She typed on the keyboard for the flight control computer. Hannah edged closer, hand over hand along the aft bulkheads, trying to see what Kate was doing.
“OK. That ought to work. God, I’m thirsty …” Kate’s eye lit on Jack’s squeeze bottle, in the cup holder beside the right-hand seat. She seized it and shook it to see if there was anything left inside. Hannah reflected that the last seven hours had felt like an eternity, but in fact, less than twenty-four hours had passed since they were all together. Jack’s freaking tea was still there. I can’t believe the government is paying for this! the bottle said on the side. Kate drained its contents, her throat working.
Hannah peered over her shoulder.
The station-keeping thrusters were firing.
“We’re moving!” she yelped.
“Yup. Don’t worry, we’re not going far.”
The station-keeping thrusters ran off the reactant tanks that supplied the fuel cells. They were used to maintain the SoD’s position in orbit. As a rule, station-keeping burns were irregular, small, and short. Now Kate had input a new destination. The SoD sidled through space, so slowly that they felt no sense of motion.
“Wh-where are we going?” Hannah said.
“Need you ask?”
The thrust level indicators dropped. Wherever it was, they were there.
Kate rose from Jack’s seat and returned to the center seat. She beckoned to Hannah. “Here we are.” She called up the feed from the external camera mounted on the bridge.
Blackness.
Small lights shone in the dark, moving—not stars.
A flash of red and blue suddenly swam across the camera’s field of vision, like a deep-sea fish.
Hannah clutched Kate’s arm.
Something struck the truss tower with a faint boom that resonated through the empty SoD.
Hannah screamed under her breath. She meant it to be a proper scream, but it didn’t come out because she was so frightened.
“They’re hooking up electrical cables to leech off our generator capacity,” Kate said.
Hannah cleared her throat. “That’s not space out there. It’s the MOAD, isn’t it?”
Kate nodded. “We’ve docked with it.”
“Why, Kate? Why?”
Kate twisted around and looked her in the face. She did not look mad now. She looked anguished. Her eyes glittered in their pits of swollen flesh. “I told you, they have Giles! Hannah, you cannot imagine what they did to him … what they threatened to do to him.”
Hannah lowered her gaze. She felt selfish, because right now she did not care about Giles one little bit.
“Giles is being a real shithead,” Kate said, in a more matter-of-fact tone. “He always was a shithead. I just never noticed. But he is still a member of my crew. I’m still responsible for him. He’s human, goddammit. And they are not.”
Hannah nodded. She stared at the camera feed, heart in her mouth.
“By the way, I need my iPod,” Kate said.
“What?”
“I was looking for it in the drawers. Have you seen it?”
“Oh.” The gears in Hannah’s brain tumbled, adjusting to the sudden change of subject. “Yeah. It was in your cupholder. I put it away.”
She’d actually listened to a few of Kate’s tracks during her long wait. Tubthumping. Pharrell Williams’s Happy. Cheerful stuff, that she had hoped would cheer her up. It hadn’t worked. She got the iPod out of the drawer where she had stashed it, and handed it to Kate.
“Thanks,” Kate said, pocketing it.
Suddenly, a terrific boom echoed through the ship. It sounded like something had struck the SoD amidships with hull-crumpling force.
This time, Hannah did scream.
CHAPTER 34
The Cloudeater had to be chipped out of the ice before it could go anywhere. Its auxiliary power sinks had to be topped up, and the lines that powered the shelter disconnected from the turbine generators.
From the cockpit of the shuttle, Jack watched rriksti digging cables out of the floor, carrying house-sized machines out of the way.
“They do not wish to die,” Eskitul said, dispassionately.
“No one does,” Jack said.
“We are not so different, after all.”
“News flash,” Jack said, sketching airquotes. “Living beings want to stay alive. Full story at eleven.”
“We have everything in common,” Eskitul concluded gloomily. “Except that you have a home to return to, and we do not.”
