TEXT: BattleCorps
  CASE WHITE:
  THE BREAKING OF 
  CHEMICAL BONDS
  Steven Mohan, Jr.
  
  BattleCorps
  The Breaking of Chemical Bonds • Page 
  Potemkin-class troop cruiser CSS Vision of Truth 
  En Route to Rendezvous Point 
  Terra 
  Word of Blake Protectorate 
  12 March 3068
  The angry clanging of the General Quarters alarm filled the pas-
  sageway, followed quickly by the pounding of boots against the 
  white tile deck.
  Adept Theta IX Johan Karlsson waited for the watchstander 
  in the boots to make his appearance. Johan leaned against the 
  bulkhead, bracing himself against the weight of his own muscular 
  body. He pushed his bright red ballcap back, allowing the AC vent 
  to cool a little more of his old, bald head.
  That was the position he was in when the Engineering Roving 
  Watch came around the corner. The kid—he couldn’t have been 
  more than nineteen, twenty—stopped and his eyes grew round 
  as he saw the transparent red Mylar stretched over the access to 
  Number Two Engine Room.
  Adept Cyndi Smith stepped forward. The gunner’s mate was 
  dressed like Johan: steel-toed boots, dark blue coveralls, a red 
  ballcap that said “Damage Control Training Team” in bright yellow 
  letters. She pointed at the access set in the deck. The hatch was a 
  round piece of steel painted haze gray and locked in an upright po-
  sition. “Smoke is billowing through the p-way,” she shouted over 
  the clang of the GQ alarm. “You hear a roar.”
  The boy snatched a black sound-powered phone off the bulk-
  head. His hands were shaking, but he managed to turn the 
  selector to DC Central. “DCC, Rover. Mainspace fire, Number 
  Two ER.”
  Then he made his mistake. Instead of waiting for the Primary 
  Hose Team he ran forward to secure the hatch himself. Cyndi 
  made a pistol out of her right hand and pointed it at him. “Bang. 
  You’re dead.” 
  The rover took a deep, shuddery breath and sat on the deck. 
  Johan frowned. The kid had only made the one mistake.
  But a mainspace fire would only give you one.
  
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  The Breaking of Chemical Bonds • Page 
  Primary Hose arrived forty-seven seconds later. By then the 
  bridge had gotten off their collective topside asses and cut the 
  alarm.
  The team wore fire gear: a black oxygen breathing apparatus 
  strapped to each chest, twin rubber hoses snaking up to a clear 
  plastic mask that kept the smoke out and the O2 in. They wore 
  fire-resistant gloves that reached up to the elbows of their blue 
  coveralls and matching cream-colored hoods with a cut-out for 
  the mask. And of course they were dragging along a fire hose, 
  even after a thousand years still the best way to put water where 
  it needed to go.
  They looked ready for anything. Well, thought Johan grimly, 
  we’ll see.
  “Smoke is billowing through the p-way,” Cyndi shouted again. 
  “You hear a roar. The roving watch is dead.”
  The hose team leader made the same mistake the rover had. She 
  ran forward to secure the hatch. Halon couldn’t be activated until 
  the hatch was secured. The engine room couldn’t be vented to 
  space.
  Cyndi shot her dead, too.
  Which left Adept Theta IV Paul Ridge as the leader of Primary 
  Hose.
  Paul Ridge was a thin topsider who didn’t weigh half as much 
  as Johan. He wore his brown hair neat and short, which was how 
  Paul liked the world: orderly. The mask hid his face, but Johan 
  could see the fear in his eyes.
  The uncertainty.
  Nothing orderly about a mainspace fire.
  C’mon, Paul, Johan thought, you can do it. Think it through. 
  In the event of a mainspace fire and an unsecured hatch the last 
  thing you were supposed to do was secure it. The rubber gasket 
  might melt right off, hell, the hatch itself might warp. Burn a main-
  space long enough and there wouldn’t be any damn hatch left 
  And while you’re fighting a hatch that’s never going to seal the 
  fire below might just catch an oxygen tank or a store of lube oil 
  and just like that the ChEng is writing a letter home to your folks 
  telling them what a brave, stupid sailor you’d been.
  
