Her eyes snapped towards him, and he jumped back.
Wiping sweaty palms on his coveralls, he fought the sudden instinct to flee. “The Poet said yer name is Sarrin?”
She glanced at his upper arm, frowning as though the answer could be buried in the cloth of his uniform. A shake of her head a moment later, and she turned away, walking and tapping and listening to the engine. A terrible coughing, rasping whisper came from her lips. It took him a minute to work out.
“Kepheus?” he repeated.
She nodded once.
“Yeah. I’ve been getting weird readings, nothing serious, just a little funny since we left Etar.”
Faster than he could blink, she disappeared from his sight. He caught just her feet slipping into an open access hatch. He tried to catch her leg, but it moved too fast. “What are you doing?” he yelled, concern overwhelming his fear. At least the plasma wasn’t superheating this time.
The computer dinged, the scans done.
Her feet were too far in to see.
Sighing, he went to the nearest work screen. “Hey,” he called out to her, “you’re right. The Kepheus alignment is off, but by point-oh-three-one. I’ll get the aligner.”
Quickly finding the tools, he squeezed himself into the narrow tube, bracing against the heat. The engine block was a single T-shaped crawlspace nearly as long as the ship was wide. Kieran’s shoulders took up the entire width of the access tube.
Sarrin had the panel off the Kepheus drive — the massive chamber where the plasma rose and made its superheated current that powered the graviton generator. He touched her leg, tugging on the baggy, grey coveralls.
She froze, leg jerking out of his grip. Her palm rested on the metal chamber.
“Careful. You’ll burn your fool hand off!” His own hand grazed the Kepheus drive with a sizzle, as he tried to grab hers to pull it away.
Faster than he could see, her entire body spun around, curled in the blind-end of the access tube.
“I’m just tryin’….” He clutched his own hand. “You can’t touch it, it gets too hot.”
She blinked back at him.
Jesus, what was happening? He slumped back against the wall. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” What did the Poet want with this girl? He gritted his teeth and reminded himself to be more friendly. Friendliness lead to trust. Trust lead to information. He put on his best smile. “Here, I’ll show you.” He scooted forward.
She coiled back again.
He scooted back. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just didn’t want you to burn yourself. I’m sorry I yelled.”
Tremors running through her body, she blinked rapidly. Her eyes, wide and vibrant blue, refocussed, and she inched forward, reaching again for the Kepheus.
Kieran stopped himself from reaching out again. She was bright, if the ship’s narrow escape told him anything, maybe he was telling her too many things she already knew.
“Calibration 99.8.” Her voice came out broken. “Flow-through gasket is loose.”
He looked where she pointed, and when he turned back, she had skittered into the opposite side of the T junction. She pointed again to the Kepheus drive.
He scanned it with his handheld. “Aligned within 3 one-thousandths. That’s better than I can do with the instruments.”
She snuck silently down the tube, nearly to the open access hatch.
“Wait. How did you —?”
She was gone.
He tripped coming out of the tube and fell on the floor. What exactly had he landed in?
She stood over him, the nine-eights spanner held out.
His hand took it reflexively.
“Flow through.” She pointed.
“What?”
Before he knew what was happening, she climbed over him and into the access port, the spanner once again in her hands. She had said the gasket was loose, he remembered suddenly.
“Oh, hey!” Kieran reached for her leg again, but it had already disappeared. He banged on the side of the hatch. “No, no, no. I’d better do it. It can’t be too tight or the whole thing will jam.”
She flew out of the small opening, moving so fast he couldn’t be sure if he’d actually seen her climb out or if she had simply appeared hovering over him again. The spanner rested in his hand.
Somehow, he realized his mouth hung open and closed it.
He picked himself off the floor, and flopped into the access tube, but there was no need — when he checked, the gasket was tightened perfectly, exactly as he would have done
The engine room was empty by the time he pulled himself out of the engine.
