Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Kevin J. Anderson

  She slid the silver capsule aside so she could get at her navigation controls. “Let’s go find it, BeBob.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Elisa Enturi

  As night settled in on Qhardin, the modular sky hotel sank into the clouds where the running lights illuminated the swirling chemical mists with an eerie glow. Meanwhile, Oni Delkin grudgingly but diligently moved around the modules, running standard diagnostics but not knowing why.

  Anil and Shar had crafted a fine meal for the guests as well as the visiting scout pilot. Tel Robek dove into the full five-course meal in the common area and even asked for seconds. Elisa told the scout pilot to eat and drink whatever he liked. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Robek. I need to check something before we send you back to Mr. Iswander.” The pilot didn’t mind. He occupied himself with the wine list, checking selections of expensive vintages he had always wanted to try.

  After dinner, laughing and exhausted from their flying exercises, Candeen and Juvia went back to their quarters, wrapped up in their own company. Roland Kipps sat in the reading alcove, while Fourth amused himself by playing solitary games in the common room.

  Elisa was glad to find them all occupied, because she didn’t feel terribly sociable—not that she ever did. She remained tense after Lee Iswander’s disturbing message, flinching with every creak or unexpected noise she heard.

  She tracked down Delkin in the mechanic’s deck, which held the main processors, life-support systems, and levitation engines. When she entered, she caught the man sitting down and relaxing. Her voice was razor sharp. “How is the inspection going?”

  Embarrassed, he pulled himself to his feet. “Mostly done. I was just taking a break.”

  “You can take a break when you finish.”

  He shot her an annoyed look. “Why are you in such a hurry for this useless busy work? The modules are self-sufficient, and I checked all the systems when we assembled Cloud Nine less than two weeks ago.”

  “Then it’s time for the two-week check. I just received new information from Mr. Iswander. There may be a problem with the integrity of this unit.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, Delkin picked up his equipment again, then began walking around the mechanic’s bay, testing each one of the wall plate junctures and the union where this module connected to two others.

  “Safety and double safety—I know. Tolerances are set by paranoid people. Roamers used to put just about anything together and make it work, but Iswander Industries is a stickler. There’s nothing to worry about, honest.”

  He played a scanner over a support rib and a hull seam, rapped on the juncture with his knuckles to produce a satisfying metal sound.

  “Just keep checking,” she said.

  The engineer moved around the chamber, tested the electronic web that ran through the sandwiched hulls, the larger energy conduits, the life-support channels. Cloud Nine drew all its energy from three high-capacity power blocks. “Everything’s in peak shape, Elisa, just like I said.”

  She watched and waited. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  Delkin went over to the union of the modules where he ran the scanner around, then frowned as a sequence of green lights turned amber. He double-checked and triple-checked, then watched several readings turn red. “Hmm, that didn’t show up before. These two modules aren’t constructed properly. The combined seal isn’t as strong as it should be.”

  He traced the structural anchor from the seal, walking slowly around the opposite side of the module, scanning the smooth metal walls. Elisa watched him intently as he muttered. “This module shows a weakness. Something’s not put together right. The fusion of these plates, it’s …” He held up the scanner and rapped again with his knuckles. “Some kind of corrosion, a breakdown due to pressurization? Maybe something in the atmosphere of Qhardin?” He pounded harder on the metal, listening to the sound. “It should hold, though.” He struck one more time.

  A sudden crack zigzagged down the middle of the hull where one sheet had been joined to another. The two plates simply split apart, the crack widening to more than a foot in a fraction of a second.

  Delkin gaped, and the module’s internal pressure burst the hull plates out before he could utter a sound. The Cloud Nine engineer was sucked out into the open void, whipped into the swirling clouds. A full second later, his distant scream came from far out of sight.

  Elisa scrambled to find a stable grip. Air roared through the damaged module, scattering loose debris Delkin had left lying about. If she stumbled, she would plunge into the gas giant’s emptiness herself, but she held on, clawing for balance, dragging herself toward the nearest hatch.

