The Wolf Itself (The Kestrel Chronicles Book 1)

by mikel evins

  “Okay, Doc,” said Jaemon. “What’s the plan? And try to keep in mind, any funny business is most likely going to get you shot.”

  “Understood.”

  “Okay. You wake up your body and then what?”

  “Then I climb out, and the four of you don’t shoot me. Then we pull the creche out of this tube, and I explain how we’re going to get everyone out of here in one piece without Titans crawling all over us.”

  21.

  “Okay, Doc,” Jaemon said. “Do it. Wake yourself up.”

  He rested his hand on his sidearm and glared around the bay at each of us. Angier clutched his pistol, but he didn’t unholster it.

  The lights flickered.

  “They’ll be seeing that,” Jaemon said.

  The face of the creche popped and moved a little. Then it opened outward, pushed from inside. The black tips of several long, spindly legs moved within it.

  “Oh, geez,” Angier said. He turned his face away, but then turned back again, wide-eyed.

  Jaemon caught Angier’s eye and shook his head slowly. Angier swore under his breath and gripped the sidearm with white knuckles, but he didn’t draw it.

  The thing named Doctor Yaug crawled out of the creche. His legs were long and black and shiny. They seemed to be made of faceted obsidian. They probed outward, gently touching here and there, finding purchase, tugging his central mass toward the opening. His main body, a faceted ball atop a tapered rod, all as black and polished as his legs, drifted free of the creche and rose, settling in the middle of his legs. It was hard to see him in the darkness of the maintenance bay. His shiny carapace reflected our spots, making him look as if he were made of glass. A dozen jointed appendages dangled from the down-pointed rod at the junction of his legs, all moving slowly, tiny grippers opening and closing. His four pairs of manipulator arms gripped the edges of the hatch, guiding his body through.

  His voice, still reaching us over our Fabric feeds, was the same as it had been before.

  “Thank you for not shooting me,” he said.

  “Oh, god,” Angier moaned.

  “I promise you, I mean you no harm,” Yaug said. “Now, if you could help me disconnect my creche and lift it out of here, I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

  22.

  Yaug moved slowly and carefully past us to the access shaft. He drifted around the interior of the maintenance bay, touching spots where we had painted quickseal. He moved to the horseshoe-shaped workstation.

  “Hey!” Angier said, reaching for his sidearm.

  “Hold it right there, Angier,” said Jaemon. Yaug was floating half a meter above the workstation, manipulator arms motionless, extended toward it.

  “Doc,” Jaemon said. “You’re making Angier here a little nervous. Could you explain what you’re up to there?”

  “Retrieving Titan tissue samples. I have two cases of them hidden here.”

  “Okay,” Jaemon said, “Ease them out slowly, if you would, and pass them over to me. I’ll let Angier see what’s in them and then pass them back to you. Will that work okay?”

  “Yes, I think so. They are stored securely, but do be careful with them.”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  The odd shape of the workstation and the absence of any seating made much more sense once we saw Yaug pull himself into position. He seized the deck grating under foot with his walking legs and pulled himself into a crouch. His manipulators had just enough reach to touch every part of the control surfaces. He reached under the console with his manipulators and did something, then took out a pair of book-shaped cases covered in black carbon fiber cladding. He pushed himself gently up from the deck and across the bay toward us. Without thinking about it, we all backed up against the bulkhead. Angier held onto the butt of his sidearm with grim dedication.

  Yaug handed the cases one by one to Jaemon, extending his manipulator arms as far as they would go. Jaemon took them carefully and held them together in his hands.

  “How do I open them?” he said.

  “Simply lift the top face. I’ve unlatched them both.”

  Jaemon did as Yaug said, wincing slightly as he opened the first one. Inside, like leaves of a book, were stacked layers of translucent polymer.

  “Mai, can I get a spot here?”

