Sound

by Alexandra Duncan

  I come to a grate and peer through. Several of the guards lounge in chairs scattered around a table, tearing chunks from a loaf of bread and smearing it with some kind of green paste. A boxing dummy stands in the corner, my helmet shoved down over the stump where its head would be. Darts and knives protrude from its chest. Chaila. I move on, quiet as I can, until I reach a bend in the duct. It rises four meters straight up, and splits into two different passageways at the top.

  “Vaat.” When I was little, I used to brace my bare feet against the edges of the door frame in my bedroom and scoot up to the top. Ava would tease me and say I must have gecko feet. But I’m heavier now, and I stopped climbing things for fun years ago.

  I stand in the shaft, press my palms against the side of the duct, and hop up so I can plant my feet along the sides, too. The metal thunders as my feet crash into it. I stop dead. They must have heard that. I wait, but minutes pass and no one comes.

  I inch up the shaft, bit by bit, my arms burning. Finally, I lever myself over the edge and slide into the next-level duct. I lie facedown, panting. I should never have stopped climbing doorways.

  I pick myself up and continue crawling. The next grate reveals a room full of lockers, and then the control room overlooking the hangar, and finally, the dock, bright and buzzing with lights. Both shuttles sit dripping on their mooring pads, the Mendicant beside them, directly over one of the airlocks. Its loading ramp still hangs open. A small piece of luck in a gauntlet of terribleness. I’ll have to dash across half the length of the fully lit hanger to reach our ship and pray no one is watching the entire time.

  I hold my breath, listening. No sounds, no voices, only the buzz of the lights high above. I twist the tabs holding the grate in place and lower it to the floor as gently as I can. My hands are sweating, and I almost drop it. I peer out, left, then right. Still no one. I slither onto the bright, deserted dock and crouch by the wall. The lights are so loud. Everything is so loud. My heart. My breath. The rustle of my suit as I stand. Now, I tell myself. It has to be now. Before someone comes.

  But my body won’t move. I can’t make myself start forward. I’m standing exposed in the midst of my enemy, and my blood is frozen. I’m in our storage closet at home in the Gyre, and I can’t stop what’s happening on the other side of the door. They’re watching you. They’re waiting for you to move. They’ll catch you.

  Go. You need to go. I hear my mother. Climb, Miyole!

  I dash for the Mendicant.

  One one thousand.

  Two one thousand.

  Three one thousand.

  Four one thousand.

  Five one thousand.

  The loading ramp clatters under my feet and the dark, open berth swallows me up. I pause at the top, breathing hard. No one behind me. No one raising the alarm. I’ve made it, at least this far.

  Chapter 27

  The ship’s auxiliary lights still glow along the floor, but I don’t dare try to turn anything else on as I make my way to the cockpit. I keep one hand on the wall as I edge along. A strange feeling creeps over me, as if I’ve made this walk before, as if I know what I’m going to find.

  I still let out a small gasp when I see it. The synaptic panels outside the cockpit itself have been gutted, fully and methodically. Where the wires and connectors once were, there are two empty, perfect squares cut into the wall. Someone has cracked open the casing over the control panel and left its mechanics exposed.

  “No.” The word comes out a whisper. I can’t feel my feet, but somehow I’m moving forward into the cabin. I lay my hands over the exposed spacers and wires, as if that would somehow fix them. The jack that gave us the Tsukinos’ location lies in two pieces on the floor, next to a scattering of loose bolts. I know I told Aneley this is what I was afraid of, but I still can’t believe I’m seeing it. They’re breaking down the Mendicant for parts.

  I sink down into the captain’s chair and stare blindly out at the dock. I didn’t think they would gut her so quickly. I thought . . . I don’t know . . . that I could fix it, somehow. That I’d be able to reverse whatever they’d done. We were all supposed to leave together. No one stranded if one of the pilots was injured. I know we can fall back on the shuttles, but the risk doubles every time we split the group.