  The breach destabilized the entire module complex, and the decks began to tilt. She reached the connecting passage and pulled herself through the airlock into the next module. On the opposite wall, the adjoining module connected to the mechanic’s deck begin to wrench apart.

  It was a cascade of problems, one tipping point, then a succession of disasters. Elisa realized that she had never done an emergency briefing with the guests because she never expected anything to go wrong. Even with the howling alarms, they had no evacuation plan, no muster point, no survival systems. She had intended to add those later. Cloud Nine had no escape pods, no emergency lifeboat. The only ships were Tel Robek’s one-man scout craft and Old Bessie the skybus.

  Poor planning. Poor management. Countless safety violations. She could already hear the ringing condemnations. Once word got out, her serious lack of judgment would be plain for all to see—but Elisa Enturi wouldn’t be the one to pay the price. Oh, she would certainly be sacked, if not convicted of criminal negligence … if she survived at all. Lee Iswander would take the blame for so many cut corners, so many improbable conclusions, misleading promises … obliviously placing innocent customers in danger, important customers.

  Iswander would be excoriated, ruined. He would lose all credibility. He might even end up in jail. And it was her fault.

  She sealed the airlock behind her and struggled into the community module. Behind her, roaring sounds came from the mechanic’s deck where the broken module continued to tear itself apart. The adjacent habitation module had come loose, its seal pulling apart. The four guests had their quarters there, but right now only Candeen and Juvia were back in their rooms. Roland Kipps and Fourth were in the community module.

  Once through the hatch, just as Elisa grabbed an anchored cabinet to secure herself, she watched as the habitation module ripped itself away, breaking its connection to the damaged mechanic’s deck. The entire module tumbled away from the core.

  Through the observation port, Elisa could see, just for a moment, the two women inside scrambling for safety … but there was no safety. The module wall was breached, the doorway gaping open. Juvia held on to the fringe, screaming, while Candeen was sucked out into the open gases. Without levitation engines of its own, the module dropped like a stone, vanishing into the depths. Both women were gone.

  Elisa gasped, her thoughts spinning. The lights flickered in the community module, but the automated alarms continued to blare. Only two of the four modules remained—but the damaged mechanic’s deck held the systems that kept them aloft, and now the Cloud Nine complex was failing. Life support would go next.

  They had to get out of here, but there was no way to escape—and she saw no way to cover up her own mistakes.

  Roland Kipps looked sick with panic. He staggered forward, clutching for balance, holding on to the tilting wall. Fourth stumbled after him, tripped and sprawled onto the sloping deck. The walls were shaking, but remained intact. For now. Elisa already saw some of the hull plates cracking, though. The complex was falling apart. The components couldn’t withstand the added stresses of the cascading disasters.

  Fourth scrambled to his hands and knees, then pulled himself to his feet by gripping the wall. His face was pale and slack. “What’s happening?” Then his eyes went wider. “Is it a hydrogue attack?”

 
; Kipps looked grim. “It’s hydrogues—has to be. They’ll blast us apart in the clouds.”

  Elisa caught her breath as an idea sparked through her mind. “Hydrogues … yes, yes it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rlinda Kett

  As the Curiosity flew into the Dhula system, homing in on the Ildiran distress call, Rlinda listened to the weakening transmissions from the dying crew. Qul Loar’nh was haggard, his skin tone blotchy, his cheeks sagging. His voice burbled as mucous filled his lungs from the continued radiation damage.

  “Two thirds of mm crew are dead, and the attenders are preparing the bodies. Eventually, the Solar Navy will find us, but they will not be in time. Even if they do, there is no way they can help us. The warrior kith succumbed first, but by being a halfbreed noble and warrior, I have more immunity. Our ship is adrift, life support failing. The engineers are all dead.”