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  No, the right answer was to secure ventilation, expeditiously 
  clear all adjacent spaces, fall back to the nearest spacetight bulk-
  head, secure that hatch, and then blow the engine room to space.
  Anyone who knew the business of a fire aboard ship should’ve 
  known exactly what to do. And Paul knew as much about the sub-
  ject as anyone. 
  But instead of ordering his team back, Paul turned and grabbed 
  a fire extinguisher off the starboard bulkhead. It was a ten-kilo CO2, 
  great for putting out trash fires, worthless against a mainspace 
  and Cyndi was just cocking her pistol for out number three when 
  Paul stumbled.
  Maybe it was that his hands were slick with sweat, or maybe it 
  was the extra forty percent of weight from Vision’s combat burn, 
  or maybe it was 
  (his terror, my god he’s out of his mind with terror)
  something else, but—
  Paul dropped the extinguisher.
  It hit the hatch coaming and the nozzle snapped off, turning 
  the extinguisher into a missile. It shot down the passageway on 
  a plume of frigid, white gas and suddenly Cyndi was shouting, 
  shouting, calling an end to the drill, Paul just standing there pale 
  with shock, everything happening at once, until the terrible crunch 
  of a jet-propelled aluminum cylinder smashing into human ribs 
  robbed everything else of its meaning.
  
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  The Breaking of Chemical Bonds • Page 
  CSS Vision of Truth 
  En Route to Tukayyid from the Zenith Jump Point 
  Free Rasalhague Republic 
  19 April 3065
  Paul Ridge’s heart rattled in his chest like a bird frantically throw-
  ing itself against the bars of its cage. Sweat burned his eyes and 
  he dragged an arm across his forehead. Paul was a quartermaster, 
  used to working in the relative comfort of the bridge. 
  He hated the mainspaces.
  He hated the smell of oil and steel that he could never seem to 
  wash out of his hair or his coveralls, he hated the oppressive, pulsing 
  heat, but most of all, he hated the clatter of the machines surround-
  ing him, any of which seemed ready to explode at any moment.
  But he had a duty to perform.
  Number Two Engine Room was a cavernous space and at its aft 
  end lived a monster. Paul’s eyes were drawn to the dull glint of na-
  ked steel. A squat dome six meters in diameter bulged out of the 
  aft bulkhead. It loomed over him, immense, powerful.
  Threatening.
  The dome was a small section of the Number Two Reactor 
  Compartment protruding through the engine room bulkhead 
  so watchstanders could sample plasma and monitor one of the 
  mighty engines that powered Vision of Truth. 
  Inside the chamber was a mass of ionized hydrogen-1 smoothed 
  into a sphere the size of a softball by a powerful magnetic field 
  and ignited to a temperature high enough to sustain nuclear fu-
  sion by the strobe of a powerful laser. Paul felt the beat of the 
  monster’s heart in his bones.
  And all that separated the miniature sun from the engine room 
  was a sliver of low carbon steel.
  A man stood by the dome, studying a panel of gauges and 
  readouts and making entries into a noteputer. He was short but 
  powerfully-built, only one meter seventy-five but easily ninety 
  kilos, every last bit of it muscle. His raven hair was cut marine-
  short. He looked up and speared Paul with eyes the color of a deep 
  mountain lake.
  
