Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2)

by Merry Ravenell

Ersu and Sirtis exchanged frank looks.

  “What’s the nature of the illness?” Sirtis asked.

  “AGRS. She has a heart implant and medication band.”

  “I seriously question your judgement, Commander.”

  “Then it’s a good thing she isn’t your responsibility. She’s mine.”

  For whatever reason, that pissed Ersu off even more. He gestured curtly, silencing further conversation from his staff. “You and your team can get started with first shift. Sirtis, show them to their bunk, get their gear sorted, and see if Medical can manage—”

  He stumbled over her name.

  “Lake is fine, sir,” she said before he embarrassed himself further.

  His annoyance intensified, but he nodded, grateful he didn’t have to bother with her name. “I suppose if you’re going to be my bridge liaison, report at start of first shift. You can find your way there?”

  “I’m certain I can.”

  Ersu gestured to Sirtis, communicating some meaning they weren’t privy to, then walked quickly away with his other officers.

  “Get your personal gear and I’ll show you to your bunk,” Sirtis said, tone clipped and annoyed.

  The others went back into the shuttle, and she took the opportunity to look around the bay. Not much going on. NightPiercer and Ark’s were always hubs of activity. The lights did seem a bit dim, and the air was thick and humid. There were no large fans overhead to move the air, but there were some large grates. Trails of rust drained from the corners of the grates down the wall.

  Sirtis shifted her weight, not hiding her annoyance, although Lachesis couldn’t place why the Commander had taken an instant dislike to her and Rainer.

  Oh well, too bad. “Commander Sirtis.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s the AG on ship?”

  “Why?”

  That was privileged information? Weird reaction. Good thing she wasn’t above a lie or twenty. “I need it for my calculations, and I’d like to get started with my preliminary numbers as soon as possible.”

  “We don’t have spare CPU cycles for you, Navigator.”

  Too damn bad, they’d have to allocate some. “I don’t require them to get started. So, the AG?”

  “.88G,” Sirtis reported.

  It should have been .90. Losing .02 was an order of magnitude, and .824G was fatal within fifteen years.

  Once everyone unloaded what they needed, Sirtis led them through narrow corridors that were as dimly lit as the shuttle bay, and somehow, even colder. It wasn’t her imagination: Sirtis wore very beautiful gloves sculpted to her hand.

  Their feet clacked on the exposed metal grating, through which pipes and wiring were visible.

  No more rust creeping out of the seams and folds of the walls, though, and the lights weren’t flickering.

  They finally came to a normal-width hallway, but still with exposed metal grate flooring, and rows of broad doors.

  “Here,” she said, pressing her hand into the panel on a door labelled F-03. “Your assigned facilities are what we passed on the way here, I’ll send you your mess shifts. You’ve missed dinner, but breakfast will be waiting.”

  Rusting Secrets

  “I have now bunked on every ship,” Lachesis said, looking at the ceiling with a degree of pride. “What a strange accomplishment.”

  The bunk itself was nothing special at all, and only mildly warmer than the freezing corridors. They were in an eight-bunk. That meant four bunk beds. There was a sink on one wall, the ceilings were lower than Ark and NightPiercer, the lights a bit dimmer.

  “You get the impression they don’t want us here?” Juan asked Rainer.

  Rainer pulled off his comm. “I very much got that impression. Cheshire, start going over everything looking for obvious bugs.”

  “It’s their territory,” Lachesis said. “We’re outsiders.”

  “We were invited here,” Rainer said.

  “And I was invited to NightPiercer,” she said mildly. “But I still ended up eating alone once I left your quarters. They don’t want us to have to be here.”

  “It does not smell good.” Xav tugged one of their trunks to the foot of a bunk.

  Juan dragged a finger across one of the walls. No apparent rust, but a shiny trail appeared under his finger. “Condensation.”

  “I felt the humidity. Can’t say I’m surprised,” Rainer said. “We’re tired and need to regroup. This place reeks of mold and fungus. I don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to fix it, but I don’t want us to come back hacking up algae from our lungs either. Kos, start swabbing the grates and vents to see what’s growing.”

