Generations

by Tim Lebbon

  She loved Serenity as well as she loved people, and a lot more than most, but she couldn’t imagine spending her whole life on board.

  “It’s creepy,” Jayne said.

  “Sure is.”

  “I wonder what the Alliance were doing here?”

  Kaylee wondered that as well. As they moved deeper into the ship, and further toward the stern, she looked for signs of recent activity. The airlock they’d entered through, and the other new structures and bulkheads that had been built around the area of damage to the ship’s hull, had been obvious new work. Since leaving that location she’d seen nothing similar.

  What she did see were examples of old tech she’d only heard about from a few of the deep space pirates she’d come across since hooking up with Serenity. Blank, dusty screens hung in the junctions of corridors, possibly the old eyes of the ship’s controlling computer. There was talk they’d even had a form of artificial intelligence on these old ships, advanced, almost magical technology lost in the early, rough days of the ’verse. They came across a wide corridor with several platforms scattered in haphazard fashion, and Kaylee guessed they’d been moving floors, flitting crew back and forth along the length of the ship. For everything she saw that she could identify, there was something else she could not—round glass globes protruding from walls, their inner surface dusted opaque; a series of large winged shapes hanging from corridor ceilings, plastics molded to resemble wood with no discernible use; open doorways with strange chain curtains. She wanted two weeks to explore the wonders of this ancient ship. She had less than two hours.

  The captain’s voice crackled in their comm. “Wash, we lookin’ good?”

  “All shiny here. I’m having a second hot chocolate, and the Doc is currently trying to stop his sister from running herself into an early grave.”

  “How is she?” Kaylee asked.

  “Same as ever. She’s in the cargo bay running back and forth… and back and forth… But the chocolate is fine, to say the least.”

  “Nothing on the scopes?” Mal asked.

  “Just the deep, soul-destroying nothingness of endless space.”

  “You sound edgy,” Zoë said. Kaylee smiled. Trust Zoë to hear through Wash’s quips to an underlying tension.

  “So would you if you had to listen to this,” he said. “She runs, he shouts, she sings, he pleads. It’s a mite troubling.”

  “We’ll be back soon,” Mal said. “Two hours or less. Then we get our gôu shî together and reassess. Kaylee, Jayne, all good with you?”

  “All shiny here, Captain,” Kaylee said.

  They passed through more darkened accommodation levels and found themselves in a series of wider, more functional corridors, all built to a curve around a huge inner space.

  “No security,” Jayne said on the open comm channel.

  “What d’you mean?” Kaylee asked.

  “If there was something on board worth stealing, the Alliance would have protected it,” Jayne said. “Dammit.”

  “Don’t bank on that,” Zoë said. “We’re way out beyond the Rim here. Maybe they thought hiding the ship like this was enough.”

  “But the map?” Jayne asked.

  “Somethin’ covert,” Mal said. “Somethin’ they lost that shows the way here.”

  “It’s like a treasure map!” Kaylee said, and Jayne’s eyes lit up.

  As they moved on, their suit lights illuminated the corridor for many paces ahead. The wall to their right was high and convex, and the further they went the more eager she was to see what was on the other side. There were no doorways or viewing windows that way, and whatever space lay beyond the wall appeared vast. She almost felt the weight of the space contained within there, and the silence made it seem even more loaded. As if it was waiting for them to discover it.

  When the corridor came to an end against a tall bulkhead, the door leading beyond half-open, it was Jayne who saw the second doorway set into the wall to their right. This one was closed and cast so perfectly that it showed barely an outline. It was only their shifting lights that created shadows enough to discern the junction between door and wall.

  Heart beating faster, Kaylee set her decoder against the door, held there by magnetic tape, and used a listener to try to pinpoint where any electronic locks were engaged.

  “Good solid door like that might mean somethin’ worth seeing beyond,” Jayne said.

  “Seeing or stealing?”

  “This is salvage, not theft.”

  “Could mean the nuclear heart of the ship,” Kaylee said. “It’s said these old ships used fission reactors, real unstable if left uncooled. After so long the reactor coolants might’ve leaked or fizzled away to nothing, leavin’ behind a nice stew of instant death.”

  “Oh. Great.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m scanning for any dangers.” She viewed her wrist scanner and phased it through every wavelength and range. Any dangers we know of, at least, she thought. There was no telling what might be on board this ship that had fallen into humanity’s past, lost to memory and myth—strange tech, dangerous compounds, toxic ideas. There was only one way to find out.

  Jayne expected this door to open on riches that would set him leaping with joy. She hoped it would slide open to reveal a room filled with wondrous tech and mechanical workings. Treasures for them both, in different ways.

  When the door whispered open into the wall, the space beyond contained neither.

  Kaylee had never seen so many corpses.

  “It’s a pity we can’t just take the whole ship,” Zoë said.

  “Yeah, right. Fly it right back into the heart of the ’verse.”

  Mal paused and glanced at Zoë.

  “You’re serious.”

  Zoë shrugged and looked around. They had worked their way around the damaged areas and headed toward the bow, and they had arrived at the remains of a food production center. It was a wide, low room, with row upon row of tables where plants had once grown. They were gone now, rotted away to dust and occasional delicate, stick-like remnants.

