Migrant Thrive: Thrive Space Colony Adventures Box Set Books 7-9

by Ginger Booth

  She pressed a few buttons then turned to look at him, brows raised over a bracing smile.

  “It’s only, I’d talk to Clay, but,” Nico stammered. But Clay was still unconscious. Or still dead. “Is his heart beating again yet?”

  Sass’s smile faded. “Yes, crewman. It’ll be a while yet before he wakes.”

  Drat, this wasn’t how Nico intended to steer this conversation. They’d lost practically all of the academics, sixty of Denali’s best and brightest, indeed some of the best in the Aloha system. And that was the second generation of Denali scientists decimated in two generations. Another twenty colonists died in the flood, plus fifteen succumbed to the vog, plus the sixteen who died in the sprout debacle. Of the remainder – less than two thirds of the original expedition – around forty were draped all over Thrive recovering from their wounds. They had only the one auto-doc, and they’d run out of refills. Tikka Gena didn’t even have the ingredients to make more nanites. Their supplies were still up north dissolving in the acid vog.

  But that thread he could pull on. “I request permission to go back to Sylvan One tomorrow. I can bring back medical supplies, food, fuel. Maybe salvage the sawmill.”

  Sass nodded slowly. “Good suggestion, crewman. But I intend to leave you here while I fly back with Thrive.” She paused, studying his face. “What?”

  “Captain, that’s smart, but –” He winced. “I mean, of course that’s smart. It’s your decision.”

  She quirked her mouth to one side. That expression reminded him that his Tante Sass might look his own age, but she was over a century old, and quicker and more cunning than even Granddad Nathan. “Mr. Nico, out with it.”

  “I –” He glanced over his shoulder. “Permission to speak with you privately in the office, sar?”

  She sighed. “Fine, I’ll call Zan –” She stopped. “No, the auto-pilot will do.” She set it.

  Nico backed out of her way so she could precede him into the compact office next door. She kicked back in her chair and propped tired feet on the desk. “Sit. Talk.”

  “Aye, sar.” He sucked his lip a moment after sitting. “Captain, I don’t believe, can’t believe, that Floki did this. I want to return to Sylvan One to prove his innocence.”

  Sass tapped her fingers on her thigh. “Clay explained the evidence against him?”

  “Yes, sar, but it doesn’t make any sense. And Clay himself didn’t believe it. Why would Floki do that?”

  “That is certainly worth investigating. But, as you know, crewman, we’ve been up to our asses in alligators. I hardly think it’s a priority –”

  “It is if the guilty are still on the ship, Tante Sass.” Into the silence that followed, he urgently added. “Excuse me for interrupting.”

  “Excused,” the captain growled, shooting him an evil eye. But she hauled her boots off the desk and studied her thumbs. “Discussion.”

  He leaned forward, too, mimicking her folded hands. “There are only so many people with access to the fuel depot. They’re all Thrive crew. The Denali have no business there. And the containers are locked.”

  Sass canted her head. “Picking a lock is no big deal. The Denali prefer a less technological lifestyle than we do. But they’re not idiots.” But her comments had the air of someone playing devil’s advocate, not shooting down his reasoning, but honing it.

  “Yes, sar.” He sketched open a window on the desktop with a fingertip. “But the locks are electronic and register access. And the ship AI forgets in 72 hours. The only people who accessed those containers on duty are me, Clay, and Zan. I can’t prove it, but I know Clay and I didn’t do it.”

  Sass pressed her lips together and studied the logs. She marked them permanent, not subject to the 72-hour rollover. “What was Floki’s backup cycle?”

  “I was getting to that.” Nico opened another window. “His backup process ran automatically every 10 minutes, to the ship. Unfortunately, most of that time he was out of range. But listen to this.”

  “Delta, you coward!”

  “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to mur –”

  Nico said, “It stops there. I was trying to see if he figured out who they were –”

  “It’s Zan and Tikki Cook,” Sass said. She highlighted a handy time stamp with a fingertip. “Computer, where were Zan and Tikki Cook at this time?”

  “They were off the ship.”

  Sass grimaced her way through another twenty questions with the dimwit AI until a map of Sylvan One, with their location overlaid, displayed on the desktop. The pair had been in a barracks tent on the farmers’ platform.