  Jess sighed dramatically. “I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna be eating a lot of crickets and algae cakes.”

  “It is cold in here.” Jimmiez breathed out a puff of air. “Yeah, can almost see that.”

  Rainer looked at her.

  “Don’t say it.” She was used to chilly quarters, but this was damp and cold.

  Juan crouched down along the grates that ran the perimeter of the room. “Engines running at even quarter idle should still produce enough vent-heat to not freeze us.”

  Jess took stock of the panels by the door. “No custom temperature settings.”

  “Ark doesn’t have them either,” Lachesis said.

  Rainer nodded. “Everyone keep in mind that LightBearer was built with what was left over once the planet’s failure couldn’t be denied. It and Ark have less wiring, no seasonal or day cycle lights, and other niceties that had to be cut. Everyone be aware your internal clocks may get out of sync.”

  “Ark doesn’t have that much exposed grating,” Lachesis said dryly.

  Rainer shrugged. “I’ve got the original design and at-launch specs, so I’ll study them to see what they started with versus what they’ve got now.”

  She shivered. “Wish I could shift into wolf form. My fur would be warmer.”

  Rainer glared at her. “Do you want to rip a chamber of your heart?”

  “Yes, husband, I know I can’t shift with this blasted thing in my heart.” She rubbed her hands together.

  “I’ve got top bunk!” Jess crowed, vaulting up onto one of the top beds.

  Rainer raised a brow at her, and his lips curled in a smug grin.

  “Don’t you say it.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Who do you figure gets to be on top?” Juan asked Jess.

  Snickers from the rest of the room, except for Cheshire, who tittered awkwardly.

  Rainer’s smirk widened a bit. Innocently, he pointed one finger in their direction. “They said it.”

  Juan and Jess bopped back and forth, waving their hands side to side in a little dance.

  “I have historically liked being on top—”

  Hoots.

  Rainer smirked.

  “…but you can have it for now.”

  “Ooh,” came the chorus, like a pack of old-Earth wolves, even though half of them were human.

  They sorted out the remaining sleeping arrangements, unpacked and arranged their belongings. Rainer began to get pings from Engineering, although only his tablet came online, and none of their comms did. Plans were made for how to start the day while he sketched their bunk in detail and Kos finished culturing what was coming out from the vents. He determined it wasn’t anything that would grow in their lungs. They gnawed on their food stores since they weren’t getting fed otherwise.

  To the stack of food they’d brought, Cheshire said, “That’s a lot of food.”

  Rainer nodded. “We weren’t going to assume LightBearer would feed us like we’re used to. Good choice. Nobody gamble it away. No finding gambling dens.”

  “That’s no fun,” Simone pouted at him.

  “Come on, Boss,” Juan said. “Let us fleece them a little. For… what’d they call it on Earth? Where you bring something back from somewhere you’ve been?” He snapped his fingers at the group in general.

  “Souvenirs,”
Rainer supplied.

  “Let us get some souvenirs. Since that mould isn’t going to grow in our lungs.”

  “Maybe we’ll find a fungus for you yet,” Rainer said.

  “Ooo, something to grow under our toenails, you think?” Jess wiggled her bare foot and shoved her toes under Xav’s nose.

  “Give me your tablet.” Lachesis crawled over Kos and snapped her fingers at Rainer.

  “Why?” he said, the large one across his lap, and his little one—the one patched into LightBearer—held away from her hands.

  “So I can ping the other two navigators. I’m not patched in. You are.”

  Rainer handed over the tablet. She typed up a quick message to Lani, the more senior of the two navigators. Lani didn’t reply before Rainer declared light’s out, and nobody complained about crawling under their blankets.

  Rainer dragged his blankets down off his bunk.

  “And you’re going to freeze to death?” she murmured, shivering now that she was out of her uniform. The cold on the floor chewed right up through her tendons and muscles. “Fuck, it’s cold.”

