Ship of Ruin

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Casmir,” Qin whispered, distress in her voice.

  But she didn’t try to stop him. She hopped out of the shuttle, gave him a crushing hug that made his bones creak, and then ran back inside.

  “Stay safe, Dabrowski,” Asger said, then also stepped through the hatchway, shaking his head as if he knew he’d never see Casmir again.

  The hatch closed, and Casmir ran out of the shuttle bay so they could depressurize it and fly out. They would see him again. He wasn’t sacrificing himself. He swore it.

  Casmir doubted he had much time, but he couldn’t resist running down to the cargo hold, his new robot friends clanking and clattering behind him, to take a look at the gate.

  When he’d been back on the university campus, light years from System Lion’s existing gate, he hadn’t thought much about it, especially since it had been more than ten years since his class on astrodynamics, which he’d mostly taken because it had satisfied an elective and hadn’t involved getting up before dawn. But now that he was out here, traveling between the planets, he found himself more curious than ever.

  He stepped into a vast cargo hold—it had to occupy half of the massive ship—filled with great puzzle pieces, as his mind immediately identified them. The gate was so large that each section only curved slightly, but he could envision them fitting together to form a circle, one large enough for the largest ships to fly through. What he didn’t know was how they communicated with each other once they were together and somehow created a wormhole in space, allowing nearly instantaneous travel between one star system and another, systems that weren’t even that close to each other.

  Nobody knew that. But if they had the opportunity to study these disassembled pieces, they might learn.

  As he walked among them, peering at the ends and searching for seams or panels, Casmir had the urge to take one apart and see what was inside. To try to figure out how they worked. It was amazing that humanity had managed to keep anyone from doing that for centuries, collectively agreeing, when various systems agreed about nothing else, that the gates had to be guarded at all costs, that they couldn’t risk breaking the network.

  He reached out to run a hand along one of the pieces but drew back. His eye blinked a few times.

  He couldn’t see the glow he imagined of some highly radioactive piece of metal, but Kim’s warning came to mind. She hadn’t explained why Rache was immune—if she knew—and maybe he was foolish to be down here, assuming that he shared that immunity. She’d seemed to believe he would, but what if she was wrong, and it had to do with the various upgrades Rache had admitted to getting?

  Casmir backed away from the gate, hoping he hadn’t needlessly exposed himself. Though it probably didn’t matter. As soon as he’d come aboard the ship, he’d exposed himself.

  Kim, he composed a message as he headed to the bridge. I’m sure you’re busy, but I’ve visually confirmed that the gate is on this cargo ship I’m aboard. Some astroshamans were apparently trying to steal it and take it back to one of the systems where they have their monasteries. They died before I got here, presumably due to exposure.

  I have control of this ship for the moment, but I’m expecting both Rache and the Fleet to try to take it from me. Given what you’ve told me, I’m not sure I should let even the Fleet have it until someone has figured out a way to keep more people from dying. Let me know if you have any ideas about that, eh? If it’s akin to radiation, would creating a magnetic field around the gate pieces work?

  I sent Qin, Bonita, and a knight named Asger to find you on the research ship. Qin and Asger were exposed. I hope you can help them. I’m positive you wish you were back home right now, and I definitely wish you were somewhere safe instead of dealing with this, but I know you’re the person to solve this problem, and I’m relieved you’re on it.

  Anyway, I won’t distract you further while you’re trying to fix people, but I hope you’re safe. We need to figure out how to get back home. I doubt anyone else is feeding the squirrels in the tree out back. They might starve.

  ~Casmir

  P.S. If it turns out you make it and I don’t, please tell my parents that I love them. And make sure my collectible automata toys go to a worthy home. I’d give them to you, but I’ve noticed they don’t delight you as much as they do me. That’s very odd, but I forgive you for your flaws. Thank you, my good friend!

  As Casmir sent the message, he was walking past the shuttle bay. He glanced through the hatch window to make sure Qin and Asger had taken off. Yes, the knight’s craft was gone.

