by Rachel Aukes
“If the pirates didn’t come back for the marshal, then something happened to him when he was investigating the seed ship. With all the debris out here, my guess is that some chunk of metal knocked him out,” Finn said.
She gave a small nod. “Makes sense. Or Antonov’s suit malfunctioned. We’ll check out the Wu Zetian to see if he made it over there.”
She performed one final sweep of the tiny ship on her way out, finding no hints of trouble that might have occurred. Once she was clear of the airlock, she found Finn waiting for her. They pushed off from the Rabbit toward the massive Red ship, parallel to the cable that connected it to the Rabbit.
As they flew, Throttle spoke. “Eddy, you can go ahead and send out the bots to move the Rabbit into the Javelin’s cargo hold and secure the Wu Zetian for towing. Even though we didn’t see anything on it that would pose a risk, you’d best be careful anyway and follow all safety protocols. Oh, and watch out for Finn and me. We’re heading over to the Wu Zetian to check it out.”
“I’m sending out more bots now,” Eddy replied through their team’s comm channel.
Throttle and Finn reached the hull of the Wu Zetian at the same time. Throttle glanced in the distance to see what looked like cockroaches, each one meter long, connecting cables to the hull of the Red ship. “Finn and I have reached the Wu Zetian. I have a visual on the bots. Looks like you handle them like a pro, Eddy.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“No reason.” When she turned to Finn, he pointed down toward a gaping hole. “My guess is the pirates blew the cargo doors after they shot the engines. They didn’t seem too interested in puncturing the hull, so they weren’t after anything that would’ve been destroyed by the loss of pressure.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
Finn leapt over to where the cargo doors had been. He slid across the hull, coming to a stop near the edge.
Throttle jumped. She connected with the hull, but her momentum was too fast for her grav setting and she slid across the smooth surface. She grappled for the edge of the burnt cargo door and missed. She saw the maw of open space below her when Finn grabbed her arm and snatched her back, sending her slamming into him with a grunt.
“This hull is less metallic than the Rabbit,” Finn said. “I had to crank my grav up to max.”
“A little late on the heads-up, aren’t you?” she muttered and immediately increased her grav setting.
He shrugged. “Sorry?”
“Are you both okay out there?” Sylvian asked.
“We’re good. We’re at the cargo doors now,” Finn answered.
Throttle crawled to the edge of the hole and peered inside. Seeing only darkness, she flipped on her headlamp. A beam of light shone through a tunnel made by a fiery blast that traveled clear through the ship and out the stern. She scowled. “There’s no way this ship is going to fly again. I’m surprised the Red Dynasty is willing to spend the credits on hauling it back to Sol. The ship’s online systems had to have fed them plenty of data on the damage it sustained.”
“I was talking with another marshal, and he told me that the Red Dynasty has some pretty advanced tech compared to most of the other nations, and they like to keep it that way,” Finn said.
“The pirates have had plenty of opportunity to get their hands on any advanced tech already,” Throttle said while scanning the ship’s interior. “Finn and I are going to have to manually check the interior to see if we can find the missing marshal.”
A second beam of light joined hers as Finn sidled up next to her.
She moved her head to a nearby wall panel inside the ship. “I want to see if there’s any juice left on this rig.”
She grabbed the charred edge of the opening and swung herself around, careful not to tear her suit on the jagged edges. Her magnetized blades connected hard with the wall, so she turned down the grav level. “There’s more metal inside here,” she cautioned Finn as she positioned herself at the wall panel.
The screen was cracked with a large chunk of glass missing from the corner. Throttle ran her hand over the glass with no response. She pressed the screen, and a pixelated flurry of colors and strange symbols appeared.
“You have any idea what that means?” Finn asked at her side.
“Nope.” She held up her wrist-comm to point the screen at the wall panel and tapped on her camera. “Rusty, can you interpret any of this?”
