“What’s down that way?” Nic asked.
“It’s only some equipment rooms for the larger pieces and some storage for supplies. Nothing of any use for us.” I knew scientists only kept their data in their own labs. They wouldn’t leave data pins lying around in an equipment room.
Nic coughed and then said, “We should go.” Her voice was raspy.
Before I could answer her, the air in front of me vibrated a little, as if I was looking through a heat shimmer in the desert. Since it had gotten even colder, I knew it couldn’t be that. I looked again. The shimmer disappeared, but the metallic smell grew stronger.
“Something isn’t right,” Nic said. “We should get off the station.”
I had to know what was making that noise. “I want to check that sound out. It will only take a minute. You can start heading back to the airlock.”
She sighed. “No, I’ll come with you. Let’s do this fast.”
We moved down the corridor. It was dim because only about half the emergency lights were on. Nic went around a bend and stopped so suddenly, I bumped into her. I looked around her to see the door at the end of the passage opening partway and then closing, then reopening.
“There’s something floating up by the ceiling,” she said. “Something big.”
I could see a dark shape in the door opening. “It’s blocking the door from closing all the way. I think … I think it’s a person.” My stomach did a strange little twist.
The door opened partway and then closed. The closing set in motion some object tethered to the body. The object moved up and clunked against the ceiling, then moved back down when the door opened.
“It must be a crew member or a Fosaanian who died when the station blew up,” Nic said. She pushed herself back a bit.
“It couldn’t be. We did a scan. Everyone got off before the explosion. I want to check it out.” I maneuvered myself in front of her.
As I tried to pull myself forward, Nic grabbed my ankle. “We should go. I really, really don’t need to look at a body, especially not one that’s been floating for a long time.” Her lips were trembling. I’d never seen a crack in Nic before.
“You don’t have to look,” I told her. “I’ll go.” There were a lot of things that scared me, but not this. I had to know who it was. “It can’t have been here for long. And there’s something weird about it being here at all. CF people have been aboard unloading equipment. Why would they leave a body here?”
“They wouldn’t. That’s not protocol. They would have jettisoned it into space.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to float around here talking about it. If you want to look, I’ll go with you. Let’s just do it so we can get out of here.”
We moved closer. One of the lights flickered again and then went out. When we were about a meter away, I saw some tiny objects, little dark spheres, floating in front of me. I reached out, unable to tell what they were. Nic grabbed my arm. “Quinn, don’t. Those are blood droplets. Look up.”
A cloud of blood made up of hundreds of drops floated near the ceiling. I tried to swallow again, but couldn’t. An odd taste filled my mouth, and I was afraid I was going to heave. Closing my eyes, I took a few breaths. The cold air actually made me feel a little better.
I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at the body. It was a man in a plain gray coverall, hovering facedown. The coverall wasn’t the standard one space station workers wore. I hoped that meant I didn’t know him. I didn’t recognize the tool that was bumping up against the ceiling.
We stopped a meter away from him. I expected the exposed skin on the dead man’s neck and hands to have some abnormal coloration, though I didn’t know exactly what that would look like in the chill of the station.
“Will you respond?” Divana’s voice blasted through the voice link. Nic and I both started, bumping into each other. I’d forgotten they were listening in. Nic’s hand bumped against the man’s foot, making him shift around.
“What do you want?” Nic said into her comm.
“We’ve been yelling at you for the past few minutes, and you didn’t answer.”
“Well, we didn’t hear you,” Nic replied. “Something must be wrong with this equipment. We’re busy here.”
“We can see that. Random body in space station was not on the agenda. I want you to get an image of him and then get out of there,” Divana said.
“Why do you need an image?” Nic asked. “I don’t really want to touch him.”
“Information. Never turn down a chance to collect information that might be useful later.”
I gave a push to turn him over. My hand jerked back. He was still warm. “He hasn’t been dead long.”
His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Ugly, narrow green eyes the color of slime. I jerked back, bumping into Nic. It was one of Ronti’s men. What had Ronti called him? Braster? No, that wasn’t it.
Graster.
Chapter Fourteen
I glanced over at Nic but decided not to say anything. It would take too long to explain, and I wanted to talk to the others first.
“See if he has any identification on him,” Divana said.
Nic went through his pockets and then checked behind his ears for any ID inserts. “Nothing,” she said.
“I suspect whoever took off in that unmarked ship had something to do with this,” Divana said. “It doesn’t matter to us. Time for you to come back. I want to get out of here.”
“What do we do with him?” I asked.
“Leave him. He’s not our problem.”
That was fine with me. We didn’t need another problem.
We pulled ourselves back down the corridor. I glanced back over my shoulder. I heard a faint rumble, and then the lights went out.
“Great, now what?” Nic said, picking up her pace.
“We have a situation.” Divana’s voice was tight. “I’d suggest you get back here as fast as you can. There has been a small explosion on level one. Tineg has informed me that the orbit of the station has shifted.”
A warning siren sounded, but no voice came over the loud speaker.
