With one foot on the top rung, she flipped around and began the climb down. “Don’t hold your breath. You’ve probably run into the brick wall of Alsean warrior honor.”
“She’s almost as exasperating as you are. But a joy to teach. You really lucked out with her. You realize that, right?”
In more ways than one, Ekatya thought. Rahel did indeed hold an impressive amount of potential, but right now her greatest service was in the way she had been a catalyst for Lhyn’s newfound confidence. Ekatya wasn’t sure whether it was the act of teaching, or the fact that Rahel hadn’t known her before the torture and didn’t treat her any differently because of it, but that relationship was exactly what Lhyn needed now.
“I do realize it.” She stepped off the last rung and began walking toward the nearest shaft access. “I lucked out with her instructor, too. I’m hoping I can convince that instructor to reprise her role in the future. Rahel’s only the first, you know. There’ll be others.”
“You might have to offer that instructor better pay,” Lhyn said. “I heard there was something in the contract about taking it out in trade, but there hasn’t been enough trade.”
Ekatya let out a startled bark of laughter. “Is that why you were killing me at the door?”
She didn’t hear Lhyn’s response, too focused on the worst sound imaginable at the moment: that of power returning to the lift shaft.
Fucking Hades, she hadn’t told Zeppy she was climbing out. He didn’t know she was in here.
“Serrado to Przepyszny,” she shouted, automatically cutting off her call with Lhyn. “Power it down! I’m in the shaft!”
She ran, frantically cataloguing any possible metal in her clothing or pockets and thanking the Shippers that buttons had gone out of style in Fleet uniforms.
Oh, no, her pad. She ripped open the sleeve pocket and fumbled it out just as the magnetic field came up to full strength. The pad was yanked from her fingers with enough force to sting and flew straight to the wall, sticking with a clang that reverberated in her ears.
Had that still been in her sleeve, she would have been pulled off balance and probably fallen—which would have been very, very bad, she thought as the lift car’s external lights came on. She reached a maintenance alcove, barely deep enough to hold a body, and threw herself into it with one second to spare.
The car roared past, ruffling her hair with the speed of its passage. She leaned back to check for any other cars, then jumped out and set a new speed record to the nearest access door. With her heart hammering in her ears, she tumbled into the blessed safety of a chase and slammed the door behind her as the lift shaft went dark again.
Leaning against the door, she caught her breath and mumbled, “Better decisions my ass.” Resting her brain during dinner had done her no good at all. Lhyn was going to tear a strip out of her hide, and she had no excuses.
“Captain! Are you all right?” Zeppy sounded frightened.
Ekatya inhaled deeply and schooled her voice to sound normal. “Well, I’m still three-dimensional. No thanks to whoever failed to notify me that the repairs were complete.”
“Murray didn’t tell me, he must have—Captain, I’m sorry. I’ll bust him down to sewage maintenance. He should have known better, I don’t know why—” He paused and spoke with slightly more calm. “Thank the Seeders you weren’t hurt.”
It wasn’t entirely Murray’s fault, and Ekatya gave Zeppy points for not mentioning her own failure. While it was true that protocol required warning her before resuming lift operations, it was also true that she had been shockingly careless.
“Thank the ship designers for those maintenance alcoves,” she said. “Though I think they could be a little deeper.”
He made a choked sound. “They’re not made for anyone overweight, that’s a fact. You’re sure you’re all right?”
She closed her eyes, remembering the wind that had blown past her with the high-speed passage of the lift. “I’m fine. But there’s a pad in that shaft that I’m not about to go back for.”
18
Prey
Murray threw his tools back in the kit, grumbling to himself. Commander Zeppy had read him the riot act, and fine, he should have called in the fix, but why wasn’t anyone pointing out that the captain shouldn’t have been in the damned shaft? If she’d stayed in the lift like any normal person, she wouldn’t have been in the slightest danger. It wasn’t his fault she decided to wander off like a drunken cadet.