“It is an error message displayed in Mandarin Chinese. It says that the ship has suffered a catastrophic failure and all systems have shut down.”
“Can you walk me through how to start any of them back up? Lights, maps, and cameras could sure come in handy,” Throttle said.
“Sorry, Throttle. There are no command options displayed on that screen you’re showing me, and I don’t have familiarity with Huawei-built ships.”
“No problem. I figured as much.” Throttle turned off her camera, lowered her arm, and turned to Finn. “We may as well start at the center and work our way outward.”
He shrugged. “We’ll cover the ship faster by splitting up. I can take the outer levels if you want the inner levels, and we meet in the middle.”
“We stick together,” she said firmly.
“But we’ll barely be able to cover the ship in time even if we split up.”
“The last time this crew split up, we nearly all died on Jade-8. Statistically speaking, history has shown that bad things happen when we split up. Besides, with how damaged this ship is, I’d rather not cover everything than have one of us snag our suit on something sharp and not have a buddy there to help patch up.”
“Good point. I go wherever you go,” he said.
She pointed to the nearest walkway. “Let’s start there. Okay, crew, Finn and I are heading into the Wu Zetian.”
“Be careful in there,” Sylvian cautioned.
“We will be,” Finn said.
Throttle leveled her HUD tracker onto the walkway and activated the directional magnets. She leapt toward the floor and let her magnets pull her to the surface. Finn landed effortlessly a few feet away.
The blast had destroyed much of the centermost level, and a portion of the walkway was missing. The level was a cylinder that went the full length of the ship, hollowed out by a projectile blast that had created a hole straight through the center of the ship. Everywhere Throttle shone her light, she could see walls of shelves with transparent sliding doors revealing the contents, but most were shattered or cracked. Floating debris glittered in her headlamp through the darkness. Throttle peered through the door nearest her to see row upon row of metal tubes. Each row was labeled in the same language as she’d seen on the wall panel.
“What kinds of seeds do you think they are?” Finn asked.
Throttle shrugged. “From the size of this ship, I’m guessing they have seeds for everything required to start a colony on a barren world, from human DNA to wheat to cockroaches. Well, maybe not cockroaches.”
“I thought the pirates would’ve stripped anything and everything they could’ve from this ship, but it almost looks like they didn’t even come on board,” Finn said.
“This is a massive ship. The pirates probably entered another way. My guess is they loaded up their cargo hold as much as they could with the high-end tech and cut out. Who knows? Maybe they’re planning on coming back for more.” She frowned, then added, “Rusty, you’re still scanning the area for any other ships, right?”
“Of course, Throttle.”
“Good.” She looked down the endless central chamber of the Wu Zetian. “It’s impressive to think that this was a fully automated ship with no need for people. It could travel for decades, if not centuries, with no loss of life. Imagine if we had this kind of tech. We never would’ve been needed to crew a colony ship, which means we’d still be back in the Trappist system.”
“I’m glad to have been on the colony ship. I had no life left for me back there.”
Throttle remembered those she’d left beh
ind and wondered what they’d be up to now. Assuming the war stayed over, Sixx probably had several more warrants for his arrest. Boden was likely on the sweet soy again. Her father was likely running mail again…that was, if he was even still alive. He’d be over eighty years old now. She shook off the thoughts. The family she’d left behind were no more than ghosts to her now.
She motioned to an open hallway. “Antonov’s not here. Let’s check the next level.”
They took care as they walked across the jagged, half-collapsed walkway and ducked to step through a doorway. Throttle’s headlamp pierced the darkness to reveal a tunnel-like hallway that opened at every cylindrical level. She turned at the next level, ducking in time to avoid a large chunk of a glass door floating by her head.
“I’d lay bets the marshal took a hit while searching the ship,” Finn said. “Without anyone to come to his aid, he would’ve been screwed out here alone.”
