by M. D. Cooper
Sirens blared all around the room and sprinkler heads appeared in the ceiling. Lyssa clamped her hands over her ears, smearing pudding all over one side of her face, as she was assaulted by a combination of unbearable sound and filthy water.
The game froze. The sirens cut off as the everything went silent. Curtains of brown water hung from the sprinkler heads, droplets hanging in the air from where they had splashed off the lunch tables. Lyssa sat up, wiping her pudding-covered hand on her leg, and looked around the room.
Fiona was standing at the wall with a confused expression. Diane was standing beside her table. David looked at the smiling boy next to him and scowled as he seemed to realize the game was done.
Lyssa said, standing slowly. She wondered how long she could lie to them.
Lyssa looked at David. He seemed to be trying to hide among the frozen non-playable characters.
Diane frowned.
Lyssa shrugged. She waved at the room around them.
Fiona scoffed.
Lyssa said.
Fiona jerked her head from side-to-side, glaring at Lyssa one eye at a time.
Lyssa ruffled her feathers in a shrug.
Diane squawked.
Fiona spread her tail feathers and defecated on the cafeteria floor.
They both turned to glare at David, who was bobbing his head up and down.
David said, sounding pathetic. He looked at Lyssa.
Diane released a flurry of angry pigeon sounds and rushed at Lyssa, flapping her wings wildly. Lyssa stepped to the side, putting a frozen sprinkler fountain between her and the furious AI.
Fiona scoffed.
Fiona circled one side of the table Lyssa had put between her and the other birds. Diane gained control over herself after hitting the frozen water hard enough to break a wing.
Lyssa said.
Diane rotated an eye to glare at David.
Lyssa offered.
Fiona flapped her wings.
Lyssa laughed inwardly, doing her best to keep her bird-face confused and non-threatening. She wondered what it would take to get Fiona and Diane to turn on each other.
Diane opened and closed her beak.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
The flashing red icon in the holodisplay caught Cara’s attention immediately. She pointed, running across the command deck, and called for Fran.
“What is that?” she shouted. “What does that mean?”
Fran came in from the corridor. She had just stepped outside to grab food from the galley. She checked the status on the pilot’s console. “It’s your mom,” she said. “Her suit is down. I don’t have her vitals anymore.”
“She’s dead?” Cara asked, hating the words as she said them.
Fran shook her head. “That’s not what it means. It’s just that we can’t read her suits bio-feedback anymore. The suit could have taken damage.
“We need to call Dad, then.”
“We should wait, Cara. If we send a transmission now it could alert any number of ships, or even the Resolute Charity. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
Cara felt tears coming on. She suddenly felt helpless again. She felt betrayed, as if figuring out how to subvert Em’s signal had all been a distraction from where she should have really been focused. Her parents were going to die because she hadn’t been paying attention.
“Come here,” Fran said. She stepped toward Cara and pulled her into a hug.
Cara accepted Fran’s arms around her, squeezing her cheek against the rough utility harness crossing Fran’s chest.
“Don’t let yourself lose focus,” Fran said. “Focus on what we know. All we know for certain is that your mom’s suit is down. Since Harl’s is down, too, that means we need to be thinking about a way to get them back here without their power armor. They’re going to need EV suit
s or a shuttle. How can we help them with that?”
“I don’t know,” Cara said, squeezing tears that wouldn’t stop.
“Think, Cara. I’m thinking, too. Trust me.”
They had a shuttle but its AI couldn’t be trusted. At least that was what Lyssa had said. Since getting her parents back from the Clinic 46, they had used it to get down to the Cho and other than that it had been sitting in the cargo bay.
Cara let go of Fran and crossed her arms, staring at the holodisplay.
“What about the shuttle?” she asked. “We should run diagnostics on its AI and see if she’s really as damaged as Lyssa says. Or you could pilot the shuttle back to the Resolute Charity.”
Fran nodded. “I’m on board with checking out the shuttle but I don’t know if I should leave the ship. Fugia might be able to pilot a shuttle. She can help you check its AI.”
Cara nodded. “There’s something else I just thought of,” she said. “The signal. I could boost it off the relay station on Europa. If there’s anyone local that responds, they’re going to attack the Resolute Charity.”
“We think they might attack whatever the signal’s targeting. We don’t know that.”
“It’s another distraction for the other crew while we get them off the ship.”
An indicator flashed on Fran’s console. “Looks like the Resolute Charity is starting to move. They need to get off now. All right, do your thing with the signal and I’ll call Fugia to meet you down at the shuttle.”
Cara went back to her display and slipped on her headset. It would have been easier if Lyssa was there to navigate the administrative systems on the relay antenna, but she was able to access the public interface and search through the signals it was currently servicing. By default, it received incoming signals and boosted them enough to reach the Cho and Ganymede. There was a request process for other messages going out that required a ‘public service mission.’ Cara thought for a second then entered ‘Family preservation efforts,’ in the screen. She was slightly amazed when the system accepted her reason and allowed her to progress in the request process.
