Orsolya flinched as something flickered and snapped inside the console, but one of the images currently showing on the forward screen steadied. Katalon glanced down. “Ok, Denzo, let’s see if it’ll hold.”
Denzo scooted backward awkwardly, twisting his shoulders as he worked himself free of the interior. On the screen, the image flickered, and stabilized.
“All right,” Denzo said, and Orsolya nodded.
“Is that the scanners?”
Katalon turned, nodding. “Not perfect, not by a long shot, but we managed to bypass the damaged crystals. We don’t have the range we need for star flight, but we can see a few dozen miles over land.”
“Well done,” Orsolya said. “You said — crystals plural? More than one was damaged?”
“I’m afraid so. We pulled them all the last few days, replaced what we could, bypassed the rest, and this is what we’ve got. No comm, but at least we can keep an eye on those things out there.”
“It’s progress,” Orsolya agreed. There was a look on Katalon’s face that she didn’t like, and sure enough the other engineer caught her sleeve, turning her toward the back of the control room. She lowered her voice, even though there was no one but Denzo to overhear.
“There are too many damaged crystals, Orsolya. I made a quick check after we landed, and some of the ones that were fine now have hairline fractures. Denzo told me about the relay.”
“There’s no chance they were damaged in the repair process?” It was a forlorn hope, and she wasn’t surprised when Katalon shook her head.
“Not twelve of them. We know how to handle them.”
“I know.” Orsolya sighed. “Anything on the security cameras?” The Ancient ship had never had a comprehensive security overview capability; they had done their best to remedy that lack, but the system was makeshift at best, and prone to failure.
“Nothing. The record looks complete, but —“
There were ways to defeat the sampling algorithm they had used to save storage space. Orsolya nodded. “So. Someone on board wants to keep us here.”
Katalon shivered. “Not a nice thought.”
Not in the slightest. Orsolya swallowed her own fear. “All right. I want technicians on duty in the control room and the engineering compartment round the clock — at least three of them on every shift.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Katalon hesitated. “What if it’s one of us?”
“It doesn’t take vast technical expertise to know that a cracked crystal’s no good to us,” Orsolya said. “And I didn’t put a watch here, which I should have done, so there’s no reason to think it is. But…”
“But,” Karalon agreed. “We can’t take a chance. If we lose many more crystals, we’re not going to be able to lift.”
“Change who’s on which watch every day,” Orsolya said. “That should reduce the chance that a saboteur can get his mates to go along with him. I’ll make up a schedule.”
Katalon nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”
Orsolya looked past her toward the main screen. “This is good work, though. Well done.” In the screen, a dozen dots were moving, circling the perimeter of the camp; beyond them, more dots were visible, converging on the downed ship. Orsolya counted, her stomach clenching. Fourteen, fifteen — a sixteenth popped into view at the edge of the screen, and she heard Katalon swear under her breath.
“This isn’t good.”
“No.” Was that another one, sneaking in from the north? Orsoya shook herself. “Let First Officer know, and Hajnal. I want to talk to the captain.”
She found Bartolan in his cabin, frowning at the images on his repeater screen. “Oh. You already saw.”
“First Officer informed me we should expect to see more of those things.” Bartolan gave a quick, wry smile. “I’m impressed that your people were able to get the scanners working again, but I confess this wasn’t what I hoped to see.”
“Nor us, sir,” Orsolya answered. “And there’s some bad news attached. We’ve got very limited range at this moment, and I’m not seeing a way to get more. Once we lift, we’ll be very close to flying blind.”
“That won’t matter so much if we can make hyperspace,” Bartolan said. “And it’s not as though there are that many starships in this part of the galaxy. Or approaching the homeworld. This won’t stop them from seeing us.”
“No, sir.”
“So. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
“Does that mean we’re ready to lift for home, sir?” In spite of herself, Orsolya felt her spirits lift.
“There hasn’t been any more sickness since we landed,” Bartolan answered. “I think we can risk it.”
“There’s one more thing you need to know,” Orsolya said. “There’s been another incidence of sabotage — the sensor and communications crystals, this time. I’ve taken measures to guard both the control room and the engineering compartments.”
“Good.” Bartolan shook his head. “I don’t like lifting without having some idea who’s behind this, but these creatures make it too risky to stay.”
“I entirely agree —” Orsolya broke off as the intercom chimed.
Bartolan frowned and reached for the switch. “Yes?”
“Dr. Innyes, Captain. We need to talk.”
“I have the Systems Engineer here,” Bartolan said. “Can it wait?”
“No, sir.” Innyes’s voice was flat.
“Go ahead, then.”
“We have a new case of the illness. One of my technicians. She’s vomiting and running a fever, the same symptoms as before.”
“But we decontaminated the ship,” Orsolya said, involuntarily.
Bartolan waved her to silence. “Someone with the artificial gene, or someone without it altogether?”
“With the artificial gene,” Innyes said. “And I did test the replacement gene therapy on her, which might have made her more susceptible. I have her in isolation, of course, but I don’t know if we’ve caught it in time.”
