by Carrie Patel
“Roman,” she said, “where are the adults?”
He sighed like he’d been hoping to avoid the subject. “Salvage has strict limits on childbearing. They’ve only so many ships, so there’s only so much they can grow. Each resident is limited to two, but some have more.” As if that explained it.
“So they live out here? By themselves?” What surprised Jane – besides the seeming cruelty – was the sheer number of children. She had yet to find a place where two people could be alone, let alone enough to produce so many offspring.
“Once they’re five years of age,” Roman said.
A girl with choppily cropped hair, no more than seven, watched Jane with eyes like backlit windows.
Jane remembered the ginger cake she’d left wrapped in her pocket. She took it out and gave it to the girl, regretting that she hadn’t saved more of it.
“We should hurry,” Roman said. Jane followed. She could think of nothing else to do.
They left the children and their box lofts and continued on.
The Kennedy loomed over even the crates, its dark bulk visible between the stacks. Jane had heard it was enormous; even so, she gasped when they reached the edge of the deck and the Kennedy’s full length was finally visible.
It must have been over a thousand feet long. The lip of the upper deck rose above them, and the tops of cobbled cabins and battlements peeked just over that.
The gangway to the Kennedy was longer than most; it had to be to make the steep climb to the deck.
“Just keep moving forward,” Roman said. “Easy steps.”
Jane hadn’t realized she’d stopped, but then she looked down at the dark waters crashing beneath the gangway.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said behind her.
That was enough for her to take a deep breath and push onward. She fixed her sights on the square of light at the end of the swaying walkway.
Roman had explained that the Kennedy tended to be less open than most of the other ships on Salvage, but that its crew was likely to be more relaxed – and less numerous – during the festival.
And in any case, the special cargo he’d picked up would ease their passage.
A grouchy young man met them at the end of the walkway. He was just as cranky as Jane would expect for someone who’d gotten stuck with guard duty during the party.
“You passing aki?” he asked, barely making room for Jane and Roman to step off the gangway and into the relative comfort of the ship.
“With the good stuff,” Roman said. “Better than sweet.” He swung his pack from his shoulder and opened it up to show the young guard several jugs reeking of grog.
“The very good stuff,” the guard said, his eyes fixed on Roman’s bounty. “But you’re pronto.”
“Never too early for this,” Roman said. “Why don’t we leave one here?” He was already pulling a jug out. “Take the rest below.”
“They’re all in the hangar bay.” The guard nodded, regarding Roman with new interest. “I conosse you somewhere?”
“Everyone conosses the man with the grog.” Roman had already zipped up his pack and motioned to Jane with a jerk of his head.
“Some things are the same all over,” Jane said once they were out of earshot.
Roman chuckled. “Never a truer word.”
They kept their heads down and their voices low as they moved through the Kennedy, hearing the sounds of distant revelry. As impressive as the ship looked from the outside, it was much the same as the others inside: worn, cramped, and dark, with only every third filament light burning.
The only difference was that it was much, much bigger.
“What are we looking for?” Jane asked. “Where would the Kennedy keep its bounty?”
“The engine room,” Roman said. “Rumor is, there’s a stash of pre-Catastrophe spoils there.”
“So if they took something from the Library, that’s where they’d keep it.”
“We’ll find out for sure.”
Navigating the big ship wasn’t as easy as she would have hoped. There were no signs or directions marked anywhere, just combinations of letters and numbers on the doors that meant little to her.
But even Jane’s limited time on Salvage had taught her that engines and the like were usually located on lower decks, so down they went, maneuvering through steep, narrow stairwells.
Even the exterior view of the Kennedy didn’t prepare her for the length of their descent. By the time they reached the bottom deck, Jane’s knees were aching, and she was sweating beneath her pack.
“Where to now?” she asked.
Roman had his head angled back. “I smell the engine grease. We can’t be far.” They continued on until Jane spied a telltale smudge of black on a bulkhead. More than a week of cleaning and scrubbing had attuned her eye to minor blemishes. Whoever had been assigned to clean here had likely knocked off early to join the festivities above.
They were in the elbow of a narrow corridor. Bodiless footsteps echoed overhead and nearby like ghosts. The few crew folk who had stopped them above had been easily plied with a bottle of Roman’s finest, but Jane didn’t expect they’d have any such luck down here.
And from the grim, focused expression on Roman’s face, she figured he was making the same calculation.
“Do you have a plan for getting in?”
She could tell from the firm set of his mouth and the thoughtful expression in his eyes that he did not.
“It’s a big place,” he finally said. “There’s got to be more than one way.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
They eased along the corridor, moving naturally but carefully. Jane led the way, knowing that she had an easier chance of ducking out of sight than the six foot-plus Roman. They made good progress until they came to a junction where the corridor opened up to a room of piping, catwalks, and bulky, boxy machinery. The ambient hum droned out most of the other noise, but Jane noticed a shadow on the walkway above.
She pointed, and Roman nodded.
