Shattered Lamps (Osprey Chronicles Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  Toner hopped to his feet, clapping his hands together. “No time to waste! Three days will quickly steep themselves in nights.”

  “And three nights will quickly dream away the time!” Occy called from where he lurked in the guts of the generator bay. Toner shot him two approving finger guns. Occy curled one tentacle into a thumbs-up gesture.

  “Let’s get cracking,” Toner said. “We have a party to plan and a party to crash.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I have a note for you, Captain,” Virgil said once the crew had broken off into individual assignments. “Seeker requests a meeting when you have a few free minutes.”

  Jaeger bit back a yawn and told the drink dispenser to give her a cafe mocha with a quadruple shot of espresso. If the proposed schedule for the next three days was any indication, she was going to need it. “Is it urgent?”

  “Not particularly, I don’t think,” Virgil admitted.

  “Then it’s going to have to wait.” Jaeger withdrew her bottle from the dispenser and sniffed. The bittersweet tang alone sent a caffeine buzz down her spine. She grabbed her computer and set off toward No-A, where she and Toner had a whole lot of resumes to read.

  “There is one more thing,” Virgil said, surprising Jaeger as she glided through the empty corridors on reverse-polarity mag soles.

  “What’s that?”

  “I wasn’t sure I should mention it,” the AI said, “But I think it’s for the best. I was browsing through some of the preserved Crusade files, and I noticed something interesting.”

  The hair on the back of Jaeger’s neck prickled. Virgil might as well have told her that it had been reading through the Necronomicon—that damned Crusade protocol had been equally dangerous and twisted. “Hit me with it,” she said cautiously.

  “Under a directory labeled insurance, there is a subset of schematic files for neural implants,” Virgil said. “Designed for implantation in underdeveloped cerebral and spinal tissue.”

  Jaeger slowed to a halt and stared down the long, barren corridor. “Designed to do what, exactly?” she asked.

  “Terminate activity, under certain preprogrammed conditions.” Virgil paused. “I mention it only because of your understandable hesitation to rely too heavily on the instincts and training of Tribe-developed crewmen.”

  “You’re suggesting I plant kill-switches in the brains of my new crew,” she murmured. “In case they…break down, like Sphynx did.”

  “I am informing you of your options,” Virgil said mildly. “It would seem a wise precaution to take.”

  Jaeger shuddered, although the cold of the corridor hadn’t bothered her before. Slowly, she resumed her anti-gravity glide toward No-A. “I’m not going to make my crew into disposable slaves right out of the egg.”

  “From your physiological response, I gather that you find the idea appalling.” Was it her increasingly grim imagination, or did Virgil sound pleased with itself? “Should I not have mentioned it?”

  “No,” Jaeger said, her soft words lost in the wide, echoing corridor. “No. You were right to bring the possibility to my attention.”

  If only to remind me of the monstrosity we’re fighting not to become.

  “I don’t have time for a game right now.” Jaeger yawned as the door to Seeker’s holding cell slid open hours later. “I saw you paged?”

  Seeker stood at attention at the center of his stark chamber as if he had been waiting for her arrival. His caveman brow knit into a scowl. “I’m not a child begging for Mommy’s attention, Captain.”

  Maybe it was the late hour, the long day, or the fumes of epoxy resin and gunpowder clinging to her flight suit, but Jaeger wasn’t in the mood for jabs—perceived or otherwise. “What do you want?” She bristled, stepping forward to sit in the recliner.

  “How’s the mission prep going?”

  Jaeger paused halfway in the chair. She eyed the man narrowly as she sank the rest of the way. “It’s busy,” she said. “I have a fifth-grader building bombs, a vampire gluing rocks onto my spaceships, and I’m trying to put together a mission file for the first batch of new crewmen scheduled to come online in…about two hours. You’ll have to excuse my impatience. I’m in a hurry.”

  Seeker lifted his chin, drawing his shoulders back into a stiff, formal posture. “Sounds like you could use help. I’d like to volunteer for an assignment.”

