The Clockwork Chimera Series Books 1-3 Box Set

by Scott Baron

  “Very well. Thanks, Mal.”

  “Captain, as it appears Daisy is nowhere to be found inside the Váli, I request permission to perform an EVA and examine the exterior of the craft,” Barry said.

  “Granted. Just find her. And be careful. We don’t know if that damn neuro overload caused her to go schizoid on us.”

  Barry nodded once, then strode off to suit up. He might not need much oxygen to function, but the vacuum of space would make quick work of his flesh covering if he exited unprotected.

  “The rest of you, get back to your duties, but keep your eyes open. If you see anything, call the others. You all know what she did to Vince, and we don’t know how much more she’s capable of.”

  Daisy heard the entire exchange from her hiding place in the Narrows, safely wedged between pods.

  They think I’m still outside. Good. Let ’em run on that goose chase while I do what I have to.

  Coming back inside through Starboard Eight had been a risk. She knew that, but the search pattern was executed as her tactical know-how had anticipated, and it had left her the tiniest of opportunities to sneak back into the Váli. She’d made it in, safe behind the search teams in the now-checked-off sections. They wouldn’t look for her there. Not for the time being, at least.

  From there, it was easy enough to deactivate a few sensors temporarily so she could grab her tool pouches and Faraday suit three from its rack, then make her way undetected into the Narrows. Between the enhanced shielding of the suit and the nature of the Narrows, she felt confident no one had a clue where she was. In addition to the crawlspaces being totally off-scan, their interconnectivity circumvented choke-points in the search grid within the ship’s corridors, and were, by far, her best way to navigate through the ship undetected.

  It was a different type of crawl, this time. A long slog, more about covering distance than merely reaching a nearby terminal in need of repairs. The farther she dragged herself, the more she realized just how extensive the interconnected network really was. Sure, she and Sarah had been in over eighty percent of the tiny crawlspaces over the prior six months, but always in small increments, and always close to a convenient, and open, exit panel.

  Now Daisy was sealed in, crawling farther and farther into the ship. She had her tools, and could open a panel from the inside, but the added sense of mild claustrophobia hit her just the same.

  Another inconvenience was the delay moving from one section to another. She’d always just walked the corridors to her destination in the past, but that was simply not an option any longer.

  Cycling the narrow double airlocks between pods while crawling on her belly took a lot of additional time, since she was now forced to manually re-route the keypads and sensors to stay clear of the ship’s prying eyes. If Mal’s readouts showed a keypad accessed, Daisy’s goose would be cooked. Fortunately, even before the neuro-stim did whatever that thing was to her head, she had more than enough knowledge to run a simple bypass. It was time-consuming, and frustrating, but soon enough she had made her way halfway through the vessel on her way to the communications array hub inside the ship.

  Why the hell couldn’t it have just worked from outside while I was there?

  “Because you’re a dumbass and designed it for the highest level of efficiency. Unfortunately, that meant a fat-pipe data input from the ship, not that dinky little wireless from your space suit.”

  You know I love you, Sarah, and God knows I miss the hell out of you right about now, but if you’re not going to be a more helpful imaginary friend, would you please shut the fuck up for a bit?

  The voice in her head went silent.

  “Thanks,” she grunted as she crawled around a tight bend.

  The plan was relatively simple. First, get to the bundle of comms fibers running to her jury-rigged communications array. That would be a fair bit more crawling through the Narrows, but so be it. Once she arrived at her destination, Daisy would run a parallel misdirect circuit to a different part of the ship. It wouldn’t fool Mal for very long, but hopefully long enough to afford her time to tap in and achieve step three.

  That was the crucial bit.

  If she was successful sending a message out to Dark Side, or even to Earth, depending on their line-of-sight past the moon, maybe, just maybe, the people back home could come rescue her from this ship full of not-quite humans. Even if not, at the very least, she could warn them about what was heading their way.

