Stasis (The Ascendants Book 2)

by V. M. Law

  That man was a giant, too.

  He crossed the catwalk, looking down once into the chasm below, the empty vacuum that the engine was suspended in, and wondered how far down the ship went, how many missing pens and pocket junk had accumulated in those dark corners of the vessel.

  The static was greater now, the closer he drew to the core. Its blue light washed over him and bade him cover his eyes as he staggered forward. The sound rocked him. He heard nothing else, and thought that the echoes of the engine’s pounding would stamp itself forever in his mind. He would never forget it.

  When he reached the other side of the catwalk, he pulled the latch that led into the machine’s components, a latch that had been closed since the monstrosity’s assemblage during the war. Grime stuck to its hinges and dripped on his forehead as he squeezed his body into the gap and pushed further in, sheltering the bomb with his hunched shoulders. He stumbled blindly, and more than once, felt the pit of his stomach turn over as his feet stuck the outcropping pipes and mechanisms in the dark. Once, he felt sure the bomb would explode, and waited for fifteen seconds before continuing his journey.

  Hardmason told him the bomb would need to be placed deep into the core for it to disturb the reactors greatly enough to damage the ship’s propulsion. You will know, he had said. He didn’t see Jessup’s scowl of disdain, as he had his back turned at the time.

  Far enough, he thought.

  He had reached a junction; the passageway he shimmied through came to a stop and on either side of him, an alcove jutted into the machinery, just big enough for a man to force his body into. Tubes of steam and heated water rattled and the vibration of the working engine made him forget what it felt like to be completely still. He figured himself to be no more than a few meters from the center of the core, the reactors, the energy uptake.

  The vitals.

  He fastened the bomb in his arms to the pipes, and turned to exit the engine before the entire thing collapsed on him, or gained sentience and chewed him up like a piece of meat. The beeping of the device followed him the entire way, impossibly far, considering the volume with which the engine pounded in his eardrums.

  Later that night he rested his head on his pillow with the incessant beeping of the bomb inside the engine mechanisms echoing in his ears.

  Chapter 22

  The Vulcan approached the location of the beacon’s origin point, and, on the bridge, the remaining crewmembers lamented their fates with the crazy, solitary man who refused to mingle with them or share information. Caspar had become something of a ghost, in the hours leading up to the approach of the beacon. He stayed in the captain’s quarters, which some down below thought presumptuous, and even Sasha had to wonder about why he took his meals in solace.

  Now, as he watched the pinging radar beacon in the forefront of the ship’s detection systems, he burst forth from the captain’s room and shouted from the veranda to the group below. “We have reached the beacon. Our ordeal is almost out.”

  He thought he heard them muttering below and didn’t care. He needed only to activate the tractor beam, and their fates would be decided when Hardmason arrived. He thought about his Ascendancy contact. He hadn’t heard from the Althaea in a while, and despite the orders for radio silence, he grew wary of the extended period of time that had passed since that communication. What if they had been intercepted, the men of the Althaea? He had used all of the Vulcan’s fuel getting this far out of the solar system, where the sun blazing at the center seemed smaller than a pebble on a dirt road. If Hardmason couldn’t get to him, they would be adrift, left to the mercy of whoever might find them.

  Left to the mercy of Eugene Farrow.

  Or the Ides.

  He shuddered.

  “Anton,” he shouted. “Activate the tractor beam terminal and stand by.”

  The man grunted something, a curse below his breath, no doubt, but he shuffled over the terminal beside him, flipping it on and bathing the quiet, dark bridge in its light. The screen jumped to life, dilated, focused on the object floating within its range, and the computer’s voice boomed through the address system, “One object in range, one pace distant.”

  “One pace?” Sasha cried. “That’s over a hundred thousand miles. Are you close enough?”

