Matt’s pride over mitigating a dangerous situation evaporated at seeing a stunner in her hand.
“You idiot,” she said levelly. “You’ve ruined everything.”
His gut twinged in reflex. He shuffled through his brain in panic for tips on dealing with stunners. The one Dr. Lowry held wasn’t a mini-stunner, so it definitely had the range needed for the two meters that yawned between them. Get as close as you can, Ari had told him, because stunners are difficult to use in hand-to-hand. That sounded good, in theory, but not so much when actually facing a stunner.
“Mayday! Mayday! We’ve got—” Dalton’s voice came suddenly from the comm panel and was cut off.
Matt moved, before he decided to go for the comm panel or for Dr. Lowry, and she pulled the trigger. He hated stunners, he thought, as he twitched into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 22
Although Senator Stephanos has been surprisingly silent, we’ve got exclusive interviews from his staff regarding the scandal of indicting his own great-nephew, Myron Stephanos Pulnik, for treason. These interviews can’t be found anywhere else. . . .
—Interstellarsystem Events Feed, 2106.068.12.01 UT, indexed by Heraclitus 11 under Conflict Imperative
When Ariane woke, she knew something was wrong. Itwasn’t the silence, because she knew her quarters would be quiet due to their location. As she started to stir within her webbing she realized what bothered her. The gravity generator was off, which was an unusual situation for a civilian crew.
“Command: Lights, slow.” The lights came up. She loosened her webbing; she must have dragged it over herself at some point, by instinct.
“Command: Call Maria.” All she got was Maria’s message queue. She remembered the whisper as darkness overtook her: Don’t trust anyone.
Where was the ship? If they were using boost engines, she shouldn’t feel zero gee, unless they were in free fall around a planet. When she’d left the control deck, Dalton had said they were heading toward the egglike station—she felt a jolt of excitement when she thought of visiting it.
As she tapped the bulkhead for a command view port, she noted the time on her sleeve. She’d been asleep about two hours. She felt much better, but as usual after a drop, she was hungry.
Requesting exterior views proved that they’d moved and suddenly there was the object, hanging over the planet. Her breath warmed, her heartbeat quickened, and she felt the blood pound in her neck. There it is. The Minoans hadn’t been able to describe how the “homing” function would work, but the intense spike of excitement and anticipation she felt whenever she saw the Builders’ station was obvious. Her parasite quivered and she knew the seed she had to retrieve was there. She fought the impulse to immediately push out of her room and find a way, any way, to get to the station that had the glowing green light at its core.
First, she had to talk to Dalton, the mission commander. She lightly pushed across the room to her hygiene closet and inside found dried ration bars and a drink pack she’d stashed there. Their flavors were pungent, tangy, and tastier than she remembered; the crunchy texture of the bar felt stimulating—something she’d never noticed before.
Glancing in the mirror, she almost didn’t recognize herself. Her hair had come off in clumps, mostly on her temples and over her ears. Too bad she didn’t have time to get the rest clipped short—her pulse pounded, reminding her. Hurry, hurry.
Remembering Maria’s caution, she paused at her hatch. She tapped for the intercom and listened. No chatter. She pressed her ear against the hatch, and heard faint clicking. It didn’t trigger any memory of ship machinery and every once in a while, there was a disturbing irregularity to it. Hurry, hurry.
She unlocked her hatch quietly. Opening it required pushing hard on the frame with one hand while she kept her body close to the heavy hatch as it swung. When it opened, she smelled a strong and familiar metallic odor. Blood. She could almost see the stench riding the air, moving lazily through the corridor, until she felt something dial back her sense of smell. The quivering sensation in her arm made her wonder if the parasite was increasing and decreasing her sensitivities, as necessary. Hurry.
After looking around, she floated out into the empty corridor. When she turned to close the hatch, she saw the source of the smell. Bloody handprints covered the access panel, hatch handles, and both the inside and outside of the mechanical disablement panel and pulls. However, since she’d already disabled the door from inside and locked the hatch with steel bolts, whoever had left this panicked, bloody trail couldn’t get inside. Were they trying to warn her or harm her?