The cockpit’s high ceiling and forward wall were a single smooth concavity, reflective black. Mechanical consoles angled to face the two crew seats. The control panels had far too many buttons, even by SoD standards. Keyboards covered with alien squiggles were huge, for fourteen-fingered typists. When you touched the wall, a transparent ‘window’ would spread away from your hand like a puddle. The floor, too, was transparent. There were more boost seats down there, enough for twenty. They had boarded through the main passenger cabin, which would seat another four hundred people in economy-class conditions. There was a distinctly mouldy smell. The shuttle hadn’t flown in ten years. Jack hoped it still did.
On the forward wall, 3D readouts materialized and faded away as Eskitul paced behind the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.
“We will pull this out,” Jack said. “We’ll destroy these arseholes on the Lightbringer. Then we’ll get it moving again.”
This was his plan, insofar as he had one. If the aliens on the Lightbringer thought they could cannibalize the SoD to get it operational, it could presumably be done. He would do it himself, though it broke his heart to think of destroying the SoD. It would be worth it if everyone, human and rriksti, could be saved.
He planned to make an exception for the Krijistal. They would be taking a short trip out of an airlock.
“Water and power,” Eskitul said. “Water and power. Everything else is chemistry.”
Eskitul was clearly down in the dumps, and Jack decided to leave it to its thoughts. He went down through the hatch to the lower crew area, taking the weapon Keelraiser had given him. It was one of their AR-15 lookalikes, which turned out to be energy weapons. The rriksti word for them was unpronounceable so Jack was calling them blasters. You could adjust the beam power from ‘sunburn’ to ‘kill ‘em all’ strength. The trigger, made for rriksti hands, was stiff. Dry-firing it, he’d confirmed that he needed both hands to complete the trigger pull. His weakened physical state had something to do with that, clearly. He was fired up by the prospect of action, but running on fumes. He wished the rriksti ground crew would hurry up.
“I want a blaster,” Alexei said.
Wrapped in a blanket, Alexei slumped on a boost seat covered in clashing blue and orange patterns. Jack frowned at him. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
“You just try leaving me behind.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Although the operation would be dangerous, what Jack now knew about the X-ray environment in the shelter had made him acquiesce in Alexei’s insistent desire to come along. He had not told Alexei about the X-rays yet. It wouldn’t improve his friend’s morale to know that even if he recovered from his wound, he was looking at a life expectancy measured in weeks.
Alexei tried to scratch under the splint that immobilized his right arm. “Itchy like fuck.”
“That’s a good sign,” Jack said sadly.
Contemplating the prospect of their death from a megadose of X-rays, he decided not to be shy. Life was, literally, too short.
“Alexei.”
“What?”
“Are you a GRU agent?”
Alexei stopped scratching. “Yes.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Jack said bitterly.
“I hate it,” Alexei said. “I hate them.” His voice rasped with passion. “I can’t even say how much I hate those cunts. They drafted me, Jack, you understand?”
“It’s the secrecy I object to,” Jack said.
“Secrecy is their
drug. Secrecy and power. I only want to be a cosmonaut. I mean, fuck it! Can’t I bring glory to Mother Russia by travelling to Europa, landing on a motherfucking alien spaceship? Isn’ t that enough?”
“Anything else you’re not telling me?”
Alexei thought for a minute. "I think the remake of Planet of the Apes was better than the original."
Jack’s eyes bugged out. "That turd egg? That waste of time from that pretentious prick Tim Burton with fucking Marky Mark!? Are you trying to make me forget you’re working under orders from the GRU, or are you really that fucking dumb? If you believe that piece-of-crap movie was better than the original, we were never friends! You and your GRU handlers can go to hell! Now that I know you’re that fucked-up, I feel like a used condom. I could deal with being manipulated into following orders from the GRU … but you liking that Marky Mark abomination is just. Too. Much!"
“Turd egg?” Alexei squeaked, cracking up.
“Yeah, it’s when you think you’ve laid an egg from the golden goose, but it’s actually a turd.”
“Oh Jesus, that hurts my collarbone.”
