Rebel Tribe (Osprey Chronicles Book 1)

by Ramy Vance

  Jaeger lay in her quarters, on a nest of disheveled sheets and pillows and an old army surplus blanket, staring into the darkness.

  Go, Toner had said, practically shoving her through the hatch. Get a fucking nap.

  What was supposed to be another hour or so of practicing the escape maneuver had turned into another grueling three hours of analysis, brainstorming, and combat simulations as they navigated the additional challenge of getting into the wormhole without getting sliced apart by flying saucers. Thankfully, Virgil thought it would be a while yet before the saucers detected their approach.

  Six hours to wormhole rendezvous and the ugly party waiting for them.

  Jaeger was exhausted. Her crew was beat. Everybody was worn out—except for Toner, who didn’t seem to require much in the way of sleep. Probably it helped that the man spent every free second of his life eating or goofing off.

  Meanwhile, Jaeger poured her blood, sweat, and tears into programing their newly developed maneuvers into the secure captain’s log. Bernstein’s law was Grade-A spun bullshit, a lie she told because she didn’t feel comfortable telling Virgil or Sphynx about the isolated captain’s log. No telling what they would do with the Crusade files.

  She didn’t know how the captain’s log had survived the wormhole trip fully intact, and now she was gambling all of their lives on the hope that it would do so once again. It had taken her three hours of re-checking to finally feel satisfied that the new log program would automatically patch itself into the Osprey’s autopilot once they escaped the wormhole.

  Now they only had to worry about getting her into the wormhole safely.

  If Toner expected her to spend these last six hours sleeping, it only proved that he didn’t know her very well.

  I have a few ideas of my own, he had told her. I’ll work on those. I swear to God if we have to resort to my stupid ideas because you’re too tired to think straight, I will mutiny.

  She lay alone in the dark and cool, replaying scenarios and plans and battle maneuvers over, and over, and over again behind her eyes, miserable at the thought that this tortuous waiting would stretch on for six sleepless hours.

  She sat up abruptly, and the auto-lights powered into a dim glow that outlined the cabinets and drawers mounted to her walls. She reached across her tiny space and pulled open one of the drawers.

  Her stack of handwritten journals lay in the bottom of the drawer, waiting for her.

  She stared at the moleskin covers for a very long time before shoving the stack of journals aside. Maybe going through the wormhole wouldn’t wipe their memories again. Maybe, somehow, it would undo the damage done the first time. She wouldn’t have to risk picking up those notebooks and getting to know the dead stranger that was S.W Jaeger.

  There were other books beneath the stack of journals. A dog-eared Regency romance. A hardcover history of aviation, full of glossy pictures of biplanes and zeppelins. An old copy of something called The Master, with an image of a single chess pawn on an empty board.

  She pulled out that one and shoved the drawer shut so she didn’t have to look at the journals. She fell back on her bed, flipping through the pages. It was a book of chess strategy, full of pages of grids and move combinations and long essays on strategy and philosophy.

  It gave Jaeger a warm, fuzzy feeling to look through all those diagrams and realize how wonderfully familiar it was.

  It made her feel a little less of a fraud.

  She turned on her video-journal clip and fell asleep listening to the sung promises of a forgotten child.

  I would fly a billion miles

  To fall down at your door.

  Three hours later, she would wake up to the shriek of emergency sirens.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Worry didn’t burden Toner.

  He lounged in the captain’s king-size bed, fiddling with his personal computer and sipping thousand-dollar whiskey. He’d stolen a few twenty-minute naps since waking up in the Jefferies tubes days ago and was not the least bit tired. One of the perks of being a monster, he supposed.

  On the other side of the room, the holo-screen glowed. The last thing Jaeger had done before Toner shoved her off to bed was upload the crew’s messages into the log.

  Jaeger had wanted to delete all of the horrifying Crusade files. Toner sympathized—he didn’t like thinking about how many microwave cannons and species-ending bombs the Osprey could crank out, either—but he had talked her out of it. They hadn’t had enough time to explore the files. Somewhere amid all that weapons data might be clues about who created them and why. They should know what they were destroying before they did it.