The scent trail of blood went both ways from her door. Only the N-space pilot and mission commander were housed on this deck; to the right she could climb to the control deck and to the left was the engineering control center, from where she heard that insistent clicking noise. Hurry, hurry. She pushed down the nagging urges of the Minoan parasite to get to the alien station. No. This is important. She moved down the hall toward engineering, using handholds to control her short movements.
The hatch to the engineering center hung halfway open. Beyond the hatch was darkness. She hesitated, because the first rule for space crew was secure everything. The joke was that the second rule was secure everything again. Hatches could be secured open or shut—who’d forgotten their most fundamental training? She opened the hatch wide until it fastened to the bulkhead. Leaning in, she asked for lights and recoiled as they came on.
Jonathon Fitzroy, an engineer in the “suspicious four” that Edones had identified, had been garroted so violently that his head floated grotesquely above him. He was against the bulkhead, just opposite the hatch where she stood, and remained hovering there in the zero gee. Pools of blood floated to the side of his head and neck. He’d obviously been killed a meter away from his current position, where there was blood spatter clinging through surface tension to walls. The killer had then moved him out of the way of the consoles.
Although she’d privately viewed Fitzroy with suspicion, he’d seemed friendly and eager to help. Now she felt a spike of sorrow and anger—which suddenly smoothed out to blandness. Was this the parasite again, adjusting hormones and neurochemistry? Let me feel! she thought viciously and applied coercion with doubt: Otherwise, I can’t do my mission. Immediately, sorrow tightened her chest again, but not with the original intensity.
She pushed to the consoles, grabbing a corner. This engineering control center was probably where the gravity generator had been taken off- line. The console was covered with bloody fingerprints. She dragged the command view ports over to the side that was easier to use, but her fingers still ended up with pungent blood on the tips.
Calling up status, she saw that environmental support—specifically, heat and air—had been shut off in the lower levels, where the scientific mission crew worked. She immediately restored life-preserving service throughout the ship, not knowing where people were at the moment. She started the gravity generator up, which would initialize and slowly apply force. She unlocked the interlevel airlocks. She saw the intercoms light up but before she listened in, she saw another problem. No one was responding from control deck.
Carefully, because the gravity generator was going to gradually ramp up to a half gee, she worked her way out of the engineering control center toward the bow, and the control deck. By the time she was going up the vertical tube and open airlock, there was partial gee. The devastation on the control deck had settled, under half gee, by the time she arrived.
Mission Commander Dalton Lengyel’s body had crumpled awkwardly, his throat cut military style, by stabbing sideways and pushing the blade outward. He had a defensive cut on his forearm, probably made before his throat was sliced. He’d bled out and died quickly. Maria must have been on duty in the copilot and sensor seat, but there was no sign of her. However, some massive hand-to-hand battle involving a knife had occurred. She saw slashes in seats and heavy gouges in the display plastic on the copilot console and next to the exit. O
n the floor were pieces of webbing and in the far corner lay a TEBI-issue stunner that she guessed had been Maria’s. She put it in the pocket of her coveralls.
Where was Maria? She considered what was available on this level and the one below, since they’d been sealed off from other levels. There were emergency escape modules for the control deck further aft. Turning that way, she smelled blood and started running.
The corridor came to a T, with the escape modules to her left. She didn’t find Maria, but she smelled blood and sweat near the control panel and one module had been ejected. Running to the panel, she punched for comm. “This is Pytheas , calling . . .” Who?
“Kedros?” It was Maria, floating out in space, inside an escape module. Her voice sounded weak. “I’m still bleeding. He has a knife.”
“Hang on, we’ll get you back to the ship. Who attacked you?”
“It was Nathan . . . we should have warned you.”
