by Lj Cohen
"Got it," she said and mirrored his commands.
"Jem?" Barre sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Working on it," he said, shrugging his brother's hand away.
"Anything I can do to help?"
"Yes. Shut up," Jem said. Barre stood and walked away. There would be plenty of time to worry about bruised feelings and tender egos if they survived this.
"Done," Ro said. Their micros pinged one another. He forced his eyes to focus on the split screen, his data on the left, hers on the right.
He opened a silent chat window, barely able to keep his eyes on the too-bright text. Left a back door.
Where?
Text only. Command line access. Ro would have to program on the fly and fast — not just because their air was running out, but if the AI caught them breaking in, it could decide to fly them all into an asteroid or depressurize the entire ship. Not that there was a whole lot of difference between actively dying and passively dying except the amount of time it took.
Show me.
He pushed the code over to her micro and closed his eyes while she scanned it.
"Jem."
He looked up at her and tried not to notice when she winced and slid her gaze away from his twitching eyes.
"If this doesn't work —"
"Make it work," he said, and slid back to the floor, trying not to add vomit to the smell of fear-sweat in the room.
***
Nomi paused just outside the communications room. The door slid open and she blinked at the flurry of activity inside. The man who had relieved her waved Nomi to the central console. She was certain he outranked her. A half dozen other men and women in their dark gray uniforms manned every station in the room, waiting. Mendez must have called every shift in at once.
"Nakamura — I hear you got put in the hot seat," her colleague said.
She read his name off his ident: Simon Marchand. "Wrong place, wrong time, I guess. Status on the external repair crew?"
"We should have signal momentarily." He looked up at the main screen. The display had been split in half. One side showed the asteroid surface and the anonymous crew members in their bulky EVA wear. The other displayed a schematic of the ansible network, network error messages overlaying each one.
Nomi leaned forward on her console, her head drooping. Transmitting through the ansible grid required pinpoint accuracy. Calibration from one relatively fixed point to any single satellite took skill. Bringing the station in resonance with all of them in half an hour? It was more than impossible, no matter how much staff got thrown at the task.
"So what's next, boss?" Marchand said.
Tugging her hands through her hair, Nomi struggled to think clearly. Mendez didn't want to hear what couldn't be done. The ship could be anywhere. Even with all the ansibles working, the chance of pinging it randomly was slim to none.
Leaning forward, she stared up at the silent ansibles. Marchand mirrored her pose, hands on the console and face upturned.
"Maybe we don't need them all," she said, pursing her lips. Well, eventually they would, for normal network traffic, but the priority was bouncing a signal to Ro. And Nomi would bet every last credit she owned that Ro would be trying to establish communication from her end. If she had survived. Nomi let her head droop again. Marchand placed a hand on her shoulder.
She stiffened. His hand slid away. This was her show. Mendez believed in her so she had better damn well believe in herself.
Movement on the viewer caught her eye. The repair crew filed toward the airlock. "Now it's up to us," Nomi said, meeting Marchand's worried look. "So we prioritize. Network traffic will have to wait a little while longer."
"This is like looking for a needle in a planet's worth of haystacks. Hell, a system's worth. That ship could be anywhere. How do we know which ansible stations to choose?"
"It doesn't matter." She snatched up a light pen and circled about a third of the communications satellites, hoping it didn't seem as random to him as it did to her. "We'll hopscotch around the network, establishing a low level see-you-see-me link with as many stations as we can, starting with these."
Marchand's brows furrowed and he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "So we'll be able to get a basic ping-back. What good will that do? You can't transmit or transfer data at that level, and even if you could, you'd need to know where the ship is relative to an ansible quadrant." He gestured to the display. "Too many holes in the net."
"We're not trying to find them. We're not even trying to send them a message." She turned to the rest of the comms personnel waiting for her orders. A shiver worked its way down Nomi's back.
"Then what are we doing?" Marchand asked.
"Trying to make noise." She squared her shoulders and one at a time made eye contact with each member of the communications staff. "There are eight of us." Turning back to the display, Nomi carved up the screen into eight segments. "Each of you claim a sector. Get a ping and move on. We're not looking for accuracy."
Marchand frowned. His thick eyebrows jutted forward and shaded his eyes. "A sledgehammer solution. You're going to drown out whatever comm traffic is moving through the network."
"Can't be helped. Mendez wants that ship found. We don't have the resources to find it, but if Daedalus makes enough noise, the ship will be able to find us."
"That's assuming there's someone on the ship to listen."
If something had happened to Ro, it wouldn't matter even if they had full duplex. "I know." She met his gaze without blinking and held it for a moment before glancing up at the watching staff. "The clock is running, people." Squeezing her eyes closed briefly, Nomi held to an image of a delicate face framed by a soft curtain of long blond hair and filled with a driving, restless intelligence. Ro was listening for her. She had to be. "Free drinks at the commissary for whoever gets the most ping-backs."