They edged around a bank of bulbous equipment. It was a tight squeeze, especially for Roman, but the piping overhead shielded them from view. Jane stopped at the end of the row, where she could just see the guard’s shoes some forty feet away.
She was watching those shoes, waiting for them to move, when she felt Roman frantically tapping her shoulder. She turned.
He was pointing at the walkway behind him and gesturing for her to move forward. Then, she heard muffled footsteps and understood.
Someone was coming.
She crawled around the nearest machine and pressed herself against it, trying to stay far enough back that the guard above wouldn’t see her. But Roman needed to hide too, and the machinery wasn’t wide enough to cover them both. After a quick moment of silent negotiations and maneuvers, they settled with Roman squeezed against the equipment, his knees up, and Jane between them.
It was awkward, but the kind of awkward she wouldn’t have minded under other circumstances. She was thankful her back was to him so he couldn’t see her blush.
The second guard sauntered over and called up to the first. “Todo clear?”
“All quiet,” said the first.
The second scraped his shoe against the floor with a gritty crunch. “Been thinking about what Capitan said. Man’s got a point.”
“Ess,” agreed the first, but cautiously.
“Too many people, not enough Salvage. You conosse it can’t go forever.”
“Ess blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy to say what ess? It’s just an aviso. God bendicted us with this motor. You don’t think He destined us to use it?”
An uncomfortable silence followed, broken only by the sound of the second man’s shoes grinding and squeaking against the deck.
“The problem,” the first said, “ess that it’s never gonna function. What’s the plan then?”
“Who blasphemes now? It’ll function. Just gotta find the right stuff.”
&n
bsp; The first guard snorted. “Ee an ocean with waves of sweet.”
“You just think on whether you wanna sink or float.” The second man retreated back the way he’d come, dragging his feet along the deck.
There was movement on the catwalk, too. Jane peered out just enough to see the first guard’s heels as he watched the other go.
She scooted out of their hiding place and padded across the aisle toward the next bank of cover. There was a doorway just twenty feet away.
Roman followed close behind and gave her a nod once they were safely on the other side of the door. He looked uncharacteristically flustered, his throat bobbing and his neck red.
“What was that about?” Jane whispered. Not that she expected him to know, but she thought he might appreciate a neutral distraction.
He shrugged. “Hoping we’ll figure that out whenever we find this stash.”
“I guess we’ll know it when we find it,” Jane said.
“If we’re right, it should include old books.”
They made their way along. Even though the pipes, machines, and walkways were a jumble of crowded and incongruous shapes, they were almost all painted in fading shades of beige and gray, which made the occasional red pipe or yellow handle stand out all the more.
And when they reached the large red cylinder protruding from the wall, Jane was reasonably certain they’d found “it.” Whatever it was.
It appeared to be built deeper into the ship, budding through in just this one spot. Makeshift scaffolding had been erected around it, and organized on the deck and the open workspaces nearby were all kinds of common and arcane tools and books.
Lots of books.
“Do you recognize this?” Jane asked.
Roman shook his head.
She began paging through the books. They had titles like Neutron Physics and Nuclear Reactors. The pages were no more intelligible than the titles, and they were filled with images just as complex and indecipherable as the equipment around her.
“This is a pre-Catastrophe engine,” Roman said. “They’re trying to study it. Or repair it.” It was hard to tell what he thought of that.
Jane was still flipping through the books. Her hand stopped when she found one with very different imagery: a field of stars against the night sky. ESA was the title.
“Who passes aki?” called a voice from the other end of the room. One of the guards from before.
Jane spun and ducked behind a round metal tower. Roman had taken cover across the aisle from her.
“Heard you aki,” the man said. “Better if you come out now.”
Roman held his finger to his lips. Jane nodded.
Then she understood what he was about to do and shook her head. Hard.
But it was too late. He was stepping out into the aisle, his hands up. “You got me,” he said.
Jane stifled a curse.
“How’d you pass here? What are you doing?”
“Looking for the party. Someone told me I’d find a big one–” Roman grunted, and flesh hit flesh.
“You answer me in serio! Who sent?”
“No one,” Roman said.
“Lie! You sound like a Continental.”
Roman said nothing. Jane imagined there was little he could say.
“Shit. I conosse you. Your face.”
Jane’s mind buzzed with panic.
“We’ve never met,” Roman said.
“No, you’re him. The missing prince.”
Jane remembered the way people had stared at him on the galley boat. The whispers. She’d thought it had been his laugh that had drawn their attention, but no, it must have been his recently healed face. And whatever that meant to them.
“I’ve got one of those faces,” Roman said. It was a game attempt, but Jane could hear the strain in his voice, and besides, the other man already knew what he’d seen.
“Afavel!” the guard called. “Come quick!”
As footsteps clanged from the other room, Jane sought frantically for an escape. Or a place to hide. The only exit was back the way they’d come, and the equipment was wedged too tightly for her to hide. If the other man came searching, she could try to dodge around, but he’d flush her into view of the first guard if he made any real effort.