In the main engineering bay, the 3D display had changed, a new area highlighted on the star chart. He checked against the scans three times, but his work had been done for him.
He ran through the calculation to plot the jumps only paying half-attention. Despite all his training, his preparing and hoping and waiting, Kieran couldn’t help the worry that this was far more than he’d bargained for.
FIVE
SARRIN BRACED, CLINGING TO A support in the ship’s cargo bay, as the auto-pilot jolted them down on a landing tower. Planet: Contyna. Population: 10,097. UEC presence: minor. Location: twelve-hundred light years from the central planet, far in the Deep Black, the middle of nowhere. According to the database, Contyna had been terra-formed ten years ago. The settlement recently became viable, supported by iron mining in the vast sand dunes that covered the mostly barren planet.
The darkness clawed at her mind, and she squeezed the support beam with her hand until she felt its alloy start to bend.
Halud had become increasingly paranoid in the few days they took to travel to Contyna. A mysterious contact waited on the planet, someone who could hide them, but Halud feared they would be set up again as they were on Selousa. She wanted to tell him not to worry, all would be fine, there were few traps she couldn’t get out of, but when he talked in circles late into the night, all she could hear were Guitteriez’s words echoing around her own head: We just need to break her open first.
“Here you go.” The first officer held out a laz-gun. “The Poet wanted you to have one in case you need to protect yourself.”
The weapon was small, only 64V, single pulse — the kind that fit entirely in your hand and kids played with. It made Sarrin’s heart accelerate and the edges of her vision blur.
Did normal children play with the weapons? She tried to recall, so far back it barely seemed real. Memories layered on top of other memories: Halud playing with a similar gun, chasing her through the gardens until the tall man who must have been their father had yelled. The gun was a toy, but it sent a shiver up her spine, even then.
She had parents. Her beating heart stopped. A single memory: A woman laid in bed with long dark hair spread out over a pillow, death on her face. And then Halud running far ahead, her short legs pumping to keep up in the long grass.
Halud went over his plan one more time. He spoke to the captain, but it was the first officer who listened intently. “I’m sorry to say that this will be the most dangerous part of the mission. We must not be detected by the Central Army patrols on our way to or from the facility,” he said.
“Right,” said Rayne. “Because this is a covert mission for the Gods, and they are not yet ready to know.”
“Uh, yes. We have set the ship down on a nearby landing tower, instead of flying to the hanger as our contact intended. I believe it is important that we fully assess the situation before we enter ourselves into it. We will make our way on foot, and enter the compound here,” — he pointed to a grainy, out-of-date satellite image — “at the back door. We can assess the situation in the compound before deciding if it is safe to make contact.”
Sarrin squeezed the support beam again. There were too many variables, but she couldn’t find the words to suggest hacking the video surveillance, or taking a multi-pronged approach to the facility, or utilizing underground conduits instead of walking through the open streets — no
way to share the hours of tactical theory that had been drilled into her head.
And so, the darkness clawed at her, showed her all the places the plan could go wrong, and reached dangerous tendrils over her vision.
“Whatever you say, Poet,” Gal shrugged. “We drop you and the girl off at the hangar and we leave, right? That’s our job done. Maybe we can still make our freight route and pretend none of this ever happened.”
Halud bristled.
Rayne pushed in front of Gal. “We serve the Gods. We will be with you to the end.” She saluted with her five fingers.
Halud’s eyes widened in surprise, making him look incredibly young. Incredibly like the boy Sarrin had known. Incredibly like the last twenty years had never happened. But when he spoke, his voice came out hard and adult: “The engineer and first officer will stay with the ship.”
The engineer made an odd noise. “The way I see it, Poet, you’re gonna want a few more people on your side here if you don’t know what we’re walkin’ into.” He picked up one of the laz-guns and looked it over, inspecting it clumsily. Sarrin doubted the engineer had handled many firearms, still he’d been nothing but keen to help at every opportunity since they’d left Selousa, and she couldn’t deny a pang of gratitude. He nodded towards the first officer. “And Raynie here’s the best shot on the ship.”
