“Spicy flatbread,” Jacques pronounced. “It will be like old times.” His face fell. “Or maybe not. Not without Josune and Snow.”
The ship rocked. Five alarms went off. Even Roystan, unconscious in the Songyan, twitched at that. So much that she thought he might drag himself into consciousness. The Songyan prevailed, and Roystan’s body dropped back into a more relaxed state.
Carlos’s voice rose. “Nika. Jacques. Somebody. Get here. We’ve been hit.”
“I thought you said nobody used weapons in the Funnel. That it was too dangerous.”
“It is, and they’re not. Someone’s firing toward the Funnel, and the plasma is being sucked up. We’re caught in the flux. We’ll get dragged in.” His voice rose even more. “We are all going to die.”
He started praying again. Extra loud and extra fast.
Jacques left at a run.
They needed Roystan.
Nika checked his vitals. Not finished, but stable enough.
“I am not planning on making this a habit,” she told the unconscious figure. But there was no way she, Carlos, and Jacques could manage the attack on their own. She was glad Snow wasn’t here to witness. Although if Snow were here, he’d be helping Carlos and she wouldn’t need to do what she was about to do.
Roystan had, at least, stabilized, so his body wasn’t producing more chemicals than it could use. He wouldn’t get any worse, and he’d live.
Everything else would have to wait. Again. What repairs could she put off for another day?
“I am so tired of this,” but there was no one to hear. She set the machine for finish. She hated leaving jobs half-done.
The ship rocked again.
“Nika,” Carlos wailed. “I need you. I need someone on the cannon. And Snow’s not here.”
“I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
All the lights on the Songyan went green at the same time.
Nika checked Roystan’s DNA. As tight as it had been when she’d first cured him. Would it stay that way?
The lights stayed green. She set the wake-up process.
The cover of the Songyan rose, and she turned to help Roystan out of the machine. Normally she gave him a robe so he could shower.
Today she gave him a shirt and pants.
“That bad?” Roystan said as he pulled on the pants. “I dreamed we were being attacked. I don’t usually dream.”
The ship rocked again.
Roystan paused. “We’re in the Funnel?”
“Yes. Getting the effects of an attack from outside, and Carlos says plasma is being sucked in.
“Also according to Carlos, we’re all going to die.” She said this last to his back. Roystan was already out the door, running. “I want you to know,” as she followed, “that I normally finish my mods.”
If Roystan had heard her, he gave no sign of it as he slid into the pilot seat Carlos vacated for him. “What’s the status?”
“There is a god,” Carlos said. “Everything is shit and I don’t know what to do.”
Roystan looked around. “Where’s Josune? And Snow?”
“Still on the Boost,” Nika said. “Waiting for us to save them.”
Knowing Josune, she was probably saving herself.
“We followed the Boost down the Funnel,” Carlos said. “There’s another ship. I think it’s firing on the Boost, and we’re caught in the plasma flow. We’ve damage to four external sensors, and we’ve lost all the starboard cameras. I can’t see anything. That section is a blind spot.”
Roystan nodded. He opened every screen in the crew room and tuned it to view the outside space. One set of screens was black. Nika presumed that was the starboard side. Although, she wasn’t sure the port screens were any better, for they showed a small area of black just outside the ship, and the rest was predominantly gray. She’d never seen space like that before.
“Jacques is on the laser cannon, for all the good that will do us.”
Roystan wasn’t listening. He stared at the view outside.
“I know this place,” he whispered at last. “We’re near the Vortex.”
“We are,” Nika confirmed. He’d recognized earlier that they were in the Funnel. Didn’t that automatically mean they were close to the Vortex? He hadn’t necessarily associated the two before. That initial recognition must have been subconscious.
“Why do I remember the Vortex? We’ve never been here before?” He turned to Carlos, energized. “We’re still in the Funnel.”
Carlos looked at him as if wondering if Roystan was okay. “We are.”
Roystan’s words had been a statement of fact, not a question. Reconfirming to himself something that he already knew.
Something he remembered, but he hadn’t remembered before.
The screens that showed the portside flared bright again. “Cannon ready,” Jacques said. “Do I fire back?”
“Don’t fire in the Funnel,” Roystan said. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll just have to sit out the damage. Stay on the cannon, though, Jacques, for we’ll come right out into a firefight.”
The ship rocked again. More heavily this time.
“Starboard again,” Carlos said, for they didn’t register any damage. “That means the fight will be on our blind side when we exit.”
“Not necessarily,” Roystan said. “The plasma swirls. You can’t tell where it originates.” He checked the ship stats. “You came in nice and slow, Carlos. Well done. Most people come in too fast.”
“If it hadn’t been for Josune and Snow, I wouldn’t have gone in at all,” Carlos said. “Now you’re here, I’ll see if I can repair those cameras.”
“Don’t go outside the ship.”
“Believe me, I am not going out there, not even if the last camera goes out.”
“What about you, Jacques?” Roystan asked once Carlos had gone. “How are you doing?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m back in the kitchen, cooking that flatbread Nika ordered for you.”
