Rows of soy beans and high-yielding wheat sprouted from a sea of brilliant white containers at the end of the tree-lined tunnel. In the next section white pillars as broad as David’s chest reached from floor to ceiling. Feathery leaf lettuce and greens in several varieties dotted the pillars’ smooth surfaces. Several hanging gardens with exposed roots brushed against Mari’s arm as she admired their bounty of edible and fruit-producing plants in vivid reds and purples.
An oasis of dwarf palms, heavy with dates, rounded out one end of the bay, reminding Mari of Dale’s conservatory, but too clean, too sterile. The only hint of imperfection was an array of white storage and mixing containers strewn along the wall behind the brown, shedding trunks, as though someone had been working with them then found something better to do.
The foliage crammed into this impressive space represented years of genetic science and research, tweaking and modification of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of species.
Resentment at Dale’s earlier comment about Mari’s genetic pollution burned at her. Society had no problem manipulating the genes of vegetation, but had lawful taboos about enhancing or changing animals and humans. Yet it was this same science, honed and fostered on the worldships so long ago, which aided in the beautification of the Upper Caste in the first place. Selective breeding was still gene manipulation no matter if you covered it with the euphemism of marriage.
“And defects are still defects.”
As if in response to her voice breaking the silence, the aeration system kicked on, spraying its automatic mist of nutrient-rich water over the roots and scaring her out of her skin. A good reminder that she wasn’t out of danger. For her plan to succeed, she needed to get to the bridge. In order for that to happen, she needed a big distraction—nothing was bigger than venting part of the ship.
The layout of this bay should be rudimentary, yet the condensers weren’t where she expected them to be. The only other place left was the area near the nutrient mixers, beyond a copse of dwarf evergreen and deciduous trees. But even someone with her limited experience in hydroponics design knew that placing the condensers too close to the mixers was a bad idea. They both ran hot and one could cause the other to overheat. This was either a poor design or a tactic to cut costs. Either way it made Mari’s job easier.
A purple glow emanating from the angled lower branches of an avocado tree caught her attention. The dim light came from some hot pink and white bromeliads clumped in the fork of the small tree. She’d only seen this species of bromeliad in vids from her botany classes. They were extremely rare, found only in the embargoed Archenzon rain forest on Tampa One. These were most likely contraband. It didn’t surprise Mari that Dale was into cultivating illegal plants—that infringement paled in comparison to human trafficking.
The aerators kicked off, leaving behind the tinkling drips from exposed roots as the leftover liquid was funneled into a reclamation filter. The sound helped to soothe her as she surveyed the bank of condensers and mixers.
She accessed the sensors for the air filtration system, which was hooked directly into the condensers.
All she had to do was crank up the oxygen, then override the vacuum sensor, allowing the vents to unseal. They were made for keeping the CO2 levels balanced. She calculated in her head what percentage would make this system go critical. It wasn’t a uniform amount. It all depended upon the size of the space, what kind and how many plants and trees were contained within the bay, and how strong the CO2 scrubbers were.
The easiest and fastest way to emergency ventilate on-planet was by opening the vents to the outside. It was never supposed to happen in space due to the catastrophic consequences, but the sensors were ridiculously easy to override.
With the vacuum of empty, endless space on the other side of that wall, one little broken seal was all she needed—that would be enough to start the venting process and draw all attention to the hydroponics bay. Of course, she needed to get out of the bay first before the compartment barricade came crashing down to keep the rest of the ship safe from this damaged section. She also needed to do all of this without running into anyone.
She worked frantically on the vent override, opting to do it manually by disrupting the vacuum signal instead of wasting time with codes. Sean was the code master—Mari only knew the physical components from the design. The previous botanist cheated Dale by skipping redundancy measures and using cheap parts.
Though the vent controls were one of the most important features of any hydroponics bay, it was the one which failed most often, due to lack of attention to detail. Designers, techs, and laborers who worked cheap and fast were usually to blame for greenshift failures.
When she finally wiggled the vacuum sensor out of its nest of wires, she expected to be compensated with alarms and flashing emergency lights, but nothing changed. The oxygen hadn’t reached critical levels yet. Good. She needed the extra time to get out.
A metal panel slid up on the entry door back to her left, revealing a window looking out into the commonway. Mari scampered behind a series of staked cacao plants.
She could make out Carlos’ blood-streaked scalp just outside. His head was bent down as he, no doubt, worked to rewire her lockout. He must have triggered the window shade by accident. She needed to figure out how to evade Carlos once he made it through that door. Hopefully he hadn’t seen her yet.
She watched an O2 meter. By her calculations, once it hit 30%, it would open and begin to vent. Right now it lingered at 25.5%. She adjusted one of the CO2 scrubbers.
25.75%. 26%. It climbed faster now. 26.5%. Maybe too fast.
She crawled back into the rows of herbs so she could have a clear shot for the door as soon as Carlos popped inside. If he couldn’t get the door open, she’d have to open it from this side and try to charge past him, otherwise she’d start to feel the effects of hypoxia and hyperventilate. Then she’d die. Right before she got sucked out into space. Or at least she hoped it would be in that order.