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  “What’s the matter, topsider?” The man grinned. “Get lost on 
  your way to your rack?”
  “Just bringing down the daily maneuvering plan for the EOOW,” 
  said Paul handing the man a page that described how the Officer 
  of the Deck was planning to use the Chief Engineer’s main engines 
  for the coming day.
  The man frowned. (His namepatch said “Karlsson.”) “You’re not 
  the usual messenger.”
  “Yeah, well, I just love mainspaces,” said Paul dryly. “I’m thinking 
  of giving up interstellar navigation to become a snipe.” 
  Standing this close to the dome, he could feel the air itself vibrat-
  ing. Paul wanted to scream.
  Karlsson laughed and patted the dome’s steel surface. “Don’t 
  worry about my baby here. We’re perfectly safe.”
  Perfectly safe, Paul thought. Looks like it might explode. 
  And then it did explode.
  The sharp report knocked him off his feet and saved him from 
  the worst of the shrapnel. He staggered to his feet just as a high 
  keening filled the mainspace. Suddenly a violent wind was tear-
  ing at his clothes as air rushed into the vacuum that had filled the 
  reactor compartment.
  And then Paul saw the sun. It was a tiny ball of painfully bright 
  light.
  And then it came apart, too.
  A streamer of liquid fire the color of spun gold shot through the 
  jagged hole. The plasma hit the steel deck plating, instantly cooling 
  it below the temperature required to sustain a nuclear reaction.
  Unfortunately, it was still plenty hot enough to burn steel.
  Suddenly Paul was standing in hell.
  In seconds, acrid black smoke filled the engine room, cutting vis-
  ibility to zero and poisoning the air. Paul fell to his knees. Couldn’t 
  see, not even the unholy glow of inferno. Couldn’t breathe. Which 
  way is… Which way is out?
  Superheated air scalded his body, burned his lungs.
  
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  Then he felt the heavy hand of the snipe clamp down on his 
  shoulder.
  “Egress NOW,” Karlsson shouted above the rising voice of the 
  fire. The snipe dragged him to the ladder. Somehow Paul found 
  the strength to frantically climb.
  He pushed his way through the circular hatch. 
  Paul collapsed on the deck, sucking in the cold, clean air. The 
  snipe slammed the hatch down and then staggered over to the 
  nearest sound-powered phone. “Mainspace… fire in… Number… 
  Two ER,” he gasped, “Halon… activated.”
  The deep clang of the GQ alarm suddenly filled the p-way.
  “Holy Blake,” Paul whispered.
  “Don’t… worry,” Karlsson gasped. “We’re… perfectly safe.”
  Neither man noticed that the fire’s fierce heat had locked up the 
  hatch’s starboard hinge, preventing a perfect seal.
  
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  The Breaking of Chemical Bonds • Page 
  CSS Vision of Truth 
  Rendezvous Point 
  Terra 
  Word of Blake Protectorate 
  12 March 3068
  What finally convinced Johan that Paul was cracking up was the 
  tinkle of shattered glass.
  It was a rare sound on a WarShip. Plastic was generally the mate-
  rial of choice on the mess decks: beige plastic mugs, beige plastic 
  trays, beige plastic food. But tonight was special. 
  Tonight was the night before.
  That thought weighed heavily on Johan’s mind. Hell, it was on 
  everyone’s mind.
  Which was the reason for the special dinner. Somehow the 
  SuppO had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Tonight Vision’s crew was 
  dining by candlelight on steak and lobster, eating off real china 
  with actual silverware.
  And drinking sparkling apple cider out of actual fluted wine 
  glasses.
  It was one of these that had been dropped.
  Johan had looked up in time to see the whole thing. Paul had 
  been standing in line waiting for his shot at the steak when a mess 
  crank handed him one of the glasses. Paul didn’t get a good grip 
  on the glass’s slick bowl and 1.4 gees of acceleration yanked it 
  right out of his hand.
  He pressed his lips firmly together and bowed his head. When the 
  mess crank tried to give him another glass, he bit his head off.
  Johan felt a sudden chill.
  “What’s the matter, Johan?” asked Cyndi. “You look like you just 
  saw a ghost.” Cyndi was a pretty good sort for someone who had 
  opted for the soft life of topside duty.
  “Sure. His own.” Roger Wekesa let out a harsh laugh. Roger was 
  a comm tech and if he was being a little mean, Johan understood 
  it was just a way to deal with his own fear.
  