  Nearly an hour later, with bruised hips and scraped forearms, Daisy was quietly sliding through the walls of the medical bay when she heard the faint sounds of conversation as she passed a poorly-sealed switch array panel leading into the room.

  Sounds like Barry’s back from his EVA, she noted.

  She tried not to listen—she had a job to do. Being distracted was not an option.

  Keep moving, Daisy. Curiosity killed the cat.

  She continued to crawl forward, but stopped dead when she heard one voice in particular, clear as a bell.

  Vince.

  “I told you, I don’t know where she went,” he said. “The trauma sent me into some kind of stasis mode. I didn’t even know I could do that. I mean, I lost a shitload of blood.”

  Dammit, I have to know.

  Ever so carefully, she backtracked until she found a suitably large switch bracket. Quietly, she loosened it from the inside and slid it aside, giving her a narrow, quarter-inch viewing window of the medical bay. Hopefully no one would get close enough to the switches to notice an eye staring out from where a toggle switch was supposed to be.

  She scanned the room. Barry was there, naturally, as was Finn.

  Finn? But he’s human. Why is he with them?

  Barry turned and spoke to Vince.

  “Obviously, her discovery of your true nature was an unfortunate turn of events, especially this close to our arrival at Dark Side. Her reaction was extreme, and she is potentially unstable. The brutal attack on you only further demonstrates how vital it is we find her.” Barry actually sounded concerned. Worried about what she might be capable of doing. For some reason, Daisy felt proud of that.

  “Look, guys,” Finn chimed in, “she just had one hell of a shock. She just found out her boyfriend isn’t exactly what she thought he was. I mean, it’s actually pretty natural that she’d be freaked out.”

  Thanks, Finn, she thought. I knew I could count on you.

  “That said,” he continued, “you fuckers better catch her quick. We need to get her before we’re anywhere near landing. Far too much is riding on this for her to run free.”

  Son of a bitch!

  “Agreed. Let’s get back to it.” Vincent swung his feet to the deck.

  “You sure you’re good to go, man?”

  “Yeah. I’m not a hundred percent, and it still hurts like a bitch, but I’ll be fine.”

  As he stood and reached for a shirt, Daisy saw the thin red scar on his shoulder where his arm had been re-attached.

  He didn’t get a metal replacement arm, she realized. I wonder why that is?

  Despite the lack of a computerized appendage, she looked one last time at the re-attached limb and shuddered.

  The two men and the cyborg gathered their things and headed back into the central passageway, ostensibly to continue searching for their missing nuisance.

  Catch me before Dark Side? Fat chance.

  Daisy quietly slid the switch back into place and tightened the bracket from the inside. Once that was done, she resumed her long crawl toward the communications array cable-feed goal. A few short minutes later, she wiggled through yet another airlock and into the long crawlspace leading to the airlock to the adjoining pod.

  Hang on. Something feels different.

  Daisy paused, then started moving again.

  Yep, something’s off.

  It took her a good minute before she finally realized what it was. As she crawled, every so often, her ears would pop.

  A pressure change? But this is dead space i
n the ship’s basic structural framework between pods. There shouldn’t be anything here but bulkhead and data cables.

  Daisy looked around the narrow space, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Once more, cryptic words were scrawled on the bulkhead.

  “And the great difference between man and monkey is in the larynx.” - Wells, said one.

  “A human being is the toy of God, so we must live playing,” read another.

  Not necessarily ominous, per se, but the words certainly captured Daisy’s attention enough to make her stop crawling for a moment, which turned out to be fortuitous.

  There before her was an almost seamless access plate tucked into the smooth metal. To her, something about it looked ever so slightly different from the others she’d seen all throughout the ship, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. At least not until she actually put her finger on it.

  To the touch, it seemed almost normal, but upon closer examination, as she began slowly turning the hex bolts holding it in place, she noticed something quite unusual indeed.

  The screws were threaded in reverse.

