Junkyard Heroes

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Then she realized. They were waiting for her.

  * * * * *

  Haydn felt the tether tug on his waist, telling him he had drifted away from the box while he craned his neck to look up at the roof. Slowly, he rotated through the air until the roof looked like vertical wall and he no longer had to look upward.

  Someone was working on sealing the hole. He could see them running a sealer around the edges of whatever they’d scrounged up to cover the hole.

  He narrowed his eyes. There was something familiar about the engineer, although the bulky overall and multi-pocket jacket didn’t help him pin down why.

  Then she turned, reaching out for the tether and he realized he did know her. Black hair, short and wispy, around a delicate, small face. Black eyes. Pissed-off attitude as she had stood defending her friends. The woman from last night. The tiny one.

  It wasn’t a huge surprise to him that it was her fixing the hole. She, among all of them, had an air of competency and confidence in her ability to get things done. She had directed them all last night, too, with a naturalness that said she wasn’t aware she had been leading them. It was just how the group worked.

  “Start it now?” the kid called out from below.

  Haydn looked down at him. “Not yet.” He flipped himself over and hauled on the tether. “Find your footing,” he told the engineer floating above him. “Tell me when she has, too.”

  The engineer, at least, didn’t need long explanations. He nodded and hauled himself around the column to where the service ladder climbed up the side, then forced his feet onto a rung. He looked over his shoulder, up toward the roof.

  As he moved, he was talking softly. All the engineers were hooked into their own private communications network. He would be warning them.

  Then the engineer bent around the column to spot Haydn. “Now!” he called.

  Haydn gripped the edge of the casing and pressed the restart switch.

  The generator immediately hummed. He could feel it through his hand.

  His feet drifted down toward the floor, then settled. Real weight tugged him toward the floor, which had become “down” once more.

  The kid lifted his feet experimentally, looking at them as they dropped back to the floor. He was grinning.

  The engineer on the ladder climbed down to the floor with swift, practiced moves, his boots making the rungs sing softly. He jumped to the floor, disconnected his tether and walked over to the generator where Haydn and the boy stood. He was short, his hair gray at the temples and his belly pushed out beyond the opening of his jacket, yet he walked with the energy of a younger man.

  “I can take it from here,” he told Haydn and gripped the folded-back lid of the generator.

  “You’re going to take care of the other hole, then?” Haydn asked.

  The man blinked. “The other hole?”

  Haydn pointed up at the little green square sitting up against the roof where the hole had been. “Something punched through the roof at a velocity high enough to tear through plasteel. There—” He pointed to the steam vents. “Then there, there and there. It didn’t slow down, not even when it ripped through the generator here.” He pointed into the generator box, at the hole in the floor, there. It was as wide as a couple of his fingers. “When you get into the service area under the floor, you’ll find more holes, including another one in the hull, down there, where the thing tore through the other side of the ship. For all I know, it’s kilometers away from here, now.”

  The engineer’s eyes narrowed. He touched his ear. “Did you get all that?” Then he nodded. “No idea. A civilian and a child.” He listened some more, then his gaze refocused on Haydn. “Thanks, but you should go home now.”

  “You’ll look into it?” Haydn pressed.

  “Probably.” He shrugged.

  There was a stiffness about his shoulders and his voice that told Haydn he’d pushed too hard. Anything he said now would not be heard. He gave up and headed back down the alley toward the Capitol. Let them figure it out for themselves. If the whole ship died of exposure, it would make no difference to him.

  * * * * *

  By the time Noa reached the floor of the Field, the trembling in her limbs had stopped. Instead, her legs and arms were heavy and uncooperative. She was exhausted and it was still morning.

  “Everyone, rally at the nearest edge of the Capitol market,” Leuthar said. “I wanna do a head count.”

  With a sigh, Noa made her way out of the tangle of pipes to the nearest access path, then trudged back to the Capitol. She found Leuthar standing there with his arms crossed. Two of the unit were beside him. Trevor was sitting on the ground, his head hanging.

