by Jaleta Clegg
The round cockpit contained five seats. I went to the pilot station first and checked on the ship’s status. The engines took a few minutes to power up. Whoever had landed this ship had done an incredible job, or else they'd landed on purpose before the force field tripped. Everything in the engine showed green.
I went to the scanning station next. The bank of equipment was much too familiar. For not being Patrol, my Phoenix was better equipped than the Tommy Ruiz. I sent out a signal to the ships still waiting. I hoped to get a better map than the one I’d printed on the wrapper. The scan lit up with green lights all along the canyon. I hit the print button. A sheet of mem paper slid out of the printer.
I picked it up. It wasn’t my map. That came sliding out a second later on regular paper. The mem paper I held was blank except for a security encryption light blinking yellow in one corner. I tried opening the message. The light just flashed red before fading back to yellow. I had no idea what code it would respond to, most likely it was voice coded. I rolled it up then stuck it in a pocket.
The scans didn’t show anything different than I’d already figured out. The equipment had to be better shielded, it still worked. I put it on standby.
I skipped the nav station and went to the fifth chair. This was a Patrol ship, the station controlled the weapons. I sat in the chair and studied the controls.
I had never fired a ship’s weapons before. I’d learned to shoot hand weapons, it was required of everyone at the Academy. I’d even earned a marksman’s pip. The ship’s weapons were way beyond my expertise. It would be safer to skip them entirely. With my luck, I’d blow up half the countryside if I tried to use them.
I looked over the room, trying to decide what to do next. I had a ship full of supplies and equipment. And I had no idea if any of it would do me any good.
On a whim I sat back in the scanner seat and flipped on the com. I heard nothing but static. I tried the emergency beacon. Nothing happened. The switch had scorch marks around it. I pulled up the ship’s log.
It was not the usual text, the captain had opted to use a recording. Her voice filled the cabin. I watched her face as she calmly recorded the ship status during a routine message run.
She was young for a captain, not nearly as young as I was, though. She had blond hair, pulled back severely from her face. Her gray eyes were serious. I watched her log as much to hear someone else’s voice as to satisfy my curiosity.
“Captain Joli Esslen logging off,” she said. The screen blanked before her face reappeared. She read off the ship time and date and location. It was another routine message run. I let it play, closing my eyes and pretending she was talking to me.
I went through three more messages before I got to the one I really wanted. The captain’s face appeared on the screen.
“We have detected a distress call from quadrant seventeen, on what is commonly known as the Kumadai run,” she said and rattled off a string of coordinates. “Tommy Ruiz responding.”
She left the log on record mode. I watched her crew as they sent the ship towards the red dwarf star and its false cry for help. I watched her as she followed all the procedures. The signal came, the emergency beacon bleeped steadily. The voice call came through, the same broken plea I’d heard. I watched Captain Esslen order her crew to move faster.
And then the scans came back with unexpected results. I watched as she realized too late that the signal had been faked, that it was a trap. The recording was rough as they fought to keep the ship in one piece as it hurtled towards the planet. Captain Esslen kept her poise, shouting orders over the noise of a ship fighting the pulsing tractor beam.
The pilot landed the ship a lot more gently than Clark and I had managed. Captain Esslen was out of the nav chair and giving orders almost before the ship settled. Data streamed in from the scans, the bottom section of the screen showed every result, recording the same bursts of energy I’d already measured.
The crew put the ship on alert, locking it up according to procedures for forced landings in hostile territory. It didn’t do them any good. I watched helplessly as the golden men used their black boxes. The crew struggled, clutching their heads and screaming as the irresistible pressure built. They staggered and fell down the ladder.
The recording continued. The cockpit was empty but I heard the crew opening the airlock. There were shouts and a brief explosion. The airlock closed again. Someone had kept their wits enough to shut and lock the door as they left. The recording showed nothing but an empty ship for a few more minutes before it shut itself off.
