“What in all three hells is going on?” Alisa demanded, still slumped down in her seat to stay out of the needle gun’s trajectory. “What kind of ship is this?”
“I think the light is a scan,” Mica offered. She had no explanation for the gun.
“A scan of what?” Alisa asked.
“Us, would be my guess. Should we be heading toward that crater?”
The comm beeped.
“Lieutenant Marchenko? Your ship is angled toward the surface of the asteroid. Is there a problem?”
Alisa reached up, fumbling with the controls without lifting her head to look out. The nose of the dodger lifted, and the stars replaced the view of the asteroid.
“Just dealing with some of those quirks, Control,” she said. “Coppervein, can do you do something about that needle pointing at the head of my seat?”
The blue light pulsed and went out before Mica could do more than reach for the tool bag she had brought along. The arm of the needle gun folded back into the top of the control bank, and the square lid lowered, returning to a flush position.
“I think it’s—” Mica was about to say safe, but that seemed an ambitious thing to proclaim. “The needle is gone.”
Alisa’s head came up slowly. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. The scan finished.”
“And decided not to shoot needles full of venom at us?”
“We don’t know what was in the needle,” Mica said.
Alisa hit the comm. “Control, did that imperial pilot have a tiny puncture in his head or neck?”
“Uh, I’ll check.”
“Quirks,” Alisa muttered.
“Look at the display,” Mica said, pointing. The image of the surface of the asteroid had changed into a cross-section of it, showing what appeared to be a series of tunnels and chambers inside. “That looks like some kind of map.”
“To our base?” Alisa peered at the display while throwing glances toward the now-hidden needle gun.
“No, the base is at that end of the asteroid. That’s… I don’t know. Has anyone mentioned mining tunnels in the other end?”
“Not that I’ve heard of.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Oh.” Mica had imagined that Alisa was an old hand around the base from the way she’d acted with the admiral.
“I was told this was a temporary assignment for me. I’m supposed to be getting orders for a warship. Then I can be part of an offensive squadron, not merely a defensive one.” Alisa sighed wistfully.
Mica failed to see much of a difference. “Don’t you get to blow up the enemy, either way?”
“Yes, but I like to take the empire by surprise, rather than the other way around. Plus, on a ship, we might get close enough to the core planets that I could holochat with Jonah and Jelena—my husband and daughter—more often.”
“Was that your wedding ring on the chain?” Mica asked, guessing.
“Yeah. It bothers me to have something on my fingers when I fly, but I want to keep it with me, you know?” Alisa reached for the holodisplay, perhaps to attempt to enlarge the map, but hesitated and eyed the hidden panel again.
“Do you want some tape to cover that with?” Mica asked.
“You think tape would thwart some ancient Starseer booby trap?”
“I have no idea.”
“Give it to me.” Alisa held her hand over her shoulder.
Mica snorted and dug in her bag.
“Lieutenant Marchenko?” the Control operator said, a strange note in her tone. “There was a tiny puncture wound in the side of the pilot’s neck.”
“Well, that’s one mystery solved.” Alisa snapped her fingers. “Tape.”
“It’s coming.” Mica handed her a small dispenser.
Alisa picked the triple thickness setting and applied the tape generously, the laser cutter making quick work of the task.
“Are you in any danger, Lieutenant?” Control asked. “The admiral says you can come back if you need to.”
“Generous,” Alisa muttered. “Say, Control—are there any old bases in the asteroid? On the other end? We found some kind of map, and I’m wondering if it’s current or a few centuries old.”
Silence came from the comm.
“I think you stumped them,” Mica whispered.
“Apparently.” Alisa turned the dodger back toward the asteroid. “Let’s try to find the entrance.”
“Is that a good idea? Maybe that’s what the imperial pilot was doing when the ship killed him.”
“I’m hoping the tape will save us from that fate,” Alisa said.