  Nico sat back, dismayed.

  “They had no business there,” Sass murmured. “Nico, can you retrieve any visual from Floki’s final upload?”

  “Yeah, but it’s useless. It was pitch dark in the vog.” He brought it up anyway to show her.

  “And is this Floki’s entire visible spectrum?” she asked.

  “Um. No, actually. Computer, give us infrared of this video clip.” On infrared three figures showed clear as day. And they wore Denali wet suits, not space suits.

  Sass opened another window. “Computer, give us ultraviolet of the video clip over here.” The rainbow false-color images were much degraded by the fog. “Computer, attempt to map this to true color.” She zoomed in on a rainbow-tinted ghoulish face and stabbed inside this helmet. “This is Denali skin tone.”

  Well, that made them look Denali, but the image was extremely grainy.

  “Computer, at this location,” Sass pointed on the colony map. She zoomed out and double-checked the images, then corrected her finger to another point on the fuel depot platform. “This location. Whose trackers were there at –”

  Nico did the honors for her. “This time stamp.”

  “Farmers Cory, Tien, and Farmer Selectman Benek.”

  “Why would they be there…” Sass mused, then tapped the farm tent where Tikki and Zan were reported. “Computer, do farmers Cory and Tien live in this tent?”

  “Unknown.”

  The captain sat back in her chair.

  “Captain,” Nico begged, “they could have swapped suits!”

  “Clearly. Yes, Nico. You have my permission to visit the fuel depot. In fact, are you too tired to do it tonight?”

  “No, sar! I can go right now!”

  She hit the comm button. “Eli, got another puzzle for you. I should go, but I can’t leave the ship.” She asked him to meet Nico at the shuttle with a repaired suit and whatever portable sensors might help at Sylvan One, including a search for Floki’s remains.

  That done, she wiped the desktop and stood. “I’ll walk you there. We’re going to talk in hushed tones the entire way. About cooking.” She opened the door. “So do you think Jules taught your sister to cook as well as she does?”

  Nico tamped down a smile and attempted to match her in solemnity. He kept his eyes trained away from anyone they passed. That amounted to several dozen Denali. They could barely step foot on the catwalk without treading on someone’s leg or jouncing a hammock. “Captain, Frazzie is the worst cook in the known universe.”

  They passed Tikki, then Zan, and ran across Kaol in the crew bunkroom while Nico fetched his suit.

  “Can I help?” the hunter offered, hastily setting aside his reading tablet and sitting upright on his bunk. He brained himself on the bunk above.

  “No, relax, crewman!” Sass told him sunnily. “Chocolate covered avocado. She didn’t. Really?”

  “Ghastly cook,” Nico assured her.

  Soon she followed him into the shuttle airlock, at last free of Denali ears.

  “Why the silly conversation?” he inquired.

  She smiled. “Hopefully we made a guilty conscience or two itch like…the vog. Keep me apprised. Eli, Nico will fill you in.” She shook hands with both, and left them to button up and fly into the night.

  38

  Sass ducked into her cabin, and checked on Clay next. His heart was beating, and chest
rising and falling, albeit shallowly. She’d wrapped his poor burnt hands in gauze bandages. That didn’t help the nanites heal any faster, but his blackened hands, burnt to the bone at places, grossed her out.

  Protected by his helmet, his beautiful face with the high cheekbones appeared unmarred and innocent, young and carefree. Her lover was none of those things. She stroked his sculpted jaw and sighed.

  “I have a problem, Clay,” she confided to his slumbering form. “And not much backup.” At this point she couldn’t count on any of the four Denali on her crew. The many injured Denali aboard might include conspirators as well. Her first mate was Clay, third officer Zan, and security Kaol. She had no reason to suspect Zelda the meteorologist, or her chief engineer Darren, or Eli, off with Nico. But until this single conversation, Nico had been on the suspect list as well.

  Am I sure? His evidence was compelling. And it simply never made sense that Nico Copeland would seek to undermine the Sylvan expedition. Why would he? Of course, that was a moot point, since she wasn’t sure why anyone would sabotage their own colony.

