by Lyn Gala
“How Ribelian of you.” Sometimes Tyce got tired of their pessimistic theories about souls and flaws.
“Thank you,” Yoss said with a smile.
Tyce was going to say something cutting about Ribelians and weird religions, but then a shiver ran down his spine. He stopped and looked around. In a heartbeat, Yoss had his weapon up and his back against the wall. “Where?” he asked, skipping the more obvious what and who, not that Tyce had any answers.
Tyce stepped forward, and Yoss grabbed his arm in a bruising grip. “What are you doing?” His voice was low and dangerous, and he used his free hand to keep his weapon trained on the end of the corridor as it curved out of sight.
“I have no idea,” Tyce admitted.
Yoss gave him an incredulous expression.
“Seriously. I don’t know. But I am curious to find out what’s down there.” Tyce didn’t believe in gut feelings; he believed in facts and sometimes subconscious processing of information. Right now his subconscious knew something he didn’t about the passage they had been about to skip in their quest to head down a set of stairs to unlock doors.
“We’re not going down there alone,” Yoss said with a quiet intensity. If Tyce were the captain, he’d order Yoss to follow him. He regretted giving up that power.
“You can head back. I don’t want to use radios this close to Command territory, but Ama should know I want to investigate down this corridor.”
“Over my dead body.” Yoss planted himself in the hallway.
Tyce narrowed his eyes. “Just because I gave up the captain’s chair doesn’t mean I have no authority.”
“It means exactly that. I have seniority over you by a good year, and you’re not even Ribelian.”
Pointing to his chest where a shirt covered his tattoo, he said fiercely, “This makes me more Ribelian than you with your chimera genes.”
“Right, like Command has never tried to counterfeit a mark.” His disgust spilled out with every word.
“Command still thinks this means suicide bomber. No Command personnel could fake this. So don’t you throw my birth planet in my face. I have the combat experience and tactical experience you lack. If I bring Ama into this little fight we’re having, you know who will win.”
Yoss raised his chin, his gaze pugnacious even though Tyce was right. Ama might’ve been Ribelian through to the core, but she was also a practical woman. Being a gunner gave her an ability to make quick decisions, and a lack of patience for bullshit.
They stared at each other for a good two or three minutes before Yoss said, “Give me one good reason for going down there, something related to combat or tactical experience.”
Tyce’s brain shorted out. He wanted to go down that hall because he wanted to. He couldn’t articulate anything more intelligent than that for several seconds. “We need our escape routes spread out, so taking a parallel corridor for a significant distance before doubling back would give us that.” The answer was plausible—reasonable even. It just wasn’t Tyce’s real reason for wanting to explore.
“Or,” Yoss said, “We go too far and end up in a different section of the ship.
“Then we’ll know what path to avoid.” With that, Tyce pushed past Yoss and walked down the curving hall. His anxiety rose, but he couldn’t tell if he was excited about achieving his goal or nervous about where he might be going.
Yoss followed a good twelve feet behind. “This is stupid,” he muttered at regular intervals. They passed several doors which opened with a mere touch. Tyce passed four stairs down into the lower levels and two more that led up before he stopped in front of a door. Unlike most of the doors, this was another sphincter opening, the wrinkles of skin almost invisible against the pattern of the wall. Tyce would have walked past it except a long slit had already opened.
Did the aliens have a reason for the two different door styles? An anthropologist could’ve probably come up with any number of theories, but Tyce’s brain kept circling the idea of internal security. The doors that locked only from one side had primed him to look for signs of paranoia. If this had been a prison ship that might explain why the lower levels had smaller rooms with crowded and uncomfortable bunks. But it didn’t explain why resources were more abundant on the lower levels.
When Tyce ran his hand over the slit, and the skin withdrew, leaving an oval opening with a pinched top and bottom. Inside, a console took up most of the floor. It resembled the one that John’s people had dragged Tyce to, but there was no alcove waiting to shove probes into a victim’s head. Instead there was the curved line of the console as it rose four feet high before curving back to the floor. It was like a gentle mountain slope. It even had several soft peaks and valleys in the main part of the console.