  Caspar Faulk rolled up his sleeves and approached the terminal with a martial step that he used to exude authority, to seem qualified. Was he close enough? He didn’t know. But Jakob Hardmason would arrive shortly, with Eugene Farrow on his heels, and Faulk did not want to find out what would happen if the pod wasn’t secure before the Althaea docked.

  He grabbed the controls. Tunnel vision. Nothing in his mind except the control panel in his left hand and the target superimposed on the screen, hovering in circular orbits around the speck of light that represented Kasey Lee’s escape pod. He ran through the nightmare scenarios in his mind. The pod could be a trap, a bomb. He could have misread the identification code. Maybe he would be dragging an Ides landing pod into the hangar, and would flood the sequestered crew with a fresh set of deadly grasshoppers.

  Block it all out.

  He took a deep breath, and as the crosshairs overlapped the blinking light of the pod’s mechanisms—indiscernible to the naked eye, but blazing bright on the screen’s defined readouts—he pulled the trigger and felt the massive outburst of energy that surged forth from the tractor gun, mounted on the outer crust of the Vulcan and pivoting as he maneuvered the controls.

  His forearms ached. The veins there popped out and he felt his pulse slamming against the side of his temples and a bead of sweat trickled from his hairline to the angle of his jaw, before falling with a minuscule splash onto the burning surface of his arm. Everything came to him with utter clarity, with pinpoint precision. Every sensation, every vibration, from the draft of cold air dousing his neck to the muttering of the disgruntled survivors.

  A streak of green light blasted from the tractor gun’s cannon muzzle, fingerlike and tenuous in the impenetrable blackness of the solar system. A jolt and a kick to his arms, and the controls bucked in the palm of his hand.

  “Object latched,” came the voice, and the cheers of the crew—even Anton and Patrick—echoed to the vaulted ceiling of the bridge.

  “We’re ready to pull her in.” He exhaled and issued the command to reel in the escape pod. As the command went out, relayed and transferred and converted into electrical signals that were picked up by the tractor beam’s turret, the beam of light that culminated in a period of light with the escape pod of Kasey Lee shrouded in it began to pulse. A loud groan ripped through the bridge, the sound of energy expenditure and massive, rolling gears.

  “The system is almost overloaded, Caspar,” Anton shouted, his eyes fixed on the fuel intake monitors. “You’re going to blow a line!”

  He paid no attention and kept his attention riveted on the tractor beam’s digital display. Keep pulling. He felt his control over the implement wavering. His arms felt like knives protruding from his muscles and the burn spread itself into his shoulders and up to his neck, until he had to grit his teeth to avoid screaming with the pain of exertion that accompanied such a vast expenditure of force and fuel.

  “Object approaching. Point three paces.”

  “You’re almost there, Caspar!”

  Was that Sasha’s voice? He couldn’t tell anymore. Their cries all blended together in his mind as he focused all of his attention on the task before him. Everything else is a distraction, he told himself, though he felt her stare burning into him.

  “Point one paces,” came the voice after a few more minutes, but the tension in the room had grown so intense that Caspar felt as if he aged a year between that statement and the computer’s last distance announcement.

  How much longer?

  His arms wanted to give out and his clenched fists, closed lips, could no longer contain the force of the scream that sought to escape his lips. He bellowed with his head back and screamed until his lungs were out of air and he fel
l to the floor.

  “Object secured. Which bay would you like to dock in?”

  He tried to voice his answer, but had no energy left with which to fill his lungs. “Exec—”

  But he couldn’t finish the word. Darkness swirled in the corners of his gaze, a murky brown water, like a muddy riverbank disturbed by tromping feet. He fought against, but he couldn’t hold back the wall of darkness that crept up on him, engulfing him and burying him until not even the sounds of their worried voices came through.

  The last word that came through the haze of unconsciousness was the name of the bay, executive, spoken by Sasha. Caspar Faulk, upon hearing it, fell into the blackness knowing that, if nothing else, he had gotten the pod into the ship. Hardmason would find it, or not, and it wouldn’t matter, because the sounds faded out and left Caspar alone in the darkness.

