The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  “Second group, with me,” Hanako said, and led another dozen kids along the same path as Maria.

  Lucas watched the Orpheus, glittering a beautiful pearly white against the blackness of space. How many miners would be on board? Were he and Maria leading everyone into a trap?

  “When we get there, I’m going after Tali,” he told Elena and Rahul.

  “That’s not the plan,” Elena objected. “Maria said—”

  “I know what Maria said. But she’s my sister. I have to find her.”

  “Do you even know where she’ll be?” Elena asked. “What if she’s on the bridge, helping them?”

  “I guess I’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Lucas said.

  “Wait—Tali is your sister?” Katya asked.

  Lucas nodded, and Willem gave a low whistle. “Well, that complicates things, doesn’t it?”

  The third group took off, led by a delta-section second-year. Lucas looked around at the remaining first-year cadets. “All right—stick close to me. The tighter the formation, the less chance we’ll be seen.”

  He pushed off as hard as he could and used a few pulses of thrust from his belt to straighten out his course. The cockpit of the closest mining ship was dark and empty. Apparently Stockton had been telling the truth when he’d said the fleet was on autopilot. Lucas braced himself and landed on the hull near the engine cowling. A few seconds later, the rest of the first-year kids arrived. It was nicely done, he thought with some pride—especially since most of them had barely seen space until a few months ago.

  Rahul was the last one to arrive. His face was pale, though there was a glint of determination in his eyes that Lucas had never seen before. “You okay?” he asked.

  “No,” Rahul said hoarsely. “Not even a little bit. But I’ll make it.”

  Lucas gave them all a moment to rest, and then he led them on the next hop. This one was longer, and it gave him more time to study the Orpheus and the little Belter flotilla. Did Stockton really think that one hijacked cruiser and a bunch of ore haulers would be much protection once the Navy got here? It seemed stupid and suicidal—which worried Lucas, since Stockton was neither of those. Did he have some other plan in mind?

  As soon as he landed on the next ship, Elena grabbed him by the arm. “Where are Rahul and Willem?”

  Lucas looked around. She was right—everyone was present except for the two of them. His mind had been so wrapped up with Stockton that he’d forgotten to keep an eye on all the cadets in his group. He scanned the sky frantically. Where could they be?

  “Can we radio them?” one of the delta-section kids asked.

  Katya scrunched up her face. “Didn’t Maria say short-range transmissions only?”

  Lucas looked out anxiously at the deep black field of stars. Katya was right. Anything other than the close-proximity comms they were using now might get picked up by the Orpheus. But they couldn’t leave Rahul and Willem out there by themselves. What if something had happened to them?

  Five minutes, he decided. If there was no sign of them in five minutes, he would have to use the radio. Maria would be furious, but he wasn’t going to abandon his friends, even if it meant risking their mission.

  “We shouldn’t have let him come,” Elena muttered.

  Maybe she was right, Lucas thought. Maybe he should have refused to let Rahul join the mission. Some leader he was turning out to be. It had barely been twenty minutes, and he’d already lost two of his team.

  “There!” Aaron said, pointing.

  Everyone turned toward the spot he was indicating. For a moment Lucas thought Aaron was wrong—there was nothing there that he could see. Then a tiny point of light that he’d been sure was just a star shifted slightly, accompanied by the telltale blue burst of a thruster pack.

  “It’s them!” Katya said excitedly.

  Lucas shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted at the tiny light, which slowly grew bigger and bigger until it resolved into two small suited figures. Relieved, Lucas moved everyone out of the way to give Rahul and Willem a place to land. He had a million questions, but right now the only thing that mattered was that they were safe.

  As soon as they touched down, Elena grabbed Rahul. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Rahul gasped. “I got off course. Willem came after me.”

  “But then we lost our bearings,” Willem added. “Had no idea which ship to go toward. Rahul finally figured it out. Pretty brilliant.”

  “Never would have gotten back without him,” Rahul said, still catching his breath. “Once we started moving, I could barely tell up from down.”