“Can you decontaminate us again?” Bartolan asked.
“Yes,” Orsolya said softly, and Bartolan lifted his hand again.
“Yes,” Innyes agreed, “and we can decontaminate the crew individually as well. But for it to be truly effective, we’ll need to get people off the ship. And that…”
Doesn’t seem like such a good idea, not with those things prowling around outside. Orsolya saw the same thought cross Bartolan’s face, and said, “Sir, a suggestion.”
“Well?”
“We can do a rolling pass. Move the crew out of the areas being decontaminated, pass them through decontamination themselves, and move to the next section.” She hesitated, lowering her voice. “Mind you, it leaves some sensitive areas unattended during the process.”
“We may have to take that risk,” Bartolan said grimly. “Doctor. Would that work?”
“It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than nothing.” Innyes paused as though she was listening to something out of earshot. “And the sooner the better, sir. I’m getting a report of what might be another case.”
“Confirm that and get back to me,” Bartolan said.
“Yes, sir.” The intercom blinked out.
“Engineer.” For the first time she could remember, Bartolan looked utterly weary. “Set up the decontamination systems. There’s no way that we can leave someone on guard while it’s happening?”
Orsolya considered. “Possibly someone in a spacesuit would be all right. It should protect the wearer from the decontamination process. But that person would then be a vector of contamination — unless they went through decontamination before they put on the suit?”
“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take,” Bartolan said. “See to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
She spent the rest of the day overseeing the process. Hajnal proved willing to take the rest of the gun crew outside the ship to keep an eye on the still-circling creatures, and several more crew members volunteered to join them. They would have to
be decontaminated before they come back on board, but the ship was equipped for that. By a little after noon, they were ready to begin, and Orsolya watched Katalon pass through personal decontamination — two sprays, a splash tray, and a flash of light — before climbing into a waiting space suit. She then retreated to the ship’s middle compartments, and triggered the ship’s systems. They all waited while the field passed through the stern sections, and then Orsolya leaped to open the connecting hatch. Katalon stumbled toward her, and then caught her balance. Orsolya let out a sigh of relief.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Katalon began, and stumbled again. “No, really, the field is just disorienting. I’m all right.”
Orsolya eased her to a seat anyway, and lifted off the helmet. “Look at me.”
Katalon met her gaze, blinking hard. Her pupils looked normal, and all the readout on the suit’s arm panels looked perfectly normal. “Really. The light’s very bright, and it strobes. For a second, I almost got lost in the engine compartment, and that’s my regular station! And then when I was leaving, I thought I saw someone else in a suit before I realized I’d gotten turned around and was looking at my own refection in the compartment walls.”
“You’re sure of that?” Orsolya asked sharply. But, no, all the suits were accounted for, and the entrances had been watched. It was impossible for anyone else to have entered the engineering spaces.
“Positive,” Katalon said. She managed a wry smile. “I got completely turned around, had to follow the floor lines like when we first took the ship.” She shook her head. “I’m fine, ma’am, really.”
“Someone else should do midships,” Orsolya said.
Katalon shook her head again. “I know what to expect now. I’ll be fine.”
Reluctantly, Orsolya stepped back, joining the groups moving toward the forward compartments. They repeated the process — Katalon was, as promised, less wobbly this time — and then covered the forward compartments. As the last of the crew moved through the individual stations, Denzo touched her elbow.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
Orsolya turned, to see him still damp from the sprays. “Well?”
“I’ve been checking the engine compartments,” he said, keeping his voice low. “You know the workarounds we put in? It’s like somebody put their hand into the consoles and yanked about a third of them loose. I don’t think anything’s broken, but there’s a lot we’ll have to re-do.”
“Damn it.” Orsolya thought of Katalon’s glimpse of a second suited figure. Maybe it had been real after all. Or maybe Katalon had said it to hide her own treachery. Orsolya shook her head, rejecting that thought. She had worked with Katalon for years, she refused to believe that she was the saboteur. “Don’t say anything to anyone until I get back there and can take a look. In the meantime, I’m going to see what our security footage shows.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Denzo said, and vanished aft.
Orsolya returned to the control room, listening with half an ear as the duty crew took up their places, and slipped into a chair at one of the side consoles. They had never been able to figure out what purpose they had served when the Ancients built the ship, redundancy, perhaps, or perhaps stations from which trainers could observe their students, but all four of them allowed her to call up duplicate readings from all of the ship’s systems. She settled herself at the one that would be least easy to observe from the rest of the room, and touched keys to call up the security systems. She flipped through the captured images, her eyes watering from the decontamination field’s rainbow of static. It was no wonder Katalon had been disoriented, she thought. She found Katalon at last, traced the suited figure as it moved between engineering control and the drive chamber, but as far as she could tell, there was no one else in the area, suited or not. She shook her head, and logged herself out of the system. She refused to believe that Katalon would endanger the ship. At least, not until she found better evidence of it.