Jack fought, and failed, to repress a grin. Alexei made people around him laugh. That’s the way he was. Could a GRU agent quote large chunks of The Princess Bride, and use the Russian word for ‘pancake’ as a swear word? Yes, yes apparently he could.
Alexei was still the same man who’d had Jack’s back ever since they were trainees. This changed nothing, Jack decided.
“I have to tell you something else,” Alexei said.
“Oh, no.”
“Star Trek: The Next Generation was definitely better than the original series …”
“You really are looking for a fight, aren’t you?”
Alexei made a face. Then the laughter slipped out of his eyes. “Skyler was right. There is malware on the SoD. The GRU wrote the programs, and Russian construction workers installed them. But I have nothing to do with that anymore. It’s out of my hands. This is the truth. And there was no malware in the Shenzhou. I did not kill Meili.”
“If I believed you did that,” Jack said, “I’d have to try this blaster out on you. It’s OK, mate. I would be more surprised if there weren’t malware on the SoD. There’s no other explanation for the bloody flies …”
Overhead, an eight-foot slit ripped open in the aft wall of the cockpit. Keelraiser prowled in, stark naked. Jack craned up through the transparent floor.
“Eskitul!” Keelraiser’s voice came through their headsets.
The bigger rriksti turned from the readouts it was studying.
“You look ridiculous,” Keelraiser said. Eskitul was wearing a ceremonial outfit that consisted of a short red toga-like garment over a stiff split skirt. To Jack’s eye, it did look ridiculous. “Get off my ship,” Keelraiser said. “You aren’t coming. It is far too dangerous.”
Eskitul’s reply was a high-pitched gargle of birdsong.
Jack perched on the couch beside Alexei’s. He touched the wall to make a window. The manufacturing floor was now empty of machinery. The remaining rriksti ground techs wore their spacesuits, as if they had been doused in white paint. They had depressurized the shuttle bay. Time to go. Got to go. Kate, Hannah, Giles, we’re coming … if these aliens can decide who’s going.
“You’re taking their bait!” Keelraiser said to Eskitul.
The Shiplord responded in the rriksti language again.
Alexei murmured, “Pilot doesn’t want commander getting in the way. Commander thinks pilot will fuck up. Sound familiar?”
“There might be more to it,” Jack muttered. Keelraiser had to know the two humans were down here, although it hadn’t glanced down. It was speaking English, for their benefit, but Eskitul wasn’t.
“Their threats are empty,” Keelraiser said. “They dare not risk your death. But if they capture you, all is lost!”
Eskitul drew itself up to its full eight-foot height and made a slashing gesture. Clearly having the last word, it spoke so forcefully that harmonics squealed into the men’s ears. Both Jack and Alexei ripped their headsets off.
Keelraiser bowed its head and sat down in the pilot’s seat. Eskitul folded itself into the seat beside it.
“Aaaand the commander pulls rank,” Alexei said, smirking.
More rriksti filed into the cockpit and descended through the hatch to the lower seating area. All of them, like Keelraiser, were naked. They carried the small backpacks which would transform into spacesuits. One, smaller than the others, with reddish hair, held out backpacks to Jack and Alexei. “Put these on. I’m Hriklif. This translates as Ditchlight. I will look after you.”
Brilliant.
Jack accepted the backpack with a smile of thanks. He helped Alexei get out of his clothes. Hriklif showed the men how to don the spacesuits. You strapped the backpack on your back, clamped the air supply tube in your teeth, donned nose plugs and goggles, and pressed a patch on the bottom of the backpack. The rriksti had double-jointed shoulders, so this was child’s play for them. Jack couldn’t reach the place you were supposed to press. He did Alexei’s, and Alexei did his.
The contents of the backpack flowed like tepid water over Jack’s back, over his naked buttocks and thighs, down his legs, between his toes. The material came around the front of his body and encased his genitals. It rose up over his stomach and chest.
“Stop,” Hriklif yelled. The nearest rriksti leapt to press the buttons on Jack and Alexei’s backpacks. The white tide stopped at their necks, leaving their heads exposed.
Skyler scrambled down through the hatch, entirely encased in white. He looked like a classical statue that had taken up scuba diving.