  I tap the controls’ tracking pad halfheartedly. Lights flicker on the right side of the console. I slide over to the copilot’s chair and examine what we have left. Telemetry, pneumatics, and lighting. No connection to the engines. No air circulation. Nothing that will get us out of here.

  A sudden movement catches my eye. Two men stride across the hangar, heading directly for the Mendicant. Vaat. I jump to my feet and shut down the controls. I turn to the holes gouged in the walls, and then back to the viewport. There’s no time to make it out. I back against the bulkhead. I have to hide, but where?

  The storage compartments. They’ll have checked those for goods first thing, so maybe they won’t go in there again. Unless they’ve found the clinic empty and have come looking for me. There must be security eyes all throughout the spindle, but whether anyone has been watching their feeds is another question. I hurry down the corridor, swift and quiet, as footsteps thump the loading ramp.

  “. . . going to have to take a heat saw to the whole thing.”

  Chaila. I’m not going to make it to storage.

  “At least we can use it for scrap. What’s that saying about a gift horse? Never look it in the face, or something?”

  I turn back. Not storage. Not the cockpit. Not the sleeping berth. The holes in the Mendicant’s walls are large enough for Tibbet to crawl inside, but not for a taller-than-average girl in a pressure suit.

  One of the men laughs. “Your baba teach you that? I’ll never figure out those old-world sayings.”

  A section of the floor buckles as I hurry past. Of course. The utility shaft where we hid from the dakait. If Rött’s men are breaking down the ship, they’re more likely to look in there, but they’re almost on me. I’m out of other options.

  I pull up the section of floor, jump down, and settle the panel back in place just as Rött’s men enter the corridor. I press both hands over my mouth to muffle my breathing.

  “I don’t know why we can’t get the hands up here to do it.”

  “Che. You really want them wielding heat saws?”

  “Not the new ones. I mean the ones that are broke in already.”

  Hands . . . broke in . . . he must mean us. The people trapped in that lightless cell three levels below. Anger floods my bloodstream. I want to bash their heads against the wall. I want to watch them bleed out slowly.

  “He won’t want to risk letting them out until all that official traffic passes by. One of them gets loose and starts running its mouth, it makes it hard for those government types to turn a blind eye.”

  A snort. “I’d like to see them hack it here for a year. They’d do the same as us.”

  Government types? Official traffic? Someone important is in orbit above Enceladus. Someone who would look bad if they were seen to let slavers slide. Shore leave, I suddenly remember. The Ranganathan. Could it be them? I calculate the timing in my head. Four weeks in transit at the Ranganathan’s slower speed . . . it could be. They’re due to stop here. It’s possible. Probable, even. And if I can reach them . . . the Ranganathan’s brig is definitely preferable to this.

  Doubt creeps into my chest. Even if it is them, the DSRI isn’t interested in looking past the surface at Rangnvaldsson’s. Why should they look here? They buy ships from Rött, or at least from the people Rött sells to. He said as much.

  “Jalvar.” One of the guards spits. “Bunch of hypocrites don’t want to hear about how their own sausage is made.”

  I look at the wires and ports all around me. The signal dampener Rubio and I put in place at the beginning of our journey is still there. I could remove it. Maybe that was part of what disrupted our long-range coms when we plugged in the jack from the drop sphere. If I pull out the dampen
er, I could repair them, given enough time. Maybe. If the dampener was the problem. If Rött’s men leave me alone long enough. I wish Rubio were here. I may be able to fix people, but he’s much better at machines.

  “You still want those chairs?” one of the men above me asks.

  “Säkerligen, I want ’em. Better than what we have up in the control room now.” Their footsteps retreat in the direction of the cockpit.

  I let out a breath. They can take anything from the cockpit they want, as long as it doesn’t further disable the coms.

  I lie on my back and work my fingernails under the plate that covers the signal controls. I always thought the nail-strengthening pastes the other girls at Revati painted on were vain, but now I wish I had some. Better yet, a knife. Or a magnetic lever. I move the plate enough to fit my fingers inside. One of my fingernails cracks, but I swallow my yelp of pain and suck the blood away. Almost there.

