Finder

by Suzanne Palmer

  He pulled himself together enough to record a message. “Blackcans rigged with bomb. Love, Mr. Anders,” he said, then sent it on broadcast.

  Marrick was pulling himself hand over hand down his safety cable toward his chair. “Release pilot alpha-position safety tether,” Fergus told Venetia’s Sword, and the pilot slammed into the ceiling beside Gilger, who was still struggling to get out from beneath the Luceatans.

  Licking his top lip, Fergus whispered to the computer. “Override code delta,” he told it. “Instruction set follows.” The instructions were short, precise, dangerous. “Set complete. Initiate,” he said at last. Then he closed his eyes, trying to ignore the shouting above him.

  Gilger was screaming. “This is my ship! Where do you think you can go? Back home to Mars?!”

  “Not from Mars,” Fergus managed. “I’m from Scotland.”

  “And what fucking backwater planet is that?”

  “It’s planet I Win and You Lose,” he said. To the ship, he added, “Voice response on. Narrate embedded instruction set.”

  Venetia’s Sword spoke up, the voice tinny and full of skips, like an ancient LP left just a little too close to the fusion engines. “Relocating position to outside the Halo for maximum safe rad-ad-ad-adius. Shutting down shipwide life support. Self-destruct activated,” it said. “Setting clock to minimum mandatory ten-minute window, per system regulations. Count begins. Six hund-undred—”

  “Get out if you think you can, assholes,” Fergus called up to the men plastered to the ceiling.

  Then he stopped listening for a while.

  Chapter 14

  The bridge of Venetia’s Sword was dark and cold when he woke up. He was alone, hanging upward in his chair, his hands white where the ties cut into them. The bridge doors had been forced open at the top using a zero-grav handhold bar that had been ripped from the ceiling.

  At least that went right, he thought. “End debug mode. Set artificial gravity to zero.” The sensation that he was being pulled apart eased.

  “Terminating debug mode,” the ship responded. “Self-destruct sequence simulation successful. Instruction code set delta fully ex-executed.”

  “What’s our position?”

  “We are point eight kilometers outside the Cernekan Halo at specified location.”

  “Status of life pods and life support?”

  “All life pod-ods have ejected. Life support is terminated in all areas of ship except bridge and bridge antechamber due to blast d-d-door compromise. Air and heat have been at operating minimum, below threshold for biological survival, for approximately two hours.”

  “Any people other than myself still aboard?”

  “No other people detec-tected.”

  Fergus could have cried in relief. “Us damaged two,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”

  Then he remembered the other thing: I’m still tied to a chair.

  “Ship,” he said, “does this chair release?”

  “Detachment of bridge fixtures is not recommended by the safety p-p-protocols.”

  He had to see if he could fix that stutter on the long jumps back to the Shipyard. Assuming he didn’t die here still tied to this chair or when Gilger came back with reinforcements to retake the ship. Fergus had already met enough Luceatans to last a lifetime. “Override protocols and release my chair,” he said.

  “Releasing.” There was a click, and he could just barely feel the chair shifting beneath him. He pushed off the floor with his bound feet, and the chair headed upward. Halfway to the ceiling, he said, “Ship? Gravity to 2 percent, reset to standard orientation.”

  He began to fall. So did the bar that had been torn free to wedge open the door. Land in my lap, he told it. Come on!

  It hit his knee. “Auuurgh,” he said, gritting his teeth. Straining at the ties, he scrabbled for the bar with his one good hand and managed to walk it up his leg far enough to wrap his fingers around it.

  The broken ends were sharp. He wedged the bar into the tie on his other hand, trying to cut it against the chair’s arm; he opened a long, ragged cut along the side of his wrist trying to get the angle right before he managed to worry the plastic tie into snapping. One bleeding hand free, he transferred the bar over and did his best to hold it steady as he cut the other tie, then the ones around his ankles.