  It was what Casmir had wanted, but he couldn’t help but be aware that he was alone now, on a giant ship he didn’t even know if he could fly.

  Well, not entirely alone. He glanced back at Zee and his cadre of robots. A lot of them needed repairs, but they trooped along without complaint. It probably helped that only one of them could speak.

  “What do you think of our new friends, Zee?” Casmir asked.

  It was silly, since he knew the crusher had no feelings, but he couldn’t help anthropomorphizing and thinking Zee might be jealous or worry he was being replaced.

  “They are inferior models,” Zee stated.

  “So, I had better keep you?”

  “I am necessary to protect and defend Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “Yes, you are. And we better get that stealth generator back online to help with that.”

  He could worry about choosing a hiding spot for the cargo ship afterward.

  As soon as he stepped onto the bridge, Casmir headed for the electrical panel, intending to return power to the stealth generator. But lights flashed on numerous other panels on the bridge, and a ship filled the forward display. His stomach churned. It was the Fedallah.

  He could see one of the warships in the distance, still guarding the gate, and the two other warships had to be out there too. Hopefully, coming this way with railguns pointed at the Fedallah. Assuming the fleet saw the mercenary ship. Casmir knew from his experience at the refinery that the Fedallah’s slydar hull plating made it almost invisible until it was within a few miles. Right now, it was almost up the cargo ship’s nose.

  He tapped furiously at the touch panel, reconnecting power to the stealth generator. An error message flashed. A connection had been damaged in the fight on the bridge.

  “Not good.” Could he even reach it without tearing out half of the consoles?

  A flash of yellow came from the forward display. The Fedallah was firing.

  Casmir vaulted a railing and flung himself into one of the helm positions. Shielding? Did this ship have any sort of shielding?

  A missile slammed into a lower section of the hull near engineering, and a shudder racked the cargo ship. Casmir would have ended up on the deck, but Zee had followed him and pressed a hand down on his shoulder, keeping him from tumbling from his seat.

  “Comm,” Casmir whispered, lunging over to slap the panel.

  He had to let Rache know he was here and hope that mattered to him. He didn’t allow himself to consider that Rache might already know he was here and might not care. What if he was holding a grudge for how their last meeting had turned out? With the bioweapon blown up and his ship damaged from the explosives that had gone off in the refinery? Granted, those had been Rache’s explosives, but Qin had ensured they detonated prematurely.

  “Captain Rache,” Casmir blurted.

  He sent his broadcast wide, hoping the warships were paying attention and would realize the Fedallah was nearby, if they hadn’t detected it yet. As he spoke, he found the controls for the cargo ship’s shields and raised them.

  A flashing diagram showed that he had numerous weapons online and available to him, should he wish to engage in a firefight with the Fedallah. Considering he was the entirety of the bridge crew—of all of the crew—that didn’t seem smart. Tork may have been keeping the warships busy, but Casmir didn’t have the processing power of an android.

  “It’s Casmir Dabrowski. It’s been a few
days since we chatted, but I’m hoping you remember me. Uhm, I’m over here on the cargo ship. I’ve liberated it from its previous crew, and I’m deciding what to do with its cargo. I’d appreciate it if you not fire at me currently, as I haven’t had a chance to take a thorough inventory yet. I thought you might be interested in this cargo, actually, so I’m a little surprised you’re flinging missiles at it.”

  As he waited for a response, Casmir crawled to the stealth generator and opened a panel on the structure, hoping that broken connection was in a spot he could reach. He wished he’d been able to find schematics for the device during his earlier search. It was probably too top secret for that.

  Rache’s face appeared on the bridge’s big forward display—technically, it was his mask and hood, his face hiding somewhere behind all that.

  “I assume the pieces of the gate are largely indestructible,” Rache said calmly, not sounding surprised to find Casmir on the vessel. “I was going to blow up the cargo ship and collect them.”