Yoss stood at the door, his weapon pointed at Tyce’s stomach. “Explain how you found this.” His voice had a cold and brittle quality Tyce hadn’t heard in a long time. No matter how suspicious he might get, he would never shoot Tyce in the back, so Tyce ignored him for the time being. Instead, he walked over to the console. Some areas had controls that resembled buttons or dials, although Tyce wasn’t sure they would function the same.
But what he found more interesting were the streaks of color along one of the angled edges.
“Robinson?” Yoss practically growled.
Tyce turned. “I think the ship guided me here.”
Yoss stared at him as if waiting for the second half of the joke. However, that was the only remotely logical explanation. Yoss finally said, “Guided?” in a tone that demanded more information. He even raised his weapon a fraction of an inch.
That amused Tyce. Amali always talked about the patterns in life, and here they were years after they’d been prisoner and guard, and they’d returned to that relationship. Ironically, falling into his old friendship with John hadn’t been nearly as easy. Maybe Ama was also right about the fundamental nature of humanity being corrupt.
“When I was a prisoner up in Command territory, a few of John’s soldiers went rogue and tried shoving me head-first into an alcove. The ship is missing some organic wiring, and apparently they think a person can fill the hole.”
“Okay,” Yoss said slowly, like he was trying to sound out the word. “If that’s true, I’ll happily kill them all for you—”
“You’ll happily kill any Command soldier you can target.” During the war, every day they’d taken off from a port or planet with Yoss still onboard had shocked Tyce. He constantly expected him to leave in order to join a rebel combat unit. He might have except he had an obligation to Ama.
Yoss shrugged. “True, but I’ll kill them slower for trying that shit. But that doesn’t explain how you found this place.”
“A few of the probes got in my brain,” Tyce admitted. He waited, half-expecting Yoss to open fire.
Yoss took a deep breath. “What?”
Tyce pointed to his skull. “Probes in the brain. Their doctor said I was having tactile hallucinations because one is too close to the sensory cortex, but I think I’m getting data from the ship.”
“If it takes you over, I’ll kill you.”
“Whoa!” Tyce held his hands up. “Can we avoid discussion of murder, please?”
“Wouldn’t be murder. Would be a mercy to send you to the next life if the ship takes this one.”
“Then don’t feel any need to show me mercy,” Tyce said since he couldn’t argue with Ribelian crazy. “You don’t even like me, so you don’t need to do me favors.”
“I don’t like what you did, but you’re not that bad as a person. I like you well enough to save you from being taken over.”
Sadly, from Yoss that was a rousing endorsement. “The ship isn’t taking over, but it is sending me flashes of information.” Tyce turned back to the controls. He raised his hand over the streaks and inched forward. That felt wrong. It was as if he had ants under his skin. He reversed the direction, and the itching eased.
“What are you doing?” Yoss came and stood next to
him.
“No idea,” Tyce admitted. He touched the streaks and repeated the hand gesture. A valley lit up and foggy light streamed upward.
Yoss jumped back and brought his weapon up. “Stop,” he said firmly.
Tyce ignored him and followed an instinct to run his thumb along the yellowest of the orange streaks. The light flickered and molecules rearranged themselves into a watery version of an alien corridor.
“Fuck,” Yoss said softly.
Two figures moved into view, their hands on their weapons. Ralie and Ter walked to the nearest junction, checked both directions and retreated back to their guard post.
“Real time?” Yoss asked.
“Are Ralie and Ter on patrol today?”
“Yep.”
“Then I assume so.”
Yoss moved back to the door and checked the corridor. “Those alien probes might be useful after all. We need to go back and talk to Ama.”
Tyce shook his head. “I’ll stay here. You go.” Tyce’s gut screamed at him that he needed to stay here.
Yoss slung his weapon over his shoulder. “We’re both leaving right now.”
Again, Tyce shook his head. Something was happening, and even if Tyce didn’t know what, he knew he needed to be here. He twitched his fingers, and the camera view skittered to the side and went through a wall, showing a detailed view of all the fluid lines within the wall.