  As he’d promised, he had scratched out a few backup plans for dealing with the saucers. Beyond that, he hadn’t a care in the world.

  In other words, he was bored.

  He had connected his personal computer to the local network and was flipping idly through the ship’s systems, checking statuses. Generators had ramped up to full capacity. Hull repair, nearly complete. Engines in good condition. Bio-signs fine, reading all of the embryos in No-A, plus six biological crewmates. Life support, fully operational. Fabricator stores, nearly full. Long-range scanners, oper—

  Wait.

  Wait just a damned minute.

  Toner flipped backward and pulled up the bio-sign scanners. He ran another sweep and pulled up report details.

  No-A was full, and all embryos accounted for, sans the two they had activated. Okay, check. Occy was resting down in the engine room with Baby, where he’d set up a campsite. The boy hadn’t wanted to leave his precious engines untended.

  Jaeger was resting in her bunk, a few meters away from Toner. That was four. Sphynx was napping in the command crew quarters down the hall. Five.

  And Virgil didn’t have a body, so who, pray tell, was that sixth bio-sign all alone in the port wing?

  Toner nibbled his lip. His first thought was a Locari stowaway, but no—it was too big to be one of the little plant-bug critters.

  He studied the unmoving life sign for almost a minute before pushing himself off the bed and grabbing his utility belt. No need to rouse Jaeger quite yet. He’d investigate this himself.

  Sphynx lifted his head from the lounge sofa and lazily blinked as Toner stepped out of the captain’s bunk.

  “I’m gonna stretch my legs,” Toner said gruffly as the hatch slid shut behind him. He would swear he felt a sneeze coming on every time he saw the catman, despite Jaeger’s assurances that Sphynx must be hypo-allergenic.

  Sphynx shrugged and lowered his head again, his eyes going hooded but not entirely closed.

  Toner grimaced and walked out of the crew quarters.

  He didn’t think twice when the corridor hatch opened without asking him for authentication.

  “Someone is approaching the port wing,” the AI said irritably.

  “Of course they are,” Seeker muttered. “You didn’t expect this to go smoothly, did you?

  The AI said nothing. Seeker looked up from the code prompts in front of him. “Who is it? Jaeger?”

  “No. It’s Toner. The vampire.”

  “Ah. Tough son of a bitch.” Seeker stood, drawing his stun gun. It had a myriad of interesting settings. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious to test some of them out.

  He set his vape aside and glanced down the darkened corridor. “How long?”

  “At this rate, he’ll be on you in two minutes.”

  “Ah. He’s coming straight for me.”

  “I suspect he noticed you on the bio scanners. It’s the only explanation.” The AI hesitated. “You must complete the authority override now. If Toner alerts the others to your presence, it may force me to turn against you. You are fortunate he has not already.”

  Seeker shook his head, ramping his gun from standard to fry—the highest setting that still promised not to punch holes straight through the hull. “Sorry, bud. I’m not a wizard. It’ll take me another ten minutes at least to complete the trans
fer. He’ll be on me before then.”

  “So what are you going to do?” the speaker asked petulantly.

  Seeker grinned through the shadows. “I’m going vampire hunting.”

  Seeker had dug a spare personal comp out of one of the supply cabinets and patched it into the local AI network. Now it displayed the AI’s bioscan results overlaid against a Tribe Six schematic, giving him a detailed, real-time radar.

  “He is moving damned fast through the corridors.” Seeker stared at the blinking dot gliding in his direction from the central column juncture.

  He had to hold the computer to his ear to hear the AI’s whispered response. “He has a mastery of the reverse-polarity mag sole settings. He can outmaneuver you in zero-G.”

  Seeker grunted, glancing down at his boots. He’d tried skating around the corridors with his boots repelling from the metal struts, and sure, it was faster than walking, and it left his arms free, but it required quite a bit of focus to keep himself from smashing into support struts. Standard mag sole settings had left him thunking noisily through the empty corridors. He had primarily defaulted to leaving the damned boots inactive and towing himself around by his arms.

