Spectra Arise Trilogy

by Tammy Salyer

  This time, the remaining crewmen comply, and the room echoes with the sound of rifle butts banging on steel. Desto and I quickly kick them out of reach and wave the men against the far wall with the non-negotiating ends of our weapons. Strahan continues to hold the major in a throat-crushing grip, and the man’s face begins turning an alarming purplish color as Vitruzzi approaches them.

  Despite being choked, he manages to whisper, “You’re making a huge mistake, Captain.”

  She nods at Strahan, who eases up on the pressure, and Donnelly draws a whooping, pained breath.

  Vitruzzi ignores him. “Call your flight deck and get a SITREP. Tell them not to report to any other ship until you get back up there. Am I clear, Major?”

  He nods, eyes squinting in fury, keenly aware of the gravity of his situation. Strahan pushes him toward a com console near the airlock.

  Pressing the link, he clears his throat and says, “Captain Roby, SITREP.”

  “Sir, the ISPS fired on us! The auxiliary engine is completely gone. And there’s something wrong with the transmitter. We’re trying to get a lock on the craft, but it’s moving erratically. What are your orders?”

  The major shifts his eyes to Vitruzzi, waiting for his orders.

  “Tell him to hold fast, you’re coming up. Have all crew not dealing with the engine meet you in here.”

  He gives his subordinates the command. Within seconds, six more men rush into the bay from the forward cabin, completely unaware of the situation, and are quickly subdued. Desto ties their hands and feet to each other, immobilizing them, and covers their mouths with tape. It takes less than two minutes. While he’s busy with the crew, Strahan and I provide security, and Vitruzzi interrogates Donnelly for information regarding the location and duty of any remaining crewmembers. Ten minutes later we’re standing on the bridge, in control of the ship. I’m having a hard time swallowing the rising sense of dread our unlikely streak of luck brings—there’s no way things will go this smoothly again. No way.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Twenty-four hours have passed. Venus has been at the helm for the last eighteen, but seems as fresh and lively as if she’d slept eight perfect hours a night, each and every night of her life. The good news: no shots were fired when we took the bridge. The bad news: the bridge commander, Captain Roby, immediately changed the ship’s course and locked the nav-system when he realized they were compromised. Donnelly and Roby are the only crewmen with the encryption pass codes to get back into the nav-system, and without them we’re flying blind. Not part of the plan.

  Donnelly consistently denies the ship’s destination is the Fortress, but he’s lying. He doesn’t even try that hard to hide it. So what if we reach the Fortress? He knows it’s crazy and our odds of being blown out of the sky, or worse, picked off to be used as more test subjects, are much greater than our odds of achieving whatever idiotic plan we’ve cooked up, so why bother to try and be convincing?

  When the MCACS doesn’t make its rendezvous with the station, they’ll begin a search and our plan, along with all of us, will be dead in the water. Vitruzzi has been explicitly clear that none of the Admin crew should be needlessly harmed, instantly rejecting my suggestion that we shoot one every ten minutes until Donnelly gives up the codes. I’m not bloodthirsty, but it’s as Rajcik once told me: they knew the risks when they signed on.

  Brady has been piloting the Sphynx, keeping her within firing distance in case we lose control of the situation, while Bodie and Venus keep the MCACS flying. We locked the crew in the galley, rather than with the thirty-eight prisoners aboard, for their own protection, and Desto and I switch guard duty every six hours. I’m standing on my third watch, staring through the galley door at the imprisoned crew, shifting my weight from foot to foot to stay conscious. None of us has slept since intercepting the MCACS and I’m starting to lose the battle against the fatigue threatening to take my eyelids prisoner.

  There’s a noise in the corridor and I look up to see Desto approaching. “Your relief is here, honey. You ready to catch a nap?”

  “No. I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to.”

  He chuckles. “That’s not what it looks like. Go ahead, rack out for a few. I just did and I feel a million times better. Captain started us on a sleep rotation for three hours each, and you’re up. Take it while you can get it.”

