by Scott Baron
Whoever was behind all this was storing bits of people.
Could Mal actually be that far gone? And if she is, does that mean the captain is part of this too? I mean, it’s his ship. How could he not know?
Smaller limbs floating in translucent containers toward the back of the space caught her eye. Limbs too small for any of the crew.
My God, are those from children? But where did they get them? Could they have been harvesting from kids before we even launched?
Farther back, she noted the much larger tanks. Big enough for far more than just parts.
They can’t be—
Daisy snapped out of her shock as the touch of the slightest of drafts wafted across the sensitive skin of her cheek.
A draft. In a sealed ship. Where one shouldn’t exist.
Daisy put her revulsion aside and turned her mind to a new task. One that she’d actually been working on for some time now. Oh, how the universe could throw you curveballs.
In any case, gift horse. Mouth.
She dug in her kit for a pair of sharp wire snips, then deftly unscrewed a panel on the wall. It contained nothing of critical importance, and crucially, none of the wires were leading to anything Mal would notice a fluctuation in. Daisy clipped a hot wire, holding the ends apart from one another with her insulated clippers.
While fire can be deadly on board a space ship, and thus, open flames are strictly prohibited, other things can relatively safely give off smoke, if you know what you’re doing. Daisy quickly stripped the two ends of the wire from inside the panel, then touched them together, arcing the electricity, causing a brief flash.
The small puff of smoke given off drifted toward the near wall, as if pulled by an invisible magnet.
Gotcha!
It was tiny. Just a pinhole, really, but in the vacuum of space, it was more than enough to cause a deadly loss of air, given enough time. From the looks of it, a heavy piece of equipment had hit the wall at just the right angle and weakened the metal, though as she studied the small, damaged area, she noted it almost looked more like someone had been slowly scraping away at the wall over a very long period of time, rubbing that heavy corner back and forth for many, many years. Of course, that was impossible. The ship hadn’t even been traveling very long at all, but still, it gave her pause.
Daisy pulled her thinnest fiber optic camera from the pouch on her thigh and slid it gently through the minuscule hole. It barely fit, but barely would have to suffice.
There you are.
Though blocked by a bundle of tightly bound cables, Daisy could see a tiny tear in the bulkhead in the formerly airtight compartment housing them.
No way I can get to that without Mal noticing, she realized.
The small puncture was probably from a piece of debris that had impacted the ship at some point. It was just dumb luck that the internal wall became compromised. The fail-safes were designed to prevent such an occurrence from causing serious harm. Areas were compartmentalized, and a breach would activate the countermeasures. Only this one was too small and too delayed from the initial impact to trigger the automatic sealant foam. It was a one-in-a-million chain of events that led to the continuous leak, but that sort of thing seemed to be happening far too often for comfort on this mission.
Daisy dug in her kit and produced a small tube of vacuum-active dry adhesive and a metal patch. The stuff was stronger than underwater concrete, and it could work in sub-freezing temperatures and didn’t need any air to function. She carefully withdrew her camera and stored it back in her thigh pouch, then applied the tiniest dollop of sealant to the hole, being extremely careful not to get any on herself, lest she become an unwilling addition to the Váli’s superstructure. Less than a second after she applied the small patch, the hiss of escaping air ceased as she successfully sealed the gap.
“Way to go, Daze. Nice one!” her invisible friend cheered.
“Thanks, Sarah. At least that’s one less thing to worry about. Now back to the plan. As twisted as this shit is, my number one priority at this point is still to contact Earth and the moon base.”
“Makes sense. Get safe, then figure the rest of this mess out.”
“Exactly.”
Daisy looked again at the body parts floating around her. Hell, if anything, making contact is even more of a priority now. Who knows what they’ll do if I allow them to dock at Dark Side.
Daisy cast a curious gaze around the space, this time looking beyond the horrors floating in the sealed tanks and taking greater care to note anything non-body part related that might be of importance.
The compartment was well-hidden, and its width was significantly less than other pods. A secret lab, nestled in the Váli’s main structure rather than a removable pod.
You could walk from pod to pod right past this and never even know it was hiding only a few feet away.
“You see that, Daze? Over there, on the far wall,” Sarah pointed out.
Daisy looked and saw there was a solitary double air lock door. One way in, one way out. From the inside it looked just like every other set of pod doors on the ship, but Daisy suspected this one led somewhere unexpected.
What the hell, let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes, she thought as she opened the first of the matched doors and stepped inside.
She reached for the second door’s activation panel as the first door sealed behind her. Hesitating just a second, she touched the control, and the second door slid open with a whisper.
“Jesus, Daisy, you startled me!”
Tamara jumped up from the red peppers she was tending, accidentally crushing her watering spout with her cybernetic hand. The unit automatically self-sealed, preventing any loss of water.
Behind her, Daisy heard the airlock door slide shut, blending seamlessly with the chamber’s wall.
“Tamara? It was you? But you’re human. How could you do something like this?”
“Wait, what?” Tamara said, a confused look momentarily flashing across her face. It was quickly replaced with one of realization. “Oh, you mean the parts in the bio lab. No, I don’t deal with that stuff. It’s not my department. I just grow the food.”