  “AGRS.” Rainer pushed her down onto her bed, and drawing blankets over her. “It’s just going to eat through you.”

  She shivered in the dim darkness. “What about you?”

  He pulled off his shirt and stepped out of his shorts, his naked silhouette outlined in the dimness. Then his human form melted down into his large wolf form. He crawled up on the bed next to her and arranged himself like a big furry blanket, his snout resting between her breasts.

  “Strange wolf,” she murmured, but she rested her hand between his ears.

  “Do you sleep, Commander?” Juan asked over their breakfast of… algae cakes.

  “Not here, apparently,” Rainer said. “Did I keep you awake?”

  “Hard to sleep, but not because of you.”

  They were (except for Lachesis and Cheshire) Engineering, and the cold, damp, mildewing, dim lighting bugged all of them. Although just being in a strange place—when none of them except Rainer, Juan, or Lachesis had ever been anywhere except NightPiercer—had them all out of sorts. And only Lachesis had ever slept anywhere not her birth-ship.

  Rainer had gotten up every ninety minutes to pace the perimeter of their bunk, sniff the grates, check Lachesis, and check each member of the crew before returning to snuggle up next to her.

  “It’s like we know we’re somewhere different even when we’re asleep,” Cheshire said under his breath.

  “Lizard brain programming,” Rainer said. ‘They discovered it back on Earth. Your brain just knows when it’s somewhere else, even if you’re asleep. I’m sorry if I kept anyone up. I know my claws click.”

  Lachesis examined the cricket on her plate, then popped it into her mouth. Everything here tasted sort of damp and moldy. The dampness ate right through her sore body. She didn’t say anything—everyone else had pale, cold-looking fingers, and breathed on their hands, and she noticed that a lot of the LightBearer had fingerless gloves. It wasn’t her imagination. But it also reassured her that the cold and damp wasn’t an abnormal or new situation.

  Rainer tapped his fork on his tray to get their attention. “I’ll go to Engineering as planned and pursue the engine and Core issues. We need to investigate this dampness and mold. This much dampness means corrosion.”

  Rainer said the last word very quietly.

  “Juan, you were supposed to come with me, but I need you to ferret out the… integrity issue.” Rainer avoided saying corrosion again. “I trust you to pick your words carefully. Mask it as engine efficiency or some other bullshit excuse.”

  “Sir.” Juan nodded.

  “Cheshire, find your way to IT as planned. They reported thirteen percent chiplet failure. Get someone to tell you what’s really going on. Weird sensor readings, blank spots, blind spots, why Fabrication hasn’t caught up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t spook them. If you think you’re not going to get a straight answer, shift tactics. Lie, cheat, sweet-talk, menace, bribe.

  “Simone, go with Juan. Don’t say anything, just listen. Lachesis, was Ark this dim and cold?”

  “Not at all. And I found out what the AG actually is.”

  “It’s not .90G, because this is not .90.”

  She lowered her voice. “It’s .88.”

  Everyone stiffened another notch.

  “I don’t recall it being like this when I was here a few years ago, but I was only here a few hours and pretty pumped full of adrenaline from making the crossing,” she told him. “What about you? How long has it been for you?”

  “At least ten years. I only did the ferry flights to get my pilot qualification,” Rainer said. “Juan? When was the last time you did this run?”

  “Five years,” Juan said. “I wasn’t really paying attention last time I was here either.”

  She leaned across the table. “How concerned should we be if they’ve had an AG drop like that?”

  “I’m more concerned about you. You need as much passive gravity as you can get.”

  She’d been so distracted by the fact the ship had lost so much G that she hadn’t thought about what it might do to her.

  Rainer frowned, pensive and dark.

  “How bad is it from an Engineering perspective if they’ve lost .02?” she asked him again.

  Juan answered for her husband. “Depends. Did they turn it down, or is it the best the ship can do?”

  “Why would anyone turn down AG?” Cheshire demanded.

  “Shhh!” Jess waved her hands at him.