“I wouldn’t put much faith in it. I bought it from a sleazy robot at a discount tool kiosk on the way here.”
“They make you pay for your own supplies in engineering?”
“I was told not to assume that my new duty station would have the basics. So far, that’s proven true. I hope to be leaving soon.”
“You waiting for a ship assignment too?”
“Something like that.”
“Lieutenant?” Admiral Banerjee said. “We had this asteroid studied via satellite before carving out a base. There shouldn’t be any other tunnels.”
“So these are tunnels that have since been collapsed?” Alisa flew the dodger low over the asteroid, slowing them down and sometimes flipping them sideways or even upside down for good views of the craters.
“What exactly are you seeing? Can you send it to us?”
Not wanting Alisa to take her hands off the controls while they were zigzagging in and out of craters, Mica pointed her earstar toward the display and commanded it to take a picture of the map.
“Working on it, sir.” Alisa sat straighter in her seat, bumping Mica’s arm. “Look, there.”
They were flying along the bottom of a mile-long crater with unusual rock formations thrusting up from the bottom. It almost looked like the depression had been hollowed out intentionally rather than being the result of an impact from another space-born body.
A hole had come into view at the bottom of a small mesa. The entrance to a cave? Or tunnel? Due to an overhang at the top of the mesa, the opening was not visible from above.
“Doesn’t look collapsed,” Alisa murmured.
“What have you found?” Banerjee asked, his usual gruffness replaced by curiosity.
“Coppervein, show him that, too, will you? Aside from this portable comm unit that someone stuck in here, the ship isn’t hooked into base headquarters.”
“No, it’s not,” Banerjee said, sounding irked by the fact.
Maybe he shouldn’t have rushed to send people out in a ship that hadn’t been properly prepared—or inspected.
Mica recorded the crater around them, the tunnel opening, and also the view of the stars above them, just in case they crashed—or ran afoul of some other booby trap—and the base needed to send out a search team for them. Alisa obliged by taking a few circles around the mesa. Mica sent the data to the Control officer.
“We’re going in to investigate,” Alisa said, announcing it rather than asking for permission.
Mica raised her eyebrows as Alisa turned them toward the entrance.
“Hold, Lieutenant,” Banerjee said coolly. “You’re to run your flight course and—”
The rest of the message disappeared in static as the dodger slipped into the dark passage in the mesa.
“Oops, we lost you, sir,” Alisa said brightly.
It was probably Mica’s imagination that the static sounded angrier as it continued. Alisa turned off the comm as the ship cruised into a tunnel, one that sloped downward immediately. The dodger’s running lights illuminated the way, shining on space debris littering the bottom and also on the sides and a ceiling too smooth to have been hollowed out by natural means.
“I wonder how the satellite missed this,” Mica said.
“The Alliance probably shops at the same sleazy robot’s tool kiosk.”
“The
re’s a lot of iron making up the asteroid. I suppose it could have disrupted telemetry readings just as it’s now disrupting the comm signals.” Mica started recording again, even though she wouldn’t be able to send off the data until later. “I sent the location of the tunnel entrance back to Control before we lost contact.”
“Hm.”
“Think they’ll send reinforcements? Or a squadron to drag us out because you disobeyed the admiral’s orders?”
“Did I? I didn’t hear him complete his orders. I’m certain I didn’t technically disobey anything.”
“Uh huh.”
“Besides…” Alisa eyed the holodisplay—a silver blip had appeared in the outermost tunnel, their ship, Mica realized. “It might not be a good idea for the other ships to follow us in.”
“Why?”
“If there was one booby trap,” Alisa said, waving toward the top of the control panel, “there could be more, maybe in the tunnels themselves.”
Mica eyed the dark walls with new wariness.
“Maybe a Starseer ship will be allowed to pass through, whereas other ships will be kept out. I should have thought to warn the admiral about that.”
“We could turn around,” Mica offered, a perfectly logical option.
“Not enough room to turn around.”