  The two of them weren’t scared, Lucas realized. They were excited—almost triumphant. He and Elena exchanged a look, and he could see that she was thinking the same thing: anyone who didn’t know the two of them would have thought they were best friends. Apparently Sanchez was right—some things could change, even in the Navy.

  The last hop was the longest of all. Lucas kept a close eye on Rahul, insisting to himself that whatever happened he wasn’t going to lose anyone again. But this time Rahul kept on course and had no trouble staying with the others—helped, perhaps, by Willem, who stayed within a few meters of him the entire time.

  They finally reached the Orpheus and joined Maria and the others near the engineering bay. As soon as she’d verified that everyone had arrived, Maria repeated the plan she’d gone over with them down on Vesta.

  “Hanako’s going to enter through the emergency access hatch on deck seven. Lucas, take a small group to the brig so we know what we’re dealing with. The rest of you, come with me through the hangar. The interference from the hull will make suit radios spotty, and we can’t use the intercom system, so each group will be on their own. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded. Lucas looked around at the determined expressions on the cadets’ faces. Were they all as brave as they looked? Or did they just know that there was no backing out? Maybe there wasn’t much difference. Maybe that’s all bravery was—committing yourself to something that you knew might end badly. Whichever it was, though, the miners on the Orpheus were about to get a rude surprise.

  He tapped Elena and Rahul on the shoulders and led them toward the waist airlock. This was the most obvious entry point on the ship, which was why the plan involved them waiting until the other teams had drawn attention to themselves. Rahul crouched down and opened the airlock control panel.

  “Can you open it without alerting the bridge?” Lucas asked, remembering how Rahul had disabled the alarm on their trip outside in the middle of the night.

  Rahul nodded as he poked through a mess of multicolored wires. “When I jimmied it that night we came out onto the hull, I left a way back in, just in case. It’s standard procedure for situations like this.”

  “Have you ever been in a situation like this?” Elena asked.

  “Well, no,” Rahul admitted. “But you have to admit, it paid off.”

  He found a diagnostic switch deep inside the panel and flipped it on and off rhythmically. After a moment, the airlock doors slid open. “Voilà,” Rahul said, waving his hand dramatically.

  A tremor ran through the hull. “Maria just blew open the engineering airlock,” Lucas guessed. “That’s our signal.”

  They cycled the airlock and opened the inner doors quietly. From the back of the ship came more shouts and the distinctive ping of mining lasers. So far, though, it appeared that Maria’s group was the only one that had been found—which meant maybe the others had a chance of accomplishing their missions.

  He tapped on a wall screen and brought up a schematic of the ship. They wouldn’t be able to use the main corridors to move, which meant finding a way through the ventilation system. . . .

  There was a sudden burst of movement, followed by a thud and an unpleasant-sounding grunt. Lucas turned and saw Elena in the prep room holding Jonah with her arm around his neck and her hand over his mouth. A few droplets of blood welled up from a cut on Elena’s temple an
d floated away.

  “Help me get him tied up before—”

  Suddenly Jonah jerked out of Elena’s grasp. “Help!” he shouted, reaching for a mining laser that was clamped to the wall. “Muskrats!”

  He didn’t get any further. Elena swung her knee into Jonah’s gut and slammed him against the floor. She and Rahul held him down while Lucas used suit-repair tape to gag him and tie his ankles and wrists. Elena let him go and grabbed the mining laser off the wall.

  “I ought to just shoot you,” she said, in a voice that was terrifyingly matter-of-fact. In response, Jonah’s eyes went wide and he mumbled something inaudible through his gag.

  “Elena, don’t,” Lucas said. He reached toward her, but she pushed him away.

  “It’s what he deserves,” Elena insisted. “He killed Oliver.”

  “I know. But hurting him isn’t going to help anything.”

  Elena held the laser against Jonah’s chest. Her hand was trembling. “This is where you shot him,” she said. “Do you remember? He was just a kid.”