She she felt a little light-headed. A bleating alarm made her whole body jump. The oxygen had just gone critical. She had to get out…now.
TWENTY-THREE
They were so close, and that’s what made waiting unbearable.
David stared into space, following the faint light of a craft passing tens of thousands of miles away from them and heading into the atmosphere of Tampa Deux. He was even further away from Mari at this point and the thought burned into his brain. David felt powerless.
He had never been good at relinquishing power without a fight, and that wasn’t always a good thing. They’d tried to beat it out of him in the fleet with the lash, but that only worked to make him shrewder in the way he vied to keep control, not just of his emotions, but of the state of affairs. With forty-five years of experience as a soldier and most of those as an officer, he had learned how to finesse control, giving a little when he could, taking it forcefully when necessary, like when Lyra had mutinied on the Argo Protector.
“This isn’t personal, Captain Anlow.”
That was the comment which had made him snap. It summed up how Lyra viewed their entire relationship—cold, impersonal, lost among titles and positions. It had also been the fuel he needed to physically wrestle control away from her, ending her mutiny with a swift reversal of a cender. Then he left her and her cohorts on a salt plain in an underpopulated area of Tampa One to wait for the prison ship.
She’d accused him of abandoning them to die, but mutineers were never allowed to stay on-ship just in case they had allies still willing to take up the cause. David had followed protocol to the letter because he only wanted to see Lyra suffer. Part of him regretted it now, but what was done was done.
At least he had been able to act. This situation was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sitting in a nav chair on a defunct pleasure cruiser while the woman he cared about suffered any number of horrors was almost enough to put him over the edge. That had been apparent in the incident with Ward.
“We should catch up to them in about ninety minutes,” Sean said.
“Ninety minutes is a long time,” David said.
Sean didn’t say anything.
The mood plummeted further into its own somberness.
Soli spoke up. “Mari’s tougher than either of you believe. Don’t let the clothes and verbosity fool you. She’s got a good brain and more determination than anyone I’ve ever met. So don’t make this sound like it’s the end.” Soli’s voice broke.
“You’re right,” Sean said. “If this were Kenon we were trying to rescue, they’d have already given him back because of all the whining.”
David looked at Sean. “Would we have really tried to rescue Kenon?”
Before Sean could offer a comment, the transmitter beeped with an incoming message from Ben.
“Go ahead,” David said.
“If they stay on this same trajectory.” Ben paused as if to emphasize that was a big if.” We have it narrowed down to a dozen or so public docks that handle a ship that size. Should they use a ship-to-land transport, that dozen multiplies tenfold.”
“Can you intercept them before they break atmosphere?” David already knew the answer, but needed to ask.
“Not without due cause. And, unfortunately—”
“I got it,” David said, knowing his word or Sean’s or even Soli’s wasn’t enough in the face of evidence that Dale and Mari had never met this morning.
“Sorry, bro. I’ll be in touch as they get closer to their destination.”
David wanted to reassure Ben, but that sounded too much like giving up, and Soli’s little speech from earlier had managed to inspire a faint amount of hope. David would guard that hope for Mari.
TWENTY-FOUR
Carlos rushed into the hydroponics bay and stood in the entry, disoriented by the deafening alarm. He scanned the area. Mari kept her head down, but circled around and peeked through the leaves of a cacao tree. She tensed her muscles, ready to bolt for the open door. Carlos honed in on his target and charged.
Mari ran for the door as Carlos headed in the opposite direction for the open panel on the condenser housing. She hit the emergency lock from the inside on her way out so it would seal behind her. When she saw the butchered controls on the outside, she realized that Carlos wouldn’t be able to unseal the door again.
The alarm screamed through the commonway. Mari chanced a look back through the window. Carlos snapped off a length of pipe from the nutrient feeder and smashed it against the window repeatedly, barely scratching its high tension plastic surface.
His face showed signs of bloating and splotchiness as hypoxia set in, but that would be the least of his worries soon. A crash wall came snapping down in front of the door just as Carlos’ body flew back toward the vents. She couldn’t hear him over the alarms, but she imagined him screaming as the vacuum of space sucked him inside out trying to void the small vent holes.
She nearly vomited at the thought.
Feet pounding toward her shoved Carlos’ horrific death to the back of her mind. She could consider what she’d done later. Right now she needed to get to the bridge.
She followed the pipes from earlier around the corner opposite the approaching crew and felt the increasing heat from oven exhaust. Thumbing open the first door she came to, she expected to enter the kitchen. Only the scant emergency lighting showed her this was the mess hall. She ignored the piles of dishes and silverware and focused on the two things she could use, both mounted to the corrugated metal wall. The portable fire extinguisher came out of its bracket easily enough, but she had to use it to free the map outlining fire exits and escape pod routes from its plastic frame.
According to the layout, the Thrall‘s bridge was on this level, and at the very end of this commonway. It was a long stretch with nowhere to hide, but there was nowhere else to go anyway. She stuffed the map into her bra, held the extinguisher to her chest, peeked out the door, and ran.