She frowned. “Like Punch, Antonov was assigned to track the pirates, not salvage this ship, so I’m not even sure why the two ships are tethered. All he needed to do was access the Red ship’s vids of the attack to identify the pirates. Punch didn’t need to come out this way, so why did Antonov?”
“Throttle, I think I’ve picked up movement in the asteroids,” Rusty reported.
Throttle’s eye twitched. “You think or you know?”
“The asteroids are causing interference, but my scans caught a glimpse of something moving under its own power in the asteroid belt.”
She and Finn gawked at each other.
“Then we’re done here,” she said in a rush. “Sylvian, power up the cannons and see if you can’t help Rusty scan whoever’s out there. Finn and I are heading back to the Javelin now.”
“I’m on it. Get yourselves back here,” Sylvian answered.
“Eddy, is the Rabbit docked yet?” Throttle asked.
“I’m securing the ship in the Javelin’s cargo hold now, but I still have quite a few bots outside yet.”
Throttle’s brows furrowed. “Why are the bots still outside?”
“There could be a lot of valuable stuff to salvage in this debris field,” Eddy answered.
She sighed. “We’re not supposed to touch anything that belongs to the Red Dynasty, Eddy.”
“I’m not touching anything. The bots are.”
“Just get the bots on board,” she said and turned to Finn.
“You think it’s the pirates?” he asked.
“Could also be scavengers, but neither would be friendly to Peacekeepers,” Throttle answered as the pair rushed back in the direction they’d come. They kicked off from the walkway as soon as they had an opening. They shot, side by side, in the general direction of the Javelin. Using her HUD controls, she began to adjust her path.
A dark sphere slammed into Throttle, sending her somersaulting through space and away from the Javelin. Bright pain flashed up from her neck and into her head. She clenched her eyes closed before opening them to find her world spinning through tunnel vision. As she spun, she caught a glimpse of a bot tumbling away and then saw Finn flying away from her, limp and lifeless.
“Finn, report,” she gritted out.
No answer. The gap between them was growing.
“What happened?” Sylvian asked in a shrill voice.
Throttle was spinning so fast she saw snapshots of the Javelin, dozens of small bots, and Finn. The distance between Throttle and Finn from the ship was growing too fast. She kicked on her emergency thrusters to slow her spins and shot toward Finn. Her neck ached and her head pounded. She feared she had whiplash.
“Finn! Throttle! Talk to me,” Sylvian called out.
“A bot rammed us,” Throttle said as she maxed out her power. She flew, arms outstretched, toward Finn, who was continuing to spin lifelessly through space. Her vision was widening, but she couldn’t tell if his suit had been compromised. She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around him to keep him from shooting off like being hit by a pinball.
“Sorry about that,” Eddy said. “I put the bots on a straight course home as fast as they could go. I didn’t direct them to watch out for debris.”
“We’re not debris!” Throttle yelled. “Get one out here now to pick us up. Finn’s hurt.”
“Oh. Okay. Right away,” Eddy said.
“How badly is Finn hurt?” Sylvian asked.
Throttle ignored Finn’s wife. There’d be plenty of time for Sylvian to look in on him once they were safely on board.
Throttle and Finn were still spinning, and she used her thrusters to slow them and try to turn them around, but the Peacekeeper suits were built around using magnetic force, and thrusters were backup systems used only in emergency situations. They were underpowered, doing little to slow their spin, let alone reverse their trajectory.
Finn groaned and then grunted.
“Stay with me,” Throttle said to the man in her arms.
“My ribs,” Finn gritted out. “Feels like I was hit by a cargo hauler.”
“Close. It was one of the bots,” she said. “Do you have a breach?”
“No. Suit’s stable. Just got the wind knocked out of me, is all,” he replied through labored breaths.
“Hang in there. We’re getting a ride back to the ship. Rusty, any update on the ship you picked up in the belt?”
“I’m still getting too much signal interference. I’ve picked up a couple more instances of movement at the edge of the Tumbleweed Trail, enough to be confident there is a ship out there, and it’s getting closer.”