***
Red light continued to stutter through the bridge. In the silence, Ro could hear all of her involuntary crew breathing too fast and too hard. It was easy to visualize them turning all the available oxygen into carbon dioxide. At least it made for a painless death. She glanced up at Barre and winced at the worry she read in his face. Even if she was good at the whole reassurance thing, she'd be lying if she told him Jem would be all right. There were more ways for them to die than to survive. Jem knew it. She wondered if Micah and Barre did.
Ro wrote across her micro and held it up for the two of them to see. Brace yourselves. Not waiting for their acknowledgment, she turned to Jem's elegant program. Damn but that kid could code.
There was really no way she could strap him in anywhere. She wedged herself against the command console, wincing as her foot twisted. If the ship accelerated again, they would all be flung around the room and things would get a lot worse, but there was no help for that.
She triggered Jem's interface override. The screen scrolled up, all the code vanishing, replaced by a single blinking old-school cursor. Ro held her breath as she typed in what she hoped would let her access the AI's core. The seconds stretched out. "Respond. Come on. Come on. Respond," she urged, setting the micro on her pants and wiping her damp hands across the thin fabric.
Words typed themselves across the small screen. SIREN version 1.7b. Initializing …
Ro exhaled and picked up the micro. The series of scrolling dots stopped, replaced by another waiting cursor. Except for the rustling of fabric and the whistle of harsh breathing, there wasn't another sound in the room. Her fingers flew across the tiny virtual keyboard in an effort to convince the dumb machine underneath the complex AI to reboot and suspend the damaged brain.
There was no time to test her code. No time to even to look it over for the most basic of errors. It just had to work. She finished, lifting her hands from the micro, and let her head slump down to her chest, eyes closed.
"Ro?" Micah's voice echoed in the metallic space.
She ignored him.
"Ro!"
/> Snapping her head up, she glared at him. "What?"
"Look. The lights." The red emergency strobes stopped and white diffuse glow brightened the room. A tentative smile spread across his face, making him seem younger and a lot less like his father.
Ro took a welcome breath of air that tasted cool and crisp against her tongue. The hum of the air scrubbers filled her ears with a sound she swore never to take as given again. She met Michah's gaze before turning to Barre and Jem, the strange relief making her oddly grateful to her accidental companions. Jem gave her a thumbs-up, and Barre nodded before settling back down next to his brother.
"Well, nice to know we won't asphyxiate," Micah said. His expression had closed down again. "We'll just die of starvation. Or boredom. I know — maybe if we're lucky, we'll be hit by an asteroid."
So much for the Ro Maldonado fan club.
"What's your next brilliant plan?" he asked. "Or do we wait here for a tow?"
"You're welcome," she said.
"Jem? Come on, you have to stay awake." Barre leaned over his brother and lifted a closed eyelid.
"What's the matter?" Ro asked, scooting closer to them.
"Closed head injury. I have no way of knowing how bad the damage is."
Barre stared directly into her eyes. He didn't have to say the "no thanks to you" part.
"He needs a head scan. Fluids. Probably a sedative if he gets restless and confused. That means getting back to Daedalus."
Ro glanced up at the viewport and the unmoving and unfamiliar star field. "We need the AI to navigate."
"Should have thought of that before you started fucking with the ship," Micah said, his voice ringing across the bridge from where he stood, leaning against the bulkhead, his arms crossed.
"You weren't supposed to be here. None of you." It was hard to feel any kind of moral authority when Ro had to look up at him from the floor.
"You couldn't leave well enough alone," Micah shouted. "Even after I told you about your father."
"My father? What about yours? Do you think those diplomatic seals just faked themselves?"
Micah's face burned bright red against his blond hair. "This is your fault. You could have helped me ground the ship, ground their cargo, tell Mendez. But no, you had to be smarter than everyone else."
"That's enough!" Jem's soft croak commanded all their attention.
"Don't you dare try to get up!" Barre said, his hand on the center of his brother's chest, holding him down.
Jem stopped struggling and closed his eyes. "Fine. But my head hurts enough without you all screaming at each other. At least we have air. Ro will think of something."
Even after everything, he still had this blind, stubborn faith in her. If he wasn't already in such bad shape, she would shake some sense into him. "I don't know what to do." She winced, admitting her own helplessness. "We can't get home until we figure out where the hell we are. We can't get any sort of nav fix without the AI. And it's fried."
"Well thank you, Doctor Obvious," Micah said.
Doctor. They didn't have a doctor, but the ship had a medical bay. She grabbed Jem's micro and pulled up his copy of the ship's schematics, circling the infirmary. "Take this," she said, holding out the little computer to Micah and pointing out where he needed to go. "Inventory the medical bay. Text me what you find. I need to know what supplies are still there." The "if any," she kept to herself.
"Why me?"
"You know your way around biologicals and test equipment." She wasn't at all sure Barre would leave his brother and even if he would, Ro didn't want to deal with Micah. She pointed to her ankle. "And I'm grounded for the time being."
Micah held her gaze for a long minute as if looking for the right words to start up the fight with her again. Then he pushed away from the bulkhead and strode out of the bridge.
"My brother seems to trust you," Barre said.
Ro shrugged.
"For all of our sakes, I hope he's right."