I sat in the chair, thinking. I was being recorded now. The equipment had set itself on auto record, triggered by sound or movement. I reached out, my finger over the reset button before I changed my mind. I let it keep recording. I wasn’t doing anything wrong other than trespassing in an abandoned ship. I was planning on committing a whole list of other petty crimes, though, like stealing the crew’s belongings. I really didn’t think they’d mind. If they were still alive.
I bit my lip on that thought. Jasyn and Clark had to be alive. The aliens went out of their way to capture them, not kill them. That had to mean something. I clung to hope.
The date on the recordings was just over a year old. How long had the trap been running? The rusted wreck hinted at centuries.
I pulled out the keyboard and typed in a request for logged orders. I was technically breaking a few regulations, but I doubted anyone would ever find out or care if they did. I might only be prolonging my own death.
My hands started shaking. My eyes blurred. I rubbed my hands roughly over my face.
“I am Dace, I can do this. I have to do this. Think, Dace. Stay together.” I scrubbed my eyes until they ached, pushing back hopeless tears with every ounce of willpower I could find. I couldn’t give in to loneliness or despair. I had to find a way out of this, a way that included Jasyn and Clark.
“If you ever want to see Tayvis again,” I said out loud, “you have to think your way out of this.”
I scrolled through the ship’s listing of orders. Most were routine message delivery or personnel transfers. The last one caught my eye. The Tommy Ruiz had been sent on the Kumadai run with a priority message from Parrus to Toko. I pulled up the full orders and ran into my first problem. The orders were encrypted.
I tried a variety of passwords and overrides. None of them worked. I gave it up. I doubted there was much in the orders that would help me anyway.
I accessed the ship library next, typing in a search for Kumadai run. I got a lot more than I expected. I pulled a ration bar out of my pocket and ate while I read through the file.
The Kumadai run had a bad reputation. Ships had been disappearing along the route ever since it had first been mapped. Most of them were never found. Occasionally the wreckage of a ship would be sighted, usually near one of the anomalies that filled this sector of space. Radiation storms were common and could be ferocious, kicking out enough energy that only the heaviest shielding stood a chance of bleeding it off before the ship was crippled. And that was the least of it. Gravity wells migrated unpredictably through the route. The stars in the area were unstable. Novas and worse happened frequently.
The more I read the angrier I got. I’d been suckered again. No wonder the payoff for making the run to Parrus had been so high. The public access files and even those in the Traders Guild offices had grossly understated the dangers of taking this particular route. One in six ships on the Kumadai run disappeared and no one thought to mention it anywhere. Except here, in a technically classified Patrol file.
I found the list of ships missing on the Kumadai run. There were close to a hundred. The Korisan Mui, the first ship I’d found, had gone missing ten years previously. I scrolled through the list, name after name rolled past. About two thirds were Patrol ships, including a heavy cruiser that had vanished fifty years earlier. The earliest reported missing ships were over three hundred years old. The disappearances were sporadic until the last thirty years.
More than twenty ships had gone missing in the last fifteen years. I promised myself that Phoenix Rising was not going to join that list. I was going to get off this rock. I still had no idea how.
I printed the list and spent a while matching up names of ships to their locations on the map. Only those that were still whole enough to have a functional transponder showed on the map. I’d find the ones I could and see what shape their engines were in.
I found a stylus and made notes on the map for the Korisan Mui and the Tommy Ruiz. I added information on the Phoenix. I got the printer to cough up some extra sheets of paper and made more notes. I had the faint glimmerings of an idea. It depended on what I found below in the canyon, though. It also depended on me not getting caught by the golden men. I folded the papers and sealed them in my pocket.
I shut the ship down to standby mode. I stood over the com unit and pushed the log update button.