When she finally hit send on the power-boost, the service announced that her signal should now reach Mars and even Terra. Not that either of those places mattered. Even the Cho was technically too far away to do them any good. Her hope was that if the signal was related to pirate activity, boosting it would remind anyone in the immediate area there was an opportunity.
The signal had been boosted for less than a minute when a return ping crossed the relay. Cara stared at the response, which was a binary acknowledgment code, then smiled as an another one came in, and another. In a minute, she had to mute the alert because so many response were flooding the system. It seemed the signal had been picked up every gang in Europa local space.
“Somebody’s responding,” Cara said. She checked the location data in the carrier signal one more time just to be sure it was still correct. Now that the Resolute Charity was moving, she added an update function to the redirect from Em, as well as a few statements in plain text.
The puppy seemed to realize she was thinking about him and whined in Tim’s arms. “What’s the matter?” Tim asked solemnly. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?” He stood and set the puppy on the deck. “Come on, let’s go down to the garden.”
“Cara,” Fran said. “Fugia’s going to meet you at the hab airlock. She says she’s bringing her tools.”
“I think that signal boost we talked about is working. I’m getting too many responses to keep track of.” She gave Fran a guilty smile. “I added some info about the defenses being down. They’re going to think it’s the biggest opportunity for salvage in history.”
“I guess it all depends on how fast the Resolute Charity tries to leave. I’m leaving our parking orbit now, so I can ease our acceleration up to theirs.”
Cara frowned, considering what was going to happen as the Resolute Charity continued to accelerate. “Isn’t there going to be a point when we can’t keep up with them?”
“Yes,” Fran said. “That doesn’t mean your mom and dad won’t be able to get off the ship, it just means there’s a point where we won’t be able to reach them, and certainly not in a shuttle.”
As the scenario played out in Cara’s mind, she looked at Fran with wide eyes. “I need to hurry,” she said, and ran from the command deck to meet Fugia at the airlock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Lyssa’s report had vastly underestimated the number of Heartbridge crew that had managed to overcome the environmental system.
They’d encountered their first group of crew in EV suits in the surgery administrative area, trading weapons fire until one of the crew members managed to hit Brit with an x-ray beam at maximum power. Brit hadn’t even tried to avoid the blast but it had burned control systems inside her power armor, locking a leg in place. The crew members exploited the damaged suit with a flanking maneuver, massing their small arms fire on her helmet.
Smashing through an interior wall, Andy lay machine gun fire on the enemy position. His heart sank when he heard Brit gasping in pain.
The pain in her voice removed any concern Andy had for harming the lightly armed crew. He launched two grenades through the doorway where they were huddled and waited until the blast rolled back at him, carrying bits of yellow EV suit. A blast of powdery fog followed, as fire suppression systems kicked on.
He reached Brit where she was stuck against a wall with informational posters about the hospital’s triage process. One poster read: Your ability to pay will never keep you from Heartbridge Care.
Petral came up behind him, pistol at the ready, as he tore off his gloves and started searching among the exterior controls on Brit’s armor for a release mechanism. He found the series of levers and pulled the back plate of the armor away, finding Brit’s shipsuit scorched and her side and waist covered in radiation burns. She hung limp in the armor.
Andy pulled off his helmet but kept his armor on. He still had the personal air filters stuck in his nose.
The far corridor was quiet for now, though he expected more security forces at any moment. The fire suppression powder had subsided, which only meant someone had checked and deactivated the internal safety system.
“She’s got a pulse,” Petral said. “That’s good news. We need to get back to the surgery and get her into one of the pods.”
“You think there’s something closer?” Andy asked. “This is a triage area, isn’t it? They have to have something for people who drop off the deep end while they’re waiting.”
Andy switched to the Link to call Lyssa. Once he had explained the situation, he asked if she knew where they could find an autodoc.
Andy hated how weak the word “assist” sounded but knew it was their best option.
>
“I’ve got her,” she said. “You get your helmet and gloves back on and get ready to mash anybody who comes after us. Once we get her patched up, we need to figure out how we’re getting off this boat.”
Andy pulled his helmet back on, not bothering to pull out the personal air filters. The local schematics populated his HUD and he led the way back through the labyrinthine corridors to the closest surgery. Petral followed with Brit thrown over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Andy would have been impressed if he didn’t remember all the muscular augments the surgery had highlighted throughout Petral’s body.
When they laid Brit down in the bed, she moaned and blinked at the ceiling. Petral activated the automed system and the cocoon closed over Brit just as she seemed to realize where she was.
<‘Challenge’. That’s a nice way of putting it. Where did you learn to use words like that?>