  Watching the blinking dot of the vampire zipping around corners, Seeker realized that wouldn’t cut it anymore.

  “He has a bio-sign radar like this, doesn’t he?” Seeker asked the computer.

  “Yes.”

  Seeker scowled. So the vampire could see Seeker’s roving dot as Seeker could see his. “Can you cut off his access?”

  “No.” The AI sighed. “Security protocols are temporarily disabled. I can’t lock him out of any doors or systems.”

  That was damned inconvenient timing.

  Seeker considered running, leading the vampire on a wild goose chase around the wing, away from the hub where he was doing open-heart surgery on the AI. He discarded the idea. It was a stalling tactic, not a solution, and he didn’t want Toner to realize Seeker had sniffed him out.

  With his boots inactive, he silently towed himself out of the administrative hub and around the nearest corner. He wasn’t going far from his hub, and he wasn’t going quickly—nothing to see here. Only a mysterious stowaway idling to the nearest supply cabinet to steal a snack.

  Seeker pulled himself down a narrow hallway lined with supply cabinets, pulling open each metal cabinet door as he passed. By the time he reached the end of the row, it had become a maze of noisemakers. Toner would either have to slow down to a crawl or barrel through the hallway, slamming the doors loudly enough to wake the dead and tipping off his prey.

  Nothing strange here. Just a stowaway, searching for a snack, and too inconsiderate to bother shutting the doors behind him.

  On the screen, Toner took the bait. He changed direction, turning down a cross-hallway that would lead him away in Seeker’s direction—away from the hub.

  He was only a few turns away now.

  “I can alter the feed he’s getting, however,” Seeker’s computer whispered. “Erase your sign from the system and create a ghost to lead him off in another direction.”

  Seeker turned another corner, reaching a row of three narrow waste-reclamation chambers. He opened the door to one of the coffin-sized shitter closets. “Negative,” he murmured, lips barely moving. “If he figures out you’re lying to him we’ll be made. All communication to text.”

  The AI fell silent. Seeker slipped into the middle stall and shut it silently behind him. The waste receptacle dug into his spine as he turned to face the door. These closets were for smaller men. Damned inconsiderate.

  The overwhelming antiseptic smell burned his nose, making him wonder if that was supposed to be better than the smell of shit it was supposed to mask.

  Seeker placed his computer on a tiny ledge on the wall and watched the radar blip draw closer, cautiously navigating its way around the littered hallway Seeker had left behind him.

  Slowly, the blip came to a halt on the other side of the toilet stall door—less than half a meter from Seeker.

  The vampire could probably hear him breathing, but Seeker didn’t hold his breath. Why would an oblivious stowaway taking a shit bother holding his breath?

  Seeker lifted his gun to head-level, waiting. The radar dot was right on top of him. Spitting distance. He could just imagine the vampire reaching forward to open the door, hoping to catch his prey at a nasty disadvantage—

  Then the corridor filled with the unholy shriek of emergency sirens.

  The tension shattered. On the other side of the door, the vampire let out a startled shout that resolved into words. “Shit. Oh.” Then, “Shit!” There was a violent thump as something hit the other side of the stall door. “Sorry, my dude,” the vampire shouted through the door. “Gotta lock you in there for now, you sit tight. I’ll be back!”

  Seeker waited, frozen in the stall for six heartbeats, his head spinning from the noise. He glanced at his computer screen. Radar showed the vampire zipping back to the central column at double speed.

  “What the hell is that noise?” Seeker bellowed.

  Text flashed beneath the radar. I have no idea.

  Fuck.

  Seeker snatched up the computer. “Can’t you lower the volume?” He shoved his shoulder into the stall door, forcing it open. Whatever lock the vampire thought he had activated had been disabled, along with all the other security provisions. Seeker spilled into the corridor, scrambling to re-activate his mag soles as the siren sliced into his brains.