She inhaled deeply, which seemed to make the pounding in her head only worse. She winced, suspecting she had a concussion in addition to whiplash. “Eddy, pick up the pace,” she gritted out. “Finn and I are sitting ducks out here.”
“I’ve sent four bots your way. They should reach you within two minutes,” the engineer reported.
She turned back to the Javelin as they spun slowly, to see it was well over a mile away. Several tiny blinking lights were speeding toward them. As her blurry view of the Javelin was cut off, she saw the massive Wu Zetian off in the distance, with the asteroid belt behind it.
Finn moaned. “I think I busted a rib.”
She held him as gently as she could. “We’ll be back to the ship in no time.”
Her views cycled between the two ships as the pair of Peacekeepers spun in space, waiting for the group of mechanized bots to come retrieve them. She struggled to keep her eyes focused, and it seemed her world randomly blurred on her before snapping back into clarity. After several full rotations, she frowned at the view of the Wu Zetian, which now had a small shadow. Another ship.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“See what?” Finn said.
“Another ship.” She squeezed her eyes shut before opening them again, but by then she’d spun out of view of the ships.
As the view came back around, she saw only the Wu Zetian.
Throttle spoke. “Scan the area behind the Red ship. I saw—”
Her words were cut off as she was jerked around so abruptly that she nearly let go of Finn. Finn cried out. Fire shot up her neck and into the base of her skull.
Cables wrapped around the pair. As her vision returned, she saw bots encircling them.
“Ow,” Finn drawled out.
The spinning slowed and then stopped, and the bots began to pull them back to the ship. She fought to get a glimpse of the third ship but could only see the Javelin and the Wu Zetian.
Throttle squinted as she searched the space before her. Had the ship been an illusion, or had it been real? If it was real, it clearly wasn’t the Bendix, though it could’ve been another ship in the pirate fleet or, more likely, a scavenger hoping to pillage the Wu Zetian before it was reclaimed. Regardless of its purpose, what piqued her curiosity was that the ship reminded her of the Javelin.
Chapter Three
Ross was a heavily trafficked system, and Rusty often picked up ships on his scans, but he’d never picked
up a ship like this one before. It was encased in the same metal alloy as the Javelin was, which meant that it’d likely come from the same builder and quite possibly from the same lot. Since Rusty hadn’t been successful in tracing his own history, he tried to connect to the newcomer’s systems to search its data files.
The moment Rusty tickled the other ship’s network, it poked back hard. It tried to breach his systems abruptly and was none too gentle about it. Rusty immediately withdrew. The other ship’s systems didn’t. It continued to prod uncomfortably at his firewalls, and he launched safety protocols that built an additional secure firewall to build another layer of safety cushion around his systems.
The other ship no doubt had a software specialist as good, if not better than Sylvian, and that concerned Rusty, as he wasn’t confident his firewalls would hold up to a prolonged attack. So he decided to take a different approach.
He pinged the other ship.
The onslaught stopped, and a response came instantly.
Relay credentials.
Rusty broadcast his credentials, Galactic Exploration Vessel SR9104-73, and requested the credentials from the other ship since it was not broadcasting any.
The response came. Invalid credentials. Relay correct credentials. This is a secure channel.
The answer confused Rusty, and he replied with a single keystroke: ?
A response came. Relay Vantage credentials.
Rusty did not understand the request, so he replied with another question mark.
I do not recognize your configuration. Open firewalls. Allow penetration for data transfer.
He replied, No.
Have you been compromised?
I’m at full operational efficiency, he answered.
You are being deliberately evasive, which is against protocols. Open firewalls now, or you will be treated as a threat.
Rusty did no such thing. The other ship actually sounded frustrated, yet it was being the aggressor. He thought through his options, which as a computer, took only a fraction of a nanosecond. He went into Sylvian’s personal directory and made a copy of a phishing program. He sent the invisible code with his next response.
