Assured (Envoys Book 2)
Page 31
“But I got more to say. Such as, you all need to face a simple fact. Confeds, Xerxians, Tluaanto: we’re all ‘monsters’, we’re all asswipes. Accept that and we can start thinking about more important things.” She pointed to the passage leading to the sarcophagus. “That thing through there ain’t important. Surviving is.”
“You’re the one put us in the hole,” Westermann said.
Gregory cleared his throat. “Hate to say it, everyone, but she’s right. About surviving and taking action. Captain, earlier you mentioned ensuring this facility is safe to stay in?”
“I did. We should scout along that final passageway. Clear any threats. And see if there’s resources we can use, maybe left by the ancient Tluaanto. This … facility must have had a purpose beyond storing one powered coffin.”
“I think it’s clear the Qesh have long since dismantled whatever was in here,” Gregory replied, “and must have repurposed it.”
“Not the fridge-coffin though, right? I’m hoping they have fridges with actual food in them down there.”
Bradstock slapped Westermann’s back. “We’ll go scout it now, sir,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” the captain replied. “I want to come with you. First, Toller and Esana, you head back to the pod. If we run into trouble, that’ll keep you ahead of it. If we don’t, you’ll have a head start bringing supplies back up here. This might be our base of operations for quite a while. And while you’re down there, start figuring out how to boost power to comms.”
“To what purpose, sir?” said Toller.
“The Tluaanto probably won’t risk their frigate coming to help us, but we still need to tell them to look after the humans they have with them. Until our relief mission arrives.”
“You mean their relief mission, sir?”
“I mean the one currently on its way from the Confederation. That’s what we’re going to tell them. They’re not the only ones who can lie to string other people along.”
“I love it,” Hecate murmured.
“Ambassador Gregory and I will return to the pod also,” said Grace.
“I’d prefer you both stayed with us.”
So would I, Gregory thought. There was more to see here, he was sure of it.
Pan added, “I value your input and perspective.”
“You didn’t mention me,” Hecate said. “Am I staying here with the interesting people?”
“You’re staying here where the Peacekeepers are,” Pan said.
Westermann said, “I agree, sir. We need her here.”
“We do?”
“We ain’t got any cambots, so someone’s gotta keep going through doorways first.”
Pan chuckled. A few people did.
Hecate turned an overdramatized pout toward Sintopas. “Why can’t he do it? He’s as big a monster as I am.”
Westermann reached over and patted the cowering comms officer on the head. “He’s our backup cambot. If you die, he gets your job.”
“Amen,” rumbled Bradstock.
Toller and Esana got to their feet, making ready to leave. Toller passed his rifle to Pan.
Gregory raised a hand for their attention. “Before you go, I have a suggestion on the topic of cambots. Didn’t the Lioness dump a bunch of those plus a security drone near the mining site?”
Pan nodded as he caught on. “They did. Esana, when you’re back at the pod, see if you can get a signal lock on any and order them over here.”
“Aye, sir.”
“If they come, though, use their cameras to make sure no hostiles follow them.”
She and Toller switched on flashlights and left the chamber.
Pan pointed to the comms rig they’d brought along. “Mr. Sintopas, while I’m scouting that corridor, you also try to get a lock on the drone in particular. Liaise with Spacer Esana. Westermann, stay here and watch him. You too, Ms. Renny.”
“Grace.”
“Grace, yes. One of these days, I’ll learn informality.”
“You don’t need to watch me,” Sintopas whined. “I wouldn’t do anything to the drone. I’m in the same crap as everyone else.”
“Yes, you are,” Pan told him. “But you’re the bastard who made it worse.”
Hecate chuckled again. “Oh, man, poker boy. How’s it feel to be on the side of the Silvers?”