  He drew a deep, rattling breath. “Under other circumstances, I might just have considered driving the reactor into overload and vaporizing all of us to end this pain … make a clean end.” His expression fell. “But our stardrive has failed, the reactors silent. I have no way of doing such a thing. We must linger … and die one by one. The thism among us is frayed. Some of the technicians have gone insane from brain damage caused by the radiation.” He shook his head. “That seems worse than this debilitating illness.”

  Behind him, the command nucleus was dim and empty. Half of the stations were empty. The warliner continued to drift, not far from the uninhabited gas giant. Loar’nh ended the transmission.

  Rlinda’s comm remained silent for some time as she flew closer, knowing the wrecked warliner was not far ahead. Finally, another transmission wave came in, and on the screen she saw the Ildiran commander’s hand barely twitching on the controls. His eyes were closed, his face slack. His head jerked from side to side with nerve and muscle convulsions. Loar’nh simply sagged and slumped, could not say a thing, and then sat motionless for the rest of the transmission. With an ache in her heart, Rlinda switched off the comm and ending that poignant silence. There was nothing more for her to see.

  Within the next hour she could see the Dhula gas giant ahead. Even though the warliner’s power systems had died down, she still detected a bright thermal image, giving off energy in the infrared, although surely everyone aboard was dead by now. Zan’nh and Jora’h had been right, sensing through the thism that the crew had perished, so they had felt no urgency in rushing out to find the damaged ship.

  But Rlinda cruised in, intending to investigate, take images, and install a beacon so Adar Zan’nh and his recovery crew could easily locate the ship—just as a favor, being a good neighbor.

  When the Curiosity closed in on the drifting warliner, she was surprised to see all the frenetic activity in the vicinity. Because she assumed the ship was just a drifting derelict, she approached with her running lights on, not attempting to hide. Her active sensors mapped out the vicinity in front of her, pinger pulses locking the specific position of the ornate alien warship as she decelerated.

  Rlinda had seen many Ildiran warliners, with their distinctively anodized hull plates and great extended solar-sail fins. But this warliner was crawling with black, angular forms that scuttled about on the exterior surface. The rear stardrive engines glowed a deep, dull red from residual radiation bleeding into space, but the skittering shapes outside the ship were not affected by either the radiation or the vacuum of space.

  Seeing the activity, Rlinda wondered if some massive salvage crew had claimed the wreck, but then she saw angular black ships drifting near the warliner’s bow: smaller, ominous-looking craft that hovered in place. More black figures emerged, like beetles that landed on the warliner’s outer hull and began disassembling the ship.

  Black robots.

  Rlinda felt cold and astonished. The Klikiss robots had been one of the most terrible enemies during the Elemental War. They had betrayed the human race and nearly destroyed the space military. Originally designed and built by the insect race, the black robots were malicious and destructive, but Rlinda had thought they had all been exterminated.

  Obviously not.

  Hundreds of black robots swarmed over the warliner, stripping it down for materials, taking away the components … possibly building something elsewhere. They had already peeled away a quarter of the hull, stacking and delivering the hull plates to the black geometric ships, which flew off while more robots continued to deconstruct the Ildiran vessel.

  “This is not a good day,” she muttered, just as a squeal of incomprehensible static and a chittering burst of language appeared over her comm speakers. The Curiosity’s sensors began to overload as a thousand directed transmissions hammered her shields. Two of the angular black ships began to accelerate toward her.

  Rlinda immediately activated her engines and her shields. “No, not a good day at all.”

  Stirred up like angry hornets, the black robots came after her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Daniel

  When the rescue ship arrived, Happiness was infested with the beautiful but deadly sporeflowers. They had blossomed in waves, magenta and white petals unfolding from the fleshy spore pod. The first wave had already shriveled and died, and the swollen pods burst to spew a deadly miasma into the valley.

  As the Roamer ship landed outside the village, Daniel pressed his hands against the observation ports. His eyes stung with tears as he searched for activity below. He saw smears of smoke from smaller fires, but most of the homes looked silent, shuttered up, empty … or dead. “Can’t you land any faster?”