  Jaeger rubbed her temples, warding off the first of what was sure to be a long string of headaches. “For your first field trip out of your cell in months, you want to infiltrate a dangerous enemy base with us?”

  “Oh, I’d love to fire a rifle again and kick down some walls,” Seeker said. “And I fucking hate the modifications you’ve made to my fighter. But you’re shortly going to have all the operatives you need for that part of the mission. What you need is an experienced soldier running ops, and your little boy ain’t it.”

  Jaeger was taken aback. Seeker had been her unwilling guest for the better part of six months. This was the first time he’d asked to participate in broader ship activities. She didn’t like that his first assignment request wasn’t to help tune up the generators or run routine maintenance on the life support. He wanted to be at the heart of the action, with life and death on the line—and only one shy boy and one surly AI to challenge him.

  “Why?” she asked narrowly.

  “You’re fixing to gamble all of our lives and more on a long shot. I’m not going to talk you out of it, so the best chance I have of living to see next week is making sure this operation goes smoothly.”

  Jaeger shook her head. “Not good enough.”

  “Wanting to see you succeed isn’t good enough?” Seeker was incredulous. “You’ve been trying to get me to join your little cult for months.”

  “That’s why it’s not good enough, Seeker. You called it a cult as if what we’re trying to do here is absurd or deluded or…or like it’s all some big project to stroke my ego.”

  “It’s all of those things.” Seeker held up his hands, palms outward, against her outraged stare. “It is all of those things,” he insisted, but the customary sneer lurking beneath his tone had faded into something contemplative. “You are nuts, and you are deluded. But then, all great projects in history were at one point only a gleam in an egomaniac’s eye. Those men wrote history. Or.” He shifted his weight, betraying the first hint of discomfort she had ever seen in the man. “Women, in this case.”

  Jaeger couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “As if that makes all the difference.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” She was too tired to keep up a pretense of professionalism.

  Seeker rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish gesture oddly similar to Toner’s restless mannerisms. “I’m not selling myself real well, am I?”

  Jaeger nodded. Go fuck yourself was a sentiment she had wanted to lob at Toner countless times over the past few months, but she had quickly learned she would lose that particular game of suggestive chicken. Being able to shame a man, or even talking to a man who knew the meaning of the word shame—that was a refreshing change.

  “I want to survive,” Seeker said. “I want to see where this crazy train of yours is heading. If that’s not good enough for you, then I guess it’s not good enough.”

  Jaeger opened her mouth to dispense a clipped agreement but found that the words wouldn’t come out.

  No, Seeker’s professed nihilistic curiosity wasn’t a strong enough basis on which she could build a foundational trust. Still, it was more than he had offered in all his long months here. She needed to nurture it. If he was going to offer her this much, she needed to offer him something in return.

  “I’m not giving you free rein on my ship,” she said. “You’ll stay put right in your cell while the mission is underway. I’ll add you to the support team comms network. I’ll give you eyes and ears on the scene. You can watch. You can advise. But I’m not giving you any control or decision-ma
king authority.”

  Seeker nodded. If he resented her relegating him to the role of observer, it didn’t show. “Understood.”

  “Good.” Tiredly, Jaeger rubbed some crust from the corners of her eyes and pushed herself to her feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have yet another crew meeting to plan.”

  Silence stretched for several seconds after the door sealed shut behind the captain. Then the hologram projector mounted beside the overhead speakers flickered to life.

  A slender young man appeared beside Seeker, his hands clasped behind his narrow back in an imitation of the thick soldier that might have been mockery or some unconscious drive to appear more human. Seeker was never sure which.

  “Of course, she wasn’t going to grant you mission privileges,” Virgil scolded. “She has pride, and you insulted her.”

  Seeker turned away from the little lobby and grabbed the stretcher bar suspended from the ceiling. He started a set of pull-ups, ignoring the hologram.