“But no,” he mocked. “It’s hurry up and get it fixed, Murray, top priority, the captain’s in there, get it done.” He had found and fixed the problem in record time, and what had that earned him? The shit shift.
He slammed the lid on the kit, furious at being punished for such a small mistake. Grabbing the handle, he stood up—and slammed his bald head into an overhead pipe.
“Aah! Shit! Shit shit shit! Every damned time!” He dropped the kit and bent over, pressing the heel of his hand against his scalp. A vicious kick sent the kit onto its side, which made him feel better for half a second until the lid popped open, strewing tools all over the floor of the chase. He hadn’t latched it properly.
“Well, that’s perfect.” He examined his hand and rolled his eyes at the blood. That would be another scab for everyone to tease him over. Zeppy knew he hated working in the chases but sent him anyway because he was the best person to get the captain out of a stuck lift. Now he had a banged head, another mess to clean up, and an assignment doing sewage maintenance.
Zeppy had been so angry that he hadn’t let Murray get a word in edgewise about the strange cause of that power outage. In fifteen years of working Fleet ships, Murray had never seen anything like this. It looked like an animal had chewed through the main power conduit. But Fleet ships didn’t have stray animals running around, and even if something had chewed through the conduit, the resulting electrocution would have cooked it. He had no idea what could cause that kind of damage.
Once the pain in his head had died down to an aching throb, he knelt and began gathering up the scattered tools. A pair of grips had slid beneath the ramp covering a conduit in the floor, because that was just his luck. He went to his hands and knees with a grunt and reached for the handles poking past the edge of the ramp.
Something moved in his peripheral vision.
“What the—?”
A part of the wall detached itself and changed to the color of burnt wood. He froze, still with his hand extended, and stared at the alien creature not one meter away.
It looked gelatinous and might have fit into his toolbox if not for the proliferation of tentacles ringing the base of a bulbous, featureless body. Greenish flashes of light sparkled under its glistening skin as it slid along the wall toward him. A tube extended from the upper part of the body and waved back and forth, as if it were sniffing him.
“Fuck me sideways!” He threw himself backward. “Murray to—”
A whitish blob shot out and slapped onto his face, gluing his nose and mouth shut. Frantically he scrabbled at it, but it had already hardened into cement. Stretchy cement, he discovered during an involuntary gasp for air. He could open his mouth, but nothing came through.
A second blob splattered across his eyes. He squeezed them shut on impact, an instinctive act that might have saved his sight had this glue not hardened just as quickly. Blind and panicked, he flailed about, alternating between fruitless efforts to dislodge the suffocating cement and wild attempts to keep the alien away.
He was running out of oxygen when the heavy weight landed on his head, bypassing his windmilling arms and sending him over backward. The creature rode him down and scraped needle-sharp teeth into his scalp, right where he’d banged his head into the pipe.
With a muffled scream he grabbed at it, but his fingers could find no purchase on its gelatinous body. It was stuck to his head like a giant suction cup. Still he tried, driven by pure instinct, until his muscles gave out and his arms dropped to the floor.
; The last thing he felt was another weight jumping onto his chest.
19
Answers
Ekatya was making her way out of the chase when Lhyn called, worried about the abrupt end to their conversation. So soon after her own scare, she hadn’t been able to lie or even come up with a softened explanation.
The silence after her short description of events was ominous. She stood still, one hand on an overhead pipe as she waited for her comeuppance. Even expecting it, she was startled by the level of fury that blistered her ears.
Until Lhyn’s voice abruptly changed and she choked on her words.
“You can’t take chances like that! Do you know what happens to a tyree with a broken bond? Do you even think about what you’ll leave me with? If you’re going to kill yourself, do it for a good reason, not because you’re fucking bored!”
The shuddering breaths were worse than any anger. Ekatya would rather face six admirals and Director Sholokhov at a court-martial than hear Lhyn cry because of her.
