“Can’t you see this? . . . Major emergency situation. The sight glasses for the tanks are wrecked too. We’re not going anywhere. Get everybody off, fast!”
Then movement farther along the compartment caught Vanessa’s eye. Two telebot mecs working together were dragging something along the floor in the aisle between the engines. They must have dropped it down the ladder from the hatch at the far end. It had a barrel, and looked for all the world like a cannon being trundled between them.
“Cole. What’s that?” She pointed. The engineer looked back. His eyes widened into whites.
“Jesus!” He dropped the wrench, seized her, and pushed her down the aisle, virtually throwing her over the top of the mecs. “Get up that hatch! . . .”
“What—”
“JUST GET OUT!”
But Vanessa would need precious seconds to scale the ladder. Cole turned to run back to the locker-space hatch and collided with Payne coming the other way. Finnion was coming down the stairs along the passage behind Payne.
“GET OUT! IT’S A FLARE PISTOL! EVERYTHING’S GONNA BLOW!” Cole bawled at them.
Payne dived sideways for the locker-space hatch. Cole kept on going and flew up the stairs after Finnion, who had hurriedly reversed direction.
Probably, Kevin shouldn’t have done it. The intention had been simply a scare tactic to keep the engine room off limits. But after his experiences of fighting the assassin bug in Eric’s car, getting Lancelot to Tacoma to free himself from the machine, a wild ride with Ohira, and finally the crazy act to stop the Dolores from sailing while the van careened across Seattle, his adrenaline had taken charge.
And, being coupled into mec space, he hadn’t known at that time that Michelle was off the boat and safe; she had been climbing down to a rubber boat at the stern at one point, but now the KE mec was there but Michelle was not. Then, seeing Vanessa brandishing the gun. . . .
And no-one was actually in the engine room itself by that time. . . .
He would agree with Eric later that it was an overreaction, unjustified by the circumstances, going too far. But he never really meant it. The feeling it gave him later, every time he relived the moment, was something that he would remember always and wouldn’t have missed for the world.
He pulled the trigger.
The main blast came up through the side hatch that Payne had just emerged from, carrying him over the side and into the water on the side of the boat away from the dock. Black, oily smoke followed, boiling up also out of the stern hatch that Vanessa had come out of and shrouding the afterdeck. She clutched the rail by the starboard gate down from the fishing cockpit, coughing and retching. The Dolores was drifting, dead in the water. People were coming out onto the quay from the back of the Shoals club building, others gathering on its second-floor terrace. Someone had thrown a lifebelt to the figure struggling in the water between the boat and the dock. Sirens of approaching fire trucks wailed along the waterfront. Flames erupted from somewhere near the stern on the far side, and another figure jumped into the water. Orange tongues were also licking from the side hatch that Payne had escaped through. There was no way for Vanessa to go forward.
Payne was swimming toward the stern. Vanessa looked down and saw the inflatable boat tied to the swim platform, which was what he was making for. Black smoke from the burning diesel fuel and pink clouds from the flare blazing on the boat deck above were mingling to blot out the whole scene. The inflatable, she realized, could also be their way out of this.
She turned and climbed down to the swim platform. As her head came level with the fishing cockpit deck, she noticed the nylon sports bag with another mec just in the process of crawling out. It came to the edge and peered down, watching while Vanessa dropped into the rubber boat and helped Payne in over the side. When she turned to untie the line, the mec flew down at her and landed on her coat. Literally—it had wings. She gave a shout, more from ire than fear, tore it off and threw it down.