by Lj Cohen
"Halcyone, can you get a fix on it?" Barre asked.
"Affirmative."
He grimaced and triggered the authorization fanfare. "Track emergency pod S-seven."
"Course zero one three, mark twenty. Speed nominal."
"Where the hell is he going?" Ro said, more wondering than asking. "He wouldn't leave his precious cargo behind unless he had some plan to get control of it." The pods were barely big enough for a person, and Halcyone would have let them know if he'd been able to break the radiation lock-down and get to the cache. No, the guns were still on the ship. He had to be planning on retrieving them somehow. If they followed him, they could be limping right into a trap.
"He knows we're dead in the water," Micah said. "Hell, all he has to do is come back with a ship and declare salvage."
"Over my dead body," Ro said, glaring at him.
Micah glared back. "He'd probably be okay with those terms."
She knew he was right, on all counts. They had to move.
"Do you think he has charts?" Barre asked, staring at the little blip moving away from Halcyone.
"It doesn't matter. It's too risky," Ro said.
"Then what's our next move?" Micah said.
This would take Barre working on all frequencies. She looked into his grief-lined face. "We have to get control of the engines and navigation. With the wild burns this thing's made, it's a minor miracle we haven't plowed into an asteroid already."
He blinked, staring at her. "She did that once already."
Ro shivered, the echo of the lost transmission in her mind, the ghosts of the long dead crew, another helpless cargo just as they were now. "Wait." She shivered again, but this time a flare of excitement burned down her spine. "Wait. I think —" Barre and Micah both stared at her, hope and fear in their nearly identical expressions. Ignoring them, she leaped to her feet and wiped the micro's display clear.
"Halcyone, display current position."
Everything fell away from Ro — her grief and guilt, her responsibility for Barre and Micah, her father's latest betrayal — everything except the miniature star field and one tiny blinking light. "Access specifics of our last burn. Acceleration, direction, and distance." She held her breath, waiting, wondering just how badly Halcyone's memory and personality subroutines had been damaged. The silence in the cargo bay pressed down on her. Come on, come on.
"Burn data acquired."
She let out her breath in a relieved sigh. "Halcyone, calculate trajectory of last burn and display. Extrapolate the inverse course. Display overlay on current map. Zoom and recenter as needed."
She heard a gasp from behind her as the AI drew a dotted line from their current position to a second blinking dot. Just a few centimeters on the hologram — it seemed so impossibly close. With maddening precision, she asked the damaged computer to map out their crazy course in reverse, each leg representing a jagged line of a random flight.
"Here, sit." Barre slipped a chair behind her and pressed down on her shoulders. Her knees wobbly, she fell into the chair, panting as if she'd run a race.
The three of them looked up at the map and their way home.
Chapter 39
Barre stared at the final blinking light that represented Daedalus station and swallowed, hard. Even the possibility of returning ignited a fierce pain in his chest. How could he go back without Jem?
"Barre, I need you to normalize the rad sensors in engineering."
He looked at Ro, the words making little sense.
"Otherwise the fail-safes won't let us calculate a burn."
Losing Jem was a raw wound, one he knew Ro and even Micah shared. But going back meant facing his parents — facing his own failure to keep his little brother safe.
A heavy hand settled on his shoulder and he turned to see Micah standing beside him.
"You did everything possible for him. No one could have done any more."
"I should have kept him here." Or he could have gone with him to Hephaestus. Then they would both be dead and he wouldn't have to drown in this terrible guilt.
"People we love die. Even when we do everything right. It's not your fault." Barre tried to look away, but Micah's gaze trapped him, his blue eyes clouded with pain.
"Sit down. Your feet need to be re-bandaged, but all our supplies are on the bridge." Barre figured the anesthetic wouldn't hold for very long — not against the nerve damage from his burns.
"Look, I know what it's like to lose someone. If you need to talk, I'm here." Micah squeezed his shoulder before shuffling back to his seat.