  Mai moved next to Jaemon, staying on the side of him away from Yaug, and trained her spot on the case. Jaemon lifted the translucent sheets one by one. Each one contained a slice of something, flat and convoluted, looking something like pressed flowers.

  “Those are samples of Titan brain tissue,” Yaug said. “DNA analysis shows that they are essentially just human brains, slightly modified.”

  Angier made a face.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” he said.

  “No,” Yaug said. “As uncomfortable as it is to realize, Titans are human beings—or at least their brains are human brains.”

  Jaemon looked unhappy as well. He paged through several more samples before closing the box and handing it to me. He opened the second one. It was more of the same. This time many of the sheets were thicker and stiffer, with samples of other kinds of tissue—tips from manipulators, sample of Titan mouth parts, several collections of whole secondaries, all frozen in polymer.

  “Satisfied?” Jaemon asked Angier, tipping the box toward him. Angier looked the contents over with a pinched grimace, and offered a curt nod.

  “Okay,” Jaemon said. He closed the box, took the first one from me, and handed both back over to Yaug.

  Yaug took the boxes, and drifted back to the workstation. He cleared the image of himself off the screens and switched them back to monitoring ship’s sensors.

  Time was running out. On the displays we could now see the black liquid of Titan secondaries flowing through the ship’s companionways, pooling at hatches. They hadn’t found it much harder than we did to jimmy them open.

  Yaug said, “With your permission, I can offer the secondaries a little more discouragement from here.”

  Jaemon looked at each of us. Angier nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Jaemon said.

  Yaug flipped the displays from one set of cameras to another. He set electric arcs jumping across groups of secondaries at several different places around the ship, frying hundreds, making little puffs of smoke and, in a couple of cases, even brief flames. Each time he did that they skittered rapidly away, then approached the spot warily in fluid spirals, probing carefully with the tips of long feelers.

  “Kestrel to Survey Team One,” said Captain Rayleigh. “Nearly in range to attempt a pickup. Everybody ready to come home?”

  Yaug slid smoothly into the shadows.

  Jaemon said “Uh, can you keep a little distance for a bit, Esgar?”

  “Sure, we’re velocity matched. Why?”

  “We’ve, uh, we’ve got kind of a situation here. Titan secondaries swarming all over the hulk. They’ll be on us in a few minutes.”

  “Then let’s get you all out of there right now.”

  “No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too much risk they’ll follow us aboard Kestrel. We’re working on a solution, though. Lev? Can you stream a record of what we’re up to?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Archive. Archive. Safety. Archive. Me.”

  “What’s he saying?” Esgar said. “I’m getting a lot of noise.”

  “That’s the damage we did to his speech box. I think he’s saying that he’s streaming data to his archive.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said.

  “Okay, I guess,” said Esgar. “We’ll need access if we’re going to use it.”

  “Yes,” I said. I opened a channel to Kestrel, who accepted it at once. I sent her a credential she could use to open my archive.

  “Listen,” said Jaemon. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “Anything,” Esgar said, “As long as it gets you all out of there safe.”

  “Well, uh…we found the pilot alive. That is, his archive.�
�

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “Well,” the Captain said, “that’s good news.”

  He didn’t sound like it was good news.

  “Yeah,” Jaemon said, “It kind of blows the salvage deal, but that’s not what’s important.”

  “Hey, it’s good the guy survived,” the Captain said, sounding bleak.

  “Listen,” Jaemon said, “This guy has been keeping us alive over here. If we get out of here in good shape, it’ll be because of him. And, well…”

  “What?”

  “Well, it would be really nice if all of you wouldn’t shoot him when we get out of this.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no time to explain. Check the data Lev’s streaming. You’ll understand when you see it. Just remember, no matter what this guy looks like, he saved our lives. Now we’ve gotta work on getting out of here before the Titans get to us. I think I can hear them working on the hatches.”

  23.

  Jaemon was right. I detected a delicate tap-tap-tap through my contact with the deck. The secondaries were exploring the hatches that led into the maintenance bay. It grew in intensity until it reminded me of falling rain.