“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “It was stupid and—” And she had been distracted while talking to Lhyn, which she was not about to say now. “I didn’t think.”
“No kidding.” Lhyn’s voice was steady once more, though considerably quieter. “So many times I’ve worried about you on dangerous missions. It never occurred to me to worry when you’re not even doing anything. If you die on your own damned ship because you’re being a grainbird, I’ll never forgive you.”
“That’s fair. I’d never forgive myself, either. Lhyn, I really am sorry.”
“I know. It’s a good thing I’m the one training Rahel and not you. I’ll do a better job.”
The laugh burst out before she could stop it, likely fueled by her near miss. To her great relief, Lhyn chuckled as well, and she knew the storm was over. All in all, she had gotten off lighter than she deserved.
Two hours later, she sat in her office, still haunted by the memory of that call. She had never given much thought to the risks of her job, beyond training and planning and taking all precautions to minimize them. In her line of work, she couldn’t worry about the risks. That led to hesitation, and hesitation led to failure.
But it wasn’t just her own life she risked now. Lhyn was tied to her through the first-ever Gaian tyree bond. There was a physical and mental cost to breaking it. And she had nearly done it because she couldn’t bear not being in control.
With a groan, she rested her elbows on the desk and rubbed her face. “You are a grainbird,” she muttered.
Her desk display lit up with an intraship call from Lieutenant Kitt. She sat back and tapped it on. “Tell me you have good news.”
“Well, I have news. I can’t say it’s good.”
“Two section chief meetings in one day,” Rahel said as she sat next to Commander Lokomorra in the briefing room. “Is this normal?”
“Nope. But it’s not abnormal, either.”
“That’s helpful.”
Dr. Wells pulled out the chair on her other side. “It happens in crisis situations, when information is unfolding as we go.”
Commander Zeppy flopped into the chair across from her, blowing out a long breath as he landed. He looked weary, and his emotional signature was far removed from the usual confidence that Rahel sensed from him. When Captain Serrado entered the room, he watched her with a spike of worry and guilt.
Oddly, the captain was exuding a similar level of guilt. She met Zeppy’s eyes with a small smile, communicating something that relieved him but not her.
Rahel would have given a great deal to understand what that was all about.
Eight other section chiefs filed in and took their places around the table, followed by the last one escorting someone new. Commander Kenji, chief of data systems, was a striking man with golden eyes and bronze skin. His long black hair was tied in an uncountable number of tiny braids, and he was as peaceful emotionally as he looked on the surface.
At his side was a younger woman Rahel had never seen before. She moved with a jerky, contained energy, and her hair was a thick mass of tight curls that added to the sense of constant motion.
“Commander Kenji, will you please introduce the lieutenant?” Captain Serrado said as they sat down together.
“Certainly. This is Lieutenant Kitt, my star data jacker. You heard her voice on the mission team.”
Kitt sketched a nervous wave. She had seemed calmer on a ghost ship with unknown life forms than she was in this room.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” Dr. Wells said in a friendly tone. “Good to see you when you don’t need my services.”
“Hi, Doc.” Kitt’s anxiety eased. “So they do let you out of the medbay.”
“Only for meals and meetings.”
Toward the end of the table, Shigeo chuckled. “That’s what you get for choosing medicine. You should try botanics; we get to wander all over the ship.”
“Yes, but you deal with fertilizer.”
Kitt’s smile was quick but genuine, and her emotional signature relaxed further.
Having recently been the new person in this room, Rahel was fascinated to see the section chiefs offering the same courtesies to Kitt that they had to her. She had thought they were treating her differently because she was Alsean, but now realized they simply wanted to put any new person at ease. It made sense when she thought about it: nervous people were not as reliable when giving information.
“Kitt is exceptionally good at cracking encryption,” Commander Kenji said. “She’s also good at scanning large numbers of files and pulling out relevant data. Rather than have me read through everything she’s found and then relay it to you, I thought it would be easier to have her report to us directly.”