“This is insane. You’re working with the cyborgs! How many of you are in league with them? Does the captain know? And what about Gus and Reggie?” Daisy’s mind was spinning. “My God, Sarah wasn’t an accident at all, was she? She knew something was wrong, and you killed her!”
“Whoa, hang on a minute, Daisy, it’s not what it looks like! This is all just a big misunderstanding. Come on, calm down. Let’s go talk to the others, and we can clear this all up.”
“Clear it up? You people are sick.”
“Trust me, it will all make sense if you just talk with us.”
Daisy’s eyes trailed down. Something wasn’t right.
Her hand, she realized. Tamara had been pressing the intercom button since she entered the room.
Further, the arm Tamara was sporting wasn’t her usual gardening variety. Sure, it looked benign enough, but it was actually a highly-advanced cybernetic combat arm, complete with a full complement of anti-personnel and defensive measures hidden under its sleek exterior.
How do I know that?
“Better question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Daisy took off in a sprint, twisting as she darted past Tamara.
Just need to make it to the adjacent pod, then I—
A flash of bright metal shot out, a hot pain radiating up her arm as the powerful mechanical hand gripped her by the wrist.
Damn, she’s fast.
“I’ve got Swarthmore. She’s in the botany facility in Starboard Six. She found the parts lab,” Tamara shouted into the open comms. “Hold still. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The slow cracking sensation in her arm told Daisy otherwise.
Daisy focused, forcing the crushing pain from her mind as best she could as she flailed her free arm and grabbed the nearest thing to her.
A small
plant in a metal pot. It would have to do.
She swung it hard, a dull gong ringing out from the container as it connected solidly with Tamara’s head. The botanist stumbled, and though she didn’t release Daisy, her grip did lessen slightly. It was enough, barely, to give Daisy the leverage to twist around and grab the sturdy metal hand with her far-weaker flesh one.
The elbow.
As if on auto-pilot, her free hand instinctively darted to the small uneven spot that she somehow knew was there. Code flashed in her mind, a series of commands and override options presenting themselves in an instant. Without hesitation, Daisy quickly punched a pattern into the nearly invisible access pad on the cybernetic arm. It was supposed to be keyed only to Tamara’s DNA, but little did she know, like just about every program in existence, its designers had built in a back door.
This had better work!
With a pop and a click as Daisy’s fingers flew, typing in the sequence by touch, Tamara’s arm loosened its grip, then powered down entirely. A moment later, the hand abruptly disconnected from below the elbow. Then the hefty mechanism finally released Daisy’s arm as it cycled off.
Daisy didn’t hesitate.
She pulled free and was already running the second the disembodied hand let go, hitting the deck with a clang as she bolted through the far door.
“Shit, she disarmed me and is heading out of Starboard Six into Starboard Seven!” she heard Tamara shout into the comms before the airlock shut behind her.
Faster, dammit! She pounded on the airlock door impatiently. Finally, the first door locked shut and the second one slid open. Pod Seven was empty—no one was waiting for her. At least not yet.
Not stopping to thank her luck and tempt fate in the process, Daisy sprinted to the next door and started cycling it just as she heard the one behind her open.
“Daisy, wait!” she heard behind her. Tamara was lurching through the airlock while clumsily attempting to re-attach her hand as she chased her.
Daisy ignored her and was already into the next airlock, keying in bypass codes, temporarily blocking all comms to the area and overriding the door’s safety mechanism as it slid shut behind her. When the inner door opened, she grabbed an EVA tether and jammed it in the open door. She then grabbed a power driver from her tool pouch and popped the door’s control panel.
The wires were easy enough to splice, and she felt confident the workaround should hold. So long as something was in the doorway, the safety wouldn’t allow the other airlock door to open. Daisy had simply created a safety loop for the entire pod that tied the jammed door’s protocol to the main door as well.
I only have a few minutes before they work around my bypass and figure out how to trap me in this cluster of pods, she realized as she stepped into Starboard Eight.
“Oh, I remember this pod,” Sarah said.
Daisy ground her teeth.
“I died here.”
“Shut up, Sarah, just shut up! I don’t need this right now,” she barked at the voice in her head.
“It’s so cold out there, Daisy. And no air.”
“Not helping,” she huffed as she ran to the far side doors leading to Pod Nine.
“It’s okay, Daisy. I don’t blame you. It was the others’ fault.”
Listen, this is really not the time for this, okay? I’m begging you, please leave me alone!
The voice went silent.
Sarah?
Nothing.
Daisy set back to work, grabbing a spare tether line and running to the far door at the end of the pod. Secretly, she found herself almost hoping to hear her friend’s voice once more.
No time for moping, she thought as she re-routed her bypass on the pod, allowing the unblocked door to Starboard Nine to slide open.
Starboard Nine. The zero-g pod.
A gravity-free place she had once despised with a passion, but now something that she could use to her advantage. Clipping the tether to her belt, Daisy pushed off into the room, aiming for the D-ring mounted on the ceiling. Only it wasn’t a ceiling. Or a wall. Or even a floor. It was simply the direction Daisy wanted to go.