  The plate falls loose on my chest, revealing the signal readout and the dampening frame, a white plastic square fitted in the place where the amplifier should go. Our signal is nothing but a blue line fizzling along the bottom of the readout’s auditory range.

  I hesitate. What if this is all for nothing? What if the Ranganathan isn’t up there at all? What if I send out a distress pulse and they ignore it? They wouldn’t send fighters after the dakait ship when Nethanel was kidnapped right before their eyes. Why should they send anyone to respond to an anonymous signal? It will only be a matter of time before Rött and his men figure out the Mendicant is transmitting. And even if I make it back through the ducts to the clinic before they figure out I’m missing, they’ll have to blame someone. They’ll lock us down even tighter, and we’ll lose any chance we had to take the shuttles.

  A screech tears through the quiet, followed by a clatter and thump of something falling over. Chairs. That must have been one of the seats in the cockpit being pulled from the floor.

  Tears blur my eyes, but I wipe them away.

  “Manman,” I whisper. “What do I do?”

  You don’t have to make up your mind now, some deep, quiet part of my brain answers. You don’t even know if you can fix the long-range coms. Better to give yourself as many options as you can and then see what happens.

  I pull the dampening frame from its fittings. At once, the signal readout jumps—not the clean, pretty line we’d need to transmit words or data to the Ranganathan, but enough power to send out the distress pulse DSRI ships use when they’re in danger. If I can get back to the cockpit to see if the long-range transmitter is working and program the pulse.

  The screech of the other chair pulling loose echoes through the ship, followed by muted voices.

  “. . . heavier than it looks.”

  “You get this one and I’ll take the other.”

  A long, sharp squeal resonates in my teeth—the chairs being dragged. They screech toward me, then over the utility shaft. I press my hands over my ears and clench my jaw. One passes, then the other. They rumble down the loading ramp and hit the dock with a metallic clang. I wait, listening. A high-pitched whine cuts under my hearing, but nothing else.

  I sit up and push the floor panel away. The corridor is empty. I make my way to the cockpit, soft-footed as I can. It looks bigger without the pilot seats. The two guards have made it across the dock and are pulling the chairs up to the dock-side control room. I stand above the console, wavering. Maybe I should go back while I still can. Rött’s men surely haven’t figured out I’m missing from the clinic, or they wouldn’t be wandering around talking about furnishings. Nethanel and Aneley’s plan for the shuttles is a surer thing.

  But it’s also a sure thing that at least one of us will be left behind. If they aren’t letting us out again until whoever is up there is gone, that means days, maybe a week, cramped in utter darkness. How long does Lisbeth have? How long until Rött’s men get bored and beat one of us, or cut off a nose, or do to one of us what they’ve done to Aneley?

  It’s a risk either way. I wish Cassia and the others were here to tell me which way to go, but they aren’t. I have to decide, here and now. If I’m wrong, if it isn’t the Ranganathan, we’ll pay when Rött and his men find out. My stomach turns. Is this how my manman felt when she aimed that gun at the man on our floor? How my mother’s and my people felt all those many years ago when they were deciding whether to fight for their freedom or bide their time? How does anyone ever know what’s right? Or do they simply jump and pray it was the right decision?

  I look down at the console and then back out through the viewport at Rött’s men positioning the Mendicant’s seats in the control room. I imagine Rött’s hands on Cassia, the look Aneley has in Cassia’s eye. I can’t know. I may never know.

  I power up the controls.

  Chapter 28

  The coms readout springs to life. I turn down the receiver volume and open an outside channel. Nothing. I bump up the volume. A low, thin hum fills the air, but nothing else. None of the traffic chatter I should be hearing, no call signatures registering. Cold sweat prickles on my forehead. I look across the dock to the control room. One of the Dakait is laughing, reclining in his stolen chair. It doesn’t mean anything. The transmitter could still work, even if the long-range receiver is out.