Commander Cox leaned forward. “You’ve cracked the captain’s logs?”
“I have. I know where they got that teracite.” Kitt slipped a data wand into the port at her seat and tapped the deskpad. At the center of the table, a holographic star system popped into existence. Three gas giants orbited a yellow star, each surrounded by a dizzying array of moons. The outermost planet sported a magnificent set of rings, but it was the second planet that drew everyone’s attention when a bright green box appeared around its largest moon.
“Oh, don’t tell me.” Commander Jalta slapped her hand on the table and scowled at the image. “The Enkara Preserve? Those flaming shits!”
“What’s the Enkara Preserve?” Zeppy asked.
“A moon teeming with lifeforms we haven’t yet catalogued. It’s protected under the Non-Interference Act. No sentient life, but buckets of non-sentient marine species—one of the most diverse and rich worlds we’ve ever found. It’s off limits to anyone without a research permit. And getting a permit is only slightly easier than getting the Seeders to answer a prayer.”
“I take it that means the penalty for an unauthorized landing is high,” Shigeo commented.
“Prison term, huge civil fine, and lifetime revocation of travel permits,” Cox said. “Now I understand why they corrupted their nav logs.”
“And didn’t call for help when they were in trouble,” Lokomorra added.
“But they didn’t just land.” Jalta’s fair skin was tinged with pink. “They mined. They tore up the substrate for teracite. Who knows how much damage they caused?”
“Then they brought some of that life back with them,” Captain Serrado said. “Organisms that killed them and destroyed their ship functions within forty-eight hours. Lieutenant?”
Kitt sat up straighter. “They didn’t figure out what was going on until it was too late. It started with little things. Doors losing power, so they had to open them manually. Lights going out, sections losing gravity. Then it hit their engines, and while half the crew was busy with that, the other half died when the atmospherics failed in their sleeping quarters and the alarm didn’t trip.” She looked over at Dr. Wells. “Including their medic. It was the night of his last log entry. Nobody went into the medbay after that.”
> Wells nodded.
“That’s why we didn’t find many bodies,” Kitt continued. “They don’t have a morgue, and with power going out all over, they didn’t want to use the freezer. So they stuck them in an airlock and cut the power to it.”
“Sensible,” Dr. Wells said.
“Sensible?” Down at the end of the table, the chief of engineering was appalled. “Sensible would be having the most basic failsafes built in so people don’t die in their sleep! How do they lose oxygen flow to an entire section and not notice?”
“It’s not a military ship,” Kitt answered. “The captain was the owner, and I don’t think he spent much time drilling them on disaster response. I also don’t think he spent much money on safety controls and redundant systems.”
The chief grumbled his disgust. “How did these people ever get a Fleet contract?”
“Lowest bidder,” Serrado said, her gaze on Kitt.
“They’d already lost five crew and things were going wrong all over. That was when they finally checked the cargo bay and figured out they had what they called an infestation.”
“Assheads,” Jalta snapped.
“Their words, not mine.”
“I understand that. Sorry, keep going.”
Kitt’s curls bounced as she nodded. “The captain still thought they could handle it, which is why he didn’t call for help.”
“Plus his profit from the teracite sale doubled. He was dividing it by six instead of eleven.” Lokomorra raised his eyebrows as every head turned to him. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one thinking like a black marketeer.”
“You’re the only one who does it naturally,” Rahel murmured.
He glanced over, briefly showing both dimples. On her other side, Dr. Wells leaned in and whispered, “You’re going to explain that to me later.”
“I think Commander Lokomorra might be right,” Kitt said. “He didn’t say as much in his logs, but I got the feeling the captain wasn’t too sorry about losing low-level grunts. Especially when two of them were hired just for the teracite mining. Anyway, what they didn’t realize until the end was that all of these problems weren’t from their accidental passengers randomly messing up systems. They were looking for food.”
Resilience Page 16