  Jonah quivered with fear as she pressed the muzzle of the laser harder and harder against his chest. “Oliver didn’t deserve to die. He wasn’t like you. He wasn’t a killer.”

  Abruptly she threw the mining laser into the airlock and mashed the button with her fist. The doors closed and the airlock vented, blasting the laser out into space.

  “You’re lucky I’m not, either,” she said hoarsely.

  Lucas breathed a sigh of relief and put his hand gently on Elena’s shoulder. In response she pursed her lips and nodded without meeting his eye.

  “We have to hurry,” Rahul said.

  Lucas turned and pointed at a ventilation shaft in the ceiling of the hallway. “That way.”

  He led them through a series of air shafts down toward the brig on deck nineteen. The ductwork was narrow, and he had to pull himself forward using the palms of his hands. It was true, more or less, that Belters didn’t get claustrophobic—at least not the ones who survived. Lucas hoped the same was true for his friends.

  As soon as they reached the air shaft for deck nineteen, they heard voices arguing. Lucas, Elena, and Rahul crammed themselves in around a small ventilation grate. Directly below him, two guards were talking on radios and watching security videos on a wall screen. The brig itself was a few meters away. Through the barred doors, Lucas could see a dozen officers watching the guards and the security feeds.

  “The air shafts for the brig are separate,” Elena whispered. “We can’t get them out that way.”

  Rahul nodded. “I don’t see Sanchez. Where is she?”

  Lucas pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket. He shielded it as best he could from the guards below him and clicked it on and off a few times. Come on, he thought. Pay attention.

  After a dozen flashes, Randall Clarke glanced up at the air grate. His eyes went wide. Carefully he leaned toward Novak and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes flicked toward the cadets for a fraction of an instant and then back down at the guards. Carefully she and Randall went around to the other officers and talked quietly with each of them.

  Novak cleared her throat and turned toward Randall. “So from what we understand, most of the miners are in engineering or on the bridge. Is that right?”

  “Apart from the ones guarding us here, yes,” Randall replied.

  “But none on deck twelve?”

  “That’s right. None on deck twelve.”

  “Hey!” shouted one of the guards. “Quiet in there!”

  “What’s on deck twelve?” Rahul whispered.

  Lucas tried to visualize the layout of the ship, but everything was a jumbled blur. “I can’t remember.”

  “Well, whatever it is, that’s where they want us to go,” Elena said. “Come on.”

  She led them forward, past the brig, until the vent dead-ended at one of the circular hallways that went around the outside of this part of the ship. She peered through a grate to make sure there was nobody around, and then she opened it carefully and floated down into the hallway. They found a cross-passage that led to the Park Place ladderway. Elena checked to make sure there was nobody above or below who might see them, then started downward.

  “I’m not coming,” Lucas said. “I’m going to find Tali.”

  Elena paused and looked back at him. After a moment she nodded.

  “Good luck,” Rahul said. “And be careful.”

  He nodded and moved quickly up the ladder toward the front of the ship. He was terrified that at any moment some miner with a laser might come around a corner and see him, but the officers seemed to be right—there weren’t enough Belters to man anything but the most essential parts of the ship. The corridors and accessways were unnervingly quiet.

  When he reached the Broadway ladder, he stopped. At the far end, through the hatch that led to the bridge, he could see Stockton. The Belter was floating with his arms crossed in an expression of frustration. His voice echoed down the ladderway.

  “It can’t be that hard. You told me you’d flown ships this size before!”

  Stockton moved away from the hatch, pointing angrily at something Lucas couldn’t see. Lucas raced up the ladderway as quickly as he could. Just as he reached alpha section’s deck, a shadow appeared in the bridge hatchway. Lucas darted off the ladder and pressed himself against a bulkhead. His heart hammered. He was certain that at any moment, Stockton was going to come down the ladder and see him.

  He counted ten slow breaths. Above him, he heard the miners arguing. The longer he waited, the more likely it was that he would be caught. He raced toward the fourth-year bunkroom, opened the door, and slipped inside.