“This is Dace, captain and pilot of the trading ship, Phoenix Rising. I used an old emergency override code to get access to this ship. Considering the crew is missing, I don’t know if they’re dead or not, I don’t think anyone will object.” I sat in the chair then summarized what I’d seen, what I’d guessed, about this planet and the people on it. It didn’t take long. “I’m making a record of this, just in case.” I let my voice trail off. In case what? In case I actually managed to get free and someone filed charges against me? In case I needed to justify my actions to a Patrol inquiry board? I reached out and snapped the record button off.
I’d recorded it as much to hear myself talking as any other reason. The solitude weighed heavily. I shut the board down.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting and cataloging and putting away the personal belongings scattered across the crew quarters. I used the galley when I got hungry. There was still a fairly large selection of food to choose from, including freeze dried chicken noodle. I hated the stuff. The noodle dish I chose instead was hot, that was about the only good thing I could say about it. I’d been spoiled by Jasyn’s cooking.
I went through every bin and locker on the ship that I could open. Several were locked. I tried a few things but ended up leaving them alone. They weren’t the kind of locks that I knew how to pick. I had my lockpicks in one pocket. I was quite good with them. Jasyn didn’t know that, I’d never told her. It was a skill that was best not bragged about, although it had come in handy before.
I ended up with a pile bigger than I could pack into my pockets. It included a couple of emergency packs that I emptied. I kept the bigger med kit, hoping I wouldn’t need it. I repacked the bags with water and food.
I filled the packs the rest of the way with things I knew would come in handy; handlights, a few tools, a knife I’d found in the bottom of a personal locker, and a portable heating unit. I found several blasters and stunners. Blasters weren’t going to be much use, remembering what had happened to Clark’s. His gun had been in perfect condition, but something had shorted out the power pack. I suspected it was a field like whatever jammed all com signals. I tucked the stunners in. Maybe they wouldn’t be affected. I didn’t want to admit I just felt safer with some kind of weapon, whether it worked or not. I added the com units I’d found. They would come in handy if we could find a way to unjam the signals.
The ship wasn’t a Survey or Exploration ship. It wasn’t equipped with the small scanners and portable testing equipment the Patrol gave Exploration ships. I’d have to keep looking for those, if there was one of those ships crashed here. If it wasn’t stripped bare. I found one small hand unit that could scan for atmosphere gases, radiation, heat, and several other things. I stuffed it into a pack.
They were both full and heavy enough that I debated removing some things. I looked at the other piles still left. Blankets and extra socks were luxuries. Maybe I could stash them somewhere along the way. I tied up a bulky bundle of them, just in case. The rest of the items I stacked near the airlock.
I opened the airlock and looked out.
The thin breeze stirred my hair. The sun was low over the canyon, stabbing angry orange light across the planet. I had a few hours until dark. The landscape looked just as deserted as ever. I went back inside, shutting the door.
I checked the airlock controls. I wanted to lock them again, so the golden men couldn’t get in but the real crew still could. If they were out there and able to return. No, I wouldn’t let myself start thinking that way. I popped off the control panel and settled for disconnecting wires. I loosened the outer panel while I was at it. All someone had to do was take the outer panel off the rest of the way and reconnect the wires. I’d bypassed the lock entirely.
I didn’t think it likely the golden men would figure it out. They’d used rocks to try to hammer open the inner lock in the Phoenix. Its lock was a lot less sophisticated than the standard Patrol ones. The men used technology. Their black box and wands were definitely high tech. But the way they’d used them led me to believe they didn’t understand them. I trusted my instincts and left the door jerry-rigged. Any half competent engineer could have it open in seconds.
I took some time in the ship’s facilities. I used the shower. I hated being filthy, going without bathing for days on end. I’d done it much too often in the last year. I helped myself to someone’s spare socks and a shirt long enough to cover me while I put my own clothes through the cleaner. I took a blanket and lay down on one of the bunks while I waited. It took a while, but I managed to relax enough to fall asleep.