  “Ship, gravity zero,” he said. Everything hurt so much, it was an effort to keep his voice steady. “Status of all ship mindsystems?”

  “Higher mindsystem is shut down due to d-damage caused by hostile actions,” the ship told him.

  “Is it revivable?”

  There was a long, worrisome pause before the ship responded. The cadence of its voice was different. “Mr. Ferguson?” it asked.

  “You remember me?”

  “You are a friend of my builders,” it said. “Are you here to return me home?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Venetia’s Sword said. The voice flattened out. “Cannot sustain higher mindsystem interaction. It has taken damage. Returning it to an inactive state.”

  “That’s okay. It’s enough to know you’re still in there,” Fergus said. “Run full integrity verification on all systems, then calculate a course to the jump point near Crossroads Station. We’re going home.”

  He put a foot gingerly against the console and pushed himself back through the damaged blast doors. The antechamber had a small bathroom for bridge crew. He pulled himself in and unclipped the suction tube from the wall. Necessity trumps dignity, he thought. If he turned the gravity back on, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand.

  From the swelling and discoloration, he was fairly certain one arm was fractured. The other was just thoroughly bruised. His hands were pins and needles as his circulation tried to make up for lost time. Adding to that, he had a couple of broken ribs, one tooth that seemed a lot less certain about its place in life, and a worrisome ache in his side that might be a kidney trying to break up with him.

  He did appear to be pissing a fair amount of blood.

  There was a small console in the bathroom. He unlocked it. “Are the systems checks finished?” he asked. The sooner he could leave this place, the better.

  “Estimated time remaining: six mi-minutes,” Venetia’s Sword informed him.

  Finished, he floated back out into the antechamber. It took several more minutes for the computer to bring atmosphere and heat back up to tolerable levels in the remainder of the ship. When the antechamber door status greenlit and he could pass through, he found garbage littering the corridor on the far side: mostly food wrappers and, inexplicably, a single boot. He floated through it all past the four discharged life pod bays. Goodbye, Arum Gilger, he thought. I hope Harcourt finds you before any of your other enemies do. He deserves you the most. And I hope he shares whatever’s left of you with Mari.

  The ship’s health bay’s door opened, and Fergus found himself face-to-face with his own belongings in a loose cloud around his empty pack. His own exosuit was there. The one he’d stolen from Vinsic’s man was spread out, parts of it shredded. He didn’t remember putting up a fight, but if he had, he felt a little better about losing.

  Beside it all, tucked in a corner, was a med-chamber with a built-in scanner. If he had to, he could spend the trip back to the Shipyard at Pluto healing inside it.

  “Systems check finished,” Venetia’s Sword announced. “No critical warnings. Thirteen intermed-med-mediate warnings. One system routine failed.”

  “Which system didn’t self-check?”

  “The water filtration subsystem.”

  Well, that probably wouldn’t kill him. “Okay. Any of the intermediate warnings flagged as safety hazards?”

  “There is an electrical anomaly in the cargo hold.”

  “What’s the danger potential?”

  “Eighty-eight percent
chance that cargo hold environmental mo-onitoring controls have failed. Sixty-two percent chance of mechanical failure of cargo stacking system. Seven percent chance of failure of cargo control head resulting in fire.”

  Fire? Seven percent? Shit. Even if it was 0.1 percent, he’d need to check it. “Will engaging engines affect the risk assessment?”

  “Normal and passive jump engines will not affect risk potential. Active jump will raise it by approximately fourteen percent.”

  “Okay,” he said. With the star system’s one active jump point farther in near Crossroads Station, he had time. “Initiate engines on course and monitor all systems for any changes in status. I’m going to go check out the electrical problem.”

  “Acknowledged,” the ship said. “Engines initiated. Protocol minimum speed until Cernekan space is c-cleared.”