  We pried at the bulky creche machinery, working it out of the tube it was mounted in and pulling it free. Something delicate crunched as we hauled on the thing’s guts. Bits of silvery pseudamnion, jostled free of the interior, oscillated through the air in blobs.

  It was tough going, and not just because the creche machinery had never been meant to be pulled out through a hatch in chunks. We ripped out wires and circuitry, broke pieces out of supports, and tore loose wires and cables. We heaved at the machinery, tearing it into hopeless ruin as we finagled its parts loose and flung them free to drift around the bay, navigation hazards for us every time we moved.

  We tried to do it while keeping a safe distance from Yaug. He worked with us, respected our personal space, and kept up a cheerful patter, but nobody could forget what he looked like. It didn’t help to see him crouch like a huge spider over the open creche hatch and seize a fistful of cables in his complicated mouth parts, pulling and stretching them until they came loose, then scuttling away dripping fluids. At one point he touched Angier on the back of the wrist with one manipulator and Angier screamed.

  Jaemon laughed.

  “We gotta get out of here alive,” he said. “The world must hear Angier screaming like a toddler.”

  “What the hell?” Angier said, pushing away from Yaug and grabbing for the butt of his pistol.

  “Forgive me,” Yaug said, “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that, in your hand—”

  He gestured tentatively with his manipulator.

  Angier held a chunk of machinery, palm-sized, several fine cables dangling. He extended it toward Yaug and released it to float in the air, then pushed himself backward.

  “Thank you,” Yaug said. “It’s my data archive.”

  Angier’s eyes darted around the bay. His face was gray and pasty, sweat beading on his skin.

  “I’ll stay out of your way,” Yaug said brightly. “Keep at it. Only a few more pieces to pull free.”

  “What then?” Jaemon said. “After we get it all out of there?”

  I had a feeling I knew what Yaug had in mind, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Just pull those pieces out and I’ll explain,” Yaug said. He shoved himself back to the bulkhead and waited, legs neatly folded against himself, as we moved in and worked to harry the last bits loose. Jaemon looked all around us and frowned worriedly. We were violating every good principle of shipboard discipline, scattering bits and blobs of detritus everywhere.

  “Okay,” he said dubiously, “I think that’s the last of it.”

  Yaug said. “There are no more pieces left in the tube?”

  Mai hovered over the hatch and, casting a wary glance at Yaug, stuck her head inside.

  “No,” she said. “It’s clear, except for a few puddles.”

  “All right,” said Yaug. “Here’s the plan. I’m rerouting some volatiles conduits so they’ll spill into the rest of the ship. Then I’m going to make a couple of electric arcs to set off explosions.”

  “What?” Angier said. “You’ll blow the ship apart!”

  “I hope so,” Yaug said. “That creche was my way out of this if my ship ever became compromised. When we arranged to insert me into Titan space, there was always the risk that they would catch on to the ruse and I would need a quick escape. My ship was that escape. But what if they compromised my ship? Well, I could blow it, but we wanted the best possible chance that I could get away with the collected samples. So we designed that creche. I could stash my samples in these cases, and my findings in the creche circuits and, in the worst case, if I had to go down with the ship, the creche might be able to revive me. It worked, apparently.”

  “So why did you rip its guts out?” Angier shouted.

  “Because I’m not using it to escape now. You are.”

  Angier said, “But—huh?”

  He stopped, frowning at Yaug. He looked at Jaemon, who was staring at the empty tube.

  “We’re not all going to fit,” Jaemon said.

  “Fit where?” Angier said.

  “We won’t have to,” said Yaug. “Only you, Mister Angier, and Probationer Mai. It will be a bit tight, but I believe there’s more than enough room for the three of you.”

  “Wait,” said Angier, “Fit where? In that tube? And you’re going to blow up the ship?”

  “Yes,” said Yaug.

  “You’re insane! Why would we get in there?”