Footfalls and murmurs reached her ears from a juncture with another commonway up ahead. She readied the fire extinguisher to use as a weapon and approached the juncture with cautious steps. The rattling of silverware slapping onto the mess hall floor behind her stopped her in her tracks. She jammed her back against the wall. With her attention pulled in two directions, she suddenly felt paralyzed. Her heart raced and her palms started to sweat. Realizing she was slipping into a panic, she forced herself off the wall and sprinted past the juncture.
When no hands reached out to snag her off her feet, she felt a bit triumphant and kept moving down the long commonway. The overhead lights strobed with her pace, emphasizing the coldness of the ship within the constant play of sallow light and its infinite shadows. By the time she reached the bridge door, she was working on automatic.
“Get this right,” she whispered to herself.
She slid her thumb over the door sensor. If the nav leader inside didn’t respond, she’d have to hot-wire this lock, too. That could eat up time she didn’t have to spare. She was about to put the fire extinguisher on the floor when the door slid open. Her surprise matched the nav leader’s as they looked at one another through the entryway. Then she pounced, beaning the man over the head with the extinguisher.
Mari pulled the unconscious pilot into the commonway and scampered over him and onto the bridge, locking him out and destroying the controls to keep anyone who might be following her at bay. Though the Thrall 7 was huge compared to the Bard, the bridge was practically the same size. The floor wasn’t the rich black torbernite that bedecked the pleasure cruiser, however, just more of the same charcoal colored rubber. And there was no crash couch, only several wall units for about five members of the crew to use if it came down to it.
Since she planned to take over this ship, it would come down to it, but she’d be the only one in here. Two nav chairs waited in front of a wrap-around viewscreen that put the Bard‘s small cockpit window to shame. She chose one of the chairs and called up an orb of holo-controls before she had even finished strapping in. The fraying fabric of the chair stank of sweat and body odor, not like the clean scent of the Bard‘s plush leather and the leftover hint of David’s green tea smell.
As soon as she put communications online, she punched in a code to transmit to the Bard. A message scrawled through a section of the holo-controls telling her that video messaging was unavailable. She didn’t have time to fix that little bug right now.
“This is Thrall 7 calling Bard.” Though she didn’t feel calm, she forced a slow clarity into her voice. “David, Sean, please someone tell me you’re listening.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Another transmission signal cut through the silence on the bridge. David opened the comm link, hoping Ben had narrowed down their variables.
“This is Thrall 7 calling Bard. David, Sean, please—”
David jammed open the comm before Mari finished her sentence. “Mari, it’s David. Are you okay? I can’t get any vid—”
She talked over him. “David. I’m so happy to hear your voice. Dale is trying to sell me.” Her voice sounded like she held back tears.
“Mari, are you okay?” David tried to interject, but the words rushed out of her mouth so fast he could barely understand them.
“Some guy on Sinder Isle wants to cut my eyes out. So I destroyed the camera and got out of that horrible room. Carlos is dead, but not because of the battery. I couldn’t help it. He destroyed the lock controls. I didn’t know, David. I swear I didn’t know.”
Soli gasped, and David’s heart pounded as he ignored the fear in Mari’s voice so he could piece together her situation.
“Mari.” He spoke calmly, as though they were sitting across from one another at dinner, like that night at the Rose of Sharon.
As she kept talking about becoming lost in the commonways, he tried again. “Mari.”
She quieted.
“Are you alone on the bridge right now?” he asked.
“Yes. I knocked out the nav leader.”
“Did you lock yourself in?” Sean asked.
“Yes.”
“Good,” David said. “Now why are there alarms going off in the background?”
“Maybe because I vented the hydroponics bay. But I didn’t have a choice.” The panic swam in her voice again.
Sean swore under his breath.
Like David, he was probably imagining every horrific scenario. “It’s okay, Mari. Is the ship still venting atmosphere?”
“No, the barrier sealed off that compartment.”
Something was amiss. “The alarms should have cut out by now if the danger were contained. Look at your atmo readings for the entire ship. Is there another breach somewhere?”
“Let me see…no, they’re reporting every place else as secure.”
He was about to insist about the alarms, when Mari must have caught on.
“Wait. The alarms haven’t stopped because I had to blow the failsafe on the condensers in the hydroponics bay. It’s just the result of my bad rewiring.”
He shot a look at Sean to see if that could be a real possibility. When Sean gave him a response somewhere between a nod and a shrug, David felt placated enough to return to his original question. “How about you? Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer right away.
David suspected what that hesitation meant. And he knew she was keeping the truth from him when she answered, “I’m okay.”
The thought of Dale or Carlos or any man raising his hand to Mari made David’s blood boil. “Where is Dale now?”
“Probably headed here to the bridge.”
“He can override the lock,” Sean said.
Though he looked at David when he spoke, Mari responded.
“He can’t. I destroyed the lock panel on this side. That should do it, right?”
“Probably,” Sean said.
There were too many probablys in this whole scenario for David. He needed some concrete action. “Do you have full control of navigation, Mari?”
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