Chipper and Vazak had encountered no more soldiers. After a few minutes walking the outer passageway, they came to a side corridor, low-ceilinged and short. It terminated in a membrane hatchway. Chipper very much wanted to see where that led. He reached it before Vazak, discovering that it opened into another passageway running parallel to the one the Lioness had landed in. He stuck his head inside. To the left, it continued straight for a hundred meters before terminating again. To the right, it curved sharply upward—but they could cut out handholds if they needed them to climb there. Up would take them deeper into the orbital, closer to the station core. Chipper was curious about what lay that way.
“On me,” he told Vazak and went through.
Where the new corridor turned into an upward shaft, there were enough lumps and bumps to start them climbing. It looked like the shaft leveled out again after five or so meters.
Talking slow, and miming, Chipper asked, “You can climb up. But can you climb down?” He pointed at her half-arm.
“Sahss,” she replied, crooking her good arm and clenching a fist to indicate strength.
“If you say so.” He started up. Knowing the toughness of these Tluaan warriors, she could probably jump down, anyway.
Halfway up, it became necessary to use knives to cut more hand and foot holds. With one more functioning limb than Vazak, Chipper reached the top first. The new corridor was devoid of life. It was narrow with two hatches facing each other halfway along. Beyond these doors, it ran a couple dozen meters before once again scooping upward. Chipper swiveled around on his belly and hauled on Vazak’s suit to help her over the lip. She muttered something appreciative-sounding. He made her wait between the two side doors while he went to the end of the passage and peered up the new shaft. It rose a very long way toward the core of the station. Chipper gave up on it as a way forward because they would both struggle with the climb … and there was some time pressure here.
“Gotta be an elevator somewhere,” he muttered.
Upon his return, Vazak indicated one of the side hatches, gesturing a question.
“Sure, why not?” He went to the one on the left. This time, his proximity did not trigger the membrane to split and gather, forcing him to activate it by touch.
They ducked through into a room the size of his shared sleeping quarters on Assured. Its lichen lights were packed more densely across the ceiling, making it brighter. Like the corridor, it was uninhabited. Two tables took up the space in the middle. Each seemed molded from a single block of dull, brassy metal. At the heads of the tables, slim-lined tools as long as his forearm lay in alcoves cut or cast into the walls. They resembled surgical instruments.
And on the tables lay two deceased Tluaanto.
Vazak gasped something like “V’rekt’t!”
“You took the words outta my mouth,” Chipper whispered back.
He ventured as close as was comfortable. These bodies were partly clothed in dirty sky-blue uniforms, flight suits from the looks, the outfits sliced down the middle and left hanging to the sides like wings. The room and the way the bodies lay on tables like this made it seem like an autopsy suite. And the Tluaanto’s torsos had been cut up, but raggedly so, as if torn at with claws rather than scalpels.
With his rifle barrel, he lifted the edge of a tunic, folded it over the torn up torso of its owner. A logo was placed low down, where a human’s ribs would have met their stomach. He knew that logo. Vazak had one just like it on her combat suit sleeves.
“They’re from the other destroyed shuttle. The one your frigate lost contact with in orbit. Or maybe from the one that crashed in the volcano.”
Vazak nudged him to ge
t his attention. She pinched her fingers together and tapped them against her faceplate.
It took him a moment to take her meaning. “You think they’ve been eating them?” He shook his head. Nothing seemed missing from within the body cavity; it just lay open to the air. The cool air, he realized with a glance at his sensor feeds. The temperature in the room was a few degrees above freezing. “No. No, no. I think they’ve been autopsying them.”
“Qla Xenthrac’nto thwi.”
“If you’re saying Xenthracr are monsters, then maybe I agree. Or maybe they’re just curious. I mean, if a couple of us had crashed into your world and died there, you woulda done the same thing.”
He moved to the room’s inner door, a membrane in the back wall set between the tables. This time, its edges recoiled from his approach, swinging open and into another compartment beyond. He stepped through. And froze in shock.
This room was much bigger.
And it was occupied.