When Yoss grabbed his right hand, Tyce whirled around. Yoss used that momentum to shove Tyce face-first into the wall before pinning Tyce’s hand to the small of his back. “You have an alien ship fucking with your head. I can’t trust you to do what Tyce would want done with his body, not until we know how much of you is Tyce and how much is the ship.”
“I’m still me!” Tyce protested.
Yoss plucked the weapon out of Tyce’s holster. “Not even Ama is going to believe that, although she might still trust this new ship-Tyce. I don’t know. And I don’t have to know. I have to get you back to her in one piece so she can decide.” Yoss took Tyce’s knife before backing away.
Tyce turned, rubbing his shoulder to relieve the ache. Yoss was not a gentle man. “You’re a pain in my ass.”
Yoss grinned. “Yep. Now let’s go find Ama. If the ship wants you in here, I figure there’s a reason, and that reason might require her to be up here. But I’m not going to trust you in here alone when I don’t know how much of you is Tyce and how much is ship.”
“We should also get our people into hiding,” Tyce said.
“Hiding? What’s coming?” Yoss demanded.
“I wish I knew.” Tyce hated the feeling of being led around by his gut, and his brain suggested Yoss was showing more common sense than he was. However, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he had to be in this room. “If we have to leave, let’s hurry so we can get back here.” Tyce took off for the door, stumbling as the sense of wrong-wrong-wrong exploded under his skin. Yoss caught him, preventing him from going face-down on the floor. As soon as Tyce got his balance back, he focused on moving one foot in front of the other, faster and faster. The sooner he found Ama, the sooner he could come back.
Chapter Fourteen
AMA STUDIED THE SPACE. “So this is the secret room?”
“A control room,” Tyce corrected her. He reached for the streaks of color that controlled the camera, but Ama caught his wrist.
“Explain this to me.”
Tyce opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find the words. All he had were vague feelings and a gut-level distress that didn’t make sense—not even to himself. “I can’t.”
“Then explain why you didn’t tell me that you had alien probes in your brain,” she said. Tyce felt the metaphorical ground shift under his feet. It’d been years since a hot need to defend himself had burned his gut, but he felt it now. The desperate need to justify his actions before she assumed the worst gnawed at him.
“Their doctor said it wasn’t affecting anything beyond the tactile hallucinations.” That sounded like a poor excuse, even to Tyce. But he didn’t have any other. Maybe he’d wanted to repress everything about his time as a Command prisoner. After all, when he’d been in a room with Command people before, he’d killed them. Their faces, and the faces of their victims, still haunted his nightmares.
Ama pulled Tyce’s hand away from the controls. “Their doctors are as ineffective as their moralists and priests. I don’t understand why you would believe them.” At least her tone made it clear that he was still on the right side of the us-them divide.
“They did a scan. I had every reason to believe them.”
“And yet, you now say the ship led you here.” Ama’s gaze challenged him to explain that .
Tyce took a step back to prove he wasn’t going to challenge her. If she said not to touch the controls, then he wouldn’t. However, the growing sense of panic grew more intense, and Tyce wasn’t sure if that was the result of her disappointment or whatever was going on with the ship. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the ship is telling me.”
“But it’s telling you something?”
“It’s telling me to look.” Tyce gestured toward the controls. When Ama gave him a concerned expression, Tyce had to stomp on his temper. “I’m not imagining this. I certainly didn’t imagine this control room into existence.”
Ama took a deep breath. “I believe you. This ship is a being, but every living creature has hopes and fears. This ship wouldn’t be different. Believing that ze is talking to you and trusting zir are very different, and I am only willing to commit to the first.” She still had the same expression, as if she was concerned that Tyce had lost his mind.
