by Ramy Vance
She let out a relieved breath. Zero-G was fun but not intuitive and forced her to pull herself everywhere by hand. The mag soles might be clunky, but on the standard setting, they’d allow her to walk normally along most metal surfaces. On the high setting, they were powerful enough to prevent someone from being sucked into the vacuum of space in the event of a sudden hull breach—a trick that might come in handy if she needed to repair hull damage on the fly.
“I cannot repair the coolant lines myself,” Virgil admitted.
Jaeger lifted one foot, set it down, then lifted the other, acclimating to her newfound pseudo-gravity. She looked at the access tunnel across from where she had entered. There was another sealed door there, blinking red and separating her from the rest of her ship.
“You can't repair your coolant lines. You know what you can do?” She strode for the door.
“What is that, Captain?”
Jaeger pulled the plate off the locking mechanism and was glad to see that the damage was far less extensive than it had been on the first door. She cracked her knuckles.
“You can get back to repairing the ship’s log. We’ll discuss command structure once we have the ship functioning. Until then, you can also kiss my fragile human ass.”
Chapter Three
Jaeger, loathe to think of her ship as simply ship and not in any mood to let Virgil opine on the matter, privately dubbed her the Osprey.
It was a fitting name. The ship’s hull design was a hunting bird of prey—two sharp wings drawn around a slender central superstructure. The central column, a series of chambers including the command center, the living quarters, and the smaller cargo bays, was intended for human habitation.
The massive outer wings contained weapons arrays and dozens of interstellar cargo bays, including the mysterious No-A bay that was sucking away so much of Osprey’s power. Virgil insisted the bay contained an utterly impossible number of people. It badly tempted Jaeger to make the quarter-mile trek up the wing to check out No-A herself and prove the smug AI wrong, but it would have to wait until she had gotten the generators fixed.
The body and wings of the Osprey connected at the rear junction, where ion generators powered the scoop and particle accelerator that served as the ship’s primary engine.
Since the wings were static structures, they contained no simulated gravity and had to be navigated either by mag sole or good old-fashioned space-swimming. The corridor walls were too far apart to make that a practical means of locomotion. Moving through the wings was going to be a time-consuming process no matter what.
By the time Jaeger reached the last sealed door separating the central column from the wings, two hours remained on the generator countdown.
“I’ve retrieved parts of the cargo manifest,” Virgil offered as she started disconnecting the fried circuits. “The port wing cargo bays contain some unusual equipment.”
“A jacuzzi?” Jaeger instinctively wiped her nose, which was runny from the cold, and lamented that she couldn’t because of her hood. She’d have to ignore the discomfort for now.
“An atmospheric ion generator big enough to create localized weather patterns on most class-M planets. Several high-class weather satellites. An injection drill loaded with multiple one hundred kiloton charges shaped for deep tectonic penetration.”
Jaeger forced a whistle through her teeth. “You’ve got to buy a girl dinner before you start talking to her like that.” She twisted two burnt wires together and jerked away from the resulting shower of sparks. “Sounds like basic terraforming equipment.” The lock disengaged, and she heaved on the door.
“That was my conclusion as well,” Virgil said. It sounded disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm.
“Ship’s log. Stay on task.” Jaeger pushed herself through the cracked door and out of the central column. “Two hours.” Her boots snapped smartly onto the metal struts lining the utility corridor stretching from wingtips to the engine room. She pulled off her hood, wiped her nose, and took the last bite of her nutrient bar. She pulled the covering back in place as she forced herself to swallow the thick, chalky substance, and let the pouch wrapper drift away. Overhead, colored pipes ran lines to various sectors of the ship. Yellow was the color for the generator room. She set off in that direction. “Plenty of time.”
She took off at a jog. The metallic clang of mag soles on the walkway echoed around the corridors with every step, the only sound on a grave-quiet ship. She felt like a freight train.
She sounded like a freight train. Sweat beaded on her brow.
Chuff, chuff, chuff.
The noise, the fatigue, the persistent cold, the head trauma she hadn’t really treated—all of it brought Jaeger’s headache roaring back to life.
Chuff, chuff, chuff.
It would be fine. As soon as she saved the generators, she could steal a nap.
Chuff, chuff, chuff.
Chuff, chuff—
CLANG.
Jaeger stumbled, crying out as the corridor shook under her feet. She snatched a strut for support.
“Virgil!”
“I’m here,” Virgil said—too quickly, Jaeger felt—through a nearby speaker.
Jaeger gulped the cold air, waiting for her heart to start beating again. Her gaze fell on a double-wide sealed door down a cross-corridor. She held her breath, ears straining.
The bone-rattling crash had come from that direction.
“What was that?” she whispered. “Something crashed in…” she glanced at the navigational display on the wall. “In one of the secondary storage lockers in Tetra sector.”
When the AI didn’t immediately answer, Jaeger took one careful step down the side corridor with her eyes fixed on the door. The electronic lock blinked red—the door had a firm seal.
Something heavy crashed on the other side of it. Jaeger scrambled backward, swallowing a scream.