  Olaf brought the ship down hard, crushing an entire patch of the grieka flowers which had infested a field. He was grim at the controls. “By the Guiding Star, it isn’t going to be difficult to collect a sample of spores so I can run tests.”

  “We need to know as soon as possible.” Daniel swallowed hard, pressing his face against the windowport. “One of the drugs we brought has to treat the spores. It’ll make my people immune.”

  Then Daniel spotted all the fresh mounds of dirt in the community cemetery. Four bearded men in dark garments and wide-brimmed hats worked shoulder to shoulder with shovels, digging more graves.

  As soon as the ship had come to rest, Daniel went to the hatch. “I need to see if my family’s all right. I have to check on them. We’ve got to help!”

  Before he could activate the controls, Olaf grabbed him by the collar. “Not yet! You know the air is thick with toxic spores, and you have no resistance.”

  Daniel spun, his face distraught. “Inject me with one of the broad-spectrum anti-allergens. It better be sufficient.”

  “No,” Olaf said firmly, and went to the supply cabinet. “I have complete decontamination gear for the three of us. We’ll suit up and distribute respirators and breathing masks for all the others.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I won’t wear a decontamination suit if my people aren’t.”

  Olaf blew air through his lips, annoyed but understanding. “I didn’t think so.” He pulled out a full facemask respirator. “This will seal around your face, eyes, mouth, and nose. Use it, at least for now. It should filter out all the spores and you can breathe. If you’re sick, you can’t help.”

  Bjorn broke in. “Could be that we three are the only healthy people on this world. If you have an allergic reaction and collapse, you’d leave altogether too much work for Olaf and me.”

  Daniel’s shoulders slumped, but he was anxious to get out there. Olaf handed him the bug-like facemask, the transparent shield. He adjusted the mask, made sure the gaskets sealed to his sweat-dampened skin. When he breathed, the dry air tasted of a faint chemical tang. His voice was muffled. “One look at us and my people will see us as monsters … maybe as bad as the Klikiss who would have come through the transportal.”

  Olaf and Bjorn both stepped into their decontamination suits, pulling the fabric up over their torsos and sealing them. “We might look like monsters, but we
will be rescuers.”

  Daniel stared at the ship’s access hatch. “Hurry. Can’t you hurry?” He pressed his hands against the observation windows again and saw several weak, stick-like neo-Amish heading toward the ship. They moved unsteadily, their faces swollen and blotchy. They could barely see through puffy eyes. “Or let me out there myself. I have to see my family.”

  All those graves …

  In the previous cyclical infestation of sporeflowers, one in three neo-Amish had died. What about his children, his wife?

  Olaf and Bjorn finished suiting up. “We’re ready now.”

  Olaf took a medkit with all the anti-allergen medications, while Bjorn fiddled with an analysis pack. “I’ll grab some sporeflowers and run tests. We may be able to determine the most effective blockers in less than fifteen minutes.”

  The ship’s hatch opened into a swirling yellow fog, thin, but poisonous.

  Wearing his traditional, but cleaned, clothes, Daniel strode out, adjusting the respirator across his face. He placed his wide-brimmed hat on his head, knowing how odd and frightening he must look.

  He recognized several of the men coming toward them. All had cloths wrapped around their mouths and noses, but their swollen eyes indicated how much their bodies were reacting to the spores. “Daniel, you came back! We thought you’d escaped and left us.”

  “I wanted to save you. I brought these people from the Confederation,” he said. “They have masks and medicines to cure us.”

  The neo-Amish men looked at one another. One said, “Father Jeremiah told us you had gone back to your real people, that you were never one of us.”

  “I went to get help,” Daniel insisted.

  “Jeremiah’s dead,” said one of the others, as if angry at the man’s stubbornness. “We buried him first, and now we’ve buried twelve more.”