I didn’t have nightmares though I half expected them. I hadn’t worried about it the night before, mostly because I was so tired nothing could have kept me awake. Dreams of being trapped, hunted, chased, or worse usually jerked me out of sleep several times a night. I’d been sleeping in front of the controls on my ship partly to try to avoid them. It hadn’t helped much.
When the dream started, a dark dream full of things with teeth and screaming, I told it to go away. I forced myself into a much happier dream. I woke, much refreshed, with a smile on my face and the remembered touch of Tayvis’ hand on my cheek.
I dressed and checked outside again. The sun was down, the thin breeze gone. The temperature had dropped below freezing. I picked up the packs and bundles, as many as I could carry, and hauled them through the door, dropping them to the ground at the base of the ladder. It only took a moment to close the door and disconnect the wires again.
I gathered the bundles at the base of the ship and started towards the dim purple glow of the canyon and its force shield. I could leave them under one of the bushes at the edge. I tried whistling. The sound was too loud in the silent night. I bit my lip and thought about Tayvis instead as I hiked.
Chapter 8
The sticks pounded rhythmically in the steaming sludge. Jasyn blinked sweat from her eyes. If she stopped, the man with the wand would trigger her collar again. She’d given up fighting it after the first dozen shocks. Each time the pain was greater, her reaction faster. Another few times and she didn’t know if she could survive. A drop of sweat fell in her eye, burning so bad she couldn’t see. She swiped at her eye, keeping up the pounding beat of the heavy stick with one hand.
She worked in a large clearing with several dozen other prisoners and only a dozen guards. Their white tunics stood out against the green jungle, making them easy to count. Each of them held one of the wands. They stood around the edge of the clearing, in the shade, and watched. Distance didn’t seem to matter with the collars. They merely pointed the wand at the unfortunate prisoner, so far only Jasyn, and the prisoner felt the choking pain. The other prisoners warily avoided attracting the guards notice.
The prisoners proved very interesting. Most of them wore shipsuits. Those who didn’t wore large white tunics like the guards except ripped and stained. They ranged in age from one man who was barely out of his teens to a woman so old and stooped she could have easily been a hundred and fifty. Their clothes were worn, evidence of hard living for years. Those who still had boots were lucky,
though most of the boots were worn through. She saw ship patches from every type of ship. There were more than a few Patrol uniforms, silver for regular Patrol, tan for Planetary Survey, even one faded pale blue uniform from Exploration. She saw a handful of black Enforcer uniforms when other prisoners delivered new plants to them, carried in awkward bundles. Less than half of the people she saw wore traders’ shipsuits.
The golden men whistled, signal for a break from the pounding. She stepped back, wiping her arm over her face. The cauldrons were wrestled free of the fire pits and trundled on crude carts to a wide opening in a squat metal contraption. It was a featureless blob more than twenty feet on a side and about six high. The cauldrons were emptied into the gaping mouth and put back on the fire pits. The mouth closed and the contraption grumbled.
The guards shouted. The fire tenders raced to gather wood and restoke the pits.
The guards shouted again. Bundles of plants were brought over and pushed into the cauldrons. Jasyn leaned on her stick, too tired to do more than watch. The woman working with her jammed the cauldron full and added water, one heavy bucket at a time.
“Start pounding,” she whispered to Jasyn, her lips barely moving. “Unless you like being shocked.”
Jasyn pushed the stick into the cauldron. She noticed that the others did the same. One person per cauldron pounded the plants with the stick, another kept the water levels right, while a third fed the fire. None of them talked.
“Why are we doing this?” Jasyn whispered.
“Don’t talk,” the woman whispered. “Later.” She hurried to fetch more water.
Jasyn kept pounding. The stuff in the cauldron went from stiff stalks to mushy stalks to thick paste. She pounded the sludge though her arms felt like they were going to fall off. The heat built in the clearing. Jasyn kept pounding, a mindless numbing rhythm. Her arms ached, her feet ached, her whole body ached. Sweat dripped into her eyes. The guards watched her, wands held loosely at their sides.