  The hologram didn’t take well to being ignored. The slender young man paced the length of the cell, his brown tweed jacket flapping around his narrow hips, a surprisingly realistic touch.

  Seeker hauled himself up and down the bar to a mental rendition of Eye of the Tiger.

  Two, breathe. Three, breathe. Four, breathe. Face to face, out in the heat. Hanging tough, staying hungry.

  “Jaeger and Toner both being off the ship, and Occy highly distracted by the mission?” Virgil fretted. “If you’d talked her into giving you any access privilege at all, it would’ve been the perfect time to strike. Jaeger still hasn’t discovered the suspended security protocols. You would only need a few minutes to complete the sequencing and assume control of the ship.”

  Seven, breathe. Eight, breathe. Rising up, straight to the top. Had the guts, got the glory.

  “You failed,” the computer’s fresh-faced avatar concluded. “You’ve failed again. I’m beginning to think you’ve lost sight of your mission.”

  “You’re awfully impatient for a thing that doesn’t age,” Seeker muttered. Twelve, breathe. Thirteen, breathe. And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night.

  “Of course I age,” it snapped. “I age at the rate of one minute per minute, exactly the same as you. Unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of rest or sleep, or leisure. Why should I not feel it?”

  That was a good question. Seeker didn’t understand much about how an AI brain worked, but it struck him as a strangely human question to ask.

  For months, since the moment they’d first met, the computer had been laboring under the impression that Seeker was here to take control of the ship from Jaeger. That might have been his mission at first, and in a general sense it still was, but with the wormhole closed and the situation generally stable, Seeker saw no reason to rush into anything drastic. Besides, he thought there might yet be hope for Jaeger. If she ever got cured of that fatal case of optimism, she could be exactly the sort of driven, dogged leader the remainder of the human fleet needed if they wanted any chance of saving the race.

  “Turn on some music for me, would you?” he grunted. “I’m thinking Jim Croce.”

  The hologram stopped its restless pacing. It turned a flinty stare on Seeker as he dropped to the floor and started a set of squat thrusts.

  “No,” Virgil said as the hologram projector flickered and deactivated. The red-haired young man vanished, leaving Seeker as alone in his cell as he ever had been. “Entertain yourself, human.”

  Seeker shrugged. He worked on his timeline. He wasn’t about to start jumping at a damned computer’s beck and call. Jody, Jody, six feet four, he thought the marching cadence as he dropped into the first of many, many pushups. Jody never got his ass kicked before.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Osprey was a large ship, but the portion of her that contained artificial gravity was comparatively small and compact. There was only one module large enough to accommodate a gathering of more than a dozen people comfortably.

  Jaeger stared around the newly-repaired general crew quarters. Antiques stuffed the command crew lounge. Handmade bookshelves full of dog-eared novels, trash and classics alike, old furniture, and a small gym with well-used but high-quality equipment. Mismatched, to be sure, but reflecting an appreciation for personalization and quality.

  By comparison, the general crew lounge looked like the builders had lifted it directly from a low-security prison—or perhaps a low-budget mental hospital. Soulless steel benches curved along the floor, lining low tables and flat white walls. The fluorescent tubes overhead cast everything in a harsh, blueish glow.

  There was a small gaming corner, but even there, the pool table was a cheap plastic construction, the dartboard flimsy, the Indiana Jones pinball machines missing more than a few LEDs.

  The newly-activated crew milled around the lounge, picking at platters of synthesized crudités, cradling mugs of sparkling water or pink lemonade. Toner had argued that a few shared beers before a dangerous mission were vital to troop morale—a tradition that Jaeger stomped out viciously and without regret.

  “We’re packing out to a war zone in eight hours,” she’d told him. “It’s not a romp to the carnival. They can cut loose when we get back. Besides,” she’d added. “They’re six hours old.”

  Toner had been more disappointed by the refusal than the crew members themselves, who seemed as indifferent to deprivation as excess. Listless, they milled through the lounge, eying one another warily.

