Dragon and Liberator

Jack frowned. Then he spotted it: a narrow, rectangular section of wall that was a slightly different color from the plates around it. It was small, extending vertically only from his eyes to his knees, its width slightly less than that of his shoulders. "What do I do?" he asked as he stepped over to it.

"Push at the top and bottom and slide it to your left."

Jack gave it a try. The panel resisted his first attempt. He tried again, pressing harder. This time it gave way and obediently slid away to the left, revealing a narrow passageway. "Got it," he called, easing his head into the opening. It was hard to tell in the faint light leaking in from their room, but the passageway seemed to go a considerable distance in both directions, bending visibly to the right as it followed the curve of the hull.

The floor wasn't solid but was made of a thin, fragile-looking meshwork, with a lot more of the narrow passageway directly below it. If the passageway had a ceiling, he couldn't see it in the dim light.

"Inside," Draycos said, loping over from what was left of the Death. He reached Jack's side and turned to face the door, crouched ready to leap. "Hurry—I can feel footsteps approaching."

Ducking his head, Jack turned sideways and got one leg through the opening, easing his weight onto the meshwork. To his relief, it was stronger than it looked. He got his other leg in and held out his arm. "Ready," he said.

Still watching the door, Draycos flipped his tail onto Jack's hand and slithered backward onto his arm. That was different, Jack commented. The panel, he saw, had a pair of handles on the inside. Gripping them, he gave the panel another sideways shove. It slid back into position and closed, cutting off the light from the room and leaving Jack in pitch-darkness.

Just in time. Pressing his ear to the panel, he heard the faint sound of the room door opening, followed by the much louder noise of thudding Brummgan feet.

Hold still, Draycos ordered. His head and part of his upper body rose from Jack's shoulder, the passageway picking up a faint green glow as the K'da's eyes rose from the concealment of Jack's flight suit. Draycos reached up with a paw and with two quick slashes cut off a section of bar running along the inner side of the passageway. Brace it against the entrance, he instructed, passing it down to Jack's hand. He sank back onto the boy's skin, leaving only his eyes and the top of his head still three-dimensional.

Silently, Jack moved the bar into place, wedging it between the movable panel and the rear of the passageway. Draycos had cut the bar perfectly, he noted, even to the point of angling the ends slightly so that it would lie flat against both sides. Got it, he said. Where now?

To your left, toward the bow, Draycos instructed. The hull curves inward more strongly in that direction.

Do we care how strongly the hull curves? Jack asked as he set off. The corridor was just a little wider than his shoulders, allowing him to walk straight instead of having to sidle.

The Brummgas and Valahgua are too big to fit in here, Draycos said. But they can still reach in and shoot.

Jack swallowed. Oh.

Ahead, the light from Draycos's eyes showed their path blocked by a fat metallic cylinder decorated with a pattern of angled stripes and spots. It was nearly three feet high and filled the corridor's entire width. Between the sections of stripes and spots Jack could see multiple holes dotting its surface. What is this place, anyway? he asked as he got one leg up over the top of the cylinder.

It's called the tween gap, a space between the inner and outer hulls, Draycos explained. In an emergency—either serious combat or an imminent crash situation—the gap can be flooded with a material called ghikada. It comes out as a vaporized fluid, solidifying quickly and filling the gap.

We have something like that, Jack said, nodding as he shifted his weight onto the cylinder. It was like riding a short but very fat horse. It's called crash foam. It's designed to absorb some of the impact in an accident.