“What does that mean?” Nic yelled.
“I don’t know.”
“I hope you know the fastest way out of here.”
“I do. Follow me.” We pulled ourselves along as quickly as we could. My heart was racing faster than we were moving. You can only go so fast without gravity and no external means of propulsion.
Just as we got to the airlock, another rumble shook our level, but there was no way to tell where it had originated.
Nic went through first. When I came through, I tripped over the edge of the hatch trying to get back into the ship and fell to my knees. “Explosion on the other side of level one,” Wren said. “Looks like someone set some charges. I assume that wasn’t the last one. They’ll need a few more to bring the whole thing apart.”
I felt Nic tugging at my arm. “Move away from the hatch,” she said. I moved as it slid shut.
“Tineg, release us from the docking bay,” Divana ordered.
I got up and pulled off the vac suit, turning so no one could see me transferring the data pins to my tunic pocket. Nic left the cockpit holding the musical instrument like she didn’t want anyone to notice. I realized Decker and Javen were not present either, but before I could ask where they had gone, I heard Divana again. “Tineg, follow my order,” she barked.
I looked over. Tineg’s arm was raised in midair. The arm of the hologram didn’t actually need to move for the MI to execute the command, but it did need to send an energy signal to the mark on the console. That didn’t happen.
Divana rushed over to Tineg’s slip and gave it some commands. There was no reaction.
“I told Creak not to mess around with the nav system or Tineg,” Pixie said.
“Tineg! Respond!” Divana reached out a hand to the MI, though I didn’t know how that was going to help. It wasn’t like you could shake a hologram. The
MI didn’t do anything, though the hologram was becoming less solid.
“If she’s shut down, how is she still maintaining the hologram?” Wren asked.
“Not all the way shut down, just locked up,” Lainie said.
“Can you do anything?” I asked Lainie.
“No, I don’t know enough about them to fix this sort of problem.”
“Take over manual control,” Divana snapped at Pixie.
“I’ve been trying to do that. I can’t get Tineg to disengage.”
The ship shifted. My stomach shifted with it. I had felt that motion before, when the Everest was going down.
There was only one solution. “Lainie,” I said, but hadn’t needed to speak. She was already headed out the door.
Divana and Pixie were trying everything, shouting suggestions at each other. None of them worked. The ship shifted even more on its side. We all grabbed hold of whatever we could reach.
The cook’s voice sounded over the intercom, but he was swearing and shouting so much I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. The tipping of the ship was obviously causing chaos in the mess area.
Lainie came back in carrying the Samson sphere under one arm. As she tried to make her way to us, the ship rolled. Pixie lost her balance, but Divana grabbed her with one hand, her other holding onto the armrest of a seat. Pixie’s necklaces flew up around her face, and a couple of strands fell off, clattering against the control panel.
As I slid down the floor toward the port side, I saw Lainie lose her hold of the sphere. It fell, but before it hit the wall, which was now the floor, the sphere made a slight whirring noise and stopped in midair.
“You’ve had an MI all along!” Divana screamed at us as she helped Pixie find a place to stand.
“Samson, activate,” Lainie said.
The hologram appeared around the sphere, and Samson righted himself, looking around with an interested expression on his face. “Hello,” he said.
“The MI controlling the ship is malfunctioning,” Lainie said to the bot. “Get into the control system of the ship and take over, then disengage the ship from the docking port.”
“All right.” Samson made walking motions, though he was actually just moving through the air up to the ceiling.
He maneuvered himself so he was sitting in a seat next to Tineg’s still form, which meant he appeared to be hanging upside down. Within seconds the ship was moving away from the docking bay. “Shall I turn the ship to its proper orientation?” Samson asked.
“Yes,” Lainie said. “No, wait! You’re going to have to do it very slowly so we all don’t crash to the floor.”
“I need to announce it first over the comm so everyone can prepare themselves,” Divana said.
“If they aren’t knocked senseless,” Pixie muttered, rubbing her head. “I’m getting too old for this.”
Samson turned the ship so slowly, it was only a matter of finding handholds as we moved into the right position.
We all collapsed into the nearest seats. More cursing over the comm from the cook. Divana spoke into it. “Manny, Ryger, go help clean up the galley. The rest can wait because I am going to want to eat eventually.” She shut the comm down and then moved over to the still frozen Tineg.
Decker, Javen, and Nic came back in. “Are they secure?” Divana asked Decker.
“Yes, we got everything fixed just in time. You know we could have been crushed?”
“Since you’re here and not crushed, what’s the issue?” Divana said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We went to help Manny and Ryger secure the air scrubbers,” Javen replied. “They weren’t fastened down correctly, and they’d been shifting around.”
“Let’s move on from the air scrubbers. We’ve got an existing problem with this.” She pointed at Tineg. “Any ideas?”
“No, but Tineg is aware of the malfunction and is currently sorting through information trying to repair the problem,” Samson said.
“We need someone to take over that slip,” Divana said. “Any of you kids have any useful skills?” she asked us.