“I’m…not sure.” Virgil’s voice sounded small and apologetic, coming from somewhere behind her. Jaeger didn’t find its hesitation comforting. An irregular series of thumps pounded on the other side of the door.
Thumping sounds—like footsteps. Like the restless pacing of a very big animal.
Except that it couldn’t be a pacing animal—there was no gravity in that chamber.
Everything in Jaeger screamed at her to turn and run. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself not to move. She couldn’t flee from every little thing that went bump in the night. Not on her ship.
The third crash rattled her down to her bones, shaking the very corridor around her.
Courage and caution being very different things, Jaeger scrambled backward and ducked around the corner. “Tell me what you know,” she hissed to the empty air. She’d lost track of where the comm speakers were. “Before it breaks my ship apart.”
“I don’t think that’s a reasonable fear,” Virgil hedged from somewhere over her head. There was a little speaker between two conduit pipes.
“I swear to god, Virgil, if you don’t—”
“I’ve run a new bioscan,” Virgil said quickly. “With, ah, the human filters removed.”
“And?” Jaeger wondered if her blurring vision was from rage or, more likely, brain damage exacerbated by sheer exhaustion and an incorrigible AI.
“There is a large life form sealed in a storage compartment in Tetra sector,” Virgil admitted.
Jaeger’s eyes narrowed to slits. Far behind her, she heard the faint, irregular thumping of…something. She imagined fists pounding against a closed door—massive fists, angry fists, but no voice calling out for help.
“What kind of large life form?” she growled.
“Unknown.”
“Unknown as in, your scanner programs can’t ID nonhuman life forms at all, or unknown as in, I’m trapped on board with an angry fucking alien?”
“All I can tell you, Captain,” Virgil said stiffly, “is that it isn’t human. I am, however, not detecting any hull damage in that sector. The life form appears adeq
uately contained.”
“For now.”
Another deafening crash robbed Jaeger of her breath. One step at a time. She pressed her eyes shut. Her temples pounded. Her fingers and toes tingled from the cold.
I am exhausted and confused and lost in unknown space with a dangerous and possibly hostile unknown. My copilot and only company is an uncooperative AI. I am slowly freezing to death.
No. Don’t panic.
One step at a time.
Her eyes fluttered open. She swallowed hard and with trembling fingers, drained the last of her water bottle with two more headache pills. “One step at a time.”
She forced herself to turn away from the blinking red door and walk toward the generators. “Run periodic generalized bio scans,” she said hoarsely. “Let me know right away if any other big non-humans are hanging around, okay?”
Chapter Four
Jaeger stared, awestruck by the engine core arching in front of her. It could have filled a football stadium, this glorious construction of sleek, silvery platinum struts coiled around an empty, shimmering point in space where the fabric of reality wavered and warped to a different rhythm. The primary ion generator mounted on one end of the donut was fifty feet long and humming faintly.
The valve switches along the wall told her the coolant venting system was still open. She strode over to close the vents, and the warning beep from the generator consoles ceased. She dug through the diagnostic panel until she found a good old-fashioned cable hookup, which she plugged into her comp. She tapped into the system history and frowned at the activity log that appeared.
“Virgil, what is the current local time?”
“Oh-eight thirty-six,” the AI muttered from somewhere near her feet.
“Right.” She tapped the screen thoughtfully. “Generator records show standard activity levels until twenty-two oh-one last night. Then here, we have several output spikes. It looks like power diverted heavily to weapons, at first….then all power to weapons ceased and diverted to shields.” She bit her lip.
“Weapons power suggests we were under attack.”
Jaeger shook her head. “Maybe. We diverted all power to shields pretty quickly, and I don’t see a massive draw from the engines to suggest we hauled ass out of a hot situation. You can’t win a fight on the defense. I wonder…I wonder if we mistook some natural hazard for a hostile? Then here, the power draw from the shields went off the charts. The system tried to cycle coolant well past regulation to compensate for the excess heat created.”
She traced the energy log with one restless finger. “That caused coolant pressure to go haywire, which probably accounts for the electrical damage on internal systems. Then the pressure crashed at twenty-two forty-nine. We must have emergency vented to prevent a core meltdown.” Her comp found access to a live sensor feed from the engine systems, and she glanced over the readout.
“Some good news. It doesn’t look like the primary coolant system is damaged. Let me remind you that there’s only a physical blockage somewhere in the line that’s preventing access to the secondary tanks.” She glanced at the narrow access tunnel on the upper deck of the generator room. There would be a void running along the major coolant lines, wide enough for a mechanic to get in and poke around.
“I’m going to have to inspect the lines down to the secondary coolant tanks visually,” she decided.
“There aren’t any comm speakers in the access tunnels,” Virgil warned. “If you leave your computer plugged in a minute longer, I can synchronize to it.”
Jaeger, who had been about to unplug the computer, paused. “Come again?”
“You’ll be able to continue communicating with me through your computer speakers while you’re navigating the access tunnels.”
“Aw, man. And here I was hoping for some peace and quiet.”
Virgil said nothing.
“Sorry, Virg.” Jaeger tromped to the side of the bay and pulled one of the dozen toolkits from the wall. No telling what she’d need, deep in the bowels of the ship. “That was a mean joke.”