Chapter 22
Micah punched the bulkhead next to the bridge door and swore at the pain. At least it cleared his head. And he'd be able to treat it if the medical bay was intact.
Ro's face burned in his mind. The arrogance reminded him far too easily of his father. He strode through the silent, empty corridor, past several rooms his map labeled barracks and a large mess hall, empty of everything except the tables and benches bolted to the floor, before reaching medical. A bare bones ship, everything had been stripped down for speed and efficiency. It was nothing like the elegant and lush vessels his family had traveled in during the years before his mother's death — and his father's disgrace.
At least while they had possession of this ship, his father couldn't deliver the crates full of weapons to whatever smoldering conflict had paid the most or for whomever owned him. Though he doubted that had been Ro's intent in triggering the cascade that woke the AI. Beware the unintended consequence was the story of his life.
Micah triggered the manual door release. Lights flickered on as he stepped over the threshold. For a craft abandoned for something over four decades, it was remarkably free of dust and dirt. Basic environmental tech had been pretty much perfected in the first interstellar wars, along with the artificial gravity that allowed soldiers to stay deployed long enough to reach the fight and still be able to return planet-side with enough bone stock and muscle mass to survive. That is if they survived the actual battles.
The med-tech had been designed with battlefield injuries in mind. Metal plinths with shock cradles lined the long wall, primitive scanner displays at the head of each. In the center of the room, a command chair with a clamp for a portable readout faced the row of patient beds. Along the right hand wall, a glassed in room had been carved out of the main medical bay. Micah peered through the window and the elaborate airlock entrance. A metal plinth sat in the middle of the room, retractable lighting over it. It could have been an isolation chamber or a morgue. Knowing the purpose of these ships, probably both.
Up along the ceiling of the entire bay, and lining the isolation room, high pressure nozzles faced down. He shivered from more than the cold, empty air. This was a place designed to be simple to disinfect, probably with an independent air supply and external overrides on the door. In the calculus of war, the lives of a half dozen or so soldiers and med staff meant little against the chance of some biological agent or alien virus getting loose. He glanced back, looking for the reassurance of the dimly lit hallway.
As long as they were drifting and the AI shut down, he knew he could get out, but knowing something and keeping his adrenals from reacting to the fear were different matters. He forced his shoulders to drop and his jaw to relax as he looked for supplies. The wall opposite the isolation room was lined with neatly labeled drawers. He opened a few at random.
Micah triggered Jem's micro and started typing.
Medical ?? operational. Scanners not powered. Likely tied into the AI. Place cleaned out except for what's bolted down.
He didn't wait for a reply before backing out of the sterile space, chills arcing between his shoulder blades.
Fuck. We need supplies. See what you can find.
Searching the ship gave Micah reason not to be in the same room as Ro, even if her giving him orders irked him.
He wandered along the central corridor. The barracks rooms all followed the same pattern: rows of metal bunk beds with an integrated storage bin bolted to the floor, handrails across the walls and ceiling, a small head, as bare and as utilitarian as the medical bay with nothing to salvage.
There was nothing useful here except what he'd brought on board for his plants. At least all his work would be good for something. Maybe they could salvage the cloth row cover for bandage material. They wouldn't die of thirst. His closed system contained nearly 200 liters of water. At the bare minimum of two liters per person, per day, it wasn't hard to do the math in his head. Worst case scenario, even if the recycling systems didn't work on the ship, raiding the water from
his bittergreen plants would buy them a few weeks. Food was another matter.
How long would it take for Ro to get the AI working and get them back to Daedalus? No, that was the wrong question. The right question was how long it would take for his father to mobilize every resource he could to find the ship.
They needed to get back to the station before that happened. Some of those questionable resources would view them as complications. Micah would be safe. No matter how low his father sank, he protected his son. But Ro, Barre, and Jem?
Micah bypassed the mess hall. Even from the doorway he could see it had nothing they needed. According to the map, the compartments aft of the mess contained access to the engines. They would probably yield nothing of value. The only other supplies on this old boat were the ones his father stowed here. They couldn't eat weapons or ammunition, but maybe some of the other cartons had more useful contents.
He triggered the door release. The utility lights along the floor and ceiling provided a dim illumination. He poked around Jem's micro and set it to flashlight mode.
The mound of silent cartons threw oddly shaped shadows across the cavernous hold as he walked around. Micah didn't have a knife, but he figured they didn't have to worry about keeping the seals intact anymore. He set Jem's micro down on the top of a box and pulled several boxes down from neighboring stacks.
"Damn it, Dad," he said, staring down at the diplomatic seals, his hands curled into tight fists.
He tore open one box after another, shoving the ones full of weapons aside. What would his father do if they just tossed them all out of the airlock? He certainly couldn't complain to Commander Mendez. As satisfying as that would be, it would also destroy all the proof and any leverage he might have. He paused at a fresh box, waiting for the guilt that always came at the thought of abandoning his father. All he saw when he closed his eyes was his mother's face, lined with pain and regret.
"At least you didn't live to see this," Micah said to the empty room. He turned back to the box at his feet and tore open the cover. "Jackpot!"