“Samson or I can do it,” Lainie said, “but I can’t sit on Tineg. I don’t understand how the MI stayed in place when the ship tipped.”
“It’s operating on some level even if we can’t see it working. I’ll move it.” I knew the solid form of the MI was inside the hologram even though I couldn’t see it, but it still felt odd to reach through the projection to pick it up. As soon as I touched the sphere, the hologram disappeared, leaving just the sphere behind.
Divana was staring at Samson. “So you’ve been keeping this MI from me all along.” She burst out laughing, a deep laugh that made her bend over and hold her sides. Was she suffering from oxygen deprivation? I’d expected a blowup of rage. Instead, she slapped her leg and straightened up. “I didn’t quite buy the hero-to-the-rescue bit. You want to know how to fix your own MI.” She moved closer to Samson. He looked over at her and smiled. “I assume this one has flaws like the rest of them.”
“Yes, I have a number of flaws,” Samson replied. He held out his leg with the missing foot. “This one is the most annoying to me.”
“Why did you keep him hidden?” Wren asked.
“We thought Divana would take it for her own use,” I admitted.
Divana laughed again. “You’re smarter than I thought. So, I take it you didn’t recover any useful information on the station?”
I shook my head.
“Then if your MI can’t fix mine, you’ll give me yours in payment for nearly making me lose another ship.”
Lainie began to say something but then cut herself off. I saw her mouth tighten, and I knew she wasn’t going to give up Samson so easily. Knowing Lainie, her brain was already sorting through dozens of ways to outwit Divana. I had a feeling that even if Samson managed to repair the other MI, Divana would try to take him anyway.
I slumped in my seat. Not only had we failed to find Mira, we weren’t going to be able to keep the MI safe until we could get it to my mother. The whole trip was a disaster.
“Now, where do we go next to look for Ansun?” Divana said.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.
“You’re going to help us keep looking for him?” Lainie asked.
“He could be on any one of a thousand planets,” I said. My eye was throbbing again. All I wanted to do was go back to our quarters and find a hammock.
Divana smirked. “You’re giving up? I’m not. There is a nice reward for him: three hundred thousand earcurs.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Pixie said. “We could use that. This ship needs more work than we can do on our own.”
“Don’t give up yet, Quinn,” Lainie said. “Samson, do you know where Ansun might be?”
“No.”
“Okay, dead end there,” I said. I didn’t want to drag out this discussion when it would end in us giving up anyway.
“Wait, I’m not done yet. Samson, do you know how many other MI bots Ansun has?” Lainie asked.
“He has two, now that he no longer possesses me.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know their current location.”
“Let’s try a different way.” Lainie sat down next to Samson. She had that look on her face that meant she had a method worked out to get the information she wanted. Lainie had a real knack for communicating with bots. “At some point in time did you know where they were?” she asked.
“One was on Reyet with me. I do not know where the other one was located. I did not communicate with it. That was the job of Becamor.” Samson’s face took on a disapproving look. “A most unpleasant MI, if I must say. I did not like him, and he did not like me.”
I didn’t want to listen to a description of a robot personality clash right then. I did feel a tinge of interest though. Maybe things weren’t so disastrous after all. “Can you communicate with them now
and access their locations?” I asked.
“I can communicate with them, but I can’t access their locations without requesting it.”
“We’ll tip off Ansun we are using an MI to look for him if Samson does that,” Nic said.
“There might be another way,” Lainie said. “At one of Ansun’s mandatory rallies, we had seen projections of the destruction Ansun said he caused on Earth. Samson, did you send those signals?”
“No, that was not my work. The MI who was not on Reyet did that.”
“We know Ansun has control of the military Rinth communication network,” I said. “With that, he can access any communication to any part of the military. Can you get into it, too, and access a record of where the MI was when it initiated the signals that caused the destruction? And can you do it without one of his MIs realizing it?”
“I could do it, but I could not guarantee that my access wouldn’t be noted.”
“Does it really matter that Ansun knows we are looking for him?” Lainie said. “He’s got a lot of other things to worry about, and he doesn’t take us all that seriously anyway.”
“That’s true,” Divana said. “I don’t take you seriously either.”
Lainie got up and wandered around the cockpit, her fingers twitching. “Samson, what happens when you communicate with another MI? Does it signal it has received the information?”
“Yes, it ‘pings,’ as it is called, though it is not an audible sound.”
“Do you know how long it takes for the information to reach the MI? Isn’t that part of the data transmission record? A time stamp of when it was received?”
“Yes, of course.”
I didn’t see where Lainie was going with this train of thought.
She came back to Samson’s slip. “So if you ping an MI and you know how long it takes and the speed at which the transmission travels, we could draw a circle with us at the center of all the planets that particular distance away. Maybe we can narrow it down that way. If a planet intersects with the circle, it’s possible that’s where the MI was located.”
“Can you do that?” I asked Samson. I felt more energized all of a sudden. Maybe we weren’t at a dead end after all.
Paradox Hunt Page 15
