The heavy steel hatch of the backup airlock slammed shut. The repressurization pumps roared to life, flooding the chamber with warm, cold air-rich air.
Arthur Vance removed his combat helmet, shaking his sweaty, flattened hair free. The air in the bay was thick with the sharp tang of ozone, burned hard shell, and the metal copper stench of alien blood. The sky scrubber fans whined at maximum capacity. It pulled the heavy void soot toward the chemical filter banks.
In the center of the bay, Grimm dropped the cut fifty-ton command pod onto the heavy floor. The metal decking groaned beneath the huge mass. But Titus, still locked into the keel beams below, absorbed the shifted weight with a slow, reassuring rumble from his shell.
Grimm right away backed away two steps, lowered his head. Then he tucked his tail between his hams, his ears flattening in a clear display of canine guilt.
A puddle of black, thick, sticky fluid was oozing from the cut pod, staining the freshly scrubbed deck plates directly in front of the emergency medical locker.
Arthur looked from the stain to the hound.
Grimm averted his eyes. That turned his broad snout toward the far inner wall, pretending with all his might that he was an invisible piece of furniture and that the fifty-ton alien carcass had appeared on the clean floor entirely of its own accord. His left hind paw twitched slightly, tapping the metal floor in silent anxiety.
