The False Admiral

by Sean Danker

  “Oh, Founder.” Nils stepped back, rapping on his faceplate with gloved knuckles. “I don’t know anything about Ganraen colony ships . . . This is a lower deck . . . We might be near the reserves, but I don’t know how to find them.”

  “What about emergency masks?”

  “The temperature’s equalized. It’d buy you a few minutes at most, but it wouldn’t help us solve anything. The exposed skin would freeze. I don’t know if your suit could maintain your core temperature. You’d lose half your face.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, turning around. “We just came through an airlock. There have to be pressure suits.”

  “Oh!” Deilani understood.

  The life of a colonist inevitably involved the occasional trip outside. On a planet without atmosphere, most of the colonists would have their own suits, but there still had to be something for general use. There were large lockers for emergencies in an alcove just to the left of the airlock’s inner door. Two of them. Perfect.

  Deilani and I wrenched them open and pulled the suits out.

  “A suit in a suit,” Nils said, but the relief in his voice was evident. He’d been afraid we were going to drop right in front of him.

  As Deilani and I clambered into the emergency pressure suits, I knew this was yet another temporary fix. Salmagard and Nils would need air next. I got the helmet settled in place, pressurized the suit, and disengaged my EV helmet. There. I was safe for the moment, and a look at Deilani told me she’d managed as well. The Ganraen suits were primitive compared to Evagardian ones, but we weren’t complaining.

  Besides, playing dress-up was my specialty.

  “Now what?” Nils asked, looking around at the bleak Ganraen bulkheads and ceiling.

  The interior of the colony ship was more inviting than Captain Tremma’s freighter. There were fewer sharp edges, padding on the bulkheads, and the deck was solid plastic instead of metal grating that rattled underfoot. It still wasn’t as elegant and comfortable as an Evagardian vessel, but after the freighter it felt like unspeakable luxury. And there was power.

  “Something’s obviously wrong here. Security should be all over us. The damage in the airlock looked serious, but if we’ve still got power, we’ve got options. Do the guide paths work?” I asked Nils.

  “Do Ganraen ships even have them?” He sounded dubious.

  “A colony ship would. It’s too big. People couldn’t get around without them. There’s a console— Nils, you do it. I can’t with all these gloves.”

  “Will it still work on emergency power?”

  “If you want to live, you better find out.”

  Nils fiddled with the Ganraen console. “I don’t know these systems,” he muttered. “This is stupid. Why would they make their emergency systems so counterintuitive? And why’s it so slow?” He prodded the screen and swiped through menus, making his selections.

  In time he was able to make a blue line light up on the deck. We followed it. The bulkheads were light gray, which wasn’t very cheery, but it was all clean and new.

  “This is starting to really bother me,” Deilani said.

  “Wearing two suits?”

  “That there’s no one here,” she snapped. “Reckon they abandoned this unit when it sank?”

  “I didn’t see the others,” I said.

  “Probably because of the mist,” Nils said. “Maybe they all sank.”

  “What others?” Deilani asked.

  “A Ganraen colony is actually four ships; they split apart on the planet’s surface. The manufacturing ship, the mining ship, the science ship, and the executive ship.” I paused in a junction, looking in either direction. Deserted corridors stretched away, littered with debris. This didn’t look right. It couldn’t be good.

  “Which one is this?” Deilani’s voice was small, almost hesitant. She was trying to stay in the game, but she couldn’t forget that she’d been only minutes from suffocation. I felt the same way. Detached. The empty ship couldn’t mean anything good for us, but I hardly felt worried. I was just glad to be breathing.

  I was looking at this situation as if it was someone else’s problem.

  “I don’t know. This is a weapon burn. What are these marks?” I ran gloved fingers over the blemishes on the bulkhead, lit up by soft glow panels on the ceiling.

  “Something’s corroded the plastic,” Nils noted. “What did they build this ship out of? Are the Ganraens really that broke? Kind of sad. They better hope the cease-fire holds.”

  The trainees had been expecting, in the best-case scenario, a cool welcome from the Ganraen colonists.

  But finding no one at all—this was unthinkable. The damage to the ship and occasional bloodstains weren’t helping.

  “Looks like there was some civil disobedience,” Nils said, nudging some shredded and bloody clothes with his foot. There were signs of violence and mayhem everywhere, but no bodies. Grav carts were overturned in the corridors, hatches were left open, and the carbon shields over emergency Klaxon releases were broken. We were looking at the aftermath of some kind of major incident, but for the life of me, I couldn’t guess what kind.

  “These people are animals,” Nils said.

  “The colonist life isn’t easy,” I told him distractedly. His theory wasn’t crazy, but I didn’t think he was right.

  Nils looked through an open hatchway, then back at me. “You think the people on this ship got out of hand, and leadership depressurized it to get them in line?”

  “To get them in line they’d have needed to repressurize it at some point,” I said.

  Nils swallowed. “I guess so. What is this stuff?”

  “It looks like ash,” I said, kneeling on the deck. My joints ached from the withdrawal. Grimacing, I ran a gloved finger through the stuff on the floor. “Or something like it.”

  “What were they burning?”