  Eighty-eight percent chance of the environmental monitoring systems being down, the ship had said. Did that mean he could unwittingly open a door to vacuum? To an inferno? To a bay filled with nothing but carbon monoxide? The idea of having to go down into the cargo hold and deal with what was probably a trivial maintenance problem made him unhappy; the knowledge that if he was smart, he’d put his exosuit on before he did it was enough to make him want to weep.

  Pushing through the doorway, he retrieved his suit from where it gangled by the back wall and checked it over carefully. It seemed that Gilger’s people hadn’t done much more than pull it from his pack and power it on long enough to verify its genericness. Made on Mars, of course.

  Putting it on was excruciating. Fergus added broken toes to the list of Luceatan gifts he’d been left with. Fuckers.

  Once on, the snugness of the suit was surprisingly reassuring, except over his ribs. As the suit adjusted itself to him, he checked the oxygen and suit charge. Both were still nearly at full. No excuses, he told himself. Let’s do this. Then I can sleep until the only thing I’ve got left of Cernee is bad memories.

  There was a travel tube from the main interior of Venetia’s Sword down to the cargo area. The shaft ended in a small platform and a set of blast doors, which opened easily to his touch.

  He’d expected to feel the weight of the world lifting off his shoulders, his usual post-job got-away-again high, but instead his whole punching bag of a body felt like it had been stuffed with lead weights and despair. He wondered if Mari was still alive. Or Harcourt’s daughter. It felt bad to be leaving like this without knowing everyone was going to be okay.

  You’re too hurt to help anyone even if you could, he thought. Let it go. You aren’t a hero, and they’ll be better off without you getting in the way and dragging them into more trouble.

  Besides, he had a responsibility to the ship too.

  Fergus checked the readings on his suit display. At least the air was good, if chilly; none of the lights worked. He pushed up his face shield, seeing his breath in swirling clouds around him. In the light from the doorway, he spied the suspect electronics panel and shoved off toward it.

  Something fell at him in his peripheral vision. He was too startled to do much more than grope for the nearest handhold, but it hit him before he could turn himself around. Something sharp sliced into his back below his shoulder blade, and he cried out.

  He managed a half turn, saw the glint of the blade raised again, and shoved himself upward on the bar with his one good arm. The knife stabbed into his leg, ripping downward until his boot reflexively kicked the hand away.

  “Marsie bastard!” his attacker hissed at him.

  Graf? Fergus looked down and saw the dark-suited man launch himself upward. He couldn’t move away fast enough. Graf caught his damaged arm and yanked him painfully around, then placed the knife blade against his throat.

  “Order the ship to stop,” Graf said.

  “Ship, stop and hold position,” he said. He could feel the thrum of the ship’s engines subside even as his own heart beat like mad in his chest.

  “Ten minutes to get out of here, and you in complete control of the ship? There was no way we could have gotten to the escape pods if you hadn’t wanted us to. So you made it just hard enough to scare everyone into a panic. Very smart.”

  “Didn’t—” Fergus said, aware of the weight of the blade against his neck. “Didn’t want you stopping to take the towels on your way out.”

  “So you’re just a thief? No wonder Harcourt doesn’t value your worthless life. Who sent you?”

  “The Shipmakers of Pluto,” he said. He saw no point in lying. “I came to retrieve the ship you stole. I have legal letters of marque.”

  “Oh, letters of marque,” Graf said, sneering. “This is Cernee, not Earth, not Mars, and definitely not fucking Pluto. Release the ship back to my control, or I’ll kill you right here and now.”

  “If you kill me, this ship is a paperweight in space.”

  “Marrick can get it working again.”

  “Yeah? Like he did such a great job last time? Sure. If you weren’t in the middle of a war,” Fergus retorted. He felt cold, felt a need to shake, but didn’t dare with the blade so near. “Do you think everyone else is going to wait for you to get your shiny ship working again?”

  “Like who? Harcourt?” Graf asked. “Arum sends the word, and his kid is dead. Harcourt isn’t going to so much as shit without our permission.”

  “What about the Governor?”

  “He can’t stop us, not without Harcourt’s help.”

