Raven's Children

by Sabrina Chase

  “Everybody ready? Gren, are the tools loaded?”

  He nodded. “I just hope there isn’t damage forward. This is a tight cluster, so it could have hit one of the others coming in.”

  “All we need is something that runs this time. Kids, stay together and be careful. OK, let’s go.”

  They filled up the scout completely, even with Gren sitting in the copilot chair. Ennis was with the crew, silent and subdued. Something had happened on the bridge, but she’d been too tired to figure it out then and now she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. He probably didn’t know himself.

  I don’t need this. Not now. The longer he stayed, the more it seemed like he had always been with them. He was even helping with the kids. He’s not staying. Get used to it. What she needed was to get a new working ship as soon as possible so she could send him back to Fleet. That’s what he really wanted, and she had other important work to do. She had to get Sequoyah defensible before Toren showed up.

  When the scout had docked and the crew began to file out, she tilted her head at Ennis to stay.

  “We’re going to take a look at the crab ship,” she told Gren softly, under the noise. “Tell the others we’re looking at other salvage possibilities, if they ask.”

  Gren gave her a morose look. “You’re sure it’s dead?”

  “Hasn’t moved since the first time I saw it. If it’s a trap, it's been in place for a long time. They aren’t that patient.” He nodded, unhappy but resigned.

  As soon as the gear was unloaded, she undocked the scout and moved away. Ennis, in the copilot seat, pulled up the scope and was looking at the sargasso.

  “This is incredible. How many ships are there?” he said finally. “How did they get here?”

  “Accidents in drive,” Moire said, shrugging. “The anomaly doesn’t have much effect in realspace. Most of our time is spent finding the ones where the core didn’t blow, or something like that.”

  “How many have you salvaged?”

  She chewed her lip, wondering how to answer, then caught a glimpse of the crab ship. “Look, there it is. At the end of this loose cluster.” There was a line of ships, like a string of islands, and the crab ship was at the very end. Partially hidden by a big cargo ship, just like she remembered.

  Ennis was staring at the scope, scanning and zooming in for the closest view he could get. “That’s strange. I haven’t seen that configuration before, have you? Not their usual size. Too big for a fighter. It’s almost like the one we shot down at Lambert, but this one is definitely military. Plenty of guns.”

  Pity we can’t steal them. She still hadn’t found much in the way of armaments in the sargasso, and with Ennis around she wasn’t going to be looking for them. Moire flew the scout out and around the end of the string of ships, turning on the floodlight at the bow to get a better look.

  “Huh. No gaping holes. I wonder what happened to them.”

  Ennis shook his head, still engrossed by the view on the scanner. “This is perfect. Can we get inside?”

  “Let’s see how the others are doing.” She punched up Gren’s comm code. “Any luck?”

  “It’s a good one. I think we can fix it, but we’ll need some of the stuff I packed,” Gren’s voice said. “Pick me up and we’ll get started.”

  “On my way,” Moire replied, and spun the scout around. “That was quick.”

  “Mm.” Ennis looked up. “Some of these ships have cables snagged everywhere. I hope the crab ship isn’t tangled up like that.”

  “I didn’t see anything, but with those black hulls it’s hard to tell.” Moire brought the scout in to the salvage ship and docked it. “Let’s take a look and see what else Gren needs.” She pulled on her helmet and sealed it, and Ennis did the same.

  The scout was docked to a midlevel port. Someone had already paint–‌penned arrows with directions, and put clip lights along the corridor. Moire pushed off and floated away.

  “I hate zero–‌g. I hope Gren can fix the power soon,” she muttered.

  Ennis smiled. “This is fun. Although I can see it would be hard to work like this.”

  “Yeah, it’s fun the first few times. After that it’s pure annoyance.”