Mica squinted at the back of her head. Alisa sounded like she didn’t want to try.
“There’s a cavern ahead, at least according to this.” Alisa pointed toward the holodisplay where their blip was approaching an open area. “And then a whole maze of tunnels beyond it, hm.”
“The cavern would be a potential spot to turn around,” Mica observed.
At first, Alisa did not respond, and Mica wondered if she should be looking for a way to wrest control of the ship away from the impulsive pilot.
“We’ll take a quick look around,” Alisa finally said, “and if there’s nothing interesting, we’ll go back out.”
“What constitutes interesting?” Mica wanted a more concrete promise that they would leave. Especially since they were here against their commander’s wishes and probably against the wishes of some long-dead Starseers too. It wasn’t as if the mystical people were known for helping humanity and inviting strangers into their secretive enclaves.
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
Mica scowled and opened her mouth to object, but the ship came out of the tunnel and into the cavern. Their lights barely pierced the darkness, and if not for the map and the blip, she wouldn’t have had any idea about its size. She caught a glimpse of one of the tunnels that opened up on the far side.
“Plenty of room to turn around,” Mica said.
Alisa was swooping low to explore and had found the bottom of what now seemed more like a chamber. It was empty. Here and there, tiny rocks floated, ticking against their cockpit canopy, but there was nothing more substantial.
“All right,” Alisa said. “We’ll go out and see if Control wants us to explore further before taking it upon ourselves to do so.”
As the dodger followed the wall back toward the tunnel, the wall shivered. Dust floated free from it and the ceiling, clouding the air. Sound was nonexistent in the vacuum of space, but Mica imagined an ominous rumble nevertheless.
The ship drew even with the tunnel as a huge slab dropped down at the entrance. It landed with the finality of a lid shutting on a coffin.
“How’s that for interesting?” Mica snapped, not bothering to hide the fear and irritation in her words.
Alisa swung the dodger away so they wouldn’t crash, the forward beams playing over the thick slab of rock as they banked. “I’d call that more concerning than interesting, but I’m not that into semantics.”
“This ship only has twelve hours of oxygen,” Mica said, slumping back in her seat. “And we don’t have spacesuits. If we can’t get out, we’re dead.”
“Relax,” Alisa said. “This thing has weapons, doesn’t it? The admiral wouldn’t have been ogling it for our squadrons if it didn’t.”
“Old weapons. Captain Brandt said we’d have to upgrade them.”
“No missiles? No e-cannons?”
“What I saw looked like forward-firing machine guns. I don’t think I’ve got anything back here.”
“If you’re a Starseer sitting back there, maybe you’re supposed to snipe at enemies with your mind powers.” Alisa glanced around the cockpit. “I see the trigger. It’s built in here. I suppose I can see what happens when we shoot at that slab.”
“Ricocheting, most likely,” Mica said.
Alisa guided the ship in a loop, twisting upside down with more flair than the maneuver probably required. “Are there shields of any kind for the dodger?”
“Not that I heard. That’ll have to be one of our upgrades. The lack of offensive and defensive powers is probably why you’re only supposed to be doing a test flight right now.”
“This is certainly turning into a test.” Alisa grinned back at her.
Mica growled.
Alisa flew toward the giant stone slab at an angle, probably to keep ricocheting bullets from bouncing straight back at them. In the enclosed chamber it might not matter. They would find the dodger eventually.
Alisa squeezed the trigger with caution that Mica appreciated. They couldn’t hear the bullets firing, but they could see them pinging off the slab with little puffs of stone dust. They did nothing to crack the massive piece of stone, nor did the assault convince whatever mechanism had lowered it to lift it.
“Nothing that looks like controls on the wall there,” Alisa said, turning them in the opposite direction again, toward the opposite side of the chamber. “We’ll find another way out.”
“Are there any exits on the map?” Mica asked, knowing there weren’t. She had been eyeing it since it first came up.