  Mal was haunted by the implication of this room, its use and scope. It had been designed to feed a crew of hundreds or thousands over many years, decades, even centuries. No one knew for sure how long these ships’ journeys had lasted from Earth-That-Was, but the scale of the undertaking was epic. To uproot a whole society—virtually a whole species—and shift it trillions of miles through interstellar space was beyond his comprehension. Doing so without knowing for sure whether there would be a habitable home at the end was the ultimate in desperation.

  They sure must’ve messed up their old planet good and proper to come this far searchin’ for someplace new, he thought.

  Their arrival in the room had caused a subtle shift in the atmosphere. The remaining plants fell apart in small wafts of dust, like slow-motion breaths finding cold and spreading until they vanished from view. The fecundity of this place was a distant echo. Just like the crew, and just like the millions of people who had been transported here in suspended animation. This dark, empty, cold place was like a memory being revisited once again, still dead but laying itself open to view. Mal imagined Serenity as equally lifeless, and it made the sight painfully sad.

  “Takin’ the whole ship back’s a thought,” he said. “It’s like a museum. Maybe it’s our duty to take it back so others can see it.”

  “Duty, Mal?”

  He shrugged. “We’d charge admission. But it’s a foolish notion.”

  “That ever stop us before?”

  “Huh.” Mal often entertained these wild but brief flights of fantasy. The idea of flying the Sun Tzu back to the Core was delightful, perhaps with Serenity leading her in, planets and moons turning out to welcome their incredible return. Delightful, but ridiculous. The Alliance would stop them a hundred times before they made it to the Outer Rim. They had gone to efforts to make the ship their own, and they had ensured it remained safely hidden away.

  Besides, the chances of it being
serviceable were remote. However much of a natural Kaylee was with engines and mechanics—sometimes, Mal thought she and River had more in common than anyone thought, only Kaylee’s instincts and talents were of a more practical bent—this was something else.

  “Maybe in our dreams,” Zoë said. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be stuff here that can make us rich.”

  “Right,” Mal said. “The captain’s name plate would be nice, for starters. Star charts from their journey. Planners and logs. Imagine that tale, handed down from captain to captain as one grew old and another took over. The places they must’ve passed through. The sights they must’ve seen. I’m sure Jayne’s looking for treasures, but sometimes treasures ain’t what you might expect.”

  “Remember Niska?” Zoë asked.

  “You suppose I’ll forget him in a rush?”

  “He had a fine collection of memorabilia from Earth-That-Was. Him and people like him would pay a small fortune—”

  “Rather not deal with his like again, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “He did have a certain charm.” Zoë smiled.

  “Let’s haul our asses through this place, get closer to the bridge. I’ve an inkling that’s where we’ll find something of worth.” Mal glanced at his watch. “We’ve been forty minutes. Time to turn back soon and regroup, but we’ve a picture of the geography of the ship now. Maybe Wash can engineer a docking, and we can spend some days on board.”

  Zoë shivered. “Spooky,” she said.

  “For sure, but we’ve seen nothin’ yet that’ll do us harm.”

  The ship spooked him, but fascinated him as well. Just like River.

  “Wash, how’s the girl?” he asked.

  “Just as weird as ever.”

  Weird as ever, Mal thought, but that wasn’t quite true. She was weirder than ever. The Sun Tzu had her stirred up, and coming here had been as much because of River and her ability to read that map as anything else. Without her they’d have never found the ship. He remembered his promise to the Doc that he’d search for whatever had made River so keen to come here. He couldn’t help think it might not be something good.

  “Maybe it’s safe to bring her on board now,” Zoë said, and Mal was surprised once again at how she seemed to read his mind. Fighting together, almost dying together, had given them a bond that would never be broken, no matter what the future brought.

  “Maybe I’ll ask Simon to bring her,” he said.

  “I’m not sure Simon will have a say in it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s looking after River, but sometimes I think it’s her looking after all of us.”

  Mal didn’t answer that. It was a strange thought, and disconcerting, but a form of that idea had implanted itself in his subconscious some time ago, and it still returned to trouble him on occasion.

  Beyond the hydroponic area their lights revealed another set of new blast doors. They were obviously retrofitted, and they opened to a touch on their control pad. They were thick and heavy, welded into the solid bulkheads of the ship. Their style and construction did not match the rest of the Sun Tzu, and construction marks and fixing points were obvious.

  “More Alliance control panels,” Mal said.

  “Yeah,” Zoë said. “I’ve been thinking on this.”

  “Me too. I got nothing.”

  “They’ve done their best to make the ship still look like a derelict, while protecting the interior.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “That blast zone we came in through. Jayne thought it was recent, and could be he’s right. Maybe that wasn’t something that happened long ago, when the Sun Tzu first arrived in the ’verse, but intentional destruction to make the ship look dead. And these doors—and I’m willing to bet there are more in other directions, all away from the damaged area—are to isolate the damage from the rest of the ship.”

  “It’s a big effort for them to go to.”

  “Some things are worth such an effort,” Zoë said.