Forcing her body to relax as she floated, she snapped the tether in place as she flew by, giving a gentle tug and redirecting herself with ease to the door leading to Starboard Ten. If she could make it to Starboard Twelve, she’d be able to cut through the central passageway to the port side without them noticing. That should buy her at least a little more time as she made her way to the comms array while they tried to get to her in a pod she was no longer in.
Daisy gently landed next to the keypad, firmly grasping the handle next to the door before reaching for the control panel.
It lit up, ready to cycle open, and she had not yet touched it.
Shit!
Her fingers flew across the keypad, but the inner door began to open before she could enter her bypass codes. For a moment it hummed with the strain of conflicting commands, then finally stalled in place.
Just a few more seconds and I’ll have it, she thought as she keyed in the commands to override the inner panel and close the door.
“Daisy, talk to us. This can all be explained,” Gustavo called to her through the narrow opening.
“Bullshit, you’re in league with the fucking robots!” she yelled back.
A dark metal tube jutted through the gap, blocking the mechanism and engaging the no-close safety just as she overrode the door commands.
Dammit!
A blast of compressed air brushed her cheek as the tube sent a projectile flying into the opposite wall, where it sparked brightly upon impact.
“A stun rifle? You motherfucker!”
Daisy released the door, positioned her body out of the line of fire, locked a foot under the handle, and grabbed the barrel, tugging hard, but Gustavo was too strong to be so easily disarmed. Using both his hands to yank the stun rifle back from her, he pulled as hard as he could.
Of course, that was her plan, though she didn’t know how she knew so clearly what to do when facing an attacker in an unusual tactical situation like this. Regardless, Gus fell backward when she unexpectedly released the weapon, Daisy’s body barely kept from flying the other way in the zero-g chamber by her anchored foot.
With the opening now clear of the obstruction, she quickly executed the override command, sealing the door, but once again, it stayed ajar.
“His leg, Daze!”
Sarah was right. Gustavo’s boot had jutted into the gap when he fell.
Sonofa—
The door slid open, and Gus dove at her headfirst. Daisy had just the slightest of moments to yank the tether she was still tied to, sending her gliding out of his reach.
She bent her legs just before she reached the wall, then pushed off hard as soon as her feet made contact, twisting in mid-air so she was traveling feet-first.
Gus took both of her boots to his face, the impact sending him crashing into the nearest wall, then rebounding into the ceiling. Daisy, on the other hand, was used to the quirks of the zero-g pod, an edge she was damn sure to use to her fullest advantage while he was still stunned.
“You don’t understand—” was all Gus managed to get out before he found himself whipped into a spin, flying toward the far wall. Daisy had braced herself with her tether, then yanked Gustavo’s nearest leg, resulting in a nausea-inducing ride, smack into unforgiving steel.
Daisy unclipped the tether and pushed off again, deftly attaching the loose end to Gustavo’s belt, then kicking him into a tight spin, wrapping him in the tether as he flailed.
It won’t take him long to get out of that.
Gus made a horking sound as he vomited in the zero-g pod.
Okay, maybe it’ll take him a little longer than I thought.
“No dicking around, Daze. Get the hell out of here,” Sarah urged.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she silently agreed, then made her way back into Starboard Eight, jamming the door behind her.
She was loc
ked in, with pursuers desperately trying to catch her at each end. And with Gus going so far as to start shooting at her, she now knew just how serious they were, and to what lengths they would go to capture her. She had only one option.
She knew what she had to do, and knew she had no other choice. Nevertheless, the thought of the EVA doors that had taken her friend sent a small shudder running up her spine.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Override disengaged,” Mal announced, having finally regained control of both the doors and comms for the small conglomerate of pods Daisy had somehow managed to take control of. The normally calm AI found the ease with which she had been blocked out more than a little disconcerting and was pleased when the code blocks unexpectedly fell to her access attempts.
Starboard Seven and Nine both cycled open their doors into Pod Eight at the same moment, Tamara and Gustavo visually ensuring the other was not about to be ambushed, silently nodding to one another as they stepped in and sealed the doors behind them.
“She didn’t come out my way.”
“Mine either,” Tamara replied, looking at the weapon in Gustavo’s hands. “Jesus, Gus, a stun rifle? Really?”
“Hey, Captain said whatever it takes, and this was the least lethal thing in the armory. You know how important she is.”
Tamara gave him an unhappy look as she reached for the comms panel.
“Is that puke?”
“Shut up.”
“Jesus, Gus, you trained for zero-gs. And what happened to your face?”
“She ambushed me.”
“Ambushed, huh?”
Tamara’s raised eyebrow told him just how much she believed him.
“Captain,” she said into the comms. “Daisy ran to Starboard Eight, but she’s not here. She must have made an EVA outside the ship. She could be anywhere out there.”
“I read you, Tamara,” Captain Harkaway replied from Command. “Daisy disabled a lot of our equipment in that section, but I’m going to have Mal scan the ship’s surface as best she can. Standby.”
Gustavo looked around the pod. All of the strapped-down containers were too small to hide in, so it really did seem their shipmate had opted for a space walk.