Maybe he had, because she was being logical. He had no reason to trust a being that was whispering in his ear. None. But his gut screamed at him that he could. He ignored that instinct and focused on cold logic. Numbers. Facts. Tactical strategy. “The ship wants the cameras turned on—not environmentals or weapons. If she was trying to get us to turn on a self-destruct mode or drive us out, those would be the two systems she would use.” Instead she screamed for them to turn on cameras—so much so that Tyce’s stomach cramped at the horror of standing in the ship, camera blind and helpless.
“Don’t assume a female gender.” Ama was probably going to break out another sermon about respecting the life choices of others, but this time Tyce wasn’t being thoughtless. He felt the ship. He knew her in a way Ama didn’t, even if her voice could only tease the edge of his awareness.
“The Command crew opened fire on a shuttle door. They did huge amounts of damage, and the ship retaliated by destroying most of the shuttles.”
“You said that already,” Yoss’s voice was edging toward frustration. However, he continued to lean against the open door, his gaze sweeping the room and corridor outside. He might not be jumping in to defend Tyce, but he was taking the warning seriously.
“I know I did. But the ship up there... it stinks. It’s dry—they haven’t found water or protein sources. The ship is trying to starve them out.”
Yoss offered a curt, “Good.”
Ama’s expression didn’t change much. “If the ship is aggravated with Command that does not mean ze likes us.”
“She likes us more than them.” Tyce assumed as much anyway. However, he found it almost impossible to maintain his absolute faith in these ghost impressions under Ama’s scrutiny. Maybe the ship was manipulating him. Yoss certainly implied as much when he changed Tyce’s name to ship-Tyce as if Tyce no longer had an existence of his own. “We need to turn the cameras on. Ama, if you believe that the ship has a right to choose her path, then I’m telling you to turn cameras on because that is the path she’s choosing.”
Ama shoved her gray hair behind one ear. “And you can’t tell me why?”
Shaking his head, Tyce said sadly, “I wish I could. I only know something terrifying is coming or maybe it’s already here.” A shiver ran down Tyce’s spine.
For several seconds, she studied him. Then she sighe
d. “If you do anything to endanger the crew, I will shoot you in the head and search for your soul on Ribelo so I can apologize later.”
Another cold shiver ran down his spine. “If you believe in people choosing their own destinies, I would point out that I don’t want to get shot. So, before you fire your weapon, think about that. You know how you disapprove of interfering with people’s life choices.”
“I also know you put yourself in the middle of far too many conflicts for a soul who has chosen a peaceful death.” Ama backed away from the controls, choosing to stand on the opposite side of the open door as Yoss. They were bookends, two people ready to shoot Tyce if something went wrong. Ama probably would risk arrest to search for his soul on Ribelo in ten or fifteen years. That would be an Amali sort of thing to do.
Tyce moved to the controls. “Yeah, well I don’t want to get shot by a friend.”
“Again, you’ve made odd choices if that is truly your goal this life,” Ama said.
Tyce shot her an unhappy look before he reached for the controls. His heart slowed and the panic faded. He still had the idea something bad was about to happen, but now he had the feeling he did before the ship would go into battle. He might die, but at least he knew what was coming at him.
Or he would as soon as he could find the right camera. He ran his fingers over the colors, not understanding the controls but following his instincts.
“Wait!” Ama stepped forward as the camera panned past a person. Tyce was already reversing his gestures, moving the camera back to the corridor he’d passed. A soldier in a Command uniform lay sprawled across the floor. Tyce pivoted the camera—or whatever the ship used that doubled as a camera—to show the soldier from the opposite angle. The woman seemed familiar, but Tyce couldn’t connect any of the soldiers he’d seen to the body with her face contorted in horror and her guts split open.
“Fuck,” Yoss whispered.
Ama rested a hand on Tyce back. “Scatter?” she asked softly. It was the most serious of all the security codes. It would send children and elderly to the most secure positions and scatter all the fighters. The uncoordinated attacks would, hopefully, be enough to warn invaders away. Ama had used it against Command boarders to confound their attempts to counter her strategy, but this... this was something so alien that Tyce didn’t know if it was the right call. His fingers danced across the controls, the camera skittering wildly out of control until he found what he wanted on the watery, distorted screen.