by Kelly Gay
“You read that, Niko? R-o-m-a-n, space, b-l-u-e,” Rion said.
“Searching now,” he replied.
Kip turned to her. “What now?”
“Any luck on the armory, Cade?”
“One sec . . . Yep. Looks like a decent payload.” His breath huffed over the comm as he moved around. After a few metallic bangs, he reported: “Thermite paste . . . body armor . . . jet packs. Some small arms, rifles. And heavy ordnance.”
“Leave the heavies for the military and pack up the rest. Less, how’s it looking your way?”
“Not bad, Cap. Med bay’s got some nice SFGs, biofoam, the usual. Lots of damage though. Gonna see if the pharmacy is intact. Might be some salvageables there, depending on how some of this stuff fares in cold weather.”
“Niko?”
“Cryo’s in bad shape. Place is huge. A few pods we can take—looks like some were ejected . . . Control panels look good. I’ll see what else I can find. And, Cap, there’s nothing on chatter about the Roman Blue. She’s a ghost ship.”
“Kip, head to Niko’s location and give him a hand with those pods.”
Kip hesitated for a moment, the light emanating from his HUD illuminating his features. “You gonna report it?”
The way he was looking at her made her uncomfortable, like he was judging her, like he was some self-appointed moral compass. “Yeah, rookie, I’m going to report it.”
He dipped his head, then made his way down the corridor. Rion watched him go. Yes, she’d report it. But she had a feeling the UNSC would never tell the families a damn thing. They’d let sleeping dogs lie, whatever line they’d fed loved ones originally—KIA, MIA—would probably still stand. Why open old wounds?
Because there were people like her who’d spent their entire lives unable to move on, always wondering, always searching . . .
Standing on this ship . . . she could just as well have been standing on her father’s vessel.
Gripped with the need to know more, Rion told the crew, “I’m headed to the captain’s quarters.”
She wanted information, if only for everyone else who’d been denied it. The war was over. There was no reason to hide the resting place of the Roman Blue. After she reported it and the UNSC took control of the site, Rion would give them enough time to collect their goods and then she’d release the intel.
She had to crawl through bent metal to get inside the quarters.
Typical space—living and dining area, private bath, and two bedrooms. Debris littered the floor, like a giant hand had lifted the compartments, shook them, and set everything back down again. Her boots crunched metal and glass. The wind howled through an opening beyond one of the compartment walls.
A picture frame caught her eye. As she picked it up, glass bits fell onto the floor. Two young boys stared back at her, their arms around each other.
Rion set the picture down and made for the overturned table. Some of its wires were torn, but the comm cables were still attached, disappearing through the floor. She righted the heavy table and examined the large integrated screen on its surface. The screen was busted, but she set to work dismantling the panel and then searched inside the casing for a data chip.
There you are.
She took the chip and placed it in her commpad. A list of dates began pouring down the screen. Personal log dates of Captain William S. Webb, the first being March 10, 2531.
“Holy shit.” Rion’s knees went weak. She grabbed the table for support.
Early 2531 was the last time she’d heard from her dad.
Voices immediately came over the comm, asking if she was all right.
“What? Yeah, fine. I’m fine. Just . . . stubbed my toe.” She said the first thing that came to mind.
As the chatter died down, Rion pressed the date on the comm. She’d never get another chance like this to get inside the UNSC.
Crumbs, she was looking for crumbs.
CAPTAIN’S LOG: MARCH 10, 2531
A slim gentleman appeared on the screen, with gaunt eyes and lines across his forehead. His hair was light and speckled with gray. There was a fatalistic look in his expression, a weariness about him that made Rion instantly sad. He went through the formalities of stating his name and rank and ran through the day’s events.
“. . . a month of repairs before we can return to the fleet. Captain Hood has been reassigned to the frigate Burlington in a fleet-support role for the time being as I take command of the ship. I’m sure he’ll make his way back to the front lines soon. God knows we need all the talent we can get. The admiral insisted I stay and witness the dressing-down he gave to the captain. It was . . . harsh, but deserved.” The captain shook his head, obviously troubled a great deal by the event. “Disobeying orders and engaging the Radiant Perception near Arcadia was reckless and foolish. He had no chance of defeating that destroyer. If Hood had picked up that log buoy and returned as ordered . . .” The captain’s shoulders sank a little. That buoy is out there somewhere, lost, picked up by the destroyer. . . .” He sighed deeply, the weight of the war resting heavily on his shoulders. “Godspeed to the folks on the Spirit of Fire. May they find their way home.”
Shock flared inside Rion, sending her stumbling back. She ended up sitting amid the debris, disoriented, her breath stalled in her lungs.
Her eyes began to sting. She gasped, remembering to breathe. Her pulse was wild, heart thundering so loud it filled her eardrums.
Somewhere in the din, she heard voices. The crew, no doubt, hearing the commotion. Unsure of what to do, she scrambled to her feet as a wave of pure adrenaline hit her.
Rion closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down as the ship suddenly shuddered hard, sending her flying forward, straight into the table. Pain shot through her hip as a loud, metallic groan echoed through the Roman Blue.