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  “Did you see Paul drop the glass?” Johan licked his lips. “He’s 
  losing it.”
  Roger rolled his eyes. “Nah, he’s just tweaked about tomorrow, 
  like everyone else.”
  Cyndi nodded. “Sure. He’s just got a case of the whites.”
  “Come on, Cyndi, you saw him during the drill. A man was hurt.” 
  Johan shook his head. “We have to watch out for him. I don’t think 
  he can hold it together.”
  She shook her head. “He made a mistake, is all. Shit, ChEng had 
  no business ordering a drill during a combat burn anyway.”
  “You’re wrong,” Johan snapped.
  “Take it easy, man,” said Roger.
  “You don’t get to pick when you have a fire,” said Johan tightly.
  “Is this about three years ago?” Roger asked. “Sure we weren’t 
  there, but--”
  “That’s right,” said Johan.
  “Look,” said Cyndi crisply, “I’m on the DCTT. I know how to fight 
  a fire.”
  Johan scowled. “But you’ve never fought a mainspace.”
  Cyndi’s lips pressed into a thin line
  “Fire,” said Johan. “Such a simple thing. The breaking of chemi-
  cal bonds. You can never understand the power. Not until you see 
  it.”
  “Look,” said Roger, “if you really think he’s dangerous go to the 
  ChEng. Have him pulled from the DC watchbill.”
  “I can’t do that,” said Johan tightly.
  Cyndi shook her head.
  “I saved his life,” he snapped. “I promised him he would be safe. 
  Twice.”
  “He was safe,” said Cyndi.
  “You don’t understand.” Johan picked up his own wine glass, 
  held it up to the flickering light. “Do you know how glass is tem-
  
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  pered? It’s heated to just below its melting temperature, then 
  rapidly cooled. Done right, it makes the glass stronger. But cool it 
  too fast and the glass cracks.”
  “You’re afraid if you pull him off the bill, it’ll break him,” said 
  Cyndi.
  “Can’t you just keep an eye on him?” said Johan.
  Cyndi sighed, looked at Roger. “Sure,” they both said.
  Across the mess decks, Paul knelt to pick up the jagged pieces of 
  his glass and cut himself, staining his hand with blood that looked 
  black in the dim light.
  
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  CSS Vision of Truth 
  En Route to Tukayyid from the Zenith Jump Point 
  Free Rasalhague Republic 
  19 April 3065
  A fit of coughing shook Paul as his body tried to expel the poison 
  he’d swallowed, great racking coughs that left his head dizzy and 
  his stomach sore. When he finally rolled over he saw a line of DC 
  folks moving through the passageway, dragging a hose along.
  The woman on the nozzle looked at him. “Fire is out,” she barked. 
  The muffled words sounded alien and strange through her mask. 
  He stared at her blankly. 
  “Fire is out,” she barked again. This time she sounded impatient.
  “Fire is out,” gasped Karlsson. “Set…reflash watch.”
  Paul blinked. He hadn’t known the woman was asking him a 
  question.
  She pulled a handle back on the nozzle, coating the hatch with a fine 
  mist of cool water, slowly drawing off the heat from the space below.
  A medic knelt down to look at Karlsson.
  “Hey,” someone said, “the hatch doesn’t look right.”
  Someone stepped forward to dog it down. “Something’s wrong 
  with the hinge,” he said, leaning over the mostly-closed hatch. “I 
  can’t get it sealed.”
  v v v
  Halon was an inert gas that settled to the deck, robbing the fire 
  of the oxygen it needed to breathe, smothering the monster in its 
  crib. But there was no quick way to dissipate the tremendous heat 
  that blanketed the engine room (not without opening the space to 
  vacuum anyway). And so, the residue of inferno set up a natural 
  circulation cell: pushing hot halon-rich air out of the engine room 
  through the imperfect seal of the hatch and pulling cool oxygen-
  rich air back in.
  Carrying oxygen back down to a steel deck that was still well 
  above ignition temperature. 
  