  Gren was down in Engineering, in a bad mood. “I don’t know what the hell happened to this ship, but I think they were too cheap to replace things that broke. See that space? Should be a secondary readout there. Just ripped it out and didn’t put anything back. That’s not the only thing that’s missing. Nothing critical, but it’s a bad sign.” He sighed, looking gloomy. “Maybe we better look around for another one, just in case.”

  “Maybe.” Moire glanced around the room. “Where are the kids?”

  Gren looked up, alarmed. “Hey, they’ve been real quiet….‌”

  They found Alan and the others in a section near the hull, gathered around something.

  George pointed. “Look, it is moving! It’s alive!”

  “It can’t be. There’s no air and it isn’t in a suit,” Alan protested.

  Moire pulled her way along the wall. The kids were watching a chunk of jagged metal. It was slowly drifting toward the hull. She did a quick scan, relieved that none of them appeared to have damaged their suits or found explosives to play with.

  “What’s going on?”

  Alan spun around and had to grab onto George to stop spinning. “We followed it here. Why is it moving?”

  It was an ordinary chunk of metal. It looked like a cable conduit brace. Moire shrugged. “Somebody must have pushed it loose when they started working. There’s nothing to make it stop.”

  “But we stopped it, and it started again,” Ash said quietly.

  Moire reached out to the chunk of metal and held it in her hand until she was sure it had come to a stop. She let go.

  Slowly, it began to move again. Toward the hull.

  “Magnet?” Ennis guessed.

  Moire shook her head and pointed at the wall. Now she could see there were lots of little pieces of junk lining the hull side; crumpled pieces of flimsy plastic, a broken stylus, even a glass rod.

  “That’s why there’s a cluster here. One of these ships still has gravity.” She pushed away from the wall toward the door. “Let’s find a viewport. Hey, Gren!”

  She impatiently worked her way down the corridor, searching. An emergency airlock sign was visible ahead, and she aimed for that. A lot of those had some kind of viewport.

  Sure enough, there was a ship outside. It was so close she couldn’t see the whole thing. “Gren, look! That ship still has power!”

  Gren pulled himself in to the airlock hatch. “That would save us a lot of time—‌and if it’s running, it has all the pieces. Can we get the scout in?”

  Moire screwed up her face, thinking. “It’s tight. Get some line. We’re close enough we can freewalk out to it.”

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Data was always the key. If he had enough, if it was the right kind, everything worked together like a complex piece of music. Kolpe considered his next move. He had been too direct before, trying to satisfy Toren’s need for a quick resolution. That hadn’t been very successful.

  So. The trick to seeing a faint target was to look ever so slightly away from it. If he couldn’t find Cameron, perhaps he could find her crew instead. He had the listing of the original crew of Ayesha. He debated leaving out Tenna, but decided to keep her in. The others might contact her.

  He started assembling the data he needed, thinking about what he’d learned so far about why Toren was so determined to find Cameron. They’d been desperate enough to call him in, which meant they thought she was a threat to the company or had something they wanted very, very badly. The first option he discarded almost immediately. Toren hadn’t even existed when her exploration ship took its final flight, and she’d spent the intervening time either in Toren’s custody or on the run.

  Toren was very careful about information leaking out, which was why he was so intent on finding out what he could. He’d
learned some interesting things in the course of working with them. Sometimes he could almost see the overall plan. Their control over their colonies, and shipping, and the industries they were running in the Fringe that were never listed in their public holdings. If the crabs didn’t exist it would form the base for an audacious, dangerous plan, but as long as the war continued the colonies needed Fleet for defense. Toren would not be able to build up the necessary military force to counter it in secret.

  He knew they had some plan for the future of their colonies. One that probably did not have much to do with the laws currently set on Earth and enforced by Fleet. Cameron must have found something they needed for that plan.

  With a few hours of work, Kolpe had a new set of databots crafted and sent to the bounceback addresses all over the Fringe. If any of the listed people activated anything with a standard ID key, he would know. The data service he had paid for didn’t know he was getting that information, but he had added procedures to ghost–‌echo the information download and capture it. Illegal, of course, but a carefully calculated risk.