“No. But we’ll come up with something. In the meantime, we might as well explore.”
Mica glowered at the back of her head. “This couldn’t have worked out any better for you, could it? Well, what’s going to happen when you’re done exploring, we’re out of air, and we still can’t get out?”
“I don’t know,” Alisa said, “but it sounds like we don’t have to worry about that for at least eleven hours.”
“I want to live longer than that.”
“We’ll live. I’m sure of it.”
“Three suns, there’s nothing more alarming than an optimistic pilot.”
“Nothing? Are you sure? What about Starseer booby traps?”
“Nothing.”
*
As the dodger flew deeper into the asteroid, cruising through passages stacked atop other passages, Mica kept glancing at the small digital clock her earstar displayed. Her estimate as to how much air they had left had not been precise, but as the minutes passed, she couldn’t help but be aware of them. She opened the seat panel again, wondering if she could improve the efficiency of the carbon dioxide scrubber.
“What do you think we’ll find in here?” Alisa asked, swooping around another corner.
The blip on the map was leading them in a particular direction, but Mica had no idea if they should be trusting it. It might be showing them the way to another booby trap. Or to an ancient incinerator.
“Besides our deaths?” Mica asked.
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Nothing, I’d guess. The place has been empty of anything so far.”
They hadn’t seen any sign that the area had been inhabited at one time or was even suitable for it. There weren’t any doors, airlock hatches, docking bays, or even signs of equipment leftover from the creation of the tunnels. Just miles and miles of nothing.
“Then why was the imperial pilot coming here?” Alisa asked.
“An accident?”
“He accidentally flew to the asteroid that this ship has a map for stored in its database?”
Mica shrugged. Usually, she would find the puzzle interesting, but the fact that they were trapped, however large their prison, ma
de her uneasy. It also cast further doubts into what had already been a mind full of doubts. What was she doing here? Why had she signed on for this? She wasn’t some heroic freedom fighter. She just wanted to help create a system where people didn’t have to win scholarship lotteries in order to go to school and seek the jobs of their dreams. Being trapped in asteroids hadn’t been part of the plan.
“I think there’s a three-hundred-year-old treasure in here,” Alisa said.
“After that long, it’ll be under so much dust that we’ll fly over it and never notice.”
“Dust doesn’t settle in space. If there is something, we’ll see it. Maybe there’s something in here that’ll be useful to the Alliance.”
“Like better satellites?”
Alisa grinned back at her. The crazy woman wasn’t having a good time, was she?
“This life really suits you, doesn’t it?” Mica asked.
Alisa’s face sobered and she turned back. “More than it should, I suspect.”
“What do you mean?”
For a moment, Alisa did not answer, and Mica thought she wouldn’t. But then she spoke quietly, saying, “I should be home with my husband and my daughter, being a wife and a mom and making cookies and teaching my little girl. I like doing those things. But…”
“You like flying too?”
“Flying and mattering, yeah.”
“Is that what we’re doing right now? Mattering?”
“I’m mattering,” Alisa said. “You’re mostly grumbling about how we’re going to die, Coppervein.”
Mica scowled, a retort on her lips. But was Alisa wrong? Could she be doing more right now? And could she be doing more for the Alliance itself?
She hadn’t felt like she belonged since she arrived—no, since she’d signed up for the army and started the officer training course—and that had left her disgruntled, uncertain of how to help or if she even wanted to bother. Interestingly, Alisa didn’t seem like she belonged either, but that wasn’t keeping her from volunteering for missions. And volunteering the person standing next to her too.
“Mica,” she said.
“What?”
“You can call me Mica.”
Alisa glanced back and stuck out her hand. Mica started to snort, but shrugged and shook it. The greeting might mean Alisa wasn’t originally from Perun. Those citified people, packed into their skyscraper tenements, always seemed too worried about germs and sanitation to touch each other. It was a wonder how they procreated.
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