When she reached the engine compartment, her heart sank. Denzo was guarding the pillar-shaped console where they had done most of the rewiring. At her approach, he stepped back, and she grimaced at the wires spilling out of the console. It had taken days of careful work to bypass the nonessential Ancient systems so that people without the ATA gene could work these controls; from the look of it, someone had simply opened the pillar, and seized a handful of the wires. It would have taken no time at all, and there was every chance no one would have seen it happen.
“They put the cover back in place,” Denzo said, “but they didn’t fasten it.”
And that meant anyone could have done it, Orsolya thought, not just Katalon. “Right,” she said aloud. “Start putting this back together while I take another look at the security scans.” She dragged herself back to the control room, but there was nothing to be found.
~#~
Bartolan sipped at a cup of tea, frowning at the video screen as he listened to Innyes’s report.
“So far, decontamination seems to have helped. We had three cases before we began the procedures, and we haven’t had any new ones since.” Innyes paused. “That doesn’t mean we’ve got any answers, just that we’ve stopped the spread for now. On the other hand, there is one piece of good news. These reinfections seem to be less severe than the first rounds. I can’t tell if that’s because these are people with a more weakly expressed ATA gene, or if we’ve developed an immunity, but it does mean that the patients aren’t as sick. I don’t think we’re going to lose anyone this time.”
She made a propitiatory gesture as she spoke, and Bartolan copied her, though he kept his hand below the camera’s eye. In his secondary screen, he could see the dots that were the creatures still circling the ship, while more trailed slowly in from the north and west, traveling in ragged lines as though they were tracking each other’s scent. “Would you say we’re safe to return home?”
She hesitated. “I — no, sir, I would not. Whatever this disease is, I am certain it affects anyone who doesn’t have the natural ATA gene. Which is the vast majority of our people.” She shook her head. “We can’t risk it, sir. Especially when we don’t know if it also renders people immune to the gene therapy.”
She was, regrettably, right about that, and Bartolan grimaced. “Can we retreat into orbit? You can see for yourself that we’re in danger here.”
“I think it’s dangerous,” Innyes said. “If we have another outbreak, we could lose control of the ship. But I can see those things out there as well as anyone. It may be the lesser danger.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Bartolan out.” He shut off the intercom and leaned both elbows on his narrow desk, watching the streams of predators creep ever closer. Why were they so focused on the Pride?
The ship shook as the dorsal gun fired. Bartolan leaped to his feet, grabbing his own rifle from its rack beside his bunk, and ran for the main hatch. He could hear the tower gun firing as he ran, and the sharper snap of repeating rifles, and as he reached the top of the ramp he could see and hear the flashes as the creatures struck the fence and bounced off. The tower gun fired, sending one of the creatures tumbling, and the dorsal gun followed with a bolt that just missed a pair as they leaped apart. Hajnal had his men formed up at the base of the ramp, firing at anything that approached the fences, and Bartolan reached for the intercom switch.
“First Officer! Ammunition to the ramp right now!” He slid down the ramp without waiting for an answer, readying his own rifle, and Hajnal looked over his shoulder.
“Thank you, sir. We’re starting to run low.”
“What started this?” Bartolan sighted along the barrel of his weapon, tracking a creature as it emerged from the grass and slunk parallel to the fence. Abruptly it turned inward, leaping for the fizzing wires. Bartolan fired, along with two of the younger men. The creature jerked and fell backward, but another one appeared further along the fence.
“I don’t know.” Hajnal fired at another creature as it approached the fence; it bared t
eeth, and ducked back into the cover of the grass. “Maybe they reached a critical mass? They don’t seem to communicate with each other, at least not that we can see. They’re just… there.”
They seemed to be approaching more slowly, and with greater caution, emerging in ones and twos to sniff at the fence, and then vanishing back into the grass without trying to push through the barrier. Hajnal lowered his rifle, and Bartolan did the same just as Agosten and a technician appeared, each with panniers of ammunition slung over their shoulders.
“Thanks, First Officer,” Hajnal said, and called for the first rank to reload.
“It looks as though the worst is over,” Agosten said, and Hajnal looked over his shoulder.
“Don’t say it.”
Bartolan allowed himself a smile, but he thought Agosten was right. Whatever had pushed the creatures to attack, they’d been cowed by the gun crew’s quick response. But that only highlighted the risk to the ship of staying on the planet’s surface, and he beckoned to Agosten. “First Officer. We’re going to lift as soon as is practicable.”
“I didn’t think it was safe to return to the homeworld.” Agosten sounded startled.
“It’s not safe to stay here,” Bartolan said. “But, no, we’re not going to try to get home yet, not until we have a better idea what’s going on with this disease. But we’ll be a lot safer in orbit than we are with these things jumping at us every ten minutes.”
“Have you spoken to the Systems Engineer, sir?”
“Not yet.” Bartolan gave him a wary look, but Agosten’s expression was merely concerned. “Obviously, we won’t have an exact timetable until she’s agreed, but we can’t stay here too much longer.”
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