  The scan for Jessack came back immediately. To his surprise, there was a match. Gren Forrest had used a public kiosk to send an on–‌station message with an account key on the same day the Fleet officer had escaped.

  Kolpe raised his eyebrows. A remarkable coincidence, and worth further inquiry. He started more searches, using even more illegal procedures and slowscans. The message had been sent to a construction firm, and merely requested a meeting. Nothing useful.

  He called in Bronsen. “I need access to the local security database.”

  The manager thinned his lips. “It’s too risky right now. They are suspicious.”

  “Not as risky as a new link. I require that access to do my job.” Realizing his annoyance was only making Bronsen more stubborn, he changed tactics. “How did the article work?”

  Bronsen’s expression thawed slightly. “Three calls to verify the amount of the reward already. I think we’ll add additional details after a few days. Make it more realistic.”

  Kolpe nodded and forced himself to smile. “Good idea.”

  Bronsen still refused to allow him direct access to the security data, and had enough good reasons that Kolpe reluctantly agreed to stored searches.

  They took two days, but they were worth the wait. Matches to the still of Gren Forrest had been found on several security tapes. Kolpe looked at them all, returning to the one from the docking level. Forrest was leaving from the hatch of a ship.

  When he ran the dock number to find the ship, he stared at the screen in disbelief, feeling a tightness in his gut he rarely experienced anymore. “Raven,” he whispered. It was too neat. Surely even these blithering idiots had done their own search?

  Then again, they hadn’t been looking for the same thing he was. They had only been interested in the escaped Fleet officer. The search they had run was saved, however. Everything related to the brief visit of the ship Raven, including the emergency services call from Raven’s captain.

  This is Ren Roberts.

  At the sound of her voice he could feel the vein throbbing in his throat, his heart pounding. For an instant he was furious, thinking Toren had withheld information, but the local office had attached no importance to Raven. They didn’t know who Ren Roberts really was.

  Kolpe licked his lips. How had she known? How could she possibly have known? He played the recording again, listening to the cadence of her voice. She had been here less than three weeks ago, to rescue someone before Toren even knew he had been captured. It wasn’t possible.

  He felt a slow smile spread over his face. This one would be interesting. He would have to use every trick he knew to complete his assignment successfully. Quickly, he sent another wave of databots, this time with the ship name.

  Gren Forrest had visited a construction firm. Why? Kolpe paused, thinking. He should find out more. It might be best to wait here for the databots’ return. If the visit was business, someone from her crew would come back.

  He leaned back in his chair, feeling satisfied with the day’s work, but then a disturbing thought crossed his mind. If Cameron had known about the officer, did she know about Kolpe, too?

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  It was easier to freewalk to the gravity ship than Ennis had thought it would be. There was something to grab onto the entire distance from one ship to the next. There was even a long segment of beam that was conveniently wedged near the outer hatch door of the ship.

  “Huh. I wonder why they did that,” Montero said, one hand holding on to the access rung beside the hatch.

  “Can’t you get in?” Moire asked.

  “Oh, I can get in no problem. That’s the strange thing. See?” He pushed one of the outside controls. Now Ennis could see what he was referring to. The hatch looked like a regular maintenance access hatch, not a cargo or docking hatch, but it had a full panel of outside controls instead of the basic emergency set. “It’s taking longer than I…‌there it goes.”

  The door pushed in and slid to one side. Montero held onto the rung and swung his feet in, letting the gravity pull him down. The rest followed, imitating him. Ennis felt the effort of standing with relief. Moire was right; zero–‌g did get annoying after a while.

  Montero’s helmet was almost touching the controls and readouts inside the airlock. “So that’s why it was so slow. Still got pressure.”