He turned to Ro. She stood, her slim body rigid, staring at the little cube of space that glowed above her micro. "I'm going to work on calculating a single course back to Daedalus. The faster we get back there, the faster they can go after my father."
There was no guarantee the ship would even let them fire the engines, but he knew they had to try. Barre watched as Ro added a notation to the map, along with the time stamp of when Maldonado had stolen the life-pod and its last known course and speed. Even Barre knew the chances of finding him were slim to none, but he wasn't going to puncture Ro's happy little bubble-of-revenge fantasy.
Composing the strange melodies that communicated directly with the AI didn't distract him from Jem's death, but it let him pour his grief into something outside himself. Halcyone may have been a construct created out of logical code, but he knew the ship understood loss and regret.
As he released his musical program into the AI's awareness, he heard an answering coda; his pain played back to him.
"Radiation levels in engineering eighteen percent above ALARA. Within acceptable limits for crew safety. Lock-down lifted."
Ro glanced back at him and nodded her thanks. "Okay, people. Here's the plan." Micah scooted over to the display. "I have a course plotted. It should bring us in far orbit around Daedalus. If we have Halcyone go for maximum acceleration, we'll need to get back to the bridge and use the mats."
"How deep of a burn are you thinking of?" Barre asked. Even with the mats, it would be rough on Micah.
"Five gees."
"Not possible." If they had modern acceleration couches, maybe. Even then, he wouldn't risk Micah's feet, not unless they didn't have any other choice.
Ro glanced between him and Micah. Barre could just about see the code spinning in her mind. "Ro, it won't help us if we kill ourselves getting there. And it won't find your father any faster."
"Recalculate the burn at three," Micah said.
Barre frowned. It was still over the limit he was comfortable with, especially given the condition of the ship.
"Do it. My father has some questions to answer."
Ro returned to her micro's display. "Okay. Atmosphere is back to minimal safe levels in the ship. I have the parameters set. Ready to roll?"
He walked over to where Micah sat and bent down to pick him up. "Let's go."
"You're not carrying me," he said, scooting back.
"How do you think you got here in the first place?"
"Fine. Push the damned chair."
The more he could focus on Micah and his injuries and the upcoming burn, the less Barre had to think about Jem or his parents and how they would react. They would blame him. It didn't matter.
"Get settled as best you can," Barre said, shoving Micah's chair into the bridge. "At three gees, even with padding, it's still going to be a rough trip."
Micah tumbled out of the chair and onto his mat. Barre gritted his teeth and pulled Jem's over to give Micah's feet extra padding.
"Thanks, man."
He looked away, not trusting his voice.
"Ready?" Ro asked.
Barre looked away and lay down on his own mat.
"Barre?" Ro called his name softly.
He rolled his head toward her.
"Thank you." Her face burned scarlet all the way up to her scalp. "For everything. We wouldn't … I wouldn't have gotten this far without you."
"Let's get out of he
re," Barre said. "We all have responsibilities back on Daedalus."
Ro nodded, her expression tight. "I'll toss the course data to your micro. Can you set a musical trigger for the burn?"
He should have thought of that. "Yeah, no problem." It took less than a minute for him to set up his auto-run to hook onto her program. "All set. Get yourself secured."
She scrambled to her mat. "Set."
Taking a series of deep breaths, Barre triggered Ro's navigation program through his neural. The engines growled beneath him. He forced his tense muscles to relax. Even expecting it, even lying as symmetrically as possible, he nearly panicked when the burn started and his weight suddenly tripled. The pressure squeezed down and his spine seemed to grind against the hard floor. The pad could have been tempered steel for all it cushioned him.
But no matter how much his own body complained, Micah would fare much, much worse. The pressure would stress the already damaged capillaries in his feet that were oozing plasma through the burned skin. He wished he'd taken the time to re-bandage him before. But it was too late now and all Barre could do was struggle to force air into his squeezed lungs and hope that Ro knew what the hell she was doing.