  All around them, people were thronging, their voices raised in alarm and excitement. The normal schedule of the ship had been disrupted. Noa couldn’t see any Cavers. They had left.

  She sank to the ground next to Trevor.

  “Noa,” Leuthar said gently. He pressed his hand against her shoulder, making her look up. Then he nodded toward the mouth of the back alley through the Field.

  Morris and Gustavo were emerging from the alley. They were carrying someone between them.

  Noa caught her breath. She recognized the shaggy, dirty blond hair of the man being carried. “Daniel!” She hurried forward to meet them and they lowered Daniel to the floor. Noa dropped to her knees next to him. “Medic!” she called, for Daniel had blood all over him. “Someone get a medic!”

  People crowded around them. Noa ignored them. “Daniel,” she called, shaking him. His eyes were open, pale and unseeing.

  “Noa, he’s dead,” Leuthar said softly.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Trevor gripped her arm. “The thing, whatever it was, it went right through him. Look, Noa. He would have been dead before he knew he’d been hit.”

  She shook her head again, yet she couldn’t stop herself. She looked at the remains of his ruined body, visible through the huge rents in his coveralls. Whatever had holed the ship had bulleted through plasteel as though it was water. What it had done to Daniel’s body was far, far worse, for human tissue was weak, compared to plasteel.

  It forced Noa to accept that Daniel was dead.

  Her vision blurred, her eyes ached and her throat closed down painfully. The agony tore at her chest. Poor Daniel, who had never asked for anything except to be liked and had failed even at that. No one would mourn his passing except the five of them who remained.

  She had to find a way to tell them all, before they heard it from gossip.

  She had to find out why this had happened at all. Her friends would want to know. She wanted to know.

  Through the shifting sea of people around her, she spotted a tall figure. Shaggy black hair. Black eyes. Stubborn jaw, bruised from last night’s run in. Ragged coat over dirty clothes. Arms folded, watching her.

  Haydn Forney.

  Above her, standing around her like a fence, her engineering unit was silent, except for Leuthar and Jerry Ottman, the director from the Institute, who must have sprinted from his carpeted office in the Aventine to be here. He was murmuring to Leuthar.

  “…emergency meeting on the Bridge…determine what happened…”

  Noa glanced at Haydn Forney one last time, remembering his withering comment about mechanics and losers. She scrambled to her feet, some of last night’s rage pushing aside her sorrow. “I want to be at that meeting,” she told Leuthar.

  Ottman looked startled. “The meeting is for senior personnel. Leuthar needs to be there because he’s the supervisor of the unit most directly affected—”

  “I plugged up the damn hole!” Noa raged. “That is my friend lying at your feet! I deserve to be there.”

  Ottman cleared his throat.

  “Let her come,” Leuthar said softly. “All the rage in the world doesn’t alter the truth.”

  All her fury evaporated instantly. She stared at Ottman and Leuthar. They were both Cavers. They both believed what had happene
d was nothing to get upset about. From their perspective, a hole in the side of the ship was the same thing as a hole in the side of their own apartment. The apartment was enclosed inside a larger air-filled container. The Cavers thought the ship was enclosed the same way.

  Coldness touched her. How far did the Caver madness extend?

  Ottman ran his thumb over his chin. “All right, then,” he said, with a sigh. “Meeting is now, so no dawdling.” He ran his gaze from her head to her boots and curled his lip. “Get rid of the blood. You’ll be in the same room as the Captain. Try to look like a professional.”

  Someone patted her back, as Noa glanced down at her blood-covered hands. Someone else pushed a damp cloth into her hands and she wiped them with it as she hurried to catch up with Leuthar and Ottman, who were making their way toward the train station.

  As she walked and cleaned, she saw Haydn Forney was still standing on the edges of the crowd, watching her. He nodded, as though he approved of her shoving her way into a senior meeting.

  Startled, she wrenched her gaze away from him and saw her unit pick up Daniel’s body and carry it away.