Gregory paced the chamber as Grace kept her eye on Hecate and Westermann watched Sintopas. Buoun remained crouching against a wall, sipping water, lost in his own thoughts.
Seven minutes after Pan and Bradstock had left to scout the passageway, the captain commed them on their suits’ open-chan, his voice pitched low.
“Ambassador, Grace. I want you to get Ensign Moore up here from the pod, then I want the three of you plus Sintopas to join us here. And when you do come in, be damned quiet about it.”
“Why Ensign Moore?” Gregory commed back.
“Because she’s the closest thing to a xenologist we have.” A moment’s pause, then: “And she needs to tell us what the hell we’re looking at here.”
Epilogue
When she came around, Ana’s right temple pulsed and pounded like someone was giving it CPR. Her eyes had gummed shut with dried tears. The world beyond her eyelids was bright, too bright to consider opening them yet. Any kind of movement seemed like madness—she would fall to pieces if she tried. She was a lump of dried oatmeal stuck to a plate. She was a brittle pile of crystal glasses. She was—
Thinking too damned much.
Eyes still gummed shut, she groaned. It felt good to groan. She could move one hand over to the opposing wrist, but trying to reactivate her retinaid prompted no response. Damned thing was offline. Dead. Not even an error icon to flash in the corner of her vision.
She wasn’t dead, though. The pain in her skull was proof enough of that. And whatever she was lying on felt soft. It had give. A bunk? Fowler must’ve moved her to a cabin.
Oh.
Fowler.
Right.
She could flex her hands; they weren’t tied. She’d hit Fowler then and someone else had moved her—there had been someone else with her, but she couldn’t recall who it was.
Another possibility was that Fowler was uninjured and he’d simply locked her in this cabin.
Either way, she couldn’t muster the energy to care.
“Okay,” she said—then said it again, relieved that her voice and her hearing worked fine. “Let’s get these eyes open.”
She did so cautiously, the salt-gum coming apart with tiny pops. Staring directly into a ceiling globe was a mistake; she turned her head to the left, moaning when it made the pounding worse. She was on her back on a bunk all right. In the ambassador’s room. Alone. The door was closed. A probing finger to her right temple brought a stab of pain. No dressing. It was only bruised. Fowler hadn’t been lying when he’d said his rifle was on stun: on AP, even a glancing blast would have left a severe burn.
Getting off the bunk happened in stages, with long rests between each stage: get up on left elbow; onto left elbow and thigh; sit up with legs off the bunk and head in hands; stand up while leaning on the ambassador’s workstation; stand with hands free and feet spread wide for balance. The room swayed and tilted. Bright pinpricks dotted her vision. She tried the retinaid one last time: still nothing. The stun-bolt might have fried the thing.
Which means I’m helldamn lucky there’s no brain damage.
How did she know there wasn’t? The room still swayed. Her head ached like a bitch. And she could remember the moment of exchanging fire with Fowler, but not the other person with them on the yacht.
“Shit.”
Moving to the door was like moving on someone else’s legs; she controlled them as if remotely. One hand on the jamb, she opened it. Conversation bubbled through—she cocked an ear—a one-sided conversation, a man talking to himself out in the lounge.
“Piers,” she whispered, remembering.
The chatter choked off when she came shuffling down the passage, leaning on the starboard wall. Piers sat at the portside table. Chlalloun was with him, neck twisted so he could stare at her.
Oh, yeah. That guy too.
The human and the Tluaan had glasses clasped in their hands. Chlalloun’s drink was clear, probably water. Piers’s was copper-colored, probably bourbon, and his glass was half full.
“Well, thank God,” the pilot said. “Didn’t know if you’d ever come around. How’re you feeling?”
Ana ignored the dumb question, pointing at the floor near his feet. Blood was smeared there, probably the results of a clumsy attempt at mopping it. No body though. “Where is he?”
Piers jerked his chin at a point behind her.
“Airlock?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said and looked down at his glass.
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” She sagged against the wall. “And Umby?”