  They moved on, and a few minutes later they arrived at a set of open doors leading into a large hold area. They shone their lights around the wide space, and Mal caught his breath.

  “Whoa,” Zoë said.

  “Looks like they came ready for some travelin’ and explorin’,” Mal said.

  The hold was filled with vehicles of all shapes and sizes, colors and designs. Lined along the wall to their left were six large, bulky and identical trucks, and Mal guessed these were military transports of some kind. They were built for strength and reliability, not aesthetics. Elsewhere, other wheeled cars sat side by side, tied down to the deck and packed in between with blocks of a compressible material that had grown hard and brittle over the centuries. Some of these vehicles presented their back ends to Zoë and Mal.

  “What’s that say?” Zoë asked. She knew Mal had a smattering of old Earth-That-Was English.

  “Ford,” he said. “Same name on all of ’em.”

  “Guess our ancestors weren’t too imaginative about naming their transports,” Zoë said.

  “Right.” The hold presented a sad sight. Whatever had happened at the end of the Sun Tzu’s journey, its passengers hadn’t had a chance to unload this part of its cargo. Some vehicles remained where they’d been loaded and tied down, but shining their lights through the assembled ranks, they could make out a few jumbled areas where cars and trucks had rolled, flipped, and crashed down on each other. So much effort had gone into building and loading, all for naught.

  “Seems kinda wasteful,” Zoë said.

  “That it does,” Mal said. “More Fords over there. And those army-lookin’ trucks are all… General… Dynamic.”

  “They gave their vehicles ranks?”

  Mal shrugged. “Guessin’ that’s the case.”

  “Mal,” Kaylee’s voice came over the comms. “We’ve found something.” Mal could hear the tension in her voice. And perhaps the fear.

  “What have you found?” he asked.

  “Bodies,” Kaylee said. “Lots of bodies.”

  * * *

  Jayne had seen his fair share of corpses, and he’d been responsible for quite a few of them. This was something else. This was death on an unimaginable scale.

  “I wonder if they went into those things wearing their jewelry,” he said, and Kaylee turned and shoved him in the chest. He staggered back, hands held out. Kaylee had tears in her eyes, and rage, but when she saw his expression she stopped and froze.

  “Jayne…” she said.

  “Yeah.” They handled things in different ways.

  She shivered with shock. “Cryo pods. The Alliance uses them sometimes, but it’s glitchy tech, never been fully developed. It’s always said Earth-That-Was knew more about this sort of thing than we ever will, ’cause desperation drove ’em to it.”

  “Must be worth a lot, then,” Jayne said. The ranks of suspension pods marched into the distance, away from the small doorway and corridor they had ducked through and leading left and right, radiating out in stacked curved rows that encircled a distant central area. A low level of lighting—the first sign of active power they’d seen in the ship—glowed from countless points on the high ceiling, forming a regular constellation that drew together in the distance, along with the racks of ordered pods, to add a dizzying perspective to the huge space. The far extremes were too distant to make out in the gloomy illumination. Jayne reckoned there were at least fifteen levels of pods on the complex stacking system. Frost speckled every metal surface, as if a fine layer of snow had fallen from the high ceiling. In places stalactites hung down from the framing, glimmering in their torchlight, like fiery spikes. The cryo units were made of clear material—glass, plastic, or some sort of natural crystal, he couldn’t rightly tell— and some still contained their occupants.

  Just a few paces from him was the first of the dead bodies. He couldn’t tell what sex it had once been because the pod had failed, and the person was a shriveled husk. S
kin clung to its skeletal remains, hair long and tangled, face pressed to the pod’s side with mouth open in a silent, endless scream. Others close by also still contained their subjects. Some were lying on their backs with wires, pipes, and cables still attached to them in various places, having seemingly died in repose. A smaller number were in a tangled mess. A couple had clawed hands raised before them, as if they had still been scraping and banging at the clear, impenetrable lids when they had eventually died.

  “All those people,” Kaylee said, and her voice broke.

  “Lâo tiãn yé. Long way to come to die like that,” Jayne said.

  The chamber was so large that the pod structures in the distance became a blur, so much so that Jayne thought there might be some sort of haze on the air.

  “Weird that the lights are still on,” Kaylee said. “Still power.”

  “Wash, did you pick up any power traces?” Jayne asked.

  “Nothing obvious,” Wash said. “You got power down there?”

  “Sorta,” Jayne said. “Still keeping my suit lights on, though.”

  “Could be they used some sort of natural luminous material,” Kaylee said. “But after so long it wouldn’t still be active.”

  “What else you got?” Mal asked.

  “Cargo hold,” Jayne said, and Kaylee glared at him. “What?”

  “Thousands of suspension pods,” Kaylee said. “Some still contain bodies.”

  “Don’t touch anything down there. If there’s a power source that Wash hasn’t picked up, no one else will detect it either. Let’s leave well alone.”

  “So many bodies, Mal,” Kaylee said.

  “It ain’t the dead that concern me.”

  In silence, Kaylee and Jayne stood and stared around the vast space. It was difficult to take in. Jayne reckoned there were ten thousand pods in that one place, maybe more. He guessed there were many halls like this throughout the ship.