  She would find out what happened, for Daniel’s sake.

  Chapter Five

  When they were ushered into the room on the Bridge where the meeting was to be held, Noa understood why neither man had been too concerned about letting her tag along. The room was huge and there were already dozens of people in it, sitting at the tables scattered around the room, or standing and talking. The elegantly dressed people all seemed to know each other.

  Noa tugged on the stained hem of her jacket and fought the need to run her hands through her hair. She didn’t want anyone to know how intimidated she was feeling right now. She had never been on the Bridge, not even for the public tour of the old Bridge room itself. Now she was here and part of a meeting being held right next to the Captain’s office. In fact, there was a door in the far corner that probably connected with the Captain’s office directly.

  Everyone else looked completely at ease, although no one was laughing or looked happy.

  The door Noa suspected led to the Captain’s office opened and two people emerged. The first was Captain Owens. She was taller than Noa had realized and the halo of dark gray and silver hair around her head made her look even taller. Despite the gray hair, Zsoka Owens looked vitally alive and young. Her dark brown skin glowed with health.

  The man behind her was just as tall and just as gray, yet he seemed older. His skin had a tanned, leathery look, while his brows were still dark and shadowed his eyes. His chin and thin cheeks were stippled with short gray whiskers. This had to be Captain Owens’ Chief of Staff, Masud Magorian. Lots of people said he was the real captain. Cai had laughed at the idea. “Zsoka Owens would resign before she would let anyone tell her what to do. She won the chair because she was so honest. No one wanted another Antonio Tyler manipulating their way to a comfortable life with all the trimmings.”

  What little Noa knew about Captain Owens seemed to support Cai’s beliefs. She didn’t wear glamorous, expensive clothes. She didn’t go to tankball games just because she could, not even when Nicky Bathen broke Quiver Sheenan’s long-standing goal record. Her captaincy was smooth and unremarkable, without the crises that had crushed so many captains before her.

  Except now, Captain Owens had her own emergency. Did she even believe it was one? Noa held her breath. Now she would find out, she hoped, what the Captain really believed.

  Captain Owens didn’t sit down. Neither did anyone else and those who were sitting got quickly to their feet. Magorian beckoned to another man, who hurried up and spoke quietly in his ear and handed him something. Then Magorian looked at Owens.

  Captain Owens looked around the room. “Can anyone tell me what happened forty minutes ago?”

  Magorian pointed to Ottman. “Your people were closest, Ottman. I see you have a couple of them with you. Your theory?”

  “It’s too early to say for certain,” Ottman said smoothly. “A projectile of some sort broke loose. Most likely it was under pressure, which explains the velocity and the damage.”

  “There have been fatalities?” the Captain asked.

  “Two that we know of,” someone else in the room said. “We’re still establishing that.”

  Noa drew in a long, deep breath.

  “It could have been worse,” Magorian said softly. “The puncture was sealed?”

  Ottman shrugged again. “A patch was added.”

  Noa breathed in again. They were making it sound as if it was a minor thing.

  The Captain looked at a group of people bunched up at the side of the room. “As our only astro-physicists, can you explain what happened?”

  “At this time, no,” the man at the front of them said. “Information is sketchy. It’s too soon. The Wall District institute is insisting it was a simple maintenance thing, as Ottman said. An object under pressure came loose. We don’t know enough yet to confirm or deny that.”

  Noa spoke before she realized she was going to. “Are you all crazy? That thing came from outside the ship! The sides of the hole were bent inward! How can you believe it was an internal screw up? How can you even think that?”

  She swallowed the rest of her protest when everyone turned to look at her, including Magorian and the Captain.

  After a tiny silence that seemed to last forever, the Captain said, “And you are…?”

  “Noa Doria, ma’am,” Leuthar said stiffly. “Mechanical Engineer with the Fourth Wall Institute. She is very upset. Her friend was one of the fatalities.”