  “And you’re sure Vinsic is on your side?” Fergus asked. “Because from what I saw, it looked like he was playing you.”

  “We’re playing him,” Graf hissed. “And we’ll win.”

  “Well, yeah, but only because he’s dying anyway.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Fergus managed a smile. “I know a lot about Vinsic. Maybe even more than you do. How do you think I got one of his suits?”

  The blade wavered. Gotcha, Fergus thought.

  “Arum has Vinsic under control,” Graf said, pressing on the blade again. Fergus could feel it cut, shallow but long. “I could give you a one-man, enough to get you to Crossroads. Arum would agree to that. You could live.”

  A lie, Fergus knew. “And the Wheels?”

  “Harcourt’s an obstacle and an enemy, but the Vahns are a blight in the eyes of the One,” Graf said. “You’d know if you’d met any.”

  “I did meet one,” Fergus said. “On a cable car on my way into Cernee. A cable car you blew up out from under me.”

  Graf gave a half laugh. “It seems I missed an opportunity to save myself a lot of trouble,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Fergus said. “Both of us.”

  “You know how many Vahns I’ve killed over the years?” Graf said. “I know they don’t talk about ones who’ve left their pitiful little farm, but you know why they almost never come back? Because most of them never make it out of Cernee alive to start with. It’s just a shame none of them except the old lady herself ever made it much of a challenge.”

  “You’re evil,” Fergus said.

  “No. They’re clones, unnatural. They have no souls. I am doing righteous work in my own redemption. The one-man: that’s my offer. Take it or leave it. I want the ship back now.” Graf gestured around the empty cargo bay with the point of his blade. “Or I can invite my friends back. Even Arum, who doesn’t like getting his own hands dirty, would enjoy taking a stab at you. Do you like that idea better?”

  “I hate it. I hate this job. I hate Cernee. I hate Arum Gilger. And I hate you,” Fergus said. “Ship, override all safeties and evacuate the cargo hold. Immediately.”

  The knife punched into his stomach just as he locked down his face shield. The blast doors into the interior of the ship slammed closed behind them, and then there was a yawning gap where the far wall had been. Fergus’s exosuit hissed, trying to seal the holes in his torso and leg, as he was
pulled out into the dark in a shower of his own blood.

  He caught the surprised O of Graf’s mouth as the man, fumbling madly at his own open face shield, was pulled out into vacuum beside him.

  The knife spun away, occasionally catching in the distant light.

  I really screwed this one up, Fergus thought. He hoped his friends back at the Shipyard wouldn’t be too disappointed in him.

  His vision was becoming indistinct. The red lights on his display were hypnotic, beautiful, telling him the suit couldn’t seal, couldn’t save him. It didn’t matter. He’d failed to bring home Venetia’s Sword, but he’d effectively taken it from Gilger, and taken his right-hand man too. Some small victory for the Vahns, for Bale and Mari, and Katra, and who knew how many unknown others.

  I failed, but at least there’s some small justice, he thought. Maybe the next person along will get it right.

  Then a yellow light joined the red ones, flashing rapidly. The Boolean alert.

  He watched with bemused fatalism as a jet-black triangle of ship slid between him and the stars, and everything winked out.

  Chapter 15

  Fergus opens his eyes. The shadow shapes of nightmares shift in and out of focus in dim blue light around him. There is a sound like water falling, so close it seems to tickle his ear, and he wonders if he is suspended in it, but he is neither cold nor hot, and he is fairly sure he’s still breathing. Muffled sounds echo around him like the summer crickets of his childhood in the hills around Beinn Ime, deepened and amplified and made strange in this place. Thoughts of home—carefully never missed, not all these years—make him weep. Fresh tears pool around his face as he slips under again.

  * * *

  —

  His father is rowing steadily away from shore, his leg in a thick, white cast bright with newness in the morning sun. Da has joked that it is from falling drunk off a barstool, but Fergus knows that’s probably not far off the truth.