by Jay Allan
He couldn’t do this. The doubt flooded in. He wasn’t strong enough, capable enough. He couldn’t handle the responsibility for all their lives…not again. At least this time, he too, would die. He wouldn’t endured the guilt, the shame, of surviving those he’d failed.
And yet, something else rose up inside him, some vestige of what he had once been. A war raged inside his head, his tortured thoughts battling against each other, the urge to give up, to surrender to the peace of death warring with the need to survive. To save his new shipmates.
Despair came close to victory. Indeed, it would have had Righter’s life been the only one at stake. But he couldn’t fail his comrades again, couldn’t endure the thought that they would all die.
Not again.
His fingers moved again over the console, typing in the access data. The station was responding, at least part of it was. The flickering of the screen sparked hope inside him, and a few seconds later, he hit the final button.
There was nothing at first, nothing save the continued descent. Righter could feel the despair strengthening again, every bit of self-loathing that lived inside him coming to the surface.
And then Pegasus lurched.
It was different than the movements the ocean currents had caused, and the ship vibrated as Pegasus shook hard again. The battered vessel’s systems were struggling, fighting to activate, almost like a living being desperate to survive. For another few seconds, the ship rolled to its side, but continued its descent. Then it vibrated wildly, almost as though it would shake itself apart.
And it began to rise.
Righter checked the instruments, trying desperately to confirm what he already knew. The positioning jets, at least, were functional. And they had stopped the ship from dropping lower.
They were still in trouble, deep trouble.
But Pegasus was no longer sinking.
Chapter Eighteen
Free Trader Pegasus
Somewhere in the Endless Sea
Planet Aquellus, Olystra III
Year 302 AC
Andi could see the ceiling above her. She was groggy, still a little disoriented, but she realized almost immediately she was in the cot in Pegasus’s tiny infirmary. It took her a few seconds to get her thoughts together, to remember how she had gotten there, or at least the last thing she could recall.
Then it came to her. Pegasus had been sinking. Whatever had happened, it had to be better than any hopes she’d had when she lost consciousness, because she’d been beaten then, resigned to the loss of her ship and all her people.
She tried to lift her head, but the pounding pain, already almost unbearable, increased enormously, and forced her back. Something was wrong. For a few seconds, she thought her vision was damaged. She could see, but everything was dim, almost like a dusky evening. Had she damaged her eyes, or was the problem in her brain? A concussion? Some other kind of problem?
Then, she saw a series of lights on the med station about a meter to get side. They were as bright as ever, and she could see them all crisply. It wasn’t her eyes that were damaged, it was Pegasus.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake.” Doc’s voice, genuine joy at finding her conscious…but something else, too. Stress, fear…whatever had happened to save her ship, she knew they weren’t out of the woods yet.
“You guys got me out of there…and you managed to patch the leaks. We’d all be dead if you hadn’t.”
“You can thank Gregor for most of the patches. I’ve never seen a force of nature match him when he’s riled up. And, your new engineer saved the rest of the day…or at least got us this far.”
“How far are we?” Andi gritted her teeth and pushed back against the pain as she tried again to raise her head up. She made it on the second effort, but she was far from sure it had been worth it. The pain was bad, and the payoff was a view out through the small doorway into the main lower deck. She’d known, on some level at least, that it had to be a mess, but actually seeing it was something else entirely. There was water everywhere, and piles of toppled equipment. Whatever was keeping Pegasus running, it had to be by the slimmest of margins. “The truth, Doc. There’s no time for sugarcoating anything. Not now.”
“Lex Righter has the reactor operating at thirty percent, but it’s taking most of that to stabilize the ship. Best we could tell, we were almost three kilometers down. I don’t want to think about how close to disaster we came, but it couldn’t have been far.”
No, it couldn’t have…
Andi didn’t know exactly how much depth Pegasus could endure, but she’d have bet three kilometers was beyond that point. She knew the ship’s survival had come down to the alloys in the hull and the inner structure, physical properties definable by pure mathematics, but she couldn’t help believing the vessel’s spirit had played a role as well.
“Where are we now?”
“Holding at two kilometers. There was a…discussion…about what to do while you were unconscious. We held a vote. Staying down here won against going up to the surface to really check the damage. It was close.”
Andi imagined it had been close, but her people had managed to do what she would have ordered. As much as she wanted to address any needed repairs—and that would certainly be easier on the surface—she had no idea where the Sector Nine ship was, or if the enemy was still searching for Pegasus. Better to stay as hidden as possible, at least until she could figure out what to do.
“Help me up.” She shifted her legs off the cot, and she shoved herself the rest of the way into a seated position, biting her lip as the pain hit her again. “And, my God, I know damned well we’ve got painkillers on this tub…how about getting me a handful?”
“I was afraid to medicate you too heavily until I had a better idea of your condition.”
“My condition is fine…at least if my head doesn’t explode.”
“Okay, sit tight. I’ll add something to your IV mix.”