The burn seemed to go on and on. What if their commands had triggered another fight-or-flight response from Halcyone? What if the acceleration never stopped, not until Halcyone's fuel ran out and the fusion drive died, leaving the silent ship to drift in space, carrying three battered corpses?
Then his own parents would be long dead and Jem's memory lost as well. There was something oddly comforting in that thought.
Silence blanketed the bridge. So this is what deafness feels like, he thought, a floating calm carrying him along in its wake. No noise. No music. No need to do anything. It wasn't just his mind that floated, but his body felt strangely light. He could breathe. The enormous fist that had pinned him down had disappeared so suddenly, he gasped. The return of the ragged sound of his own breathing seemed like a wheezing metronome. Barre blinked, reveling in the sensation of his chest rising and falling easily. A groan pulled his attention outward.
"Micah?"
"Shit. My feet. They're bleeding again."
Barre pushed himself to sitting, shaking his head to clear it of his lightheaded confusion. "Ro? Where are we?"
Her laughter — a bright sound, but to Barre's trained ears, edged with fear — filled the bridge. "Ground zero. Look."
For the first time since Jem smuggled him aboard the broken ship, the view screen showed a familiar constellation. The small asteroid that had been home for the past year twinkled in the distance with its evening lights. "Now what?" he asked, though no one but Ro and Micah could hear him.
"Wait until we're line of sight with their antenna array and send a message directly to Mendez," Ro said.
"We need to get Micah to sick bay." Which meant his parents. He scrambled over to him and shook his head at the mess of his feet. "At least I can re-seal these wounds, for now."
"Intruder alert. Ship bearing zero-zero-seven-mark-three. Time to engagement thirty-seven seconds."
"Shit!" Ro shouted.
Barre winced as a blast of defiant sound pierced through him.
The ship's engines rumbled.
Red lights washed over the melted consoles.
He crouched over Micah, stabilizing him.
"Halcyone, this is —"
"Ro! Ro can you hear me?"
"No! We can't make another burn like this!" Micah said.
"Wait! Nomi?" Ro's voice cracked.
"Hephaestus." Barre stared up at the ship displayed on the cracked screen as if he could see his brother somewhere inside it.
"Halcyone, stand down," Ro shouted.
The engines continued to growl. Barre sent a furious arpeggio of sound through his neural toward the ship. "Don't you dare," he warned, as the music surged around him. "This is home." Jem was home. The song he composed swelled and filled the bridge, too. "Don't you dare," he said again.
The engines stilled. Barre let the music falter and sat back smiling as Ro and Micah stared at him in stunned silence.
***
Hephaestus's orderly bridge erupted in an explosion of sound until Targill bellowed, "Silence!"
"Ro," Nomi whispered, staring up at the view screen, tears blurring her sight of the definitely not-adrift Halcyone, her face hurting from smiling so hard. The bridge reassembled into its usual quiet efficiency. Targill stood.
"Open a channel. Let's try that again."
Nomi blinked the wetness from her eyes.
"Comms?"
She jolted upright. "Aye, Commander. Channel open."
"Halcyone, this is Hephaestus. What is your status?"
"Hephaestus, this is Halcyone. We are five by five. Repeat, five by five. All systems stable."
Hearing Ro's confident voice set her heart pounding.
"We have skimmers standing by to escort you to Daedalus station. Do any of you require medical assistance to evacuate?"
"Thank you, Hephaestus. Please stand by."
Commander Targill stood and every eye on the bridge turned to him. He cocked his head at the view screen and lifted a single eyebrow. Nomi blinked and her mouth fell open. Targill drummed his fingers on the arm of his command chair.
"Halcyone, we will send a skimmer to repatriate Alain Maldonado to the crew."
"Alain Maldonado is no longer on board this ship, Commander. Halcyone out."
The channel snapped shut from Ro's end, feedback from Nomi's headset squealing through her ears. What the hell was that all about? She glanced up at Targill to find his deep-set eyes staring at hers.