  “How could they burn anything? Where’s the fire-suppression foam? None of this makes sense.” I got up, shaking my head. I turned and looked back down the long corridor. It was a mess—a mess like you’d expect to see in a loss of gravity. But we were on a planet. This gravity couldn’t be switched off.

  “Where’s security?” Nils demanded suddenly. “I want to be detained.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy.”

  “I just want to see another person,” Deilani said. “I keep thinking about how Tremma ended up.”

  I was thinking the same.

  “I’ve got a weapon on the deck,” Salmagard reported, and I turned to look. A pistol from a Commonwealth maker lay beside two heavy plastic impact cases, probably containing survey tools. It was a compact handgun, not the kind that the ship’s security would’ve carried. It was something a civilian would have for self-defense.

  “Leave it—we don’t want them to think we’re hostile.”

  “There’s nobody here to think it,” Deilani said, sounding lost.

  “It’s a big ship, Lieutenant. Look, there aren’t any bodies—so if there was a fight, someone’s cleaned up after it.”

  “Doesn’t look cleaned up—did you see those rooms back there?” she replied. “Either there was a war in here, or somebody picked up the ship and shook it. It’s a disaster.”

  “It’s a disaster with power, and we’re guests in it. Do we need to take this lift?”

  “No, we should be able to get to engineering from down here.”

  “Did you set the path right?”

  “How should I know?” Nils sounded disgusted.

  Our confusion only grew when we reached engineering. We’d assumed there had to be a maintenance reason for the depressurization—perhaps temperature control—and I’d hoped to find techs in pressure suits working to get things in order.

  Instead we found nothing but empty rooms and unmanned consoles. The hatches to the reactor chamber stood
wide open. Aside from a few items knocked about, everything seemed to be normal. There was no blood, and no sign of weapons fire. Everything that mattered was in its place. Even the chairs at their stations looked neat and orderly.

  “Can’t we get a break?” Nils groaned.

  “This is a break, Ensign. The consoles are online. Activate the seals and get some air in here before you run out.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “I don’t see anybody telling us not to.” I shrugged. “If anybody tries to stop you, let me know. I’ll talk to them.”

  “I’m not even going to think about the political ramifications here. I’m just following orders.”

  “Do what he says,” Deilani told him.

  “Following orders,” Nils repeated firmly. “That’s what I do. Because that excuse has worked so well throughout history.”

  I let him whine; it was his way of coping.

  I turned to Salmagard, catching her eyeing her readout. We were cutting this close. I could only hope Nils could figure out the Ganraen systems before he turned blue.

  “Private, are you all right?”

  “Just conserving oxygen, sir.”

  “Keep an eye on the ensign while he works. Lieutenant, with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to look around a little. Keep in touch.”

  There were tools left out as if forgotten. A broken monitor. There were dents in some of the bulkheads near the airlock, and it was nearby that we found the body.

  “He can’t be alive, can he?” Deilani said.

  We stood in an open hatchway to a control room. In a chair on the far end was a figure sitting up, his back to us. We’d have missed him if I hadn’t seen his limp hand dangling over the armrest.

  “Not unless he’s wearing an invisible pressure suit,” I replied.

  “He must’ve been dead before they depressurized.”

  “Safe bet. There’s a suit over there.” I pointed.

  “I’m in the system, Admiral,” Nils reported over the com.

  “Keep at it, Ensign. Are you all right?”

  “Got a few minutes left,” he replied distractedly.

  “What about you, Private?”

  “Four percent.”

  “Deilani, take this suit to them. I’ll find another one.”

  “What about this guy?” she asked, taking the suit from me.

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “You found someone?” Nils asked, sounding hopeful.

  “Just a body. Stay focused.”

  “What is going on?” he moaned.

  “Focus. Take that to him. There’ll be another one in the next core chamber. I’ll get it.” These suits were meant to protect techs from radiation if something went wrong, but they’d work well enough for getting breathable air to Nils and Salmagard.

  Deilani and I split up. I resisted the urge to enter the control room and examine the body; there were more pressing things to do. I found another suit, but before I could return to the trainees, Nils let out a shout of triumph over the com, and the doors dropped, sealing me in.

  “I’ve got it!”

  “What have you got?” I asked warily. I noticed my right hand reaching back, like I was wearing trousers and a jacket, and I had a waistband with a pistol in it.

  But I was wearing a pressure suit, and I’d gotten rid of my gun hours ago.

  I swallowed, looking around the chamber. There were only two sets of doors, both firmly sealed. I might be able to get out through a maintenance hatch, but even if I did, I’d still have Private Salmagard’s combat scanner to think about.

  “The diagnostic’s running. It’s deciding which parts of the ship are compromised,” Nils said.

  Ah. So he hadn’t sealed me in deliberately; this was just part of the system. That was a good decision on his part; the suit I was holding was his lifeline. I let my breath out slowly. I wasn’t sure when the trainees would’ve found the time to make a plan to detain me once we got here, but they were resourceful. They could’ve done it.

  But they hadn’t. Maybe we finally had trust.