Quickly, she grabbed the data chip from her wrist and shoved it into her pocket. It was the most valuable thing she’d ever found in all her years of searching, and she’d be damned if she’d lose it now.
“What the hell was that?” she yelled over the comm.
The crew’s responses came quick and jumbled.
Cade shouted above them all. “That’s ordnance—someone’s firing on the ship!”
Another round slammed into the Roman Blue, and the entire floor where Rion stood vibrated, then dropped a few centimeters. Damn it, it was going to give.
She took off at a dead run for the mangled door, diving through the small hole she’d crawled through just as the floor in the captain’s quarters collapsed. Her momentum sent her rolling across the corridor, where she banged against the wall.
Her temper ignited as she got up. “I swear, if they hit my ship, I’m going to kill someone! Head out, people. Now!”
As Rion rushed down the wrecked corridor, a knot formed in the pit of her stomach because she knew she was the weak link, the farthest away from Ace. The crew was close together and would make it back at least fifteen to twenty minutes before she could, and that was a lifetime right now. “Get to Ace, go dark, and get her airborne as soon as you’re all on board.”
“Not without you.” Cade’s voice came over the comm with a ring of finality. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Appreciate the love and all”—she dodged a metal plate as it fell from the ceiling—“but if they hit her, we’ve lost everything.” She righted herself and started running again. “I can fend for myself. Lie low. You know I can. We’ve done this before, Cade, more times than I can count. I’ll send a signal when I’m clear.”
Several negatives filled her comm until Rion shouted at them to knock it off, get their heads on straight, do their goddamn jobs, and save her ship.
The comms finally went silent and all Rion could hear were the sounds of heavy breathing and pings of metal and shuffling.
“Damn it, Forge,” Cade’s voice broke t
he quiet. Rion smiled. He only used her last name when he was pissed. “I’ll be waiting for your signal.”
“Counting on it.”
Purpose shot through her like lightning.
She wasn’t dying today. Not now. Not when she’d found a crumb.
No, not a crumb, she thought as laughter bubbled up from some crazy part of her. She’d found a lead to a goddamn ship.
Spirit of Fire . . . I’m coming for you.
Dad . . . I’m coming for you.
PART TWO
* * *
* * *
LUCK BE A LADY
THREE
* * *
* * *
Eiro, Ectanus 45 system
The Roman Blue shuddered again. Temperature warnings flashed across Rion’s HUD as a superheated shock wave rolled through the vessel. The sizzle of burning metal hissed through her audio. Whoever was firing on the wrecked UNSC cruiser had gone from ordnance to plasma.
Not something she saw every day.
Over the years, she’d imagined the many ways she might meet her end, but melting had never been on the list.
In a matter of minutes, her cold suit had gone from asset to potential death trap; the thing wasn’t designed to handle high exterior temperatures; it was meant to keep heat in. And if she didn’t clear the Roman Blue soon, she could add roasting alive to her growing list . . . if the next blast didn’t do her in first.
Metal blistered and groaned, eerie notes ringing through the passageways as walls and floors turned molten and supports gave way, entire sections crashing through levels. The walkway beneath Rion’s feet began to dip starboard.
Her pulse beat wildly as she ran, dodging and ducking through an ever-changing maze of twisted and jagged alloy.
One more corridor to go.
She slipped around a corner and grabbed at a damaged railing. It broke from the bulkhead, sending her sliding backward and plowing into the opposite wall. Her neck snapped back and a crack echoed in her ears. A quick glance at the HUD showed a small fracture in the exterior shell of her helmet, but the damage was confined to the outer layer, one of many layers made of titanium nanocomposite fibers and plating. And those, thank God, were still intact.
As the remains of the Roman Blue continued its dip starboard, Rion drew on all her reserves and sprinted, as fast as the cold suit would allow, for the broken stairwell, counting each step in her head, knowing it’d take some time for the plasma cannon overhead to gear up for another blast.
Instead of taking the stairs one tread at a time, she leapt the distance and hit the landing with a thud. The weakened stairwell shuddered, slowly dropping away behind her as she bolted for the shafts of welcome daylight piercing through the wreckage.
The white glare from the moon’s wintry surface was blinding, but not so much that she couldn’t see what lay ahead. A few meters more and the deck simply disappeared into open space. She didn’t slow down. Out was out, no matter how far she’d fall.
And if she was going to meet the ground, it would be as far away from the Roman Blue as possible.
At the edge of the deck, Rion shoved off with everything she had and sailed into the air.
On the bright side, the drop was only one story.
On the not-so-bright side, controlling her descent in the heavy suit was impossible. The earth and snow rose up to meet her with a vicious slap that stole her breath and sent her forehead slamming into her display. Her vision went black. Alarms rang in her ears and the taste of blood from a bitten lip trickled into her mouth.
With a groan, she rolled onto her back and blinked tightly several times until her vision cleared, only to find the HUD blitzing in and out. All around her, clouds drifted upward.
No, not clouds. It was steam. From her suit. A pained laugh bubbled in her throat. She’d come very close to catching fire after all.