  “Is that an order?” I try to keep my tone light, but it doesn’t work. My voice sounds gruff and resentful, even to me.

  “Does it matter? You need it, trust me.”

  Even if I don’t, my body wants to accept the invitation. My arms drop heavily to my sides and my knees waver, forcing me to lean back against the wall.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Head up to the top level. It’s the bunk nearest the flight deck. Any troubles here?”

  “They’re as calm as kittens. Keeping the temp at thirty-seven C doesn’t inspire rebellion.”

  * * *

  A dense curtain of fog moves around me like a shroud. It’s cold and damp, a heavy mist, and there’s a strange grating sound—metal against metal—coming from somewhere not very distant. I’m on full alert, feeling danger in the mist with me, but none of my senses can locate it. I want to call out to David, to see if he is here too, but I can’t risk drawing unwanted attention to myself. Any noise could give away my location, and I won’t be able to see it, whatever it is, coming.

  I don’t know what to do, so I begin stalking quietly toward the sound. If I find it first, I may be able to identify it without being detected.

  As I take a few tentative steps, curdles of thick fog blow back from my shape like smoke, quickly replaced by more of the same. Continuing forward, I look down to get a sense of what kind of ground I’m walking on, trying not to make any noise. One more step and the mist shifts for an instant, long enough for me to see that there is nothing. Nothing but black, empty space below me.

  The moment this realization hits me, the sense of having solid ground beneath my feet dissolves, and I’m suddenly falling—hurtling—through space, gaining speed though there is no gravity. I feel cold wind and needles of ice burrowing into my skin, as if being stabbed by a million tiny knives. I begin to kick and claw at the emptiness around me, trying to slow myself, to break my fall, anything. I hitch in a deep breath, preparing to scream—

  —and wake up gasping. Wild-eyed and panicked, I look around the room and pick out Vitruzzi leaning through the doorway.

  “You all right?” she asks.

  I can’t speak for a second, still partly paralyzed in the free fall of my dream. The haggardness in her face, eyes deep-set in dark pockets, almost mournful, helps bring me back to the present. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Time to get back to work. Leaning down and pulling my boots on, still trying to get a grip, I hear her footsteps as she comes in. She watches me quietly for a moment and says, “We can’t wait for Donnelly anymore. We need the pass codes, and we’re going to have to make him tell us.” She doesn’t say it, but I know what she’s thinking: I wish like hell it didn’t have to come to this.

  “Are we going to use his crew?”

  “No,” she answers immediately. “We’re not going to make them pay for his mistakes.”

  “Vitruzzi, you know we can’t let any of them go. They know who you are. They know your ship. Even if we pull this off, if anyone lives to report what happened, you and the others in Agate Beach will be targets. The Admin will come eventually.”

  Anger flashes across her features, but it’s not about me. She’s angry with them for putting her in this situation, and no one can blame her for it. I still don’t know why she gave up her comfortable life on Obal 10 before all this, but the more I see, the more I’m convinced the Admin had something to do with it.

  “Let’s just get this done.” She heads for the flight deck and I follow her.

  Strahan stands over Donnelly, who’s been taped to the copilot’s seat. He doesn’t appear to be frightened, but dark smudges beneath his eye
s reveal a wary concern and lack of sleep. When we enter, Strahan glances up and the major cranes his head back to look at us.

  Vitruzzi positions herself rigidly beside the seat, looming over him. She’s relaxed, nothing in her stance overtly threatening, yet no one would mistake her mood for anything but serious. Deadly serious.

  “Major Donnelly, give us the pass codes to the nav-system. Now.”

  “You have control of the ship. What difference does it make?” He’s trying to remain curt, but there’s an unmistakable strain in his voice.

  Strahan pulls a vicious-looking knife from his load-bearing vest and presses the blade against the man’s jugular. “Major, you’re going to tell us those codes, or you’re going to watch yourself bleed to death. I suggest you think very carefully about what you say next. You’ve got five seconds.”