  Now that’s interesting, she noted, ever so slowly reversing direction with her screwdriver. It wasn’t until she’d managed to loosen each of the eight bolts an eighth of an inch that she could insert her slender fiber optic camera and accompanying light. What she saw was an elaborately designed sensor array, wired to the panel on four sides. It wouldn’t take her long to clip them off and run a bypass, but it was the other unusual feature that really caught her eye.

  Thick glass vials were mounted directly beside each bolt, with just enough space that they’d remain unbroken so long as the panel remained flush. The reverse-threaded screws, however, would catch a less attentive person unawares, and before they realized they were tightening and not loosening the panel, the glass would be crushed, releasing whatever toxic chemical they contained.

  It was a particularly nasty booby trap, and one she felt confident was likely designed to kill, not disable. Any normal person who happened to make it this far without killing themselves would recognize the imminent danger and back away.

  Daisy was anything but a normal person.

  Nothing piqued her curiosity quite like a “Stay Out” sign, which the booby-trapped panel and array of alarms most certainly were.

  “Okay, I’ve got the tools for this,” she muttered as she dug in the larger of her pouches. “Damn, I’m still lugging this thing around,” she said, pulling her little plasma cascade device free. She was tempted to just leave it there, one less thing to haul as she crawled through the Narrows, but the project had become sort of a meditative pastime for her, so she tucked it safely back in her pouch, then lay out the necessary tools.

  With her adrenaline flowing and her senses firing on all cylinders because of it, disarming the devices was nothing more than a temporary inconvenience. In short order, she had bypassed them all and fully removed the bolts with her power-ratchet. A faint whoosh of air sucked past her into the dark space. A slight vacuum. Interesting.

  I know I’m good, Daisy thought, but even for me, that seemed a little too easy.

  “Maybe you fried your brain,” her friend chimed in. “Made yourself a super-genius or something. Or maybe this is all a dream and you’re actually still strapped to your neuro, drooling on yourself while you have a schizoid embolism.”

  Shut up. You never even watched that movie, so what do you know?

  “I’m in your head. I know what you know.”

  Then you know this schtick is going to get old really quick.

  “Hey, I’m not the one conjuring me up. You obviously need me for something beside my witty conversational skills, so what is it?”

  I wish I knew.

  “Well, come on, then. We might as well drop on down there. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

  Easy for you to say, you’re already dead.

  She heard Sarah’s goofy laugh, a jolly voice whispering in her head.

  “Morbid, Daze. Just morbid.”

  Daisy cracked a little grin.

  Well, who knows. I may be joining you sooner than expected, she thought as she lowered herself into the dark space below.

  Chapter Twenty

  Daisy felt her ears pop slightly as they equalized once more as her feet softly touched down in the unlit compartment. The hiss she heard as she opened the access panel made sense; there was a noticeable atmospheric differential between the unmarked space and the Narrows. Looking around, she realized something else that felt wrong about it. The room was not only dark and narrow, it was somewhere a room shouldn’t be.

  Sonofa… Hidden right under my nose all this time?

  Carefully, Daisy eased her way forward into the pod, bumping something at hip level as she did. She’d already run a rudimentary bypass of the pod’s alarms and scanners, but froze in place regardless.

  No sirens sounded. It appeared she was successful in her security re-routing efforts, and so long as she was in that pod, she would effectively be a ghost.

  A faint bubbling sound and the smell of ozone wafted to her nose, causing a faint discomfort to her eyes. On top of that, an overall musty odor permeated the space despite the dry air. Almost as if an animal or something had once lived in the darkened chamber.

  “Okay, let’s get some lights on in here,” she said quietly, motivating herself to get moving. She fired up her flashlight, casting a beam about the walls, the light dancing briefly over storage lockers, medical equipment, and scientific tools, until she finally spotted the light switch.

  Daisy hesitated a moment, then flicked it on. The overhead lights fired up immediately and illuminated the clean-scrubbed chamber from end to end.

  She suddenly wished she’d left them off.