Ariane displayed the location of Maria’s module, which had been ejected about an hour ago. The ship had moved since then, leaving Maria halfway back to the buoy. Meanwhile, in her mind, she ran through the crew members on the Pytheas. “I don’t remember a Nathan.”
“His cover is Hanson, the Terran xeno-archeologist. But he’s really Nathan—Nathanial Wolf Kim,” Maria said. “And he’s insane. He didn’t recognize me, but I know his muscle memory, his moves in hand- to-hand. He smashed up the comm console.”
Ariane paused. She’d gotten complacent, letting her guard down around Parmet and Maria, almost thinking of them as coworkers rather than enemies. “You knew Kim was on board?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.
“No. I suspected. We looked, we really did,” Maria’s voice faded. She was either tired or wounded, or both.
Hanson? She searched her memory, recalling a Richard Moki Hanson. A Terran, but not one of the “suspicious four” identified by Edones. Perhaps someone else had unknowingly transported his explosives. Hanson was new to G- 145 and had been on the Pilgrimage for a short period, coinciding with the bombings. She tried to connect the picture she remembered of Hanson with Kim’s face. It seemed unbelievable, after going through the crew herself. She couldn’t have missed Nathanial Wolf Kim, the man who tortured her, could she?
Her implant vibrated, reminding her that she had another mission to complete. “We’ve lost the mission commander and at least one engineer. Once I can get the crew together, they can retrieve your module.”
“I think he did something in the clinic, maybe harmed a medic. He was obsessed with getting to that orbiting monstrosity,” Maria said.
No! Don’t let him. Hurry, hurry—must get there first. She gasped at the intense anxiety the parasite let loose in her body. She signed off with Maria. Going back to the control deck and no longer worried about running into Kim, she got some answers from the second-shift medic and engineer, who were in their work centers and trying to get operational again.
“Hanson killed Sapphira.” The medic, who had been locked below, had arrived in the clinic to find their Autonomist medic, who was also their xenobiology expert, dead. “Crazy—what a waste.”
Yeah, crazy. Considering the chemicals pouring into her bloodstream and the anxiety her parasite was invoking, she figured this was why Kim wasn’t behaving sanely. He must have installed his own parasite—the missing one from Lee’s lab—despite the fact that it was experimental and designed for her biochemistry. Now there were three dead, on the Pytheas alone, to lay at Nathan’s feet.
The engineer had been crying, obviously close friends to the man Nathan had killed. She’d escaped the carnage by being off-duty in her quarters below, and then had been saved from a cold death when Ariane restored life support.
“He took one of the exploration skiffs, so we can use the other one to get—”
“No. I’m taking the other one,” Ariane said. “You’ll have to turn the ship around and retrieve Ms. Guillotte. Use the manipulator arms.”
“But—what about you?” The engineer was aghast.
“I’ll get back to the ship in the skiff. Don’t worry.”
When Ariane arrived at the skiff docking area in the aft section behind engineering, she knew she was on the right track. She bared her teeth, feeling a primitive excitement surge through her body. Hurry, hurry. She ensured the skiff had its environmental suit, air, and power. As she climbed in, she felt the parasite in her upper arm vibrate. Yes—yes—yes—yes—yes. . . .
Matt woke up, feeling like he had a hangover. He was in the common hygiene closet of Aether’s Touch, which wasn’t an immediate problem, because he had to relieve himself. As he did so, he surveyed his situation and his attitude sputtered into hopelessness.
Dr. Lowry had locked him in, but he tried the hatch anyway. Worse, she’d smashed the nodes inside the closet—that bitch must have used a heavy wrench to break them, then pulled the node assemblies out of the bulkhead and cut them off, leaving the microwire harnesses dangling without their connectors. The damage enraged him and cleared the last vestiges of fuzziness left by the stunner. It also dispirited him, because she’d cut him off from communicating in any way with the rest of the ship. The nodes brought in comm, controlled the displayable surfaces, and operated as sensors. Any hopes he had of contacting Muse 3 or causing emergency alarms, via smoke or chemical vapors, died a quick death.