  “I’ve got it spiraling out from engineering . . . recyclers online. It’ll take a few minutes to get air pumped in, but we should be all right. It’ll take even longer to get the temperature back up, but I can deal with being cold. I think we’re good, Admiral. We’re in business.” Nils was elated, and I didn’t blame him. For the first time since we’d come out of our sleepers, things were looking up.

  “Contact the bridge. Let them know we’re here, and why we’ve done this—we don’t want them to shut it down.”

  “On it. Um—wow, I don’t even know what to say. Uh, reactor section to bridge. Reactor section to bridge, we’re a little low on air down here, so we’re . . . Admiral, there’s no one on the com. I’m showing no active stations,” Nils said. “My terminal is the only one on this entire boat that isn’t idle.”

  “That can’t be right.” I looked around as though there was someone I could glare at for an explanation. It would take time to kill that sense of entitlement.

  “Where could they be?” Deilani asked.

  “Town meeting?” Nils suggested.

  “Try the security net, look through the feeds. Find me someone,” I ordered.

  “Security systems are locked. Or down. I can’t tell with this thing. Admiral, these systems are ridiculous.”

  “Is it because we’re on emergency power?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m getting an error code. But I can’t tell if something’s broken or if I’m just locked out.”

  The doors reopened; this part of the ship had been declared intact, and life support was back online. I checked the Ganraen suit’s atmosphere gauge. It still wasn’t safe to breathe, but it would be soon.

  “If this is a ghost ship,” Deilani was saying, “how did it get this way?”

  “Something must have gone wrong, something that made the colonists relocate to one of the other ships. Crowded, but better than whatever’s the matter here?” Nils speculated.

  “We’ve got air and power. What more do you want?” I asked, making my way back through the gray corridors.

  I found them all clustered around the console, looking intently at the readouts. They were as anxious as I was to get their helmets off. I dumped the suit over the console and waited with them. Why not? They weren’t going to be able to concentrate until the helmets were deactivated anyway.

  I couldn’t make sense of what we’d walked into. Even I couldn’t have predicted exactly how the colonists would have reacted to us—but I’d been ready for anything. Finding no one was about the only thing I didn’t have an answer for. Typical.

  My suit declared the air safe to breathe, so I broke the seal and stripped out of the Ganraen pressure suit. Deilani was doing the same, and Nils and Salmagard had already collapsed their helmets back into their neckpieces. It was freezing cold, but none of us cared.

  How long had we had those helmets up? Twelve hours? Eighteen? More? I didn’t know. The others breathed deeply and appreciatively. I did too, and rubbed at my face—I always seemed to develop an itch when I had a helmet on. It was cold, but it would warm up quickly.

  “I can’t believe it,” Nils said, looking down at his gloves. “We made it.”

  Deilani was giving me a funny look, and Salmagard was smiling.

  Finally, they appreciated me. Then Deilani’s expression became one of suspicion, and the moment was gone. I cleared my throat.

  “If there’s no security, we just have to get creative. If there’s anyone else on this ship, they must be in pressure suits, so track active suits.”

  “You got it, Admiral.” Nils grinned at me, popped his knuckles, and turned back to the console. This from the guy who’d been ready to throw in the towel j
ust a few short hours ago? Good. “The only active suits I’m showing are in this room.”

  “Then there we go. We’ve got the place to ourselves. And the other ships don’t know we’re here, because in a place like this, who would just come walking up to the door? Security’s down because it doesn’t need to be up, that’s all.”

  “Supposing there was some kind of conflict,” Deilani said. “And these people fought among themselves—what would they do with the bodies?”

  “Each ship will have an infirmary and a morgue,” I told her. “There, or incinerated—depending on how long ago this happened.”

  “How can we tell?”

  “We can’t unless we can get into the computers. If it’s been in vacuum the whole time, it’ll be preserved. But that fellow in the other bay didn’t make it to the morgue. We should probably go see why,” I suggested.

  “Is that safe?” Nils asked.

  “How long are your decon nanomachines good, Lieutenant?”

  “A while longer. Let’s have a look.”

  We retraced our steps, this time with Salmagard and Nils in tow. The body hadn’t moved. Nils stayed by the doorway. Squeamish?

  The sidearm hanging from the Ganraen’s hand didn’t leave much uncertainty about how the hole had gotten in his head. He had been about Nils’ age, and his uniform was that of a tech.

  “Why?” Deilani asked, turning very pale.

  I looked at the console in front of the dead man. “I think he’s the one that vented the ship.”

  “He’ll thaw out now. Should we do something with him?”

  “Leave him. The colonists wouldn’t like us touching their people, but they must have left in a hurry if they didn’t take him with them.”

  “What do we do?” Deilani was looking to me for an answer.

  “We get to the bridge and see if we can get in touch with the other ships.”

  The trainees were starting to realize that maybe we weren’t out of danger yet. The urgent but straightforward threat of asphyxiation had been replaced by a new threat, this one more ambiguous. Were we in danger from the colonists? Ordinarily we wouldn’t be, but circumstances on this ship were anything but ordinary. These people could be a threat, and if they weren’t, what about whatever had driven them off this ship? We didn’t know. During our trek across the surface, this colony had represented safety.