  I duck under the console. Our captors haven’t gutted the coms system, so at least there’s that. I open the Mendicant’s ancient systems management interface and pull up communications diagnostics. The receiving line is red, but the transmitter’s is green. It should work. I only have to program it to send the DSRI’s unique distress sequence.

  I pop my head up and check on the dakait. Still in the control room. No one new on the hangar floor. I change the coms to pulse mode and set the pitch and frequency, open it to all receivers. Rött’s men might pick it up, too, but I don’t know the Ranganathan’s call signature by heart, so it’s a risk I’ll have to take. Please be up there. Please hear us.

  I switch back to diagnostics and hold my breath. The transmitter line spikes. Spikes again. Green. It works. We can’t receive anything in return, and I don’t know how long it will hold out, but for the moment, it works. For few seconds, I let myself imagine escaping, what I would do if I got out. Hug Soraya again, the way I used to when I was a little girl, and Ava and Rushil, too. Go visit New Gyre, like Ava is always trying to get me to do. See if it’s anything like my childhood home . . .

  Enough. I can’t let myself dive too deep into that fantasy. I program the distress burst to repeat and look in on the dakait again. One of them is drinking something. The other has his feet up. Time to go.

  I kneel in the shadow of the Mendicant’s loading ramp. It’s only a matter of time now, whether the Ranganathan sends someone for us, or Rött and his men discover the transmission. I have to get back to the others and tell them. We have to be ready.

  Twenty-odd meters of well-lit open space lie between me and the duct. How long will it take to run that far and pull the grate back into place? Ten seconds? Fifteen? The men up in the control room could look out at any time. Even if they don’t catch me, they could still raise the alarm. But the longer I wait, the more I risk Juna or Rött noticing I’m gone. My chances for making it back to the others decrease exponentially with every minute.

  I run full tilt for the open duct—Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. I stop short at the wall and spend a few precious seconds maneuvering myself into the duct feetfirst. My knee thuds against the side as I wiggle backward on my stomach. I freeze. Vaat.

  The electronic hush of the control-room door opening fills the silence.

  “What was that? Did you hear knocking?”

  I pick up the grate with shaking fingers and fit it into the opening. The tabs lock back in place with a whisper of a scrape. I wince. Not here, not here. Don’t look here.

  “I don’t hear anything. Maybe the lift?”

  “No, it was over this way.” Footsteps on the stairs, moving closer.

  “You hearing ghosts n
ow?” The other man follows him. “You shouldn’t listen to Njord. His head’s up his ass.”

  “Skit på dig. I thought . . .” One of the men’s legs comes into view through the grate. I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “There’s nothing here.” The second man.

  “Yeah . . .” Doubt still hangs on the first man’s voice.

  I open my eyes.

  “I’m telling you, it’s the lift.”

  “Yeah, the lift. Or we’ve got rats again, maybe.”

  The first man laughs. “You know what that means. Rat fricassee time.”

  The other joins in. “Rat sausage.”

  “Rat pie.”

  I crawl backward, shaking. The sound of their laughter fades as I go. The way back is easier than the way up, especially dropping down the shaft between floors. I brace my hands and feet against the sides again and use them to slow my descent so I don’t crash into the bottom. I move silently past the room with the lockers and the one with the dummy wearing my helmet.

  At last I reach the clinic and peer out through the grate. The room looks exactly as I left it. A few bread crumbs on the exam table, and disorder reigning on the shelves.

  I land on the floor, reattach the grate, and then bend over and let out a deep breath. It feels so good, the breath turns into a laugh, and then I’m laughing so hard I can barely breathe. It bubbles out of me—all the tension and silence—coming and coming until it hurts so much my eyes water. Nothing is funny and I ache down to the center of my breastbone, but I can’t stop. One time when I was little, I ate some spoiled butter and couldn’t stop throwing up until it was all out of me. This feels the same. As if my body won’t stop until everything is gone.