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  v v v
  The fire roared back to life with a massive explosion and just 
  like that the hatch and the man standing over it were gone. The 
  shock wave threw bodies against bulkheads, slammed them into 
  the deck. Suddenly, Paul heard nothing but the roar of combus-
  tion, saw nothing but billowing black smoke, tasted nothing but 
  the fine grit of soot.
  Hell had followed Paul Ridge out of Number Two Engine Room.
  Karlsson scrambled to his feet, grabbed one of the fallen hose 
  team members under the arms, and dragged her across the tile 
  deck. He threw a glance at Paul. “You. What’s your name?”
  “Paul Ridge.”
  “OK, Paul. I’m Johan Karlsson.
   “I’m a quarter—”
  “Don’t need your life story, Paul. Help me get these people clear.”
  “But—”
  “We’re all there is, Paul. Everyone standing was knocked flat. Now go.”
  Paul pushed himself up Too quickly, as it turned out because for 
  a second the world went gray, but somehow he kept his feet. He 
  knelt and grabbed a young adept under the armpits, started drag-
  ging him across the deck.
  The man was impossibly heavy and Paul could barely breathe, 
  but somehow he kept at it, coughing and hacking the whole time.
  Johan Karlsson ran by him to get the next person.
  “How far,” Paul shouted.
  “The nearest transverse bulkhead,” Johan shouted back.
  He finally managed to make it to the open hatch. Johan had 
  locked the big steel door open. Paul looked down at the steel 
  coaming rising three centimeters from the deck’s surface. No way 
  he’d be able to drag the lifeless adept over that.
  Paul crouched down, slid his arms beneath the adept, and took a 
  deep, shuddery breath. Then he jerked his body up, using his legs 
  to lift the man up and over the combing. 
  
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  He dropped the man gently to the deck on the other side of the 
  spacetight hatch. Paul went down on all fours, besides the prone 
  adept, chest heaving, face sheened with sweat.
  “Next time…rescue…smaller person,” he gasped.
  Somehow Paul managed to push himself up. His mouth tasted 
  like burnt charcoal, his muscles were weak, and his lungs were 
  two balls of fire in his chest. 
  Black smoke billowed out of the hatch, so thick that he couldn’t 
  see Johan, though the man couldn’t be more than five or six me-
  ters away.
  The fire was coming for him.
  All he had to do was shut the hatch, dog it down, and it would 
  be over. Paul had never wanted to do something so much in his 
  whole life.
  That man saved your life.
  Instead, he stepped across the combing.
  Paul didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing, 
  but he couldn’t seem to stop himself either.
  He duck-walked through the smoky space, trying to keep low 
  where he could still breathe. Still see. 
  A few meters in he saw a body. It was a young woman with 
  close-cropped blond hair, very pretty.
  Except for the jagged piece of hatch that had cut right through 
  her long, graceful neck. Her pale skin was stained red with blood.
  Paul dropped to his knees, reached out with a trembling hand. 
  Touched her neck.
  Pulse. Somehow she was still alive. Maybe the shrapnel had 
  stanched the bleeding.
  Paul reached down and grabbed her under the arms.
  And then he heard the cold voice of Johan Karlsson. “Leave 
  her.”
  Paul wheeled around and saw the engineer struggling to drag 
  out another member of the hose team, a hulking man. 
  
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  “She’s still alive.”
  Johan shook his head, a sad frown on his face. “You’ll never 
  make it,” he shouted over the fire’s roar. “If you try to save her the 
  smoke will take you both.”
  Paul knew he was right. His throat was scratchy and raw. He was 
  already weak from the lack of oxygen.
  He looked down at the pretty young woman. “But--”
  “Come help me with Adept Kim. He’s a big son of a bitch.”
  But she’s still alive.
  “When I go through that hatch I’m closing it behind me,” shouted 
  Johan, “whether you’re out or not.
  Paul closed his eyes.
  And set the woman down on the deck. He turned toward Johan 
  and together they carried the giant Adept Kim out.
  True to his word, when they made it out, Johan slammed the 
  hatch shut and dogged it down. 
  Paul fell to his hands and knees choking down cool, clean air, try-
  ing to soothe the fire burning in his chest. And suddenly he was 
  retching, pouring his insides out onto the deck.
  And through it all he heard Johan making his report to DC Central. 
  “Number Two ER Hatch failed. Reflash. Primary Hose Team down. 
  We’ve fallen back to Bulkhead Zeta.” And then: “Recommend 
  blowing engine room.”
  And the DCA must’ve agreed because twenty seconds later, 
  Paul heard the high-pitched screech of fleeing air, muffled by the 
  gasketed steel hatch they’d just come through, but there nonethe-
  less.
  “We killed her,” Paul whispered.
  “The fire killed her,” said Johan. “We saved these three.” He 
  jerked his head toward the two men and one woman lying on the 
  deck.
  “I killed her,” said Paul.
  Johan shook his head. “If you’d tried to drag her out, you’d be 
  dead, too.”
  