  “Because it’s the best chance you have to survive the explosion that I will touch off in a few moments.”

  “What if we don’t let you set it off?”

  “You can’t prevent it. Even if you could, why would you? It would only mean your unpleasant demise when the Titan secondaries capture you. They are even now cutting their way through both hatches into this chamber. I admit the escape will be dangerous and uncomfortable. I admit there is a chance that you won’t survive. But it’s much better than the alternative.”

  “We’ll fry inside that tube!” Angier said.

  “No,” said Yaug. "Remember, I designed it for a situation like this. Just before I blow the ship, explosive bolts will fire and release the tube into space. I will trigger a magnetic impeller to accelerate you away from Autolycus. It’s the same mechanism I would have used to get away in the creche myself.”

  Angier stared at the gaping opening into the tube. He swallowed.

  “We won’t have any air,” he said.

  “We have our suits,” Jaemon said. “Lev is streaming all of this to Kestrel. She’ll know where we are. I see how it works, Doctor. It’s a big risk, but I’m with you. It’s a lot better than the alternative.”

  Jaemon looked at me.

  “What about you, Lev?”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said.

  “That was my thinking,” said Yaug. “I will stay behind, and your Lev will stay behind to watch me, to make sure things go as I’ve said. Isn’t that right?”

  Jaemon was still looking at me.

  “Yes,” I said. I reached out my hand, gesturing at Jaemon’s holster. He raised his eyebrows. I nodded. He unsnapped his holster and handed his sidearm to me.

  Jaemon turned to Yaug, still folded up against the bulkhead, mouth parts twitching. “You’re sure about this, Doctor?”

  “Can I persuade you to carry something away for me?” he said.

  “Your archive?” Jaemon said.

  “Yes. And the samples. All that really matters is to get them to the Strategic Service.”

  “You’re willing to stay here and burn to death along with those secondaries if we’ll take your data to safety?”

  “I am.”

  “It’s a hundred years old!” Angier said. “Who’s gonna care?”

  “They’ll care,” Yaug said. “Maybe other agents have collected similar d
ata in the past century. Maybe not. They’ll want this, either way. More data is always better. Besides, if you or your Captain are willing to decant me from the archive data, I’ll even see you again, though I won’t know you. We’ll meet once more for the first time.”

  “You trust us to decant you?” said Jaemon.

  “I do. Or to find someone who will.”

  “You don’t know us,” Jaemon said.

  “Yes I do,” Yaug said.

  “You met us a couple of hours ago,” said Jaemon.

  “Sometimes it doesn’t take that long,” Yaug said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Jaemon allowed himself a small smile.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  “Why won’t you know us?” Mai said.

  “I’ve had no opportunity to update my archive. It contains the record I made before I blew the ship’s bridge. I haven’t had a chance to update it, so I won’t remember anything I’ve done here today.”

  “We will,” I said.

  24.

  We made Angier go into the tube first. He swore and threatened us, but Jaemon stared him down and demanded that he give up his sidearm, and, in the end, he climbed in, muttering darkly the whole time.

  “Press into that end,” Yaug said, indicating with the tip of one walking leg. “Orient yourself with your head pointing toward the hatch.”

  “Why?” Angier snapped.

  “The impellers will push you out that direction. You want your head facing that way, toward the direction you’re going, so acceleration will push you onto your seat, not onto your head.”

  Angier shifted around, grumbling and looking at his feet. He pressed himself down in a squatting position and looked up.

  Jaemon said, “Well, here goes.”

  He checked the safety on Angier’s sidearm, handed it to me, and climbed into the tube. He would have been sitting on Angier’s shoulder if there had been any gravity.

  “It’s gonna be a tight fit for Mai,” Jaemon said.

  Mai licked her lips and looked around wide-eyed.

  “I could stay behind, too,” she said. “I could help Lev.”

  “Come on, Mai,” said Jaemon. “Don’t be silly. We can squeeze you in. Tell her, Lev.”