Roystan laughed. He touched the panels again. Lightly, with a deftness that said he knew what he was doing. Even Nika relaxed.
She wanted to sleep.
She stood up, went into the kitchen, to the area they’d designated the coffee area, which was the only place Jacques allowed them to go. She turned on the coffee machine.
Carlos came back as the coffee finished brewing. He looked pleased with himself. “Josune builds redundancy into everything.” He did something on one of the control boards. The starboard cameras changed—three of the screens that had hitherto been black went the same gray as the portside screens, with the patch of black close to the ship. Now they really looked as if they were in a funnel. “There’s nothing I can do for that last camera. I need to replace it on the outside.”
“We’ll be out soon,” Roystan said. “Ah,” and suddenly the image on-screen changed so the port cameras showed all black, and the starboard ones retained most of the gray, but it was farther away.
Roystan tapped that gray. “That’s the Vortex.” He tweaked the controls, zooming in to a specific spot on-screen in front of them. “Two ships.”
One of them recognizably the Boost.
“The Boost and a Lotus fighter. That’s a company warship. What is it doing in this part of space? Maybe they’ve found—” Roystan hesitated. “That would explain why they are firing on the Boost. I assume the Boost didn’t fire first?”
Carlos shrugged. “I don’t know. I was too busy trying to keep us alive.”
“Understandable. All right. They don’t appear to have noticed us. Let’s keep it that way. Jacques, you haven’t fired that cannon yet?”
“No,” Jacques said promptly. “And I don’t plan to now either.”
Did Jacques even know how to fire the cannon? Nika felt better, now Roystan was in the pilot seat. All
they needed now was Josune and Snow, and they’d be fine.
After they escaped from the Boost, of course, but even that didn’t seem so hard right now.
The light that signified the Boost split into two. Roystan leaned forward, magnified the image. “Escape pod exiting from the Boost. No. A lifeboat.”
Nika didn’t know how a lifeboat differed from an escape pod, but obviously it did.
Carlos shouted, loud and unexpected into Nika’s ear. “The marker. It’s moving. That’s Josune.”
“There’s still a marker on the ship,” Nika said.
“Three markers she took. One was destroyed an hour after she arrived on ship. One she ate. There were always two. I bet that’s Josune in that first lifeboat.”
“Josune knows how to escape,” Jacques said.
That had all of them smiling.
“Of course she does.” Roystan’s voice was soft.
“Don’t get soppy on us now, Roystan. We have to pick up the pod. And make sure we’re not killed in the process.”
“I’ll save the soppy until she and Snow are safely on board. Will that do?”
“The sooner you pick them up, the sooner I can get back into the kitchen and things can get back to normal.”
Even so, it was a relief when Josune finally contacted them. “This is the lifeboat from the Boost, calling Another Road. Requesting pickup.”
“Josune.” Carlos and Jacques capered around the crew room. Nika might have, too, but she could only see Josune on the screen.
“How many of you?” Roystan asked over the noise.
“Roystan.” Josune’s own voice was a controlled shout. It was all she said, but there was a whole world of messages in it. Her voice turned professional, although she couldn’t stop smiling. “Four. Myself, Snow, Gramps, and Laughton.”
“Alistair Laughton,” Nika said. “Did you have to bring him?”
“It’s a long story.”
Roystan couldn’t stop smiling either. “Which we’ll have time to hear, I’m sure. We’ll have to use the grapple.”
“It’s a pity Jacques is a better cook than he is a cargo master. We’ll be ready.”
“Chef, please,” Jacques said.
Roystan looked at Nika. “Can you help Jacques? I need to be on controls.”
She nodded.
“Pulling you in soon, Josune.”
“We’ll be ready,” she said again.
Roystan clicked the link off. “Take a blaster, Nika. I’m not expecting trouble, but you never know.”
Nika was. Alistair Laughton. Why did he have to keep turning up? She took a blaster, the dart gun, and the same bottle of antiseptic Josune had carried earlier. Sometimes the simplest solutions were the best. An unexpected spray in the face often gave you the seconds you required.
Jacques took her down to the cargo bay.
“Not the shuttle bay?” Nika asked.
“We need the grapple to collect them.” Jacques swung himself into place. “If Roystan can bring us close enough alongside.”
Carlos came partway with them. He was doing a more thorough check on the starboard side, while they had the time.
It wasn’t long before Roystan’s voice came through the speaker. “Coming alongside lifeboat now. You might feel a bump.”
They didn’t feel anything.
“Roystan does line them up nicely,” Jacques said as he, in turn, lined up the grapple. “He makes it easy.”
“I heard that, Jacques. I’m going to play that back to you every time you remind me of the time I landed twenty-five degrees off at Atalante.”
“You be nice to me,” Jacques said. “Or you won’t get any of that spicy flatbread that’s coming out of the oven in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be nice.”
“We can hear your stomach rumble from here,” Nika said, although it was more likely hers.
“Can you? Really?”
Nika didn’t answer.