“Add a lot to it, Doc. I’ve got to be able to function, so let’s jump right to something potent and save some time…and no warnings about addictiveness or the like. We’ve got bigger problems right about now.”
“Understood.” Doc sounded a little doubtful…he’d always been wary about the use of powerful narcotics. But he didn’t argue.
Andi sat for a moment, sucking in a deep breath and trying to hold back the nausea beginning to take her. Part of that was from the pain, but whatever the cause, she knew exactly how she was going to handle it. She was going to ignore it. If she threw up all over the floor, that wouldn’t even make their top ten list of problems.
She felt a wave moving across her head, pushing away the pain—most of it, at least—almost like a hose extinguishing a fire. The relief was more than welcome, and her thoughts came alive, her concentration increasing in intensity almost immediately. She took a deep breath and she slid off the cot onto her feet.
She wobbled a bit, enough that her hand swung instinctively behind her, grabbing onto the edge of the cot. She stood for a moment, waiting for her equilibrium to return.
“You really should get some rest, Andi. And you should let me check you out.”
“Why? What would that serve? Do you think there is anything you will find that will change our situation?”
Doc was silent. Pegasus’s anointed medic tended to take his duties seriously, but he was one of the family in every way, a hardcore Badlands adventurer, and he knew as well as Andi did, they all needed her just then.
Pegasus needed her.
She stepped away from the cot, looking better, if still a little shaky. Pegasus’s deck wasn’t exactly flat, and she found the six or eight degree slant wasn’t helping her coordination any. She stumbled toward the wall, reaching out and gripping the handholds and other constructs along the way.
She opened the hatch leading to the engineering space, and she climbed down the small ladder leading to the cramped and tiny section. She stumbled down the last couple rungs, but she made it down,
intact, more or less.
“Lex…I’m thinking I owe you a thanks.”
Righter had been crouched down, half his body thrust inside an open access panel. He pulled himself out when Andi fell down the last section of the ladder, and he was sitting on the deck looking up at her. “We’re all in this together, Andi, aren’t we?” The engineer paused for a few seconds. “Besides, maybe I still have a few gripes about the hospitality on this ship, at least at first, but you saved my life, Andi…there’s no arguing that. And believe it or not, I like to pay my debts.”
Andi just nodded. She had come to understand more about how things like loyalty was born…but she still wasn’t very comfortable with it all. By gross count, those who’d tried to injure her in her life vastly outnumbered those she’d been able to trust. “So,” she finally said, “where are we at?”
“We’re stable enough right now. Holding at two kilometers. We have enough power to surface, if that’s what you want. The consensus while you were unconscious was to stay here…and hide.”
“Hiding would have gotten my vote, too. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to do something. We’ve got a mission to complete, and if this old ship can manage it, that’s our next order of business. And if not…” She had no idea what to do if Pegasus was really in bad shape. The enemy ship was still out there somewhere, and it was more than a match for her vessel in top condition. A damaged Pegasus wouldn’t stand a chance…in either a flight or a in a race to escape the system.
“Actually, we may have gotten lucky. It will take more time to really check everything out, but from what I’ve been able to see, Pegasus came through it all with only minor damage. We’re going to need to do stress tests on the metallurgy, but that’s going to have to wait until we get back to a shipyard. For now, the best we can do on that is hope for the best…and patch up whatever fails.” A pause. “She looks awful, Andi, but this ship of yours is one tough hull.”
That she is…
Andi nodded. The situation was less than ideal—hoping for the best wasn’t on her list of ‘go to’ strategies—but it was the only choice. “How about the reactor and the engines?” A short pause. “And the weapons?”
“I haven’t managed to run real diagnostics on all of it…hell, on most of it. I focused on the reactor first, at least once we managed to patch all the leaks. After Gregor managed to patch all the leaks. But from what I’ve managed to see, I think the engines are fine. Most of their main mechanisms are designed for vacuum conditions anyway. It’s mostly electronics that took it hard, primarily from the leaks. And, of course, whatever damage the pressure did to the hull. Some of the scanner dishes and antennae took it hard, but those will be easy repairs once we get to the surface, or at least closer to it.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be a surprise when I say, we need this ship fully operational…and as soon as possible. We’ve got enemies out there, either waiting at the surface, or at least in orbit or nearby space. And we’ve got to find the imperial installation we came for. Going back empty handed is almost as bad as not getting back at all.” Durango had promised a hundred thousand credits even if Andi and her people failed in their effort, but she didn’t think running at the first sign of trouble met his likely definition of effort.
Besides, she despised Sector Nine. If there was something under Aquellus’s seas, artifacts of value, she’d be damned if she was going to let the Union have them.
“I knew you were going to say that.” Righter sounded a little nervous, but he seemed mostly onboard with her way of thinking. “Give me an hour.”
Andi was startled. She’d expected the engineer to ask for days, to prevaricate, to try to limit expectations. Anything but giving her a timeline so quickly. And one so short.
“An hour?”