  Juan whispered, “No good reasons. It’s like turning down life support.”

  “It is life support,” Lachesis said.

  Rainer laced his fingers together and rested his elbows on the table. He weighed her for a long moment. “Go to Medical and find out how complicated this is going to be for you.”

  “I’d rather not impose.”

  “I’d rather you not drop dead. Your replacement heart isn’t going to be ready for months. We can’t have you disintegrate on this ship. They didn’t include AG information in the performance data I got. Now I’m wondering what else we didn’t get.”

  “AG change data is pretty critical,” Juan said.

  Rainer snapped a cricket in half. “You, Medical. Before you report to the bridge. Find out how long you can stay here in this reduced AG. Ersu can sit and spin for not conveying AG data. Once you get to the bridge, try to get into the nav or helm or telemetry systems. Our first goal—once we establish our navigator isn’t going to die in her sleep—is to create a complete engine performance profile and a hull stress map. Everyone knows what to do.”

  Rainer glanced around, then said, tone low. “And let’s assume we’re not going to get straight answers, and nobody is going to like our questions. Lachesis is right: this isn’t our territory. LightBearer asked for our help with their position three years ago, and we declined. It’s made relations between the ships strained.”

  “Shit,” Simone whispered. “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, LightBearer’s condition has been eroding for a few years now. Ark did offer its navigators—of which Lachesis was one—but the entire thing was kept strictly secret to prevent anxiety. Everyone be alert for anyone or anything that might be a lie, partial truth, so forth. Be very careful who you speak to and don’t assume that everyone you talk to knows the extent of how bad things are here. We do not want to start a panic.”

  She and Rainer exchanged looks.

  What was in his eyes froze her even further.

  Is Anyone Awake?

  A few hours later, after having been generally chewed upon by a grouchy, put-upon doctor with a cardiovascular speciality that was more than a little annoyed at having to deal with her, Lachesis hadn’t been able to track down Commander Sirtis, and her attempts to access the bridge had been stymied by biometric scanners and a decided lack of warm bodies to harass, but she had been able to locate the
two navigators: Lani and Chui, and convinced them to meet her. They’d been surprisingly reticent, given they’d known each other for years.

  “You’d think I’m asking for a heart transplant,” Lachesis muttered as she strode down a corridor towards LightBearer’s Deck 37. The floors, as she went higher, went from metal grate, to partially grate, to solid metal plate. The LightBearer crew she passed gave her startled looks, which may have disconcerted her if she wasn’t used to it from NightPiercer.

  She waited at a lift like an idiot pretending she wasn’t an actual idiot because her palm wouldn’t open it, but within ten minutes two people came along.

  She resisted the urge to pepper them with questions. They wouldn’t know anything useful enough to justify harassing them. Except maybe they could tell her who she had to beat in a game of poker to get some of those fingerless gloves.

  “Ma’am,” one of them greeted her with a nod.

  “Crewman,” she replied. Did she sound as pompous as she thought? Hell. Ma’am? What even was her life anymore. She kept her eyes on the door as they openly studied her like she was some curious creature from an exotic Biome. Deck 37 couldn’t come soon enough.

  The astrometric lab was a tiny, closet-sized room with no windows. She had to bang on the door since her palm wouldn’t even trigger the bell.

  For fuck’s sake, this is obnoxious.

  Lani was Generation Two and older than her parents, while her student Chui was Generation Three and a few years younger than Lachesis. He was in Tech—although very junior and essentially an apprentice still learning how to tune instruments—while Lani was a Teacher in School.

  “Lani?” Lachesis asked as she squeezed into the space.

  “Lake?” Lani looked the younger woman up and down, from red hair to boots. “I thought you were Crèche, not Command.”

  Lachesis managed a tired chuckle. “I was Crèche on Ark. NightPiercer wanted me as a bridge officer.”

  NightPiercer had actually wanted her to be the vessel of their mercurial Lead Engineer’s spawn.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually meeting,” Lani said. “I always wondered what you looked like.”