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  Paul looked up and met Johan’s gaze. “And if you’d helped 
  me?”
  “Then we would’ve lost the ship,” said Johan coldly.
  Paul said nothing.
  Johan jabbed a finger back at the steel hatch. “That was a main-
  space conflagration, my friend. Mainspaces kill ships. We did what 
  we had to do to save Vision.” He paused and Paul heard the note 
  of regret in his voice. “Sometimes fire forces you to make those 
  kind of choices.”
  
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  CSS Vision of Truth 
  Engaging the Word of Blake Fleet above Terra 
  Word of Blake Protectorate 
  13 March 3068
  The Damage Control party waited in silence on the mess decks 
  for the time they would be sent into a burning space to die. They 
  knew nothing about the battle except what they could discern 
  from the changing accelerations of the ship that bore them to-
  ward Terra. Space battles were silent affairs. The silent rattle of 
  an enemy’s autocannons, the silent streak of a missile’s exhaust 
  plume, the invisible path of a laser.
  Until vacuum gave way to matter and the world exploded with 
  light and sound.
  That would be the time these people would be needed. 
  They sprawled in the hard plastic swivel chairs bolted to the deck, 
  already in fire dress, OBAs strapped to their chests. Different peo-
  ple handled the stress in different ways: there were the jokers, the 
  preachers, the chatterboxes, even (and this seemed incredible to 
  Roger Wekesa) those who’d made peace with whatever fate in-
  tended for them.
  Wekesa saw that Paul Ridge was none of these. Paul sat by 
  himself, head down, eyes screwed shut, his face drained of color, 
  sweat glistening on his forehead. Wekesa knew terror when he 
  saw it.
  Despite his promise to Johan, the communications adept tried 
  to think of an excuse to push Paul off the DC party. WarShips were 
  manned with enough crew to staff four underway watches. Since 
  not all those people were required to stand watch during GQ, the 
  remainder were sent down to the mess decks to serve as a kind of 
  ready reaction force, prepped to combat any casualty that might 
  arise. Paul wasn’t the GQ quartermaster of the watch so he was 
  down here with the DC party.
  Whether or not he belonged.
  But Wekesa didn’t see any way to get him off the team. The navi-
  gator wouldn’t move Paul topside just because he couldn’t take 
  the pressure of the DC party, nor would the nav relieve Paul of 
  duty altogether. In time of war, fear was not a disqualifier.
  
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  It was up to Wekesa to deal with the problem.
  The comm tech sighed and walked over to Paul. The other man 
  didn’t look up. After a second Wekesa sat down. “How’s it go-
  ing?”
  “Great,” said Paul dryly.
  “Look,” said Wekesa, “I’m sure when the time comes you’ll do 
  fine.”
  “You’re lying,” said Paul without looking up.
  “I’m not lying,” said Wekesa who wondered how Paul figured out 
  he was lying. “I’ve read your service record. You were decorated 
  for your actions during the ‘65 fire. You’re a hero.”
  Paul shook his head. “I’m no hero. The hero was Johan 
  Karlsson.”
  “Johan reported that you went back into the space to rescue an-
  other sailor.”
  Paul finally looked up at him. “You’re wrong, Roger. You weren’t 
  there. You don’t understand.” 
  The same thing Johan said. “OK, I wasn’t there. But Johan was. 
  And he believes in you.”
  Paul shook his head. “He doesn’t understand either.”
  Wekesa raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying Johan Karlsson 
  doesn’t understand about the fire. I find that damn hard to be-
  lieve.”
  Paul looked away. “I know,” he whispered so quietly Wekesa 
  wasn’t really sure he’d heard him.
  Wekesa sat like that for a moment, waiting for Paul to work 
  through the chain of logic himself, but apparently the man didn’t 
  have anything else to say. He clapped Paul on the back. “We need 
  you, Paul. I need your best.”
  “All right,” said Paul. “I will try my best.”
  Wekesa let a papery-thin sigh slip out. He supposed that was the 
  most he was going to get out of Paul Ridge. He squeezed Paul’s 
  shoulder and stood up. Wekesa made a round of the mess decks 
  talking to the DC crew, checking equipment, making sure all was 
  
