The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

loaded.”
    Travis laughed softly. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

Chapter Forty-Four
    Holt was in the conference room, reading the interrogation notes again, when he felt the heat on the side of his face. For three or four seconds he ignored it, assuming the plane’s climate control system had begun venting warm air from the ceiling ducts.
    Then it felt more than warm.
    He turned in the direction it was coming from—the back wall—and his legs involuntarily kicked and shoved him away from the table.
    Above the counter where the Breach entities were lined up, the plastic facing of the wall had begun to warp and melt in one area—a big half-circle blooming from the counter’s back edge.
    Centered right beneath the melting place were three entities, all the same type. Holt had read the paper slip that detailed their function, but couldn’t remember it now. The objects were roughly cigar sized and made of something that looked like polished blue stone.
    They’d been blue earlier, anyway.
    Right now they were closer to pure white, incandescing like lightbulb filaments.
    At that moment a line of flame erupted where the melting plastic had begun to pool atop the counter, the material breaking down into constituent oils. A tenth of a second later the entire melt zone was engulfed and sending noxious black smoke toward the ceiling.
    Holt shoved himself up from the chair, turned, and began screaming at the others in the seating area ahead. He’d just gotten out the word fire when an alarm began shrieking, seeming to come from everywhere. He reached the doorway and saw the others already moving, running for the fire extinguishers positioned along the outer walls. The extinguishers’ mounts were strobing bright red—it was impossible to miss them.
    Holt stepped aside as the first of the men sprinted past him into the room. One by one they went in, dodging around the chairs and one another, and blasting carbon dioxide at the flames. With their bodies in the way, Holt could no longer see the fire, but the men’s audible responses told him they were having trouble with it. They kept triggering the extinguishers, the sound not quite drowning out their curses and shouts.
    Porter arrived at the rear of the pack, carrying two extinguishers. He shoved one into Holt’s hands and then ducked in past him. Holt followed. As he did, he heard another alarm begin blaring somewhere. Back toward the tail, maybe. God knew what it was; flames and smoke aboard an aircraft probably set off all kinds of emergency indicators.
    He shouldered past the edge of the crowd and at last saw why the fire was proving difficult. The carbon dioxide was all but evaporating in the envelope of blazing air around the three entities. How hot were the damned things?
    Even as he wondered, he saw one of them flicker. Then the other two. Within the following seconds all three began to dim visibly. The white-hot color was fading before his eyes.
    Then the throat of the man next to him exploded out from under his head.
    A gunshot.
    From behind.
    Holt spun—saw some of the others turning too, even as a storm of gunfire kicked up—and for maybe a quarter of a second he discerned the figures standing in the doorway. Garner. The other man. Both women. All leveling and firing Benellis from the aft arms locker.
    Holt saw Garner’s weapon swing toward him. Saw its barrel aim straight into his viewpoint from ten feet away.
    Holt shut his eyes.
    It was over by the time Travis’s shotgun ran dry. He saw the last body drop, and as planned, the other three spun and trained their weapons on the seating area—reloading as they did—on the chance that some straggler might yet be coming in.
    At the same time Travis lunged forward into the conference room. He dropped his own gun, grabbed one of the fallen extinguishers and began spraying down the remaining flames. The blue flares were already cool enough that they no longer got in the way.
    Within a moment there was no fire at all. Just pooled bubbling plastic and a foot of gray vapor swirling under the ceiling. Travis gave the wall another long blast for good measure, then turned, ducked out of the room, and took his first breath since going in. As he emerged he heard a man shouting from somewhere forward of the bulk seating. Footsteps thudded on stairs, and then one of the flight crew came sprinting back.
    “Where is it?” the man screamed. He started to repeat it, but the words caught in his throat. He’d seen