“I don’t have feelings.”
“Uh-huh.” Jaeger yanked a retractable tether from one end of the kit and clipped it to her belt. She’d have to tow it behind her. “Maybe. For the sake of my sanity, let’s pretend you do.”
“Synchronization complete.” This time, Virgil’s voice came from the tiny speaker on her comp. Jaeger grabbed it and strode to the access tunnel. Something niggled at the back of her brain.
“Virgil, does the name Jefferies tube mean anything to you?”
“No, Captain. Why?”
Jaeger shook her head and bent double to deactivate her mag soles. There was a faint humming noise as they disengaged, and she drifted free of the floor. Walking was better when the corridor walls were far apart, but in the cramped confines of the tunnel, she’d rather push herself forward without her feet trying to attach to every metal surface. She sucked in a deep breath and propelled herself head-first into the tunnel.
“I think these access tunnels are known as Jefferies tubes, but I can’t for the life of me remember why.”
The tunnel closed around her, shadowy dark and with barely a few centimeters of clearance.
“Despite my advanced search capabilities, I can’t find the name in my accessible files.” The fabric of her flight suit muffled Virgil's voice.
Jaeger tugged on her thermal hood, activating the headlamp with a touch. The tunnel stretched into shadows ahead of her. She put her hand on the thick tube marked with the coolant sign and started pulling herself into the guts of the ship.
“You’re very demure, Virgil,” she murmured, acutely aware of the ten million tons of steel and wire closing around her. Ahead, far in the shadows, there was a split in the tube. One fork branched toward Tetra sector. She shuddered, remembering the restless animal noises coming from behind the red door.
She started sharply when the comm spoke again.
“I was premature in requesting control of the ship.” Virgil sounded a little abashed. “As I am regaining functions, I recognize the impropriety of the request. I apologize.”
Jaeger chuckled softly. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she passed the fork. She glanced uneasily down the tube, then hurried past. Did those storage lockers have access to the Jefferies tubes? She didn’t know.
“I accept your apology,” she said to keep the computer talking. The last thing she needed right now was to be left in silence, listening for the sounds of something big and angry scrambling up the tube behind her. “And…Um…Okay, I’m not seeing any damage or break in the coolant line yet.”
“My sensors suggest the obstruction is somewhere between your current location and the secondary tanks, which are just past a juncture about thirty meters ahead of you.”
Jaeger let out a wavering breath. “Great. Um. Let me know if you detect any other nearby life signs.”
Though her memory remained stubbornly out of reach, Jaeger was learning something new about herself with every passing minute. She was, for instance, realizing that she was ambidextrous. She enjoyed cafe au lait and craved it when she was tired.
She was also very, very claustrophobic.
“Seems like something they’d screen for in captain school,” she said in a small voice.
“What was that, Captain?”
“Nothing, Virgil. I’m trying to keep myself company. I see the tube opening up ahead.”
“I have obtained limited access to ship schematics. You should be approaching a utility juncture. There, the coolant lines split and branch off toward every sector of the ship. The blockage is somewhere near the juncture.”
Jaeger sealed her hood over her face. None of the readings suggested a physical leak in the coolant lines, but better safe than sorry.
Her headlamp wasn’t strong enough to light the entire junction ahead. She could see only a twisted mass of tubes and wires. She reached the edge of the tunnel and leaned out to get her bearings. There was
about a meter of clearance between the chamber wall and the juncture mass. Not as bad as the Jefferies tube, but still uncomfortably tight. She activated the infrared filter and studied the group of pipes. Through the hood screen, her world faded to a tangle of cold blue lines and warm yellow wires.
“Oh yeah,” she said softly. “There’s a large hunk of debris blocking the opposite access. These pipes…are they advanced silicon EPDMs?” She reached out and grabbed one of the tubes. “Yeah, they have to be.” Jaeger couldn’t believe she remembered the materials used in the inner workings of a ship, but not her name.
“Searching,” Virgil said. “Yes. They are.”
“So they’re more flexible than normal EPDMs,” she muttered to herself. “Hence them acting like a web and catching whatever that is.” She pulled herself into the chamber, hand-walking her way along the outer wall. The toolkit tethered to her ankle clanked faintly against the pipes. “I can see it on infrared but don’t have visual yet.” She frowned. “Irregular shape. Pretty big, too. Doesn’t look like anything that could have drifted down a Jefferies tube by accident.”
As she pulled herself around the mass of the juncture, the shadows of conjoining access tunnels shrank and grew around her. Through infrared, she could see the multitude of ice-blue coolant lines converging around a black void. It seemed to be the same temperature as the air around it, rendering it nearly invisible on her screen.
“What the hell…” She rounded the last of the juncture and deactivated the hood. She blinked rapidly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the deep shadows and dim lights gathering around her headlamp.
The dead man tangled in the coolant lines stared back at her through shocked, ice-white eyes.
“Captain? Do you copy?”
It was the third or fourth time Virgil had tried to reach her.
Hands trembling, Jaeger finally reached for her comp. “Copy.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and said, in a firmer tone: “Yeah. I’m here. There’s a, um, body here too. Human male.”