“I’ll have the engines ready to go by then, and the reactor up to at least seventy percent. Weapons will still be a guess, but like I said, they look okay to me now. We’ll know for sure when we try to fire them.”
Andi felt gratitude for Righter’s honestly, and a little worry over how blithely he’d said they’d ‘know when they tried to fire them.’ Since that was likely to occur when someone else was shooting back, she hoped the engineer’s instincts were on point.
“When we finally bust out of here, my first choice is to make a clean run for it, but if they’re positioned someplace they can intercept us…we just might have to fight it out.” A pause, and a bit or surprise that Righter hadn’t argued, but had only nodded his agreement. “We’re going to need the scanners fully operational, Lex…assuming the guns are working. If we find the imperial facility, is there any way you can repair them while some of the others and I head in and find the artifacts we’re here for?”
“The underwater suits are bulky as hell, Andi, but that’s not the biggest problem. I’ll manage to get it done. The question is, can the scanner arrays take the pressure, even at his depth? It’s pretty rough out there. I can replace the things—we’ve got spares in the hold—but if we’re not careful as hell, we’ll strip them right off again.”
Andi stood still, silent for a moment. Then, she nodded. “That will have to do, Lex. You get started on that hour…” Andi still wasn’t sure she really believed that. “…and I’m going to check what shape the bridge is in, and see if Vig and Barret and I can make something of the nav data Durango gave us.”
She turned and grabbed one of the ladder’s rungs, hesitating for an instant, and then realizing how much surer she felt on her feet than she had a few minutes before. She was ready…ready to do whatever she had to do.
And the most amazing, mystifying, wonderful thing of all…the pain in her head was almost completely gone.
Chapter Nineteen
Unidentified Imperial Ruin
Somewhere Under the Endless Sea
Planet Aquellus, Olystra III
Year 302 AC
Caron moved cautiously down the corridor, following closely behind the two Foudre Rouge up on point. He’d started out leaving more room between the soldiers and himself, but despite his cautious nature and his feeling the Foudre Rouge were expendable, he found his curiosity taking the lead. He’d never seen anything quite like the complex, in either vastness or condition. He’d come to think of the imperial artifacts he’d dealt in for the last five years as trinkets, bits and pieces of advance technology. Valuable certainly, but often less than impressive to the naked eye.
The complex stretching out before him was anything but unimpressive. It was vast, astonishing, and even his cold, focused mind was distracted with thoughts of who had built it and worked there centuries before.
Caron imagined what could be gleaned from the structure, what wonders and secrets could be uncovered through years of painstaking research. But it was not to be. The expedition’s orders were clear. He was to find what he could, retrieve anything portable enough to store on Phantasia.
And then they were to destroy the facility.
It was a horrible waste, a crime against human history and science, and the thought of it made even his cold heart shiver a bit. But he understood the rationale, and he agreed with it entirely. The Union had a border with the Badlands, of a sort at least, but it was a circuitous route through barely inhabited frontier systems. The Confederation, on the other hand, had a vibrant and bustling border far closer to the heart of the Badlands. Sector Nine had taken advantage of the disorder endemic in the corrupt and disorganized republican government of its rival to garner many of the artifacts trading on Dannith’s black market, but the Union had no real chance of maintaining an ongoing presence in the Badlands. Anything left on Aquellus, anything that couldn’t be removed from the facility, would almost certainly fall into Confederation hands eventually.
And that was something Sector Nine and the Union could never allow. Their rival already had a small technological edge, and a far more vibrant economy. Matched up against the larger size of the Union that had resulted more or less in a stalemate, at least
over the past fifty years. A major leap forward in Confederation tech levels would shatter that balance of power, and threaten the Union to its core.
“Sir…there is some kind of hatch up ahead. I suggest you remain here while we investigate.”
Caron stopped abruptly. He didn’t know if there were any active security systems or any kinds of traps that might pose a threat…but he did know that several teams had already vanished investigating the planet.
He also knew—at least to his perspective—it was better to risk the Foudre Rouge than himself.
“Yes, Sergeant, of course.” He gestured forward, his signal for the two soldiers to proceed. Lieutenant Javais came rushing up from behind, snapping out a series of warnings and commands to the two Foudre Rouge.
“Lieutenant, you are the commander of the squad…best you remain back here for now as well.” Caron wasn’t sure the lieutenant had intended to go forward with his troopers, but he’d dealt with enough Foudre Rouge to suspect it was likely. And as uncomfortable as the clone soldiers made him, he preferred to keep the sole officer alive, if possible. Commission Foudre Rouge received more training, especially in interactions with those outside the corps. Dealing with Javais was unpleasant enough, but the thought of working directly with the enlisted solders made his stomach flop.
“Yes, sir.” The tension in the officer’s voice suggested he had been planning to move forward with the two soldiers. Instead, he stopped about one third of the way to the front and watched.
The troopers stopped at the door, and the sergeant stared at the small panel next to the entryway. Caron knew his people had explosives if they needed them, but he wasn’t sure just how much power it would take to force open an imperial alloy door.