by Ron Collins
He turned to find Thomas Kitchell standing at the command station—wide-eyed and excited, but obviously in control of himself. His face was drawn, his lips thin against his teeth. His blue-green eyes were vaporous in the stark emergency lighting. Young as he was, the kid was still focused.
“Systems are just coming back online, sir,” Kitchell said, yelling over the sirens. “Give them a minute.”
The activity seemed to settle the rest of the crew down.
Torrance felt a sensation of pride in the kid’s bearing.
“All right,” Torrance said. “Comm?”
Kitchell’s fingers scurried over the panel. “Spotty, LC. We have links to maybe a third of the personal quarters, but they’re dropping in and out. I can get contact with propulsion, too. It’s all flakey, though.” He shook his head absently. “I mean, it’s all just flakey as hell.”
“Bridge?”
“Nothing.”
“Aldrin Station?”
Kitchell shook his head harder and focused on Torrance. “Nothing there, either, sir—I’m working on it, though.”
Torrance peered at the screen.
“Show me the vacuum board,” Torrance said, turning to the station that would usually be Olissy’s but finding instead that Marisa Harthing was standing there.
Their gazes locked.
“Nav is dead,” she explained. “Thought I could help.”
There was no time to ask about Olissy.
“Good,” he finally said. “Do you know how to get me the vacuum map?”
Marisa frowned. “That’s not really my thing.”
Torrance stepped up to the control board. The system flashed its readiness. He toggled a button, then gave his fingerprint to the security scanner.
A holo of the ship floated over the projection system.
Light-blue sections were compartments where atmosphere was detectable; black sections had sensors that were not responsive—places where vacuum had likely breached.
A gasp circled the room.
“My God,” somebody whispered.
Black scars split the ship from both forward and rearward sections. Systems Command was in the middle of Central Deck, which had seen some breaching but remained intact on the whole.
Torrance’s skin bristled.
The room came to a standstill under the constant pounding of the sirens, each of the crew staring with slack jaws at the image of the ship.
If this was a realistic picture, it meant more than a thousand people—anyone on the bridge, several hundred people in personal quarters, and probably a lot more—were likely dead.
The depth of the crew’s silence was a lead weight on his chest.
He had led Systems Command, of course. But this was different. These people weren’t looking to him for a routine command, or a direction out of the standard playbook. This team wanted him to give them something they didn’t have.
Bold, he thought, as he breathed through the moment.
Bold, he thought, as he felt something click in his mind and he seemed to almost separate from his own body.
“Nothing means anything, yet,” Torrance said in his firmest voice. “Something’s obviously rocked the ship good and hard. It could be that the sensor system is just broken.”
His words worked for a moment.
The fear permeating the room receded. But the smell of fire grew stronger, and the hologram’s blackness cast a pall across the room. These were intelligent people. No one believed the blackness was a collection of bad sensors.
“Abke, I want diagnostics. And give me whatever the fire systems are reporting.”
Abke didn’t respond.
Torrance used his good hand to type a physical system command.
He wanted to pull up some good news. He wanted things to be back where they were just five minutes ago. But mostly, he realized, he just wanted to be seen doing something…anything…just as long as he wasn’t fumbling around senselessly in front of the men and women he had led for so long. They had to figure out how bad this really was, and then they had to fix it.
The system spit some code, but it wasn’t enough to see anything.
“I want fire reports,” he said to Ensign Whalen.
“I don’t have Comm in those areas,” the ensign responded.
Torrance nodded. Without reliable communications, there was only one way he was going to get real information.
He turned to Marisa.
Her gaze held no fear.
“I need you to take a detail to Rearward,” he said. “Karl, you take one to Forward. I need hands-on information. If these are true breaches, I expect your teams to confirm integrity of the seals and begin rescue operations. With luck, though, you’ll be able to say our sensor system is just broken.”
“Yes, sir,” Malloy said.
Marisa nodded.
“EVA suits for both details,” Torrance said. “No complaints. The grav system is down and we could be breached, so mag boots active, and no one goes into a compartment adjacent to a black zone without a suit on.”
“Aye, sir,” Marisa said.
Malloy moved to the EVA lockers with determination painted on his face. He, too, seemed relieved to be doing something besides standing around.
Malloy and Marisa gathered teams and assigned positions.
Engineers kept working to collect what information from their stations they could.
A few damage reports trickled in.
The power was down over most of the ship. Ten of twelve oxygen filters were dead and the other two were at limited capacity.
Torrance took a deep breath and climbed the stairs to the central control station two at a time. The station was a ten-meter square with glass panels in the upper section of the walls on all sides. He slipped behind the desk, and his wrist throbbed in the relative quiet. Red light flashed crimson on the glass panels.
He felt suddenly very alone and very violated.
He thought about the situation again.
Given the design of the vacuum containment system and the massive black blocks that filled the holographic display, if something had hit them, it had to have been something huge. But Aldrin was the only other thing out there and the relative speeds of Everguard and the station weren’t anywhere near those required to do as much damage as the ship appeared to have suffered.