However, growing up on a generational ship, he’d been trained to handle emergencies since he could walk. The first step was always to inventory everything you had available, meaning food, tools, and resources. Sometimes he thought this first step was just a mechanism for calming down. He looked through everything secured, either through webbing or magnetic surfaces, inside the lockers. There were various cleaners and personal toiletries, as well as a small one-third-full pint of liquor with the Stellar Shield’s logo slapped on it.
He squeezed some air out and sniffed. His eyebrows rose. Rotgut—it couldn’t even qualify as artificially flavored liquor. Was Ari starting to drink in the mornings as she got ready? He sighed. Whatever problems Ari had, she was in much deeper trouble now, considering the mayday he’d heard.
Surveying the wealth of hair and body care products, he decided that none of it would be useful. He looked up, thinking through the ship’s structure. Considering that a second-wave prospecting ship was defined by its customizations, and the fact that he’d overseen every upgrade, addition, and alteration, he knew every bolt, strut, and level of his ship.
Above this hygiene closet was an air duct that ran above the central corridor all the way to the passenger airlock. It pressed against the ceiling, so it probably could work as a sound conductor—but only on this level, which was insulated from the control deck level. Unfortunately, this was just a normal-size air duct. He wasn’t in a v-play where one could watch actors, or co-opt an actor’s part, and escape evil through absurdly huge vents that ran through all parts of a ship or habitat. No, sound conduction through this level’s central corridor was all the conduit could provide, but that might be good enough.
Standing on the closed head and twisting his neck, he could get his ear pressed against the vent opening. He heard nothing but ship hum, so he figured Lowry wasn’t in the central corridor.
“Muse, can you hear me?” He started at a whisper, but had to go to a conversational tone before he got a response. This was an uncomfortable process, having to speak into the hole, then twist his head sideways to hear.
“Yes, Matt, I can hear you near the passenger airlock, but I cannot see you.” Muse 3 sounded clear, but he could tell that the AI had pushed its volume up.
“I’m in the hygiene closet. You haven’t identified yourself to Lowry, have you?”
“No. I have followed your procedures,” Muse 3 said primly.
“That’s good—but now we might have to violate those rules.”
“I have already run through scenarios to see how I can assist your escape. Unfortunately, Dr. Lowry has exhibited what Ari would call ‘controlling beh
avior.’ She has turned every system to manual and cut off all automated input.”
Did Lowry suspect the existence of some agent like Muse 3? With everything set to manual, Muse 3 couldn’t do anything small, like open doors, adjust temperature, or answer calls—nor could Muse 3 perform larger actions, like control parts of the ship. The AI had only been able to pilot the ship, following Ari on Abram’s fateful mission, because a ship at dock was left “asleep” so that someone, with proper authorization, could remotely control systems.
He asked Muse 3 about Lowry’s actions after he’d been stunned. She hadn’t reported the mayday from Pytheas; apparently, she’d expected some sort of problem. She’d given Beta Priamos Station an imaginary update that everything was going well. However, after waiting an hour, she’d tried to raise the Pytheas herself and seemed puzzled when there was no answer.
“That smacks of mutiny aboard the Pytheas,” Matt said, looking at the time on his sleeve. Almost two hours had passed since he’d been stunned.
“Smacks?”
“Has the flavor of—er, we’re equating taste with—so when will the Percival arrive?” Matt didn’t have the patience for a lesson right now. Besides, he needed to step off the head, and stretch his neck.
“Expected ETA is four hours and seven minutes,” Muse 3 said. “From the way she is pacing, I think Dr. Lowry is worried about their arrival.”
“Keep me apprised of her actions. I need to think for a while.” Matt stepped off the head and stretched. He wished he had room to pace. There was little he could do, no matter what creative ideas might hit him. Lowry had to make the next move.
Pathfinder Page 30