  Chapter 23

  He came to, and the first thing he registered was Sasha’s hand cupped against the back of his head. Then came the brutal awareness of the floor’s cold steel paneling on the small of his back, the smarting pain where he had hit his head, and the smell of copper that reached his nose and made him wince.

  “What?”

  But Sasha stopped him with a terse command. She monitored his vitals, and her eyes were far off as she went through a mental checklist in her mind. “What?” he repeated, though again, he couldn’t find the words to end his question.

  From faraway—Earth, even—he heard the brutal cry of an angry animal. “It’s in the bay! He did it!” and though Caspar Faulk did not know what the man spoke of or what he observed entering the bay, he was vaguely aware that he was the subject of the statement. The cheers came for him. They trusted him, perhaps. Thoughts and impressions crashed through his brain until the proper memories dislodged themselves and he put together the pieces of his previous moments. The story, what happened, what needed to be done, it all came back in one instant, so that he felt compelled to jump to his feet with exasperation and demand to see the security monitors for the tractor beam’s entrance bay.

  Sasha tried to stop him, to bid him calm down and rest, but he couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t get the thought of Kasey being devoured in her pod and Hardmason arriving to find her ragged corpse strewn about the hangar bay. “How long was I under for?” he asked, masking the pointed importance of his question by rubbing his head and adopting a curious, dazed tone common to those who have suffered head injuries.

  “A long time.”

  “Ages, it seemed.”

  “Three minute and twelve seconds. I counted.” The last came from Anton, who had his head angled down at the floor and now looked up at Caspar. “You had me worried for a moment, there.”

  Caspar took a deep breath. He searched for his SatCom, fearing that one of the crew may have snatched it while he slipped into unconsciousness. An exhalation of relief as his fingers traced the slim square object in the front pocket his pants.

  He needed to separate himself from these people. Needed a moment.

  They all needed to clear a path to the executive docking bays.

  How will they react when they are faced with the reality of their world? The lies of the Council written incarnate on the curves of her frozen body.?

  He didn’t know. He would be ready for the worst.

  “I need space,” he said. “To breathe.”

  They backed away and he doubled over, placing his hands on his knees and taking deep, relieving breaths of oxygen and holding each one in his lungs for a moment as he considered what to do next. The bays should be safe, but he couldn’t be positive the Ides hadn’t breached the security features.

  He didn’t even know if he or Kasey would be safe around the survivors, and wondered if it weren’t best for him to just wait for his contacts.

  But Eugene could show.

  “We need to get to the hangars, people. The hangars!”

  The others did not share his enthusiasm. They exchanged eager, weary looks of fear that radiated from their expressions and stuck in Caspar’s nose like warm milk. He would go only. Should go alone.

  The thought of nine sets of boots stomping down the hall, however delicately, when Ides may be sleeping around any corner? The thought brought ghastly images to his head and he blinked to focus his mind on other notions.

  “We need to arm ourselves,” Sasha said. “Stabbing tools are good, if we can’t find projectiles.”

  The others quickly nodded, though Caspar raised his voice in protest, saying that he would journey alone. “It’s safer,” he pleaded, but they wouldn’t listen.

  “We don’t want you to get all the spoils,” Anton said, the traces of a smile somehow making his vacant eyes seem even more far away. “Wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Isn’t there a weapons cache in here somewhere?” Sasha asked. “We’re going to need something.”

  “Really,” Caspar said, “this isn’t necessary. You guys should stay here; it’s safe.” But he knew by the look in Sasha’s eyes that they would not have it. That he fought an impossible battle of wills and would not be victorious. He gave up. “We have non lethals in the captain’s war room. For mutinies.”

  He hung his head as he let the last words fall from his lips, expecting derision that never came, judgments that weren’t made.