  That’s not true. Tikki Cook had been forthright all along that he considered Sylvan a disaster for his people. He wanted them to abandon this folly and focus on rebuilding their lives on Mahina. But is a criminal upfront about…?

  Yes, often they are, in her experience. Offenders were like anyone else – they justified their actions. The worse the crime, the more convoluted and devout the justification.

  She read Kaol as the beautiful and charismatic Tikki’s doormat lover. Yes, he struck out in frustration sometimes. But the love of his life lay with others for money. A career of sorting through domestic flareups said that under the circumstances, a few blows here and there were typical. Tikki seemed to agree.

  Backup, Collier. Darren or Zelda couldn’t offer much protection. Her security officer was suspect. She had no jail. And she couldn’t trust any Denali at this point.

  That’s not true. For all her butting heads with Tarana, Sass had to admit the expedition leader spoke with absolute integrity. Her job was to lead these people to determine, once and for all, whether Sylvan would be Denali’s future. For this generation, at least. Aurora was not on the fence – she bore the virtues and vices of a zealot. Sofi, Selectman for the academics, surely wanted blood over the deaths of her people…probably. Selectman Benek of the farmers was implicated in the crime. Selectman Hadron of the hunters…she couldn’t predict.

  “Clay, I’m just not sure which way any Denali will jump. I thought I understood their culture. Guess not.”

  But the fact remained, she needed to play it cool while her allies were away.

  A sudden thought made her fly to Clay’s deluxe desk. His office occupied a corner of their double-sized deluxe cabin. Rather than pick and choose, she ordered the ship’s computer to mark all data from the past 72 hours permanent, no-delete. She didn’t have the storage space for that, so she followed up to clear some.

  A knock on the door. “Zan, cap.”

  “Come in.”

  He entered, and took in Clay’s form by eye, expression inscrutable. As usual. Then he looked to her. “Shuttle?”

  Sass thought fast. As her de facto second in command, he had every right to be informed. “Surveying further south.”

  Zan’s brow furrowed. “At night?”

  She smiled. “Eli has a new sensor concept to test. We can’t waste daylight. Low priority. But Nico was willing to fly him.” That lie was complex enough to come back to haunt her. But she needed to soothe Zan, not tip him off.

  He appeared to accept the explanation. “River’s rising.”

  “Is it?” Sass checked in on her camera feeds below. The computer did a fairly good job compensating for the dark and cloudy night, but the image quality was low. The river was indeed swelling. “Huh. Not unexpected with a volcano melting the ice pack. Gotten any sleep lately?”

  “No. Split the night?” he suggested.

  That would make sense, one of them on duty at all times. “Sounds good. I’ll wake you at oh-two-hundred.” She smiled. “Good night, Zan.”

  He hesitated. “I meant… Fine.” And he left.

  The captain finished sorting out her data storage puzzle. Then her finger paused over Floki’s memories. She’d learned from watching Nico how to replay them. But violating the memories of the dead felt dishonorable. As her finger hung poised above his data, another thought occurred to her.

  Clay had the Denali historical records online. She’d flown with Zan a long time, fellow captains in a small family fleet. Even the man’s ten words a day gradually added up. She knew him. But Tikki and Kaol? She knew they were refugees, saved by Thrive from the volcanic ruins of Denali Prime twenty years ago.

  She gave in to curiosity, and looked them up. And her heart broke. They were those kids. Toward the end of the rescue operation, Abel investigated some of the holes in the deep ash closest to the volcano slopes. Most of those chambers had proven bubbles. But they found a buried dome that failed after the weeks of frantic rescue began. Only four children survived in there, emaciated, surrounded by corpses. They shared a single breath mask against the mounting carbon dioxide, and licked water from a slow seeping crack in the wall.

  Abel carried them gently to the healers for re-feeding. They never spoke. So far as Sass could tell from the database, the other two never recovered mentally. Tikki wasn’t a cosmo by birth, but an academic. But remaining mute for a year, severely traumatized, and with a dearth of academics in Waterfalls anyway, they’d raised him as a cosmo. Poor little Kaol was a born hunter, yet afraid of his own shadow. Neither misfit boy excelled.