  Surrounding her on both sides were thick-walled glass vats, and in them floated body parts.

  What the fuck?

  Appendages of different sizes, shapes, and genders bobbed in the primordial soup, suspended by a thin matrix of nutrient lines connected to the main blood vessels. She couldn’t believe what was looking at. An arm, a leg, a hand, an eye. There were even a few fingers floating in the bubbling translucent-pink soup.

  Shit, she thought, momentarily frozen in her tracks. Finn—my God, does that mean…?

  She had never seen Tamara’s arm or Reggie’s hand, but the limbs bobbing gently in the thick liquid were all roughly the same size as the artificial limbs on her crew.

  Whoever was behind all this was storing bits of people.

  Could Mal actually be that far gone? And if she is, does that mean the captain is part of this too? I mean, it’s his ship. How could he not know?

  Smaller limbs floating in translucent containers toward the back of the space caught her eye. Limbs too small for any of the crew.

  My God, are those from children? But where did they get them? Could they have been harvesting from kids before we even launched?

  Farther back, she noted the much larger tanks. Big enough for far more than just parts.

  They can’t be—

  Daisy snapped out of her shock as the touch of the slightest of drafts wafted across the sensitive skin of her cheek.

  A draft. In a sealed ship. Where one shouldn’t exist.

  Daisy put her revulsion aside and turned her mind to a new task. One that she’d actually been working on for some time now. Oh, how the universe could throw you curveballs.

  In any case, gift horse. Mouth.

  She dug in her kit for a pair of sharp wire snips, then deftly unscrewed a panel on the wall. It contained nothing of critical importance, and crucially, none of the wires were leading to anything Mal would notice a fluctuation in. Daisy clipped a hot wire, holding the ends apart from one another with her insulated clippers.

  While fire can be deadly on board a space ship, and thus, open flames are strictly prohibited, other things can relatively safely give off smoke, if you know what you’re doing. Daisy quickly stripped the two ends of the wir
e from inside the panel, then touched them together, arcing the electricity, causing a brief flash.

  The small puff of smoke given off drifted toward the near wall, as if pulled by an invisible magnet.

  Gotcha!

  It was tiny. Just a pinhole, really, but in the vacuum of space, it was more than enough to cause a deadly loss of air, given enough time. From the looks of it, a heavy piece of equipment had hit the wall at just the right angle and weakened the metal, though as she studied the small, damaged area, she noted it almost looked more like someone had been slowly scraping away at the wall over a very long period of time, rubbing that heavy corner back and forth for many, many years. Of course, that was impossible. The ship hadn’t even been traveling very long at all, but still, it gave her pause.

  Daisy pulled her thinnest fiber optic camera from the pouch on her thigh and slid it gently through the minuscule hole. It barely fit, but barely would have to suffice.

  There you are.

  Though blocked by a bundle of tightly bound cables, Daisy could see a tiny tear in the bulkhead in the formerly airtight compartment housing them.

  No way I can get to that without Mal noticing, she realized.

  The small puncture was probably from a piece of debris that had impacted the ship at some point. It was just dumb luck that the internal wall became compromised. The fail-safes were designed to prevent such an occurrence from causing serious harm. Areas were compartmentalized, and a breach would activate the countermeasures. Only this one was too small and too delayed from the initial impact to trigger the automatic sealant foam. It was a one-in-a-million chain of events that led to the continuous leak, but that sort of thing seemed to be happening far too often for comfort on this mission.

  Daisy dug in her kit and produced a small tube of vacuum-active dry adhesive and a metal patch. The stuff was stronger than underwater concrete, and it could work in sub-freezing temperatures and didn’t need any air to function. She carefully withdrew her camera and stored it back in her thigh pouch, then applied the tiniest dollop of sealant to the hole, being extremely careful not to get any on herself, lest she become an unwilling addition to the Váli’s superstructure. Less than a second after she applied the small patch, the hiss of escaping air ceased as she successfully sealed the gap.