“Lifeboat caught,” Jacques said. “Bringing it in now.” He eased the controller dial counterclockwise five degrees. Half the lights went green. The red lights showed there was no air.
Roystan pushed the cameras up to the screen nearest Nika and Jacques. “I’ll keep the door locked as they come out. Be ready.”
Nika watched as the oxygen light switched to green.
“Cleared to exit,” Roystan told the occupants of the lifeboat.
The first one out was Josune. She made for the nearest link, not the door. “It’s us,” she said. “Snow and me, along with Snow’s Gramps, and Laughton.”
That was Josune, direct and honest, and covering immediately what they were worried about.
Snow stumbled out after her, looked around the cargo hold as if he wasn’t sure where he was. He turned to the older man who exited next, the man Nika had met in the hospital on the Boost, said something quiet.
Gramps patted his shoulder. Snow smiled and looked around again, his smile getting wider. He was happy to be home.
The last person out looked larger standing than he had on a stretcher. He looked around, then looked directly to where Nika and Jacques waited outside. Alistair Laughton. Was it coincidence that he looked their way, or could he see them?
The ship rocked as Jacques opened the door for them. This felt like a real hit, albeit not a hard one.
Roystan’s voice came out of every speaker. “Need someone on the cannons. For when one of those ships turns on us.”
“On it,” and Snow took off running.
Josune looked to Nika and Jacques. Nika laughed.
“Go, Josune. We’ve got this.” She turned to her companions as Josune gave a hasty thanks and took off running.
“Why is my boy answering the cannon call?” Gramps asked. “He’s a body modder.”
“It’s a small ship. We multitask.”
“Nika calibrates,” Jacques said. “I am the cargo master.” Which wouldn’t have meant anything to these two, but Nika knew what he was saying.
“Speaking of which, Jacques. What I said about food earlier is still valid. Roystan will be hungry. And you said that flatbread was in the oven.”
“On it,” Jacques said, and he, too, quickened his pace and left them.
Nika gestured for the other two to go in front of her, and they followed at a more leisurely pace. She trusted Gramps. Although he was armed, she thought he would put Snow first. But Laughton—she didn’t know about him and wanted to watch him.
Laughton looked around the crew room as if he was memorizing it, stopped when he saw the kitchen where Jacques was pulling the spicy flatbread out of the oven.
“You put your galley next to the bridge?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Nika asked. Let him think it was the bridge.
“No. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done before.”
“This is not a galley.” Jacques struck a dramatic pose. “This is a kitchen.”
“Full commercial range, by the looks,” Alistair said.
“You know cooking?”
He’d made a friend for life.
Laughton shook his head. “I remember a case, a few years back, where someone was murdered in a kitchen like this. It was a restaurant.”
“Which restaurant?”
Laughton hesitated, shrugged. “A place called the Highest Kite.”
“Mia Gonzales’s restaurant? She has a Mengar Range? Are you sure? She prefers the Live 8900 series. Did it have a yellow trim or stainless steel?”
Laughton shrugged again.
“Jacques,” Carlos said through the link, “do you know how much you sound like Nika when you say that?” He did something that ended on a clang, said cheerfully, “Starboard side as secure as she can be. I’m coming back.”
“A bit more to the left,�
� Roystan said to Josune.
Josune adjusted a setting. “Ready, Snow?”
“I am not talking about silly machines,” Jacques said. “I am talking about life-support systems.” He patted the stove reassuringly. “Machinery that does good in the world.”
Roystan fired one of the jets. Jacques, halfway to the table with a plate of flatbread, watched the flatbread go one way as he went the other. Josune caught the pieces before the forces could separate them.
“Nice catch,” Nika said.
Carlos, somewhere on his way back, yelped. “Warn us next time.”
“Sorry,” Roystan said. “But better than being hit. You should all strap in.”
Josune handed him a piece of flatbread and dumped the rest back onto the plate. Laughton looked at the plate as if he didn’t want to eat any of it.
“If you’re worried about germs,” Josune said, “Nika can put you into one of the genemod machines afterward. She’ll clean anything bad out of your gut.”
Laughton looked around at them as if he thought they were all crazy. Which they probably were, but right now they were together. They just had to stay safe.
Nika took flatbread for herself, and some for Snow. “This is for Snow,” she told Gramps, who nodded and took his own piece as he got up to follow her.
“He’s been tortured,” he told Nika as they walked down the passage. “He’ll drop soon, even if he doesn’t realize it.”
“Snow?”
“No, the big guy.”
“Some people can go longer than you think.” She’d seen both Josune and Roystan do it.
“Not after a session or two with Norris’s bullies.”
Nika shivered. “I don’t know how you and Snow put up with it.”
“He couldn’t really touch us. He needed us.”
Gramps had found ways around Norris’s demands, based on how he’d still managed to get Snow into the genemod machine before he’d gotten Alistair in.
“Snow must have contacted you in the time he was at Landers. Why didn’t you join him?”
Snow had once told her they’d arranged a code and a place to meet. Gramps had never turned up.
Stars Beyond Page 29