  Tali, floating near the window with her arms folded, turned toward him in surprise. “Lucas?”

  “Shh!” Lucas whispered.

  “What are you doing here?” she said. “Are you crazy? You’re going to get yourself killed!”

  “I’m here to rescue you,” Lucas said. “Hurry. We need to go.”

  She gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “Rescue me? So that the Navy can put me in prison for the rest of my life? The deal Stockton offered me is better than that.”

  So McKinley was right—Tali wasn’t a hostage or a prisoner. She’d agreed to help them. Lucas sagged back against the wall, feeling as if she’d just punched him in the gut.

  Seeing his expression, Tali shook her head. “Don’t look like that. I haven’t made a decision yet.”

  “How can you even think about trusting him, after everything that’s happened?”

  “I don’t trust him,” she said. “Not even a little. But I can’t let anyone else get hurt, Lucas. Stockton says that they’ll let everyone else go if I help them fly the ship.”

  “Do you really believe him? Tali, they didn’t hijack a Navy cruiser just to fly around in circles. They killed Oliver—did you know that?”

  “Oliver is dead?” Tali said. Her face darkened.

  Lucas nodded. Unbidden, the image of Oliver dying on the floor of the airlock appeared in his mind, so real it felt as if it was happening all over again. Grief and guilt and anger welled up inside him. “We have to do something about it. We can’t just—”

  “There is no we, Lucas,” Tali said. “No matter what happens, I’m not a part of the Navy anymore. They don’t just forgive stuff like this.”

  “You don’t know that,” he insisted. “Do the right thing. Help us take back the ship.”

  She looked down at the floor. From the back of the ship they could hear voices shouting and the clang of a bulkhead door being slammed shut.

  “They really killed Oliver?”

  Lucas nodded. Her lip trembled for a moment, but he couldn’t tell if it was from anger or grief or both.

  “Then let’s find Stockton and—”

  The door slid open. Stockton, floating just outside the bunkroom with a mining laser in his hand, grinned at them.

  “No need to find me, girl. I’m right here.”

  24
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br />   TALI PUSHED HERSELF in front of Lucas. She squared her shoulders and glared defiantly at Stockton. “Let him go! He’s not a part of this.”

  Stockton grunted. “He most certainly is. A bigger and bigger part, I’m beginning to realize.”

  Lucas looked around for some sort of weapon he could use. What would Elena do? Maybe if he could disarm Stockton, then he and Tali could—

  “But I think he’s worth more to me alive than dead, at least for the moment. Up to the bridge, both of you.” When he saw Lucas’s hesitation, Stockton aimed the laser directly at his chest. “Or we can end this now now. Honestly, I’m fine either way.”

  Tali put her hand on Lucas’s arm. “Come on,” she said quietly.

  He followed her up to the bridge, with Stockton so close behind him he could smell the Belter’s breath. Willis was bent over the pilot’s station, apparently still trying to work out some of the details of the ship’s operation. Captain Sanchez was at the back of the bridge, watching him with a grim expression. Her hands were tied at the wrists, and her leg was burned from a close-range blast from a mining laser.

  “Now, Ms. Sanchez,” Stockton said smoothly. “You were saying something about how you aren’t going to unlock the weapon systems for this ship, even if I were to kill every one of your officers?”

  He waved his laser at Lucas. “So instead, I’ll start with this brat. Believe me, I’m positively giddy about the prospect of blasting a hole in his skull, so please don’t think I’m bluffing.”

  Sanchez’s eyes met Lucas’s. He could see the anguish on her face. But the weapon systems of the Orpheus were far too dangerous to turn over to the Belters. There was no way she could agree to their demands.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas saw a small light flash on the captain’s console. Something clicked in his mind, and he realized what Randall and the other officers had been trying to tell them. Now he had to find a way to make Sanchez understand without giving everything away to Stockton.

  “If I persuade the others to surrender, do you promise not to hurt anyone?” Lucas asked.