  “Fishing them out of wreckage sounds like a tedious project, especially considering a bunch of Kingdom warships are heading your way right now.”

  “Actually, they are engaged in repairs and don’t seem to have noticed me yet, though I see you’re transmitting your message to everyone within a light year who’s listening, so I suppose that will change.”

  “Am I?” Casmir asked with as much innocence as he could muster. “Sorry about that. I’m brand new to this ship and still finding my way around spaceships in general. This isn’t exactly my milieu.”

  “What are you planning, Dabrowski?”

  Yes, what was he planning? To fix the damn stealth generator for starters.

  “I’m open to suggestions. Do you want to barter for the cargo? The previous owners of this ship passed away, so I believe under the intergalactic salvage laws, it’s mine to do with as I please.” Technically, those laws did not apply in Kingdom space. Casmir was fairly certain anything found and not rightfully owned by someone belonged to the king by default.

  “You killed the crew?”

  It bothered Casmir that Rache didn’t sound stunned. Did the man truly think he was capable of that?

  “The gate killed the crew. I’m sure you know all about how that works by now. An android was in charge, and the ship’s autopilot was battling the Kingdom warships and trying to get through the gate and back to its system.”

  Rache barked a short laugh. Casmir didn’t think he’d heard the man laugh before. It wasn’t a friendly or appealing sound.

  “And all those Kingdom warships couldn’t handle it? Pathetic. Let’s talk terms of surrender.”

  “You wish to surrender to me?” Casmir asked. “I accept.”

  Apparently, the joke wasn’t worth responding to, for Rache ignored it. “How many people do you have with you, Dabrowski?”

  Alarms jangled in Casmir’s brain. Did Rache want to know because he had changed his plans? Because he now intended to board the ship and take over the whole thing? That would definitely be easier than fishing hundreds of gate pieces out of space…

  “I have whole armies of people with me. Knights, marines, snipers, bounty hunters who love pirate targets…”

  “I’m a mercenary, not a pirate, and you’re an abysmal liar.”

  The channel cut out, and Rache’s face disappeared from the display. Unfortunately, the Fedallah was still there.

  Casmir found a melted cable inside the stealth device. The good news was that he thought that was the only problem. The bad news was that he didn’t have a replacement cable in his tool kit.

  “Let’s hope we can borrow an identical piece from somewhere else,” Casmir grumbled, crawling to the scanner station. “Zee, let me know if that ship moves, please. Or if anything significant happens.”

  “I will.” Zee faced the display, his head not moving.

  “Also, can you see if you can figure out how to send a tight-beam communication to Captain Ishii’s ship? The Osprey.”

  A beep came from the comm panel. The Osprey was contacting him.

  “Never mind,” Casmir said, then ran over to accept the incoming message. Why were all the stations on this bridge so far apart?

  Captain Ishii’s face appeared on the display.

  “I hope you’re here to tell me that you’re on the way and plan to keep Captain Rache from blowing me up,” Casmir said, heading off whatever Ishii had intended to open with. He wanted the warships to take care of Rache, but he feared they wouldn’t be in position in time and that he had to come up with something on his own. “I tried to stall him, but I don’t believe it worked.”

  “Where is he?” Ishii asked. “We intercepted your message.”

  Shuttle-bay doors opened on the side of the Fedallah, and Casmir grimaced and ran back to his work, not caring that Ishii wouldn’t be able to see him.

  “You didn’t intercept it; I broadcasted it. And he’s about two hundred meters in front of the nose of this ship. For now. It looks like he’s launching a shuttle.”

  “Shoot him!” Ishii ordered. “I know that ship has weapons capability.”

  “Most of its capabilities are compromised right now. The bridge took a lot of damage when we were taking it over.”

  Irritation mixed with puzzlement on Ishii’s face. Asger must not have kept him as up-to-date as Casmir had expected.