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  ready. And when he looked back over at Paul Ridge he was star-
  tled to see the man was gone.
  v v v
  Johan finished tightening a valve with a meter-long spanner 
  wrench and looked up. He was shocked to see Paul Ridge standing 
  there. “Paul? What’s going on? We didn’t call for a DC team.”
  “I know. But I have a duty to be here.”
  Paul looked pale. Drawn. Not well at all. 
  “Look,” said Johan, “I know you feel you left something unre-
  solved during the fire.”
  Paul nodded. “Yes.”
  “But you can’t be here now. You need to go back to the mess 
  decks. Paul, by being here, you’ve abandoned your post.”
  “No.” Paul shook his head. 
  “I know you’re afraid of fire,” said Johan gently.
  “No,” said Paul. “Not in the way you think. I--” He stopped, bowed 
  his head. His voice dropped. “I am afraid of not doing my duty.”
  “Listen—” said Johan.
  “No,” said Paul. “You listen. I want you to understand. Johan you 
  are so brave. I—I’ve come to admire you, but I must do my duty. 
  Like I failed to do three years ago.”
  Johan scowled. “How many times do I have to tell you? She 
  would’ve died anyway.”
  “I’m not talking about leaving the girl,” Paul shouted. “I’m talking 
  about leaving the engine room. Helping you. You saved my life 
  and I, I got caught up in that.”
  Johan slowly shook his head, unable to follow his friend’s argu-
  ment.
  “Don’t you see, Johan? Fire draws its power from the breaking 
  of chemical bonds. Oxygen is torn asunder and melded into an 
  entirely different molecule. That is what makes fire so useful…and 
  so dangerous.”
  
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  Johan listened to the words, but he had no idea what Paul was 
  saying. “Paul.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t think you’re well.” 
  He turned and stepped toward a sound-powered phone on the 
  bulkhead.
  “What are you doing?” Paul asked.
  “Something I should have done before. I’m going to get you some help.”
  “I’m sorry,” said Paul. “You were a good man, Johan.”
  What? Johan thought. He almost turned to ask Paul what he was 
  talking about, but before he could complete that simple action 
  there was a moment of incandescent pain followed by endless 
  darkness.
  v v v
  Paul Ridge let the spanner drop from his hand and fall with a 
  clang to the deck plating. A bright red smear of blood stained 
  the spanner’s silver surface, matching the newly-minted crack in 
  Johan’s skull.
  “You once told me fire forces you to make hard choices,” he whis-
  pered. “And so it does, Johan. I respected you. Hell, I admired you. 
  But ComStar broke its sacred bond and that action has a conse-
  quence. That action was inflammatory.” 
  As he had done three years before Paul Ridge fingered a de-
  vice in his left pocket, a device that would ignite a small explosive 
  charge placed on the dome’s surface, a device that would disrupt 
  the reactor’s magnetic bottle.
  He’d spot welded the hinges on the engine room hatch and on 
  the hatch beyond that. Any competent snipe could cut through 
  his welds in minutes, but there wouldn’t be minutes. Flame and 
  smoke would pour through the ship like wine from an upended 
  bottle.
  He looked at Johan’s prone body. This time there would be no 
  heroes to save the day.
  Paul Ridge sat on the deck and gently placed his hand on his 
  friend’s back. “Blake’s will be done,” he whispered. 
  Then he pressed the button.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/BattleTech [multi]/EXTRA/Novels/Battlecorps Novels/Case White - Pt 02 - Breaking of Chemical Bonds - Steven Mohan Jr.pdf