  “We need them. I’m not going anywhere without something in my hands.” This was Patrick, who seemed to always follow Anton’s lead and never spoke up in favor or against something, unless his leader had made his own opinion clear beforehand. When Caspar Faulk surveyed the eight survivors, the eight crew members seemingly under his command, he saw eight sets of inquiring eyes staring back at him, pleading with him in a silent way, piercing through him with lingering distrust, or blind faith.

  “Well, I suppose we should prepare for some fighting.” He hung his head, his stomach revolting against his tongue and his brain regretting the words even before they left his mouth. What had he started? They should’ve all held tight and waited for the Ascendancy, but he felt the compulsion to move, the innate awareness of lurking danger, when he came back into his conscious mind, that now, upon standing and positioning himself in relation to the events unfolding around him, he believed were only the echoes of a terrible dream gnawing at his heart in his unconscious dream world. Like déjà vu, or night terrors that lingered into morning. In the light of waking life, he couldn’t remember what had excited him so intensely nor why he jumped with his feet with an urgent desire to make it to the bay that Kasey’s pod had escaped in.

  ***

  They looked foolish, was his first impression of the nine soldiers, dressed up in ill-fitting armor with weaponry incapable of killing even a human. Only Caspar held a powerful tool, the pistol he had smuggled from Cromwell’s personal belongings. A pistol, for insurance.

  Because he didn’t know, as they prepared for battle with the Ides, if any of the others knew what awaited them in the executive level docking bays, nor where their allegiances lied. To face the brutality of a worldwide lie made into flesh, to face the years of denial that had followed what became known to the public as the “Neptune Incident,” could drive a man mad. Caspar didn’t know what would happen when they set their eyes upon the pod, and he cradled the pistol beneath his armor to ensure that the situation did not stray too far from what he and Hardmason could handle.

  They made a formation before the door and Caspar stood at its head, with his fingers delicately resting upon the button that would open the sliding doors and reveal whatever waited behind. “Are you ready?” he called out, and waited for a response.

  In order, all eight responses came. Ready.

  Caspar began a countdown in his head, his fingers twitching as they rested.

  Three.

  The Ides waited on the other side.

  Two.

  Eugene Farrow, with an assault rifle trained on his forehead.

  One.

  And he hit the button, his eyes squeezed shut despite his every instinctual callin
g to keep them taped open, if he needed to. The hydraulic swooshing of air being pushed from one tube to another. The pressure mounting, reaching a breaking point and hissing with a visible cloud of warm steam as the titanium door slid back in its frame and receded into the wall.

  He opened his eyes, expecting to the see the ropes of drool hanging from the ceiling, the slime of Ides progress wrought on the sleek interior of the bridge’s access hallways, but saw only emptiness and the dim lighting of the emergency bulbs—some of which flickered like pulsars in the night—and the door all the way at the other end, a tiny silver square highlighted against the whiteness of the floors, ceiling, walls.

  They all screamed and charged forward into the emptiness, and when they came upon the fresh air of the hallway, they stopped their warriors’ dash and stood around in a confused pack. Caspar Faulk settled down, excited from the anticipation of bloodshed and relieved now that the anticipation had passed unfulfilled, but still trembling nonetheless.

  “Quiet,” he said in a low whisper, only just loud enough for the group around him to hear. “Walk gently. Don’t make a sound. They feel the vibration of your feet.”

  He walked toward the end of the hall, hanging in the distance. The docking bay would be at the other end, and they would need to get there as quickly and quietly as possible. The Ides were mostly sleeping, deep in their hibernation of sated beasts, though he couldn’t be sure that one lingering specimen didn’t wander the halls, searching for enough food to achieve its homeostatic slumber.

  One screech from one grasshopper would bring the horde.

  As they drew closer to the end of the hall, where the entrance to the loading bays for the executive deck bars and eateries awaited, he felt the pull of the escape pod quickening his pace. His feet produced muffled footfalls and he knew that any louder, and he would risk all of their lives.