  “You’re kidding.” Moire peered over his shoulder at the readouts, and Ennis craned his head to see, too. It looked like there was a full atmosphere. “That’s a first. Well, let’s pretend the readouts aren’t lying completely. We’ll cycle through like good spacers. If there are any survivors they won’t want us dumping their air.”

  The airlock controls worked as smoothly as the hatch door had. The readouts were correct. Ennis checked his suit indicators again, incredulous—‌one atmosphere, breathable.

  The corridor they were in was clean, intact, and empty.

  Moire surveyed it with a satisfied expression. “Right. What luck! Let’s get Gren and the rest of the team in and go exploring.” She made some adjustments to the comm controls on the arm of her suit.

  Ennis turned to shut the interior door of the airlock and froze. At the base of the latch was a lump of grey–‌black, grainy material he’d seen once before, on a fragment of wreckage from a repaired crab ship. A broad metal plate was sticking out of the lump. A handle, perhaps, for someone that couldn’t use the original lever.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Ennis said, as soon as his shock wore off.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “That’s crab work. Somebody’s been in this ship, and they weren’t human.”

  Moire’s head snapped up. She looked at him, then at the thing he was pointing at. Her breath hissed in.

  “Gren! Get everyone back in the scout, now!” she yelled into the comm. “We got trouble!”

  She grabbed a bewildered Montero and shoved him in the airlock. Ennis followed close behind and slammed the inner lock shut, using the emergency cycle to open the outer door a few seconds later.

  There was no way for him to move quickly between ships, even though all his instincts screamed for speed. If he moved too fast and lost hold, he’d float free. He also had to help Montero, who still didn’t seem to understand what had happened. More slowness in the salvage ship, still without gravity and now clogged with the rest of Moire’s crew.

  After the scout docked to Raven and the crew scrambled out, Moire ordered the scout out on patrol and ran for the bridge. Ennis followed. They used every detection device the ship possessed, but nothing unusual showed up. As the minutes progressed and still nothing was found, the tension decreased a notch.

  “At least we know they are stuck here. That crab ship hasn’t budged since the first time,” Moire said, slumped in her chair.

  “I’m not picking up any signals, either.” Ennis glanced at the communications station again, just to be sure.

  Gren shifted.
“You know what to look for?”

  The signal Wernicki had found at Lambert was unique enough he should be able to recognize anything similar, but there was nothing to analyze. “To a degree. It doesn’t matter—‌I’m not picking up anything at all except our comm chatter.”

  Moire sat up, a crease between her brows. “I hope they didn’t hear us. We’ve been making plenty of noise. Where’s the scout?” She went over to the communications board. “Ulrike, see any sign of activity?”

  The voice from the comm sounded shaky. “No, Captain. Nothing is moving. But the ship with gravity? I could see through the other ships a little. Most of the midsection is missing, big hole. It would take us very long to fix.”

  This was good, since there would be no reason to go to the powered ship now. Ennis frowned, remembering the too–‌convenient path between it and the ship they’d picked to salvage. What if a crab had made that?

  Moire drummed her fingers on the console, eyes narrowed. “All right,” she said finally. “Get that little float–‌pallet, Gren.”

  “All right what?” Gren said, irritably. “How’s the float pallet going to help?”

  She tilted her head at Gren as she left the bridge. “Meet me at the weapons locker.”

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gren muttered under his breath, hauling out a box of ammo. “Let’s just find another ship.”

  Moire shook her head sharply. “Same problem, Gren. We don’t know how mobile they are. The ship with gravity is in the same general area as the crab ship, but it’s a long way if you are going on foot. Or flipper, or whatever they use. We’re almost done here. Let’s finish, and when we come back next time we’ll bring more firepower.”

  Adult firepower, that is. She hadn’t missed the gleam in Alan’s eyes when she first mentioned getting the guns. At least they had some vacuum–‌capable weapons, thanks to the raid on the Created site.

  She rummaged through the rack of weapons, pulling out the ones that would be most useful. “Huh. Only three magnetics? I thought we had more.”