"Open a secure channel to Commander Mendez. I'll take it privately," Targill said, his voice very calm and controlled.
Nomi swallowed hard before turning to her console and contacting Daedalus.
***
"What?" Ro asked, meeting the nearly identical and stunned expressions on Micah and Barre's faces.
Micah got control of himself first. "You just dismissed the commander of a Commonwealth ship, Ro."
"Yes. Yes, I did." A smile stretched across her face. "We started this and we're going to finish it. On our own terms." She glanced at each of them in turn. "You with me?"
Barre laughed, a deep booming sound that reverberated through the bridge.
"Hell, yeah," Micah said.
"Good." Ro took a quick peek at the view screen at the larger, newer ship. "If he moves, let me know." She turned to her micro and tuned the comms interface to Daedalus's frequency. "Daedalus station, this is Rosalen Maldonado aboard Halcyone. Request a secure channel to Commander Mendez."
"Stand by, Halcyone." The man's voice sounded bored, as if ships returned from the dead with missing crew members every day.
The seconds stretched out into minutes. Ro turned to Micah and Barre, frowning. What the hell was taking so long?
"Miss Maldonado, you've had quite a ride, I understand."
Ro looked into Micah's eyes. He nodded.
"Commander Mendez, we advise that you place Senator Rotherwood under guard immediately." Her words came out in a pressured rush.
"This young woman is clearly deranged, Commander."
Fuck. So much for their secured line.
Micah's eyes widened and his already pale face turned an icy gray.
"Where is he?" the senator shouted. "I demand to speak with my son."
"Rosalen," Mendez said, "there are some very concerned parents here who would like to hear from their children."
Ro stiffened at Mendez's use of her given name and struggled to keep her voice calm. Barre squeezed her shoulder. "Commander, we have evidence on board Halcyone that implicates the senator in the forgery of diplomatic seals and arms trading."
"Barre, what is happening up there? How did Jem get injured?"
So the Doctors Durbin were there too. Hephaestus must have gotten to Daedalus before they did.
Barre kept silent.
"I swear if she's do
ne something to Micah —"
"Shut up, Father," Micah said, softly, the pain and exhaustion in his voice mirrored in his slumping shoulders and deep frown lines across his forehead. "We have the weapons and we have the seals. We have audio of you and Ro's father conspiring together. It's over."
"Maldonado?" Mendez's sharp voice pulled Ro to attention. The patronizing tone had vanished.
"Our hold is full of contraband, Commander."
"I protest these baseless insinuations. That my own son would support them speaks to some kind of brain washing or threat." The elder Rotherwood's voice filled the comm link and the bridge with smooth, polished denials.
Micah spat out a curse and would have strode out of the bridge if it weren't for his damaged feet. Ro winced in sympathy and wished she could cut off the line and shut the bastard up.
"Maldonado," Mendez interrupted, "maintain your orbit. Our skimmers are en route to tow you in."
"You will, of course begin proceedings against this Maldonado girl."
Ro gritted her teeth. How far did the conspiracy go? What if they took control of Halcyone and made the evidence vanish? Micah gripped the chair, his knuckles turning white. Barre paced the bridge, his brows drawn low over his eyes.
"Sergeant, please escort the senator to his quarters," Mendez said, and Ro could well imagine the cold look she turned Rotherwood's way. "I think, under these circumstances, it would be best if we kept you in protective custody, Senator."
Ro exhaled heavily. "Holding orbit, sir."
A furious roar distorted through the comm link. "Keep your hands off me!" the senator shouted.
"Take cover!" someone yelled.
More shouts followed the twang of energy weapons discharge.
Micah jumped to his feet. Barre tried to wrestle him back down and they both ended up on the floor in a pile.
"Commander! Commander!" Ro cried out.
"Daedalus — medical emergency, command," Leta Durbin's voice cut through the confusion. "Code gamma. Two men down. Repeat, two men down."