The force of the ordnance explosions and plasma beam had pushed burning debris and snowmelt skyward, creating a strange fall of sleet and metal rain. Tiny fragments and ice tapped against her helmet, the sound mingling with the hiss of snow as bigger fragments met the frigid surface. With a wince, Rion sat up and brushed a few embers off her suit.
Just as the HUD corrected itself, a faint lavender glow began building in the clouds. Spurred by the telltale sign of heating plasma, Rion ignored the aches and pains, scrambled to her feet, and took off through the freezing slush and mud, pumping her arms and not looking back.
Her focus was on a large outcropping of rocks about two hundred meters away. But the longer she ran, the farther away they seemed. Please don’t glass the moon, please don’t glass the moon. A thread of panic started to unwind and she felt thrust back to a time when glassed planets were a horrifying reality. She had no idea who was attacking the Roman Blue or what capabilities they had, but she was praying like hell that the plasma beam was directed at a single target and not the entire moon.
Part of her wanted to break silence and call in Ace for immediate retrieval, but that was the anxious Rion talking, the scared Rion. The sane part of her knew the plasma beam would’ve been a hell of a lot more intense and encompassing if the intention was to glass Eiro. It wouldn’t make sense to use a concentrated beam on the Roman Blue and then proceed with complete lunar destruction.
Her lungs and throat were on fire, and her thighs and calves screamed as she trudged on, unable to go any faster than a quick, uneven jog. Finally, she slid around the cover of the rocks, crawled up under the outcropping, and tucked herself into a crevice. Unlike inside the Roman Blue, there was no Titanium-A plating to take the brunt of the blast, no walls and levels and metal to absorb and mitigate some of the potential heat.
Rion surveyed the vast snowy landscape through a narrow frame of rock, holding on to the hope that it wasn’t the last view she ever saw.
The world flashed violet, then white.
Then the heat wave came, rolling over the landscape with a deep whoosh.
The interior of her suit became sweltering. The temperature surge and the HUD’s flashing alarms brought on a roll of nausea that had her shutting down visual and audio before closing her eyes and hoping for the best.
* * *
When Rion opened her eyes, her view was gone, replaced by long, flash-frozen icicles barring the way out. She scooted away from the crevice and kicked at the icicles’ thinner bottoms, breaking them enough to tummy-crawl out of her hiding spot. The ground had become ice, but she held on to the rocks, using them to pull herself to her feet and inch her way around the outcropping to get a good look at the Roman Blue.
Or rather, what was left of it.
The former UNSC cruiser was nothing but a smoldering mess, large chunks of debris sticking up like metal bones through a glowing, molten soup.
The clouds above the wreckage had faded once more to a dull, solemn gray.
Shaky and spent, she sat against the rock and let out a heavy sigh. Eiro hadn’t been the target. And neither had she. Or Ace of Spades, for that matter.
She brought her hands up to rub her face, but when gloves hit helmet, she let out a sharp laugh. The lines of sweat rolling down her skin created a near maniacal need to rip off her suit and wipe those feathery, itchy lines away.
But as much as she wanted to, she had no desire to be flash-frozen like the land around her. So she glanced skyward again. Whatever ship had been there before was probably long gone. There was nothing to salvage, no reason to send a landing party. The damage was done.
Cowards.
No respectable salvager would destroy a perfectly good and profitable wreck. Salvagers had a code—a shaky, unspoken one, but a code nonetheless. An honor system most of them lived and worked by.
Firing on someone else’s claim, obliterating it, putting lives in danger, even killing to get the best scraps . . . that might have been how things were done during the Covenant War a
nd its immediate aftermath. But that was then, a time when the entire galaxy was in a constant state of flux, when planets and colonies were emerging from the wreckage and rebuilding, when governments began taking shape once again, when chaos and power grabs were a common enough occurrence.
During the war and in the early postwar days, salvagers were a crazy bunch—Rion included. It had been a free-for-all, ruled by the fastest and most heavily armed. But over the years, and after a few sobering displays of violence, most salvagers had come to their senses and begun working with more civility. There was plenty of scrap to go around. The war had seen to that.
There were only a few groups she could think of that would want the Roman Blue and all it contained gone, to remain a ghost ship forever.
Its makers, for one. The UNSC.
ONI, for another.
Nothing else made much sense.
The chance that this was about some other salvager’s attempt at personal revenge was slim. Rion had made her share of enemies, had beaten rivals to scrap enough times that more than a few of her competitors held deep grudges. But a true salvager wouldn’t destroy the goods in the process.
Leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees, she checked her commpad. Fifty-two minutes of oxygen left. The wreckage had begun to cool, parts of it already becoming glass, black jagged smears on the snowy surface of the moon.
Finding that link to her father and then having anything else she might have found immediately ripped away . . .
Talk about being sucker-punched.
And as much as she wanted to move forward and make tracks, it was too soon to break silence. While chances were small that the attacking ship was still around, she wouldn’t run the risk quite yet. Ace would never stand against an enemy that could do the damage she’d just witnessed. And if Rion lost the Ace of Spades, she might as well throw in the towel and sell chatter boxes from a kiosk in a mall somewhere on Earth.