Rayne stood calmly, waiting for instruction. Her laz-rifle, slick and polished, hung precisely over her shoulder: 300V, fast-pulse, 150-metre range.
Halud paused, considering.
“This is a fool plan,” slurred Gal, far from sober. The outline of a small drinking flask bulged in his pocket. “Why am I coming with you?”
Colour and hope drained from Halud’s face. He turned to Rayne, “Yes, alright, we’ll all go. But we need to start moving if we want to maintain the element of surprise.”
“The Gods we Serve, in the Gods we Trust.” Rayne prayed, tapping her fingers to her chest fervently.
Sarrin prayed too — prayed that the miniature laz-gun resting in its holster on her thigh would stay there. That her hand wouldn’t inexplicably reach for it and start firing.
As though the situation they were walking into wasn’t dangerous enough, the simple possibility of losing control threatened to overwhelm her. Time slowed and her head started to spin. Somehow she found herself placing one foot in front of the other, travelling down the ramp behind the others and off the landing tower.
Their UEC coveralls blended in with the dust stained uniforms of the iron miners as they walked through the streets. Dry heat and bright sunshine assaulted her senses, the spinning dust clouds tasting of iron, of blood. The folk kept their eyes to the ground, quickly shuffling past on their thin, wiry frames, but their emotions bounced around like crashing surf, making Sarrin dysphoric with the sensations.
A voice wafted into her consciousness: “Sarrin, you okay?” The engineer’s furrowed brow and bright eyes and teeth sharpened into focus in front of her.
“Fine.” Her voice sounded far away from her.
The sloshing and clinking of the captain’s flask suggested he’d taken yet another drink.
She forced herself to exhale, pushing herself closer to reality.
Kieran knelt down, connecting his handheld to the warehouse’s back door. It flashed once, the security system bypassed, and they entered.
Halud’s plan had not been specific beyond breaching the warehouse, but the service lift opened straight ahead and they all climbed in together. An enclosed space with a single door in and out. Her breath came in short gasps against her pounding heart. She tapped against her leg while she distracted herself, estimating the length and width of the box, calculating its volume, standard gas-weight, and the litres of water it would take to drown them all. Stop, she told herself.
Rayne checked her laz-rifle, preparing in case there was need to fire.
The miniature laz-gun rested heavily against Sarrin’s thigh.
Elevator doors opened. Too slowly. Halud said something, but she couldn’t hear it amidst the pounding in her ears.
She forced herself to breathe.
The maintenance corridor was long, straight, and narrow — if they were ambushed here, there would be nowhere to take cover. Extreme tactical error. Her inner ear burned, adrenaline making all of her senses incredibly sensitive as she hunted for sound. There were faint footsteps below: eleven sets, male, moving quickly.
Halud tested the few doors in the hall but they were all locked. He led them to the far end, stopping where the corridor opened into a rough stairwell. He turned and looked nervously at Gal.
Desperate for distraction, Sarrin pinched her arm, hoping the sensation would give her something tangible to ground against.
“We’ll try the next floor,” said Halud.
They followed him up flight after flight, ragged breathing echoing around the barren staircase. They stopped at the uppermost floor of the twelve-story warehouse.
“Should we go in?” Halud nodded at the corridor that opened in front of them.
“You keep looking at me like I know something,” said Gal, “but we shouldn’t even be here. We should have left Selousa and disappeared beyond the Deep Black. That’s the only way to survive whatever fool errand you’ve put us on.” The captain took a drink from his flask.
Halud shook his head. “I have to see this through.”
Gal groaned and leaned against the wall, sliding down until he sprawled across a set of stairs.
“What’s wrong with you?” Halud snapped. “I came all this way —.”