He was relieved to see Abke was responding at his personal station.
He keyed the voice system on his computer.
“Give me any vacuum diagnostic reports you can get and show me all parameters on the auto vacuum-lock routines,” he said.
Information about how the system was calibrated rolled over the projector. It was weird, though. Probably only an isolated instance, he thought at first. A partial code-block. Limited depth of functionality.
More data scrolled before him, though.
Pages and pages.
It didn’t take long for the pattern to say something was wrong.
Torrance spotted the anomaly, sat back, and rubbed his eyes.
When he withdrew his hand, it was shaking.
CHAPTER 31
UGIS Everguard
Ship Local Date: September 15, 2211
Ship Local Time: 1036
“Lieutenant Commander?”
Torrance looked up.
Kitchell stood in the doorway, rubbing his chin with nervous energy.
The blue and black holo of the damaged spacecraft hung in the distance behind him.
“I’ve got a message on port 6 I think you’ll want to hear.”
“Who’s it from?” Torrance replied.
“It’s from somewhere in Aldrin Station, sir. But it’s on a common carrier, probably a system-wide broadcast. It’s Universe Three.”
“Universe Three?” He looked at Kitchell, shaking his head. It was too much to take in all at once.
The kid nodded. “We’ve been attacked, sir.” Kitchell touched the comm pad.
“… the freedom of all human being
s.”
The voice was female and terse.
“Universe Three looks at the world as three spheres. The first is the sphere of our Solar System. The next is the sphere of our galaxy. And finally comes the sphere of all galaxies that comprise our universe. We are dedicated to seeing human beings free to roam them all. We are dedicated to keeping the universe from being destroyed by conglomerate greed. We are dedicated to keeping governments from restricting the use of Star Drives to only those with power.
“Universe Three will lead humankind to true freedom.
“We will fight repression in every system and unjust control on every planet.
“Everguard’s burned-out husk stands testament to this goal. The craft that brought us the Star Drive has been burned to cinders, just as the galactic government will be if it continues its unjust attacks on the human spirit.”
Torrance sat back in his chair.
Yes, he thought. Everything made sense now. Except, of course, that nothing like this could ever make sense.
Kitchell shuffled his feet.
“Have you heard from Aldrin?” Torrance asked.
“Radio’s no good at standard freqs, but we’re scanning and I assume they are, too. Shouldn’t be long until we link up.”
“Tight-band laser?”
“Haven’t tried.”
“Then get on it. I want to know what they’re doing right now. Tell them we have survivors and need a transport as soon as possible. When that’s done, I want you to check on the availability of the escape shuttles. If nothing else, maybe we can ferry people out of here.”
“Aye, sir.”
Kitchell went to his comm station.
Software code and system cals glowed orange against the glass of the desktop.
The air was clammy. Voices and alarms blurred into a single buzzing whine behind him.
He gazed at the parameters again. Just to be sure.
The vacuum diagnostic wasn’t there.
That meant the primary configuration file had been altered, which meant someone did this on purpose, which made sense now. The vacuum seals had been disabled. Normally a diagnostic routine would run every five minutes and send a warning directly to the service panel if such a problem were discovered.
Torrance pulled the primary job schedule.
The vacuum diagnostic wasn’t there, either.
He glanced at the holo through the glass wall, then clenched his eyes tight. This was an inside job. Someone had removed the routine from the schedule, meaning it wouldn’t run when it was supposed to and therefore wouldn’t note the fact that the seals had been tampered with.
Bloody hell.
Both the containment system and the diagnostic program had been corrupted.
A chill shivered up his spine and his gut felt like he had eaten a brick.
Who?
How many people knew how to disable the vacuum containment system?
Kitchell.
He had given Kitchell his own goddamned key, hadn’t he? Thomas Kitchell could change anything he wanted. The idea hit him like a right cross to the soul.
He raced out of his office and gripped the rail over the gunmetal platform, recoiling in pain as he accidentally tried to use his damaged hand.
The crew’s faces turned his way, including Kitchell.
Torrance drew a breath to scream, but the expression on the kid’s face stopped him.
No. That was impossible. After all this time it was impossible for him to believe Thomas Kitchell had done this.
But if not Kitchell, who?
Marisa? Why had she shown up? Could she have stolen his private key sometime earlier? Someone else on the staff? Oblivious to stares from his team, he glanced to the EVA closet and saw it was empty. Or maybe it could have been from outside. An image of the round-faced grin of Silvio Nivead came to him. Someone like Silvio could have done this—and someone like Silvio, whose career had been in the dustbin for decades, might well be a target for recruitment by a group like Universe Three.
Torrance cursed.
The darkening display of Everguard’s systems said he had a bigger issue to deal with now.
Forward Deck was gone, and Rearward nearly so.
Maybe half of Central Deck remained operational.
The pattern said that whoever did this had set explosives along the ship’s external skin. With the containment system down, the decks had blown like dominoes.