  “I’m the only one here,” Casmir said, glancing to make sure this was a tight-beam transmission, but with the Fedallah so close, he couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t intercept messages. It might not matter. Rache had been certain Casmir was lying about having allies on board. “I have limited options. And no time to discuss them. Sorry, Sora.” Casmir waved at Zee. “Turn that off, please.”

  He stuck his head back under the console and looked for—

  “Ah ha, there you are, my match. What do you control? Weapons? Well, I wasn’t going to start a war with anyone anyway.” He grabbed a few tools and carefully disconnected the cable.

  “The mercenary warship is moving off,” Zee announced.

  “It is?” Casmir jumped to his feet with his new cable in hand. Maybe Ishii and his allies had located the Fedallah and were swooping in to attack. He didn’t know how they could miss it. However camouflaged it was, it ought to be blocking someone’s view of the cargo vessel.

  Casmir started to let out a whoop as the Fedallah navigated away, thrusters firing orange, but then he spotted a sleek combat shuttle heading for the cargo ship’s airlocks.

  He groaned. Rache must have sent his warship to deal with the Kingdom vessels, maybe even clear a way to the gate, while he brought a strike force over to capture this ship.

  Casmir hurried to affix the cable. If he didn’t figure out something clever, Rache would have the cargo ship, the gate, and him within minutes.

  As he worked, he looked up the model and passenger capacity of the shuttle heading over. And groaned again. It could hold eighteen people, plus a pilot. Casmir had never learned how many men Rache commanded, but he was positive he could fill that many seats with elite fighters in the best combat armor and carrying the best weapons that money could buy. Not to mention most of them were cybernetically enhanced or genetically modded to be superior warriors.

  With the cable plugged in, the stealth generator came back online. Casmir jumped up and manually toggled it on. An indicator flared to life, informing him that stealth mode had been activated.

  But it didn’t matter. Another indicator flashed on the docks and bays monitor on the other side of the bridge.

  Rache’s shuttle had docked. It was too late.

  15

  Kim watched the artifact fly out into space through a porthole next to an airlock, not caring if anyone ever found it again. Someone somewhere had the entire gate—no apparently, Casmir had the entire gate. Or was at least in the same place where it was located. She hoped he wasn’t with a lot of people—and that he truly did share Rache’s immunity.

  She headed back to h
er lab, walking the eerily quiet corridors of a research ship capable of housing a thousand people, crew and scientists. Including the quarantined people, there were fewer than forty aboard. She ought to be able to let them out now that the artifact was gone, but she would wait longer to make sure. So far, those people—and Rache—were the only ones who’d survived a close encounter with the ancient technology without being afflicted.

  When she walked into her lab, the display for the computer monitoring the bacteria growth was flashing. Had another strain died swiftly and dramatically? Grimacing, she stepped up and scanned the results. Several more had died when exposed to the blood of people affected by the pseudo radiation, but one of the modified strains was doing well. More than well. It was thriving and multiplying quickly.

  “Are you the answer, my little friends?” she murmured, sliding the dish under a microscope so she could look herself.

  The tiny wriggly worm-like bacteria were indeed alive. Alive and thriving. She couldn’t see what they were eating—the microscope wasn’t good enough to view subatomic particles—but they were dividing every twenty minutes, so they had to be munching on something they found nourishing.

  Kim grabbed a stack of empty dishes. It was time to make a lot more of them and hope this was the answer. Or at least part of it. She still needed to get a report from Angelico—he was the one inspecting the cryonics lab—on whether they could repair damaged cells here.

  As she worked, a new message from Casmir came in. She kept working as the words scrolled along at her preferred reading speed. He was very vague on how he’d gained control of the gate—how did a robotics professor who couldn’t float through zero-g without puking take over a spaceship?—but his suggestion that he would keep the Fleet from having it, for their own good, made her uneasy. She highly doubted the military would appreciate that. She could understand not wanting to let Rache get it, but… why was this Casmir’s problem to deal with? He already had someone sending crushers after him, and he hadn’t gotten to the root of that problem yet. If he continued along this trajectory, he would end up with the entire system pissed at him.