“Umbrano? I’m no expert, but he looked dead to me. Blue in the face.”
Maybe hitting him in the head at close range had fried his brain. Or maybe the big guy was just cold in there.
Three pulse rifles lay on the other table. Ana said, “I’ll put a couple more rounds in him.”
“No need.”
“Yeah need. Gotta make sure.”
“Ana. You don’t. You really don’t.” Piers was looking at her again. “I vented the air out of there.”
“Oh. Okay. So, Fowler? Where’d I hit him?”
Piers glanced down at the dried blood, his brow wrinkling. “Heart.”
“Heart?”
“Or close enough. Guess when he’d shoved me toward you, it opened him up more.”
“Damn,” she said softly. I killed him. I actually killed him. Three years serving under the bastard’s underlings; four months serving under him directly … “I want to see his body.”
“There’ll be time for that. First, sit. Rest. Talk.”
She hesitated before pushing off the wall and shuffling to the table with the rifles. She dumped her ass onto the booth, put her head in her hands. “How long was I out?”
“Not long. Twenty minutes or so. We only just carried you onto the bed. Probably what started waking you up.”
“And you …” She noticed the red on Chlalloun’s hands then. “… both of you carried the colonel into the airlock?”
“And tried to clean that.” Piers looked again at the blood. She realized there were traces of it closer to where she sat, and leading back the way she’d come.
It’s over. That part’s over. Now for the next part.
“How far did we come before you turned us around? How long will it take to get back? Is Assured even still there?”
“Assured isn’t there.” Piers shook his head sadly. “I didn’t tell either of you what I saw on scans on our way out here—I didn’t want Fowler having the pleasure of knowing. There was a massive bloom of heat, light, and radiation near where she’d been. Where Assured had been. When we left her. She’s gone. They’re gone.”
“But how do you know they’ve gone? Ship had lifepods, right?”
“Yes—”
“Have you tried contacting them.”
“Ana—”
“Have you?”
“No! I haven’t, all right?” He took a gulp of his drink.
“Why the hack not?”
Chlalloun had recoiled from the heat of Piers’s abrupt tirade. Ana just blinked at him. The guy really wasn’t a fighter. People dying around him—him nearly dying—these were new experiences.
“Okay,” she said. “You earned that drink. And some downtime. Okay.”
“Yeah, I did,” he said. Then: “You want a drink? Sorry, I should have thought of that.” He half rose and she waved him down.
“Drink would not be a good idea for me right now.”
He glanced at his as if the same was true for him, then drained it and grimaced.
“But you stopped the ship, yeah?” she said. “Before Fowler came to and grabbed you.”
“I stopped it, yes.”
There was more, she sensed. “And? But?”
“But there’s a problem.” He stretched an arm behind him, pointing to the cockpit corridor.
Holding onto the table, Ana leaned aside to look. The cockpit door was closed, that was all she could see. “What is it?”
“You got off two shots, Ana. One hit Fowler. The other must have ricocheted a couple of times before it went in the cockpit.”
Her eyes widened. “And?”
“And pierced one of the forward windows.”
Ice prickled down her neck and along her shoulders. “No. No, no. That can’t be right. We’re still here. We’re still breathing.”
“Because ships have emergency protocols for breaches. If you’d pierced the hull in most places, it would have sprayed sealant foam into the hole. But a window? The ship’s only choice was to slam the cockpit door and seal that.”
Ana swore, slamming both palms onto the table, making the rifles bounce. “That can’t be right. One bullet puts a hole in the window? What if the ship went through, like, meteors, or satellite debris?”
“Big ships,” he explained, “tankers, freighters or … or Assured, they keep their CICs and bridges buried within the ship, no need for windows. Some smaller craft use multiple layers of synthetic glass to keep the micrometeorites out. But yachts like this? They have actual tempered glass in the windows and rely on energy shields to protect them from space crap. Only trouble is, shields don’t do much against bullets coming from inside.”