  “No,” the AI shouted from the speaker of his drifting computer. “I don’t know where the alarm is coming from.” It sounded confused. It sounded downright angry. “There’s some kind of secondary system coming online. I don’t recognize it.”

  Seeker found his footing, holstered his gun, and ran down the corridor toward his administration hub. The noisy thunk of his mag soles drowned beneath the blaring siren. “Figure it out and get back to me,” he called. “I didn’t see any backup copies or stray AI code in your core. It has to be a bug or rogue program trying to invade from an outside source. Terminate it if you can.”

  The AI’s voice fell into something almost like a snarl. “Gladly.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Jaeger staggered out of her quarters, bleary-eyed, drunk-tired, and clasping her hands over her ears. She had thought she’d grown used to the wail of sirens over the last few days, but the awful shriek coming through the speakers nearly brought her to her knees. “Virgil,” she screamed. “VIRGIL! Shut it UP!”

  “I can’t.” The speakers rattled as the AI bellowed to make itself heard over the noise. “I don’t know why. I’m working on it.”

  This wasn’t only an alarm, Jaeger thought, dizzy as she staggered across the crew quarters to the captain’s door. This was an assault. It made her stomach roil and her head spin. She tried calling for Toner but couldn’t, and her screaming ended up lost in the din.

  Then she saw that the door to the captain’s quarters was frozen, half-open in its track. Her heart skipped a beat. She wriggled through the gap, bruising her hips on the door frame. The quarters were empty. No sign of Toner, except for the disheveled bedding and the quarter-empty bottle of whiskey on the bar.

  The holo-screen on the captain’s desk had vanished.

  No. No, no, no.

  Blood thundering in her ears, Jaeger sprinted to the desk. She had left the log running. There was no reason for Toner to have turned it off.

  She flung herself around the side of the desk, and her stomach dropped to her feet. Snapped wires spilled out of the back of the cabinet, sparking with electricity. There, beside the captain’s chair was a gaping black hole.

  The empty slot where the captain’s log hard drive had been.

  Jaeger’s hands shook as she pulled open the spare equipment locker. There. Two spare thermal hoods. The noise was too much. She couldn’t think straight. Dampness collected beneath her ears—the first trickle of blood from ruptured eardrums.

  Crusade P
rotocol file names flashed behind her eyes. Sonic cannons.

  God help us. She yanked the hood over her head. They had plans for brain-liquefying sonic cannons.

  The hood caught on her scalp medfoam and tore open old wounds, sending fresh blood trickling down her face.

  She didn’t care. The thermal hood pads fell over her ears, and she let out a gasp of relief as the deafening shriek of noise faded to a steady background wail. Even with the earmuffs at full noise-canceling power, the sirens still shook her bones like an oncoming freight train.

  Trembling with nausea, she connected her thermal hood to her computer and patched it into the audio channels.

  “Can you hear me?” she shouted into her mic. “Anybody? Roll call, somebody talk to me!”

  “Nobody else can hear you,” Virgil said flatly. Its voice was close, almost intimate. “They’re not close enough to speakers or microphones to communicate over the alarms.”

  Jaeger groaned. A glance at the bio-sign readout told her the control center and command crew quarters were empty. She snatched the last spare thermal hood from the supply locker, shoved it in her belt, and turned toward the nearest access tunnel. She shouted into her computer as she ran. “Virgil, turn the god damned alarms off!”

  “I told you I can’t,” Virgil snarled, so close to her ear it made Jaeger’s hair stand on end. “There’s a new program asserting control of my systems.”

  “Are we under attack?” she gasped. “Are the saucers back? Are they hacking into your systems again?”

  Virgil hesitated for a split second. “No. The saucers are still well out of range. This sabotage is internal.”

  Jaeger’s mouth went dry. She swallowed a lump as she darted past the sealed general crew quarters. “Is it you?” she whispered. “Are you doing this?”

  Have you turned on us already?

  “No.” Virgil sounded nearly offended. “My goodness. What sort of mutineer do you take me for, Captain?”