Sabatine felt considerable relief when Kaiden made the decision. Leaving men to slowly suffocate beneath tons of dust would have been a grim end to the battle. It was strange how one could be at peace with being vaporized when a missile ripped through a vessel but fear to slowly choke for lack of air. It didn't hurt that the decision irritated Tilda either. With the course decided they were faced with the how. The wreck of the Hikendorf was buried by twenty meters of dust and rock. Sabatine and Savachev discussed several options before settling on the one they felt would be both fast and safe.

"Switch on!" Sabatine called across the unit push. She was wearing her rigging suit, clumsy under the light gravity. She stood in the umbilicus with three other riggers, each attached to a mast that had been swayed out above them by ships cables. The umbilicus, at maximum contraction stood above them, a three meter wall of plastic and steel. All four spacers gripped the square handle they had welded around a spare waterline. She felt the thrum of water racing along the pipe at firehose pressure. It blasted into the dirt in a muddy spray, the force of which almost lifted the four spacers in the low gravity. A second house began to gurgle and slurp, sucking up the slurry. By slow increments they dug into the dust, the umbilicus extending around them like a well casing. Danzetti hung above them on the cable, spraying the walls of the umbilicus with plasticizer as it extened, strengthing it so the weight of earth didn't crush it shut.

"How is it going?" Kaiden asked on a private channel. By now, Sabatine's world had been reduced to blindly fumbling in the muck, running her hand around the base of the umbilicus by feel to lower it another inch. A scum of plasticizer had formed on the water and gathered like dandruff on the head and shoulders of her suit.

"If I wanted mud," she gasped, breathing heavily, "I'd have joined the bloody pongos." Kaiden chuckled over the comm and might have been about to ask more, when water splashed on something metallic. Shoulder mounted lamps lit sparkling reflections from the spray as they exposed a section of hull plating.

"We are there," Sabatine replied, it took another minute or two to clear the three meter circle and secure it with the plasticizer.

"Think we should let them know we are coming?" Sabatine asked. She made a hand guesture to Danzetti who began to shimmy up the line, disappearing into the darkness above.

"Let's not give anyone a chance to be a hero," Kaiden replied. Sabatine didn't think it was too likely that spacers trapped in a wreck were likely to open fire, but she wasn't in command. A moment later Kaiden slithered down the line, a diamond saw in one hand and a pair of slung submachine guns. His beet touched the deck and he let go of the line, handing the saw off to one of the spacers. Sabatine leaned close and pressed her helmet to Kaiden's so they could talk without the radio.

"Kaiden, I don't know its a good idea for both senior officers to be involved in a breech," she said. He unslung one of the guns and passed it across to her.

"Wan't to climb back up then?" he asked, the amusement clear in his voice. She took the gun, her eye roll concealed behind the face shield of her helmet.

"Pressurizing," Savachev's voice came across the comms. Air began to pump into the umbilicus and the indicator light in Sabatine's helmet went green, indicating the air was breathable. She didn't open her helmet, breathable didn't mean pleasant, and she doubted the plasticizer would do her lungs any favors. Kaiden stepped back and made a curt gesture. The spacer flicked the saw to life and sank it into the hull plating. Sabatine felt the scream of it through her boots as the blade cut into the hull, there was a slight outrush of air, indicating that the hull section was at least still pressurized. The spacer reversed the blade, making two more cuts that dropped a triangular section of hull plating into the ship. A greenish glow of emergency lighting washed out. Sabatine stepped into the hall, falling into the ship under the low gravity.

"Entering," Sabatine reported, engaging the magnets in her boots at twenty percent strength. She shuffled forward clearing the way for Kaiden and the other armed spacers who were already coming down the line. The interior of the ship showed signs of the trauma she had undergone. Cracks and stress fractures ran through the bulkheads where the impact waves had torqued the hull. An alliance spacer came around the corner, his face discolored by a dark bruise and with an arm full of spare air bottles. His eyes widened in shock and he dropped his armful raising his hands.

"I surrender," he gasped, pressing himself back against the wall.