Rayne stepped forward, craning her neck. “Sirs, I see an access hatch part-way down the corridor,” she said. “Kieran could open it and we could have a look through into the main hangar.”
Halud huffed, his normally silken voice shaking. “Yes, excellent. Thank you, Commander. Excellent idea.”
Kieran moved into action, sliding up the stairway past the group and into the corridor. The others followed, crowding around to watch. It took the engineer less than a standard minute to open the panel. “Big freight bay,” he said when he pulled his head back into the corridor, “lots of cargo boxes and a small shuttle. No one down there though.” He waved for Rayne to join him.
Sarrin pressed her ear against the wall. Despite Kieran’s assurance, she could hear the men in the hangar shuffling now, twisting and setting something. Some kind of machine, not a laz-gun she thought, but something else familiar — if only her wrecked mind could think.
The first officer slipped back into the corridor. “My tactical assessment shows there are suitable sources of cover spread around the room. I recommend the rest of us infiltrate the area and provide protection while you meet your contact, Master Poet.”
Halud shifted his weight. “It’s too exposed, I won’t put Sarrin in that position.”
Gal frowned, the parts of his expression shifting too slow. “You’re going to have to meet this contact some time or come up with another plan.”
“I have a bad feeling,” whined Halud.
The corridor was too narrow, far and close at the same time. Gal said something, and Halud something else — all lost to Sarrin, her mind drifting too far away. A hand reached out, her body instinctively flinching away. Rayne herded her towards the service lift. Halud and the captain moved in the opposite direction.
The elevator doors opened and the closed, swallowing her and Rayne and Kieran, trapping them. Her body vibrated in anticipation. Definitely a trap.
She listened for signs of the men below, but they had gone still and silent. Her eyes searched the elevator box frantically for an escape route — a hidden service door or panel that would open — but the walls were smooth, bare except the single button control panel.
Kieran reached a hand for her shoulder. “Your brother and the cap’n will be just fine.”
His touch bolted through her. She stopped herself from breaking his arm, twisting away instead. She found no door, no exit from their cage. The elevator finish
ed its descent. A sound of quiet shuffling reached her from the corridor beyond.
She pushed Kieran to the side with her elbow, muscles coiling and preparing to spring.
Rayne frowned opposite them, gripping her rifle, and mirrored their move to cover beside the door.
The doors swooshed open, the entryway empty in front of them.
Sarrin blinked. Perhaps she had been wrong, her mind so badly fractured it was just plain making things up now. She took a single steady breath.
She heard a rapid flurry outside, followed by the click of a mechanized trigger and a hollow-sounding explosion of air. An improvised smoke grenade landed on the floor and started spewing white gas.
Demons. She stared at it. The white-grey colour and sudden odour of ammonia identified the fast-acting neuro gas — they would all be unconscious in 5.4 seconds. Sooner if they panicked.
Darkness crowded around her vision, black clouds rolling over the white.
“Looks like there was no one in there, Boss,” said a disembodied voice in the entry.
“Be patient,” came the reply. Somewhere in the back of her brain, Sarrin recognized the deep voice. “We need to be careful with this one,” he said.
Kieran started to claw his eyes.
The monster whispered to her; it painted the scene in her head — eight men crouched against the wall — it showed her a movement diagram: maximum casualties with minimum effort. Escape was possible, always possible. But the others….
The boss spoke again, deep and clear and concise. Familiar. A friend.
She used the voice to pull herself back to the surface. Putting her hands on her head, she stepped into the doorway. The neuro-gas filled the hallway, only glimpses of the men showed through as they started to move towards the elevator, wearing goggles and breathing filters to protect themselves. Their leader — Hoepe Fallows — smiled behind his mask, and motioned for her to lie down.
Kieran copied her, mimicking the hands-on-head submissive posture as he laid on the floor beside her. Mentally, she thanked the Gods as the darkness receded, and she cursed herself for being so wrecked. She used to have far better control.
Augment Page 9