Besides, all she had at her disposal were tangled pipes, cylinders plugged with old gauges…
And red. Against the wall was a small red square with a wheel attached. A hatch.
It read “DUCT KEEL.”
The other guard trotted into the room and began a quick exchange with the first. Jane tucked her book under her arm and crawled to the hatch, keeping her head low. It came open with only the faintest squeak – she silently thanked Salvage’s devout maintenance schedule for that – and left her just room enough to crawl inside with her pack. No sense in leaving evidence that someone else had been here.
She closed the hatch with a guilty throb in her heart. She was abandoning Roman again, but there was nothing she could do for him. Not now, anyway.
She would figure something out. But she had to get clear first.
The voices faded behind the hatch, and she climbed down a ladder. It was pitch black, so she took the rungs carefully. When she was sure she had solid ground beneath her, she tucked the book into her pack, beneath the grog bottles she still carried. As much as she wanted to leave them behind, they just might be her ticket out if her and Roman’s descent into the Kennedy was any indication.
And if she managed to get out of this pit.
She crept forward, and the sound of her movements echoed down the narrow space. There was a distant light, and a thick pipe by her left hand. The good news and the bad news was that this crawlspace continued for a very long way. Long enough, she was sure, to get her beyond the engine room.
She tightened the straps of her pack and started crawling.
Chapter 17
Navigation
Malone’s initial investigation went as slowly as she would have expected. Few of the crew knew her, and none trusted her. Unfortunately, it all fit too well with what Geist had told her – to most of them, she was a savage, an untouchable.
Unfortunately, the (roughly) seven days remaining in their voyage were long when counted in hours sweeping corridors and wiping down bulkheads, but short for winning the trust of forty-two people.
Forty-one without Sharad.
She sorted through schedules and duty rotations, looking for anyone reporting absent for a shift (or anyone switching with someone else). She talked with Sharad’s shift mates and acquaintances, with the crew who had shared meals with him and whose cabins were placed near his. She asked about unusual behavior, close friendships, special enmities.
Nothing.
The most obvious suspects were the crew who had been off duty at the time of the murder, but that only narrowed her list by twelve. She performed a more thorough search of Sharad’s cabin, not expecting to find much.
The body had been removed, the bed stripped, and the walls cleaned of blood by the time Malone finally returned to the scene. There was no telling what else had been moved.
But as Malone poked around, she found something wedged under Sharad’s bunk. It was a small, narrow tab of metal, something she probably would have missed if the dead man’s belongings hadn’t already been cleared away. She picked it up, flipped it over, and read “GINTNER” on the other side.
It sounded like a title. Or a name. Not one Malone had heard on board, but that didn’t mean much.
Back in the corridor, Malone studied the door to Sharad’s cabin. She had to press her nose nearly to the metal, but she found it – a patch of scuffing at eye level. She glanced in either direction. When she was certain she was alone, she pressed the little nameplate to the door. It fit neatly in the middle of the scuffing, with a few stray scratches extending beyond the corners, where someone would have dug in with a prying tool.
Malone continued down the hall. For the first time, she noticed similar markings on all the c
abin doors – as if someone had meticulously removed all the nameplates.
The question was, why? And was the gintner the crew member who had originally had Sharad’s cabin, or perhaps someone who had visited Sharad before the man’s death?
Unfortunately, when she asked about the gintner, all she got were blank stares.
She learned little more about Sharad. He had been one of the younger, newer crew members. No one knew him as well as Malone would have hoped. Or no one wanted to talk to her about him. He had worked the night shift in the control compartment, he’d taken his meals alone, and he’d played cards with the others on his shift. Malone heard the same story from everyone she asked, almost word for word. It was a little too perfect.
And what was stranger still was that no one had reacted much to his death. Malone had come to expect a degree of stoicism from the Continentals, but this was extreme.
Lachesse noticed it, too.
They were standing on the observation gallery, three days after the murder, watching a sea like shattered glass and sipping diluted caffee. It wasn’t the same as tea, but it was better than nothing.
The Glasauge was midway through its morning shift, so it was just the two of them in the lounge. Most of the off-duty crew were either sleeping or getting ready to sleep. Malone hadn’t managed to do much of that since finding the body.
Lachesse was looking at her, an expression of patient forbearance on her painted face. Malone abruptly realized the woman had probably said something.
“Inspector, I can’t figure out if you’ve got a whole world of private conversations going on in your head or nothing at all.”
“Sorry.” Malone took a sip of her diluted caffee. It was a notch better than awful.
Lachesse rotated her cup in her fingers. A red crescent from her lips marked the rim, and it spun in a slow circle.
The moment demanded conversation. “It’s been too quiet,” Malone said. “No one’s talking about the murder. No one seems affected by it.”
The door opened behind them. Chernev swept in, bearing a fresh pot of caffee. Lachesse held her cup out and allowed the man to refill it, which he did with shaking hands. The stream was a watery brown, already weakened to Lachesse’s taste.