  Donnelly’s face grows pale, the depressed circles around his eyes becoming more like bruises. Or like the sunken eyes of a corpse. “You’ll never get away with this. You’ll kill me anyway, even if I give you the pass codes.”

  Strahan remains stolid, staring the man down with the intensity of a predator locked on its prey. Finally, Vitruzzi says, “Karl, take him to the galley and put a bullet in his head in front of his crew. Then bring the captain to the deck.” Her eyes never leave Donnelly’s. “Erikson, go with him.”

  I look from her, to Strahan, to Donnelly. The same resolute calmness is in all of their faces. Venus remains seated in the pilot’s station, keeping her head turned stiffly to the front, refusing to acknowledge the scene playing out around her. If only we could all wish it away.

  Donnelly stands up after Strahan cuts through the tape holding him to the seat, and without a word turns toward the flight deck door. Vitruzzi, still staring at the seat he’d been sitting in, says quietly, “Last chance, Major.”

  He steps through the doorway without looking back.

  * * *

  Killing him works. The ship’s new OIC, Captain Roby, complies without hesitation, inputting the pass codes himself. Once the nav-system is unlocked, Venus and I locate the Fortress’s coordinates. We’re all a little surprised when they match those Rajcik originally gave us. He’d kept his word after all, confirmation that he’s been baiting us, even as we’d held him captive. It leaves me feeling sick.

  We’re within eighteen hours of the prisoner ship’s scheduled rendezvous. They’d been ahead of schedule before we intercepted them and Roby informs us that Donnelly’s plan had been to remain in a holding pattern until their expected window. By reinstating their previous course, we’ll be arriving at the Fortress just in time.

  I’m sitting in the navigator’s station poring through the flight logs when Vitruzzi walks onto the flight deck. Without a word, she takes the pilot’s seat. Venus put the ship on auto about two hours ago and left to catch a few minutes of sleep, finally. Or maybe she just needed to put some distance between herself and the horrible shit happening around her.

  Glancing up at Vitruzzi, I see the same look in her eyes that I’ve seen too often in my own. The haunted way the eyes trip around a room, not seeing anything, covered by a dull sheen that says they’ve seen too much violence and senseless death. A look stained with the knowledge that our own end is coming, and fast. That look is the reason most soldiers don’t own a mirror.

  “You had to do it, Vitruzzi. It was the only way.”

  She looks at me gravely. “Have you ever been a parent, Erikson?”

  It’s a strange question. “You know I haven’t.” Corps troops are sterilized at in-processing to keep the ranks and population in order and ensure perpetual combat readiness—a Malthusian reaction by the Admin to guard civilization from ever reaching critical mass again.

  “I know you’ve never had children, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve never had to help raise a child. Then, I imagine you’ve never had that kind of opportunity, the life you’ve led.”

  I shake my head. I’m not sure what she’s talking about, but her grim tone extinguishes any impulse to interrupt.

  “That’s just another freedom the Admin takes from people.” She stops. Part of me hopes she’s done, but after a minute, she continues, “Karl says you’re curious about how I became an Admin contractor.”

  “Yeah. You’ve got some good people around you, but let’s be honest, it isn’t much of a life.”

  She studies me blankly for a second, then begins speaking rapidly, as if the words have been dammed up too long and can no longer be held back. “I was Head Surgeon of the Cyber Prosthetics Unit at Mercy Hope Hospital in Tunis City before I went into business with Karl. My husband was a molecular chemist, working on biological pacification projects. We met at the hospital. A year after we were married, we had a little girl. Evie.” She stops again. There’s something she wants to say, something painful, and in another second, I’m going to hear it. Only I’m not sure I want to.

  “Six years ago, an Admin-engineered virus was brought to the hospital. John couldn’t tell me where it came from, but it wasn’t hard to figure out it was developed at the Fortress. Everyone had heard the rumors about the place. He was so excited about being part of such a highly sensitive operation. I still don’t know why the Admin exported it. There was no reason to bring it to a civilian population center.