  Sass had so admired Denali education. She hadn’t stopped to wonder what happened to the kids who fell through the cracks. Her heart went out to them.

  And she realized that of her conspirators, she knew who was the weak link.

  “Computer, is crewman Kaol asleep?” Her fingers were already flying through records. At the time of the explosion, Kaol labored in Thrive’s bio-locks, giving a power assist to vog sufferers struggling through the procedures. Before that he’d been off-duty in his cabin, reading, not having spoken to anyone since dinner except his bunkmates.

  Her security officer had done exactly what he was supposed to do.

  While she was at it, she asked the computer what everyone on her crew was up to. Zelda and Tikka Gena were asleep, and Zan in his cabin as ordered, though awake. Tikki Cook and Darren were still working.

  “Tikki, this is your captain. Go to bed.”

  “I’m setting out snacks for overnight, sar. Otherwise, the passengers come in to use the head, then rifle the cabinets.”

  “Ten minutes. Then bring a bottle of wine to bed if you have to. You’re overtired. Get some rest.” Sass felt weird using maternal concern to mask her wish for clear lines of fire, so to speak. But the cook agreed. Whether his conscience would let him sleep was another matter.

  “Hi, Darren. Why are you awake?”

  The poor engineer had been going non-stop. He’d fixed the trapdoor airlock to function as a basic bio-lock the way the shuttle did it, with the nitrogen bath dodge. He’d figured out how to repair their many destroyed suits, and set the cosmo technicians to follow through. Plus he’d helped Zelda execute her brilliant concept for the open-bottom latrine, which required exposed skin. The meteorologist suggested they could ‘seal’ the bottom of the toilet’s airspace with the same ozone concoction Mahina atmo spires belched out to hold its atmosphere in place. Naturally the gap between good idea, and technicians building something that worked, had Darren’s name written all over it.

  “Writing up notes,” the engineer returned. “I need to publish the latrine and trap lock conversion. Wanted to jot down some tricky bits before I forget. Who knows when I’ll have time to write the technical memos.”

  “Makes sense. But I hope you’ll rest soon?”

  “Oh, I’m in bed. And I note you aren’t taking your own advice.”

  “Night
watch,” she claimed virtuously and dishonestly. “Say, Darren. If you needed a jail at this point… Any ideas?”

  “Um…” Sass could almost see his fingers flying over data beneath this hum. “Yes. We have three beds in cryo. Correction, five beds.” He sighed. “I’ll tell graves in the morning to clear out the deceased. Are we anticipating more than five prisoners?”

  “Hard to say at this point.”

  “Uh, do you need help with… I am no use at all on that problem.”

  Sass laughed softly. “Sleep sweet, Darren. And thank you for your phenomenal work today. As usual.”

  Soon Zan was asleep, and Tikki at least in his cabin. Sass slipped out of hers, and walked normally as far as the galley, and grabbed a snack. Kaol liked strawberries and cookies. Then she casually continued to the back of the catwalk, half expecting Tikki to stick his head out. But the coast was clear. So she continued to the bunkroom Kaol shared with Nico and Floki, and rapped softly.

  He got up to open the door, surprised. “Do you have a moment to talk?” she asked gently. “Brought you a snack.”

  So much for innocence. The security officer took one look at the treat, and shook his head warily. He can’t sleep because he’s worried.

  They settled to his bottom bunk, Sass turned to half-face him. Kaol had to slump awkwardly against the headboard to match her, too big to sit upright. “I wanted to talk to you about the explosion.”

  His body reacted, rising from his slump to brain himself on the upper bunk again. In aggravation, he thunked his butt to the floor and sat cross-legged. “Yes, sar.”

  “Have you had a chance to investigate? We’ve all been so busy.”

  “Don’t ask.” He surprised her by saying that immediately. He raised his eyes to meet hers. “Conflict of interest. Please don’t ask me to investigate.”

  “Because Tikki did it?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know that!” he barked. “Pardon, sar.”

  Back off, and circle around. “I was looking at your records earlier. And realized how sorry I am that I hadn’t made time to get to know you better. I remember when we found you at Denali Prime. Not me. My first mate at the time, Abel Greer.”