Creek entered the pod and threw his rifle (and its attendant finger), into the closest seat. "Sit down," he said to Robin, who took a seat on the other side of the pod from the rifle and began to strap herself in. Creek grabbed the door sealer and yanked it down; the door vacuum-sealed itself with a hiss.

Creek glanced through the tiny porthole and saw the other two marines finally creeping past their downed teammates. One of them saw the outside door to the pod closing and raised his rifle to fire. The airlock door, which sealed the pod from the ship, slammed shut, blocking Creek's view; as it did so Creek heard the dull thunk of bullets striking its other side.

"What do we do now?" Robin said.

"Lifepods automatically start a countdown once you seal them," Creek said, strapping himself into his seat. "We should be launching any second now."

"Good," Robin said. She sat back, closed her eyes, and waited for the launch.

A minute later she opened her eyes again. "Harry," she said. "We're still here."

"I know," Creek said.

"I thought we were supposed to launch," Robin said.

"We were," Creek said.

There was a very loud bang on the other side of the door.

"What was that?" Robin said.

"I'm guessing it was a grenade," Creek said. "They're trying to blow their way through the outer door."

"What do we do now?" Robin said.

"I don't know," Creek said. He reached over and collected up the rifle and the Nidu marine's finger. If any of the other Nidu marines had noticed that both of these objects were missing, there was a reasonably good chance that the rifle had already been disconnected from the network and would be useless as anything but a club. Creek didn't see much point in passing on that bit of information to Robin.

"They're in the pod," Picks said.

"Stop their countdown," Captain Lehane said. "But program in their destination coordinates."

"Done," Picks said, after a second. "Now what do you want to do?"

"Ready the other pod launchers to go," Lehane said, and glanced back down to his monitors, where he could see the Nidu marines congregate around the pod airlock. "And wait for the flies to come to the honey."

After a few seconds Picks glanced over at the monitor. "Those two must be going bugshit in there, wondering why the pod hasn't launched."

"It won't be long now," Lehane said. Four more Marines showed up on the Promenade Deck, and then another two. Four more and they'd be ready to go.

"That's easy for you to say," Picks said, as he watched the Nidu marines scurry to take cover from the grenade they'd placed by the airlock. "You're not the one on the other side of that door."

"There," Lehane said, and pointed to one of the monitors. The final foursome of Nidu Marines had come up the stairs and were making their way to the pod. "That's all of them. Confirm that for me, please, Aidan."

Picks bent over the monitors and did a count. "Looks like twelve of them to me," Picks said. "That's all that are left standing."

"Aidan," Captain Lehane said. "I do believe there's been a catastrophic hull breach on the Promenade Deck. Bring the ship to emergency status. I authorize you to section and seal the Promenade Deck. If you please, section and seal the aft left quarter first; that's the site of the breach."

Picks grinned. "Yes, Captain," he said, and went oft"to deliver the orders.

Promenade Decks are both a blessing and curse to commercial cruise liners. They are designed to accommodate huge windows that allow passengers to oooh and aaaah over starfields, planets, and all other manner of celestial phenomena, and make for fabulous brochure pictures to sell Midwest housewives and their cheap husbands on the idea of an interstellar cruise. The curse is these windows make Promenade Decks inherently far less structurally sound than any other part of the ship. A good random smack by chunk of rock or debris into a window at cruising speed runs the statistically extremely small yet not entirely trivial chance the window will buckle or shatter, sucking its fragments and any poor passengers nearby into the blackness of space.

After a few high-profile incidents of this, including the unfortunate incident of the Hong Kong Star, in which the parents of the First Husband of the UNE were popped into cold vacuum like two immensely politically connected corks, every space-going cruise liner with a Promenade Deck registered for service by the UNE had to be able to lock down the entire deck at least and preferably the deck in sections, to insure a hull breach on the Promenade Deck did not threaten the integrity of the entire ship or expose any more passengers than absolutely necessary to the risk having their blood boil into nothingness as they unexpectedly toured the cosmos without a ship.

In the case of a catastrophic hull breach (according to UNE regulations on the subject) a ship the size of the Neverland must be able to seal its Promenade Deck in no more than 15 seconds. In tests, the Neverland could seal off its Promenade Deck in 12.6 seconds. Sectional seals took even less time: between 5.1 and 7.8 seconds. Of course, that was before the Neverland had been entirely furnished and put into service. Captain Lehane wondered idly if the presence of carpeting, lounges, and potted palms would have any effect on the final numbers.

"Sealing now," Picks said. There was a shipwide wrenching and an immense noise as Promenade Deck vacuum doors, cleverly disguised as floors and walls, sprang up and out and connected together with an alacrity that made Lehane want to track down their designer and send him or her a congratulatory fruit basket. The carpets, lounges, and plants didn't seem to slow down the doors, although they catapulted quite nicely. On his monitor, Lehane could see some of the Nidu marines firing at furniture in surprise as it was flung around them.

"Done," Picks said, "thirteen point two seconds. Not bad. And all the Nidu marines are in the aft left quarter."

"Excellent work, Aidan," Lehane said. "Now, if I recall correctly, the hull breach occurred in that section of the deck."

"I believe it did," Picks said.

"That means one of the panorama windows has been compromised," Lehane said. "I order you to clear out the rest of the window, in order to seal the breach."

"Yes, sir," Picks said. "Does the captain have any particular window in mind?"

"I leave it in your capable hands," Lehane said.

Although the Haysbert-American cruise line was a low-to-mid-price cruise line, it nevertheless had one of the best reputations for ship safety in the entire UNE commercial fleet; the Haysbert-American executives believed that such a reputation would be a selling point to the previously mentioned Midwest housewives, and indeed it was. One of the more obscure safety touches was that every window on a Haysbert-American ship, from the smallest porthole to the largest dome, was a single transparent crystal grown into its setting during ship manufacture. The crystal's shearing angle—its "weak" angle—was along an axis secured by the setting; the axis describing the surface of the window was remarkably resistant to collision. If something cracked a window on a Haysbert-American cruise liner, it was indeed a hell of an impact.

The drawback to growing one's windows into place was if one was cracked or broken it was difficult to extract it. Haysbert-American solved this problem by constructing tiny shaped explosive charges into their window settings which would drive chisel-like planes of metal into the crystals shearing angle, shattering what remained of the crystal and allowing deployment of the emergency vacuum door hidden within its retaining wall. This deployment occurred automatically unless overridden by the bridge.

"Clearing debris," Picks said, and shattered the panoramic window closest to the lifepod.