  “I see.” Captain Owen gave her a small smile. “You have my sympathies, Noa Doria.”

  “I don’t want them,” Noa said hotly. People gasped. She ignored them. “I don’t want anyone’s sympathy if that means the real reason Daniel died gets buried under a mountain of Caver bullshit.”

  The gasps this time were even louder. She heard someone snigger.

  Neither the captain nor Magorian looked shocked. They didn’t look surprised at all.

  “How is it you know the edges of the hole were bent inward?” Magorian asked sharply.

  “Because I was right up next to it,” Noa replied.

  Magorian’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who patched the first hole,” he said slowly.

  “First hole?” Noa repeated. She brought a hand to her head, as her temples throbbed. “It went straight through,” she breathed.

  Magorian and Captain Owens looked at each other.

  Captain Owens straightened. “All other priorities are superseded until a full investigation is completed. I want every profession’s input into what happened, projections on future incidences and proposed courses of action. Weiler, your Forum coordinators can pool the input and build the report.”

  There was a shuffle of feet as they reacted. In this room, with these high ranking officials, they were being careful, so Noa couldn’t tell if they were upset about the Captain’s demand they do nothing but investigate until they were done.

  Magorian pointed. “Paderau Zingle, please stay. Bannister, you, too.”

  The man who had spoken for the astro-physicists nodded.

  Then Magorian pointed at Noa. “You stay, too, please.” He lifted his chin. “Everyone else, thank you for coming. I want the combined investigation report on my desk inside forty-eight hours.”

  Still no overt reaction. Everyone filed silently out of the big room, leaving Noa alone with the Captain, her Chief of Staff and two senior advisors.

  Magorian pointed at her and crooked his finger. “You. Come closer. I don’t want to shout.”

  Noa’s stomach cramped. The sweat at her temples and under her arms prickled hotly. She swallowed and moved closer to where Captain Owens stood at the front of the room. Moving, though, made it worse. Her throat worked. Her innards seemed to sway wildly around.

  Noa swallowed and put her hand over her mouth, looking around wildly for a recycle maw.

  Magorian’s eye
s widened. “Out in the main office, on the far wall,” he snapped.

  Noa shoved the door open with the palm of her hand and navigated around the desks outside, her jaw clamped against the wave of nausea. She just barely made it. She heaved into the open mouth of the recycler, her whole body cramping with it.

  Someone at the desks she had passed made a soft, disgusted sound.

  More people spoke quietly behind her.

  Noa hung onto the lip of the recycler, dizzy and not sure if she had finished yet. Slowly, the spasms faded and she realized that the sick feeling left in her gut was horror over what she had just done.

  “Here.” A sterilizing cloth was held in front of her.

  Noa took it and wiped her face and mouth, the back of her neck and her throat. The astringent chemical in the cloth evaporated instantly, making her skin feel cooler.

  The recycler removed the last of the lingering odor, too.

  Magorian leaned against the wall next to the recycler as she wiped. “It is amazing what terrors we can overcome when we feel strongly enough about something, isn’t it?”

  His lack of scorn or anger gave her the courage to respond truthfully. “Leuthar and Ottman are Cavers. They were lying to you. I couldn’t let that go.”

  Magorian didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at the loose skin on the back of his hands. “I grew up with Ottman. He was my best friend.”

  Fresh horror touched her. “I didn’t mean to malign your friend.”

  “How does truth malign a man?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested in her answer.

  Noa’s mouth was dry. “I…er….”

  Magorian shook his head. “Ottman and his people, including Leuthar, are very good at keeping the ship running smoothly, regardless of their beliefs.”

  “Then you knew they were Cavers?”

  “We do, and we make allowances for that when dealing with them.”

  Noa hung her head. “Then I just embarrassed everyone, including myself, for no reason.”

  “On the contrary, you flagged your own beliefs for the entire ship to hear and it will be remembered by those who note such things.” Magorian gave her a short smile. “I need an engineer with an open mind. I need their input. You are to hand.”