  “Somehow, the virus got out, and before they could contain it, twenty-five thousand citizens from Tunis City and the surrounding area died. My husband and daughter included.” She continues staring through the flight deck screens, her lips the only part of her body still animated. “I went to work early on a Saturday morning, and that afternoon they locked down the hospital. No one was allowed in or out. By the time the epidemic was contained a week later, my family was dead. I never saw either of them again. All the bodies were incinerated.”

  I remember the news. It happened right before the Soldier’s Rebellion. Rumors claimed the outbreak, dubbed the “Crowers Croup” by the Corps ranks because of how bad it made people cough, so bad it shredded their lungs and throat, was the reason for the rebellion in the first place. Or at least the catalyst. The units sent to quarantine the infected and clean up the mess weren’t properly outfitted for the bug, no one was even sure what it was and the Admin spun the news reports to keep people pacified and in the dark. Word was that it was transmitted through body fluids, mucus and saliva, but soldiers were dropping like flies before anyone realized it was airborne. Estimates say fifty thousand citizens died in the Obals—no one bothered to count the non-cits in the Spectras—but over seventy-five thousand soldiers were sent to the cremation chambers.

  “I wasn’t a very good mother. I worked too much and spent more time with my patients than my own family. My husband was just like me. By the end, we were just familiar strangers to each other. I like to think Evie died knowing that her parents loved her. But most of the time, I doubt she did.”

  An involuntary shiver traces up my spinal cord. I don’t know what to say; not that anything I come up with would matter anyway. I knew people who died from the Croup, but no story I’ve heard is as horrible as hers.

  She stops talking, battling with herself over whether she wants to relive this nightmare by telling it to me, but eventually, she goes on. “The Admin never acknowledged that the virus had come from their experimentation at the Fortress, and everyone who knew the truth was dead, like John.

  “I couldn’t stay at the hospital after that, working for a government that killed my little girl and then lied to me about it. I dropped off my resignation two days after the quarantine was lifted, and I think the only reason they let me go was because they suspected I knew the truth. They gambled I’d keep my mouth shut if they let me leave without restrictions.”

  “Why did you?”

  A bitter chuckle escapes her. “How could I have proved it? Besides, it isn’t hard to guess what would have happened to me if I had tried.”

  I don’t know how she chokes off the rage she must feel over what the Admin did to her and her f
amily without going crazy, but even as she tells me the story, she seems calm. Bitter and hateful, but calm.

  She swings the pilot’s seat around and looks at me for the first time. “Erikson, I’m telling you this so you’ll understand something important: I have no regrets about what happened to Donnelly. That was simple justice. Those scientists on the Fortress, scientists like Vilbrandt, kill people, people, in ways that no one deserves, and Donnelly was helping them do it. He got what was coming to him.”

  There’s no trace of guilt in her words. She’s not trying to make me see things her way; she wants me to know how far things have gone and the consequences for anything or anyone that gets in our way. If I had not just heard these words, I could have lived fifty lifetimes before seeing this deeply into Vitruzzi. She hadn’t brought Vilbrandt on board just because he presented an opportunity. Her motives were never that straightforward. Her plans for him, once he served his purpose, were almost certainly every bit as grisly as what Rajcik will probably end up doing to him. This isn’t just a simple mission to save her friends from bad luck. It’s personal. It’s a vendetta, and it’s driving every decision she makes, good or bad. So far, those decisions have been exact, calculated, and flawless, but there’s no telling what tiny little nudge might be all that’s needed to send her over the edge and out of control. She could be close and no one would know it. If Vitruzzi loses it, it’s hard to know how the rest of this crew will react. They’re smart, strong, and capable, but like any tower, when the foundation crumbles, it all comes down.

  “In a way, I’ve had more of a relationship with the prosthetic in Karl’s leg and the Sphynx than I ever had with my own daughter. She was only seven years, two months, and nine days old when she died.”

  * * *

  “Fortress, this is MCACS F-205, prisoner transport from Keum Libre, requesting clearance to land. Over.”