“There is a problem,” Hriklif said.
“I’ll say there’s a problem.” Jack’s face heated with anger. “Who let him on board?”
Hriklif pointed upwards, through the transparent ceiling. In the cockpit, Keelraiser and Eskitul sat side by side, immobile except for their twitching hair.
“Eskitul?”
“Yes,” Hriklif said. “Why is it a problem?”
“Because,” Alexei explained, “if I am forced to share a ship with him again, I will have to kill him.”
The other rriksti, following the exchange, twittered in their own language. Their hair danced. Was it possible that they were amused? They understood grudges, didn’t they? Holding grudges was their national sport as far as Jack could tell. And they’d seen Skyler shoot Alexei at point-blank range. Perhaps they thought it was funny for Alexei to threaten Skyler now, given that he had a broken collarbone and only one working arm. If so, they hadn’t reckoned with Jack.
Skyler waved his arms, pointing to himself, to Alexei, to Jack.
“He cannot talk,” Hriklif said.
“Not a problem,” Alexei said. “I don’t need to hear his dying screams.”
“Later,” Jack muttered to Alexei.
Alexei shrugged, his face gray.
Jack turned to Hriklif and changed the subject, hoping it wasn’t too obvious a deflection. “I do see what you mean about the comms.” The rriksti had radios in their bodies, so they didn’t need them in their suits. “Can we rig the headsets to work with the suits?”
“It is so strange that you use your mouths to talk,” Hriklif said, sounding exhausted by the complexity of the universe.
Jack clapped it on the shoulder encouragingly. “It should be an easy hack. We just need to rig the mouthpieces of the breathing tubes to go over our mouths. Split the end of the tube and wrap it with these bandages you used for Alexei’s splint. They hold their shape, so we can make a little cup for a mouthpiece. Pierce a hole in that and run a wire through it for the transmitter. Easy!”
The rriksti immediately got the idea. The fix was swiftly implemented. Freed from his suit to have his breathing tube modified, Skyler stared at Jack and Alexei in fright.
Jack settled his new mouthpiece over his lips. The suit’s silky material flowed up over his face and sealed itself at the top of his h
ead. Now he was looking out at the world through a murky filter. The goggles were dark goggles, made for rriksti eyes. He hoped the goggles were light-sensitive, or he’d be fighting blind.
He tested out his headset. “Why don’t you sit down, Skyler?”
The other rriksti, suited, settled into the boost seats. Skyler scrambled to comply with Jack’s advice.
“That’s right. Better than being splattered over the bulkheads. Keelraiser tells me this thing pulls some heavy gees.”
Skyler sat beside Alexei. Jack heard him mutter, “Sorry, man.” Alexei gazed straight ahead as if Skyler wasn’t there.
The shuttle lurched forward with a screech that sounded uncommonly like grinding gears.
The wall of the shuttle bay … melted.
Just like I thought. It was only made of metal, after all.
Sorry. Smart material.
The Cloudeater rolled out of the shelter where it had rested for ten years, onto the ice of Europa.
Jack touched the window beside him to make it go away. He was not interested in looking at that frozen plain ever again. His thoughts circled around the SoD, hundreds of kilometers overhead. He prayed they wouldn’t be too late.
CHAPTER 35
The SoD shuddered. Metallic thuds carried through the hull and rolled over the two women on the bridge.
Kate flew to the center console. She called up the internal camera feed from the storage module. Hannah peeked over her shoulder.
Giant black insects flew across the screen. Their heads—their heads—did they even have heads? Or just masses of wriggling tentacles?
“They look like octopuses!” Hannah cried. “Are those the aliens? They’ve got octopus heads! What are they doing on our ship?!?”
She clutched Kate’s arm in a white-knuckled grip.
“They don’t have octopus heads,” Kate said. “I thought those were tentacles at first, too. But they’re bio-antennas. Fuckers communicate with radio speech.”
Kate sounded astonishingly calm. Now it was Hannah who felt like she was losing her mind, just looking at those things on the screen.
Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2) Page 24