But something must have gone wrong.
If the explosion had continued through the rest of Central Deck, there wouldn’t have been anything at all left of Everguard. And that’s what U3’s message suggested was the plan.
They hadn’t meant to leave anything behind.
Some of the bombs must not have detonated.
The crew looked at him with confused expressions. He clamored down the stairs, taking two and three at a time, cradling his sore wrist that was already stiffening to a constant ache. A film of sweat covered his brow.
The holo of the ship hung in the background, and the black void where the bridge should be seemed to give a cold chuckle.
“Are you okay, sir?” Kitchell asked.
“Have you been able to contact Aldrin?”
“Yes, sir. They’re dispatching a transport as requested. But all docking locks have been damaged—essentially welded shut or blown away. They won’t be able to execute rescue activity until a containment crew cuts their way in.”
“Escape shuttles?” Torrance asked.
“I, uh …” Kitchell glanced at the model. “I don’t think anything’s left there, sir.”
Air locks welded shut, shuttle bays destroyed, air handling systems struggling to meet the demand of what was certainly a leaking spacecraft—if he was right, the rest of the bombs could go off at any time, and if that happened everyone aboard Everguard might well be dead long before an access bay could be created.
He gave an appreciative whistle. “This guy knew what he was doing, didn’t he?”
No one responded.
He wondered about Malloy and Marisa. Should he try to alert them? No. Assuming they weren’t involved, alerting them would do nothing but add to their teams’ sense of panic. Best to just let them go and see what they could do. He didn’t want to contemplate what alerting either of them would do if they were actually involved in the attack.
“I need volunteers,” he said. “I’ll explain as we go, but you’ll need to know we’re heading toward vacuum, and, as you can see, we are fresh out of EVA suits. Ten seconds to decide. I’ll take the first two who step forward.”
Time stopped.
A boot hit the gunmetal floor.
Kitchell, of course. Kitchell would do anything for him. Then Yarrow.
“Okay. The rest of you operate your stations. Comms, track my path and report status to Aldrin on tight beam every five seconds.”
He stepped toward the door, Kitchell and Yarrow following closely behind.
CHAPTER 32
UGIS Everguard
Ship Local Date: September 15, 2211
Ship Local Time: 1048
Emergency lights flickered in the corridor.
The artificial gravity system was still dead outside Systems Command, but Torrance surmised the explosions had set what was left of Everguard spinning because she was rotating enough to create a false gravity along the rightmost wall. Using both the ceiling rails and the limited force of the ship’s spin, Torrance, Kitchell, and Yarrow followed the corridor toward the section that remained intact.
Torrance beamed a flashlight ahead of him as best he could with his bad hand, launching himself ahead with his good one. The beam caught the smoky haze that was beginning to build in the corridor.
If he listened just right, he could still hear Everguard talking: the repeated clicks of relays oscillating through ventilation ducts as the air system tried to come on again, the snap of the power grid, the groans of flayed metal still folding under the power of vacuum. A metallic groan like the soun
d of a lonely humpback whale echoed from deep within the ship.
He knew this ship.
The thought of her savaged like this, hurtling so powerlessly through space, gave him the most singular sense of loss.
The haze blurred his vision as they got farther from Systems Command.
Three dark forms bobbed listlessly in the corridor ahead. All three were members of Malloy’s team. Two were obviously dead, shot at close range, but the third clutched at the gaping wound at his throat that gurgled with each breath. Torrance didn’t see Malloy anywhere.
Malloy. It was Malloy.
The certainty of it curled inside his stomach.
Malloy had access to most of the ship’s support systems. He also knew enough about the craft to understand its weak points and to set charges appropriately. And Malloy was resourceful enough to understand the code behind the vacuum system. He could disable it.
Torrance saw the truth in all its glory, and that truth made him want to punch a hole in the wall.
Torrance grabbed Yarrow by the shoulder. “Do what you can for him.”
The ensign nodded and went to the man.
The passage split, looping around on itself.
He turned to Kitchell.
“You take the left, I’ll take the right.”
Kitchell nodded.
Torrance slipped through the shaft alone. It was strange to see the place like this, empty and draped in sepia darkness.
The distant grinding from the environmental motors filled the background as they struggled to push air.
A harsh flash of white light flared ahead. It was a handheld, Torrance thought.
He cut his beam to avoid being noticed.
The place smelled of dust and warm oil.
A wall panel floated freely in the corridor before him, turning silently in the dim light like slow-motion shrapnel. It made him think of a sea ray he had seen in an aquarium once.
The flash came again.
The low glow of a light wedged into debris to provide working light was obvious now.
Malloy knelt over a package of explosives that trailed wires back into the exposed ductwork. The lieutenant’s hood and helmet hung off his EVA suit and down his back. A plasma gun lay hidden in shadows near the floor beside him—Torrance assumed it was Malloy’s Carson, taken illegally from the range. As if that mattered.