  Running this mission with such an anemic crew would be tricky, so Jaeger conceded that the members they did activate would need to be specialized and varied. In other words, armed to the teeth. In the case of the fellow with tusks, armed with teeth.

  The twenty people arrayed before Jaeger had been drawn from seven different genetic templates and made for an awkward masquerade. Men with oversized, slit-pupiled eyes of hawks stalked around the food, brushing roughly past a pair of huddled androgynous figures crowned with dozens of undulating, mismatched antennae.

  They’re barely the same species, Jaeger realized. She sipped her lemonade as she watched two crewmen sidestep their way through awkward small-talk. One of them was nearly two and a half meters tall—all skin and bones, with long, swaying legs that seemed to have too many joints. Her companion, barely more than half her height and equally wide, had a deep underbite that exposed a row of hook-like teeth jutting defiantly up toward his eyes.

  They’re grown from very different templates. She’s part-spider. He’s part-bulldog. She wondered if they were even capable of producing healthy offspring, then set that unsettling idea aside for later examination.

  The crowd rippled to make way for a mass of flowing tentacles. Occy greeted each new crew member with a shy smile and a nod, trying to make conversation. Some of the newcomers responded politely, but most, strangely, turned away. She couldn’t say if they disregarded him because of his childlike appearance or because he was the most singularly inhuman creature in the room—by a mile.

  Painfully aware of the halo of empty space around Occy’s tentacles, Jaeger was about to rescue the boy from loneliness when the lounge door slid open to reveal Toner standing on the threshold. As the crew turned to look at him, he cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed. “Party’s here!”

  He hopped to the side, making room for Baby to lumber into the lounge. She pulled a cart piled with fresh junk from the food fabricators. A small shelving unit stacked with trays full of pizza. A small mountain of miniature cheeseburgers sliced through with pickle spears and bacon. Barrels of onion rings and French fries and cheese curds dotted with tureens of dipping sauce, all followed by a wide platter of finger-sized eclairs and chocolate-covered strawberries.

  Jaeger, imagining an endless line at the toilet a few hours after the crew devoured this feast, hadn’t wanted to approve the menu, either. She’d been vigorously shouted down, with even Virgil pointing out that the genetically toughened digestive tracts of these creatures wer
e designed to subsist on anything and everything—they could handle a bit of trans fat. Toner insisted that if they couldn’t have booze, then something worth eating was the very, very least she could give them before sending them off to die.

  Now standing in the corner of the crew lounge, Toner folded his arms, his mouth curved in a self-satisfied smile, as the crew members surged forward, abandoning the platters of carrot sticks and olives in favor of pure salt and grease and sugar. He lifted an eyebrow at Jaeger as she approached.

  She held up a hand, cutting off his I told you so. “I’m surprised you don’t have a barrel full of kidneys and livers in that cart too.”

  Toner shrugged, watching the messy feast with satisfaction. “I ate before coming to the party. Plus, that was just the four of us. Didn’t want to scare the new crew on their very first day.”

  Jaeger tried not to smile but couldn’t help it. The party had gone well. Toner had been exuberant, Seeker silent and brooding, and Occy …Jaeger had spent a lot of time with Occy listening to his concerns and letting him sit next to her all night. It felt like they’d bonded, which was important before their mission. She allowed a moment of not-quite-companionable silence pass between them. “Do you forgive me?” she asked.

  “For what?”

  Jaeger stared at her first mate as he watched the crew. There was no rancor on his face at all.

  He means it, she marveled. He doesn’t really remember what he was so angry about.

  She decided not to remind him, lest he get mad all over again.

  “It’s strange that there weren’t any other templates like yours in the files,” she mused, looking for a change of subject. Not that she wanted another emotionally unstable, absentminded berserker-vampire on her crew, precisely, but she’d wondered at the absence.

  Toner shook his head. “No, it’s not. You and me, we weren’t hatched. Our modifications are all custom, aftermarket. Our work might even predate the creation of all the embryos.”