus. Springing across the hall, Rue threw herself into the crew
quarters and slid the door home. "Lock it! Lock it!"
    Faster than Rue could breathe, the lock flashed
to red. Cordelia nodded. "I hacked, but--
    Monroe bellowed and slammed against the door,
vibrating the whole thing in its frame.
    Rue turned to face the narrow bunks crammed into
the quarters. The smell of dirty socks and the stink of her own
fear filled the room, almost crawling on her tongue. At the far end
of the room, four bulky white EVA suits hung on the wall, ready for
their owners. Small metal lockers, painted the same grey as the
rest of the ship created the ends of each bunk.
    There was only one door. Crap.
    "Can you get help?" She pulled open the closest
locker.
    "I've lost my connection to the main system."
The AI's brow was furrowed with concentration. "It's a hardware
failure, not a viral block."
    Her pulse rattled every nerve in her body. Hands
shaking, Rue tore through the the locker, looking for anything she
could use as a weapon. Underwear, round datapods, cables, a
pasteboard box of rhinestone earrings. "Okay. So it's likely that
the ship AI isn't involved or he'd be hacking back at you,
right?"
    "I think they have him isolated."
    "They. Who the hell is they? Monroe, clearly but
who else?" Next locker. Black leather workboots, a worn miniature
Bible, coveralls. She felt the pockets, but they were all
empty.
    The thumps on the door had stopped, which was
not a good sign. Rue left the lockers to press her ear against the
door. Nothing. No klaxon, no footsteps. The only sound was that of
her own breathing.
    Mutiny had not been covered in her courses on AI
wrangling. She knew how to maintain systems and... "Total idiot.
Cordelia, I'm a total idiot." She still had Dr. Chia's PDA. "It's
sort of old school, but if I jack the interface glasses into the
PDA, can you get into the basic ship system?"
    Cordelia's eyes seemed to gleam. "I'd like
nothing better."
    Going back to the locker with the datapods, Rue
snagged one of the cables and slipped the plug into the jack on the
PDA.
    The other end did not fit the glasses.
    "Monkey!" She pulled her arm back to hurl the
useless PDA at the wall and barely kept herself from flinging it.
Not helpful. Rue stood, with her hand half over her head, muscles
trembling with held tension. The complete helplessness would kill
her and she didn't even mean that as a freakin' metaphor. "Begat
this!" She lowered the PDA. "Do you have any ideas?"
    Cordelia shook her head. "I can't even unlock
the door now."
    "Perfect." Rue pulled open the next locker, not
really hoping to find anything, but because she had to do something . "Can't one of these guys collect katanas or
something useful? Heck, I'd settle for a cricket bat at this point.
Or a wrench." Instead the locker held more blue coveralls and
pinups of a variety of centerfolds. Rue let her head fall forward
to rest against the edge of the door. It made a cool stripe down
her forehead. Exhaustion weighed on her.
    The smell of dirty socks had grown stronger
here. Rue wanted nothing more than to curl up on one of the bunks
and sleep until the whole thing was over. She staggered back from
the locker, head spinning.
    Except