by Mel Keegan
“There’s the event that chewed it up,” Marin was saying. “If the AI is asking for hazmat, medical and tech support, they’re carrying a lot of damage. Have they identified yet – is it a Fleet ship or a Freespacer crew?”
“Not Fleet,” Vaurien told him in an odd tone, perplexed, terse, anxious. “Freespacer? Oh, yes.”
“Do we know them?” Marin demanded, clearly expecting the worst. “Mark!”
The Resalq looked up from the tank with wide gold eyes in which the instrument lights danced with an unholy glitter. “It’s Lai’a,” he said simply.
The bald statement seemed to galvanize Vaurien. He clapped his hands sharply and barked into the loop. “Hazmat, standby. Tully, bring the engines online and give me full Aragos. Bill, are you listening?”
Grant was there at once. “The Infirmary’s powering up, boss. I’ll get a team together, and as soon as you know what you’re going to throw at me, for chrissakes give me some early warning.”
“I’ll get you as much lead time as I can,” Vaurien promised. “Tully?”
“We’re up and running,” Ingersol called into the loop. “What the hell goes on, Richard? If I just heard Mark right –”
“You did,” Vaurien told him. “Get number three tech gang into armor, and standby a squad of drones. She’s coming in hotter than hell.”
“How?” Ingersol demanded.
Now, Vaurien looked up through the shimmer of the navtank at Mark Sherratt, but if he was hoping for answers, he was disappointed. Mark’s big shoulders lifted in an eloquent shrug. “I don’t know yet,” he said with brutal honesty. “Ask me in an hour.”
Chapter Sixteen
Every hazmat sensor was alive, and Etienne began to issue warnings before Lai’a was within a hundred kilometers. Arago screens were overlapped to hold out the worst of the radiotoxic blizzard, but the old Intrepid was so sizzling, only expendable drones were going to get anywhere near it.
The Resalq AI at its heart brought it to a full stop ten thousand meters from the Wastrel, while Ingersol wrangled his tech gang and the twenty battered, refurbished drones which would do the actual work. Jazinsky hovered over a workstation, trying to configure the sensors to peer through the storm of interference and see into the guts of the ship.
Minutes passed in which she demonstrated an astonishing grasp of the profanities of four languages, before she stepped back from the threedee and routed the data to the two-meter navtank display. Travers had been standing behind her, watching the data gradually clean up to the point where it became sensible. He switched his attention to the navtank as it illuminated with a false-color graphic of the Intrepid.
“Lai’a took something aboard,” Jazinsky was saying. “It caught something in interlaced Arago fields and shunted it into number two hold, the only hold big enough to hold an object like a mid-size ship.”
“And is it a vessel?” Vaurien peered into the display, trying to make out details in the weird red, orange and yellow image.
“It’s a ship,” Mark mused, “but the hull doesn’t match anything Etienne or Joss recognizes. I just ran the whole archive, looking for a match, but … it’s odd. Parts of this thing are familiar, parts are simply bizarre.”
“Bizarre?” Marin echoed. “How bizarre?”
“Old,” Mark said slowly. “Obsolete. Even alien.” He shook his head, pointing out the stern quarter, where a module rode high above the low, flat belly of the peculiar ship. “This section doesn’t seem to belong to the rest of it at all, and as for the body? It looks like two, maybe three ships nested together.”
“And you’re right,” Jazinsky muttered, “parts of it do look familiar. Too familiar, in fact. Damnit, Richard, look at this.”
“Look at what?” Vaurien slid in beside her.
She was running records, rummaging in the archives, looking for what, Travers could not begin to guess. He lifted a brow at Marin, and listened to Mark instead.
“Lai’a, the interference from your hull contamination is so great, the datastream is breaking up,” he was saying, slowly and loudly to get over the difficult comm. “We’ll need a physical data transfer, until you’re cleaned up.”
Its voice remained surreally calm, punctuated by continual crackles, pops and an intermittent hiss of white-noise. “I am ejecting a pod. Beware, Doctor. The pod itself is a radiation hazard.”
“I’m tracking it,” Mark assured the AI. “Hazmat drones will retrieve it … in the meantime, Lai’a, I’ll need a verbal brief. Give me your chronometer readings. I want to synchronize systems with you.”
“Launch plus 46:27:32,” Lai’a said calmly.
Mark’s head came up sharply. “Repeat that, please.”
“Now 46:27:44,” Lai’a told him.
“Forty-six hours?” Marin whispered. His eyes had flicked to the Wastrel’s own master chronometer, before he looked unblinkingly at Travers.
“You’ve been in Elarne for 46 hours?” Mark’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. Travers waited, watched him take a long, deep breath, hold it and exhale it slowly.
“I was inside Elarne until launch plus 44:32:53,” Lai’a corrected. “The exit point was a Class Six event twenty light minutes from here. I returned to Alshie’nya via a slingshot around Naiobe to avoid the necessity for a micro-second e-space jump, since my hull contamination makes fine navigation in normal space uncertain. Sensors are functional, but the interference is hazardous.”
“So I see.” Mark’s tonguetip flicked over his lips. “Lai’a, you took a vessel aboard.”
“I answered a distress beacon, Doctor,” Lai’a informed him. “I could not do otherwise. The vessel was broadcasting on legitimate Merchant Astra bands, with three survivors aboard.”
“Survivors of what?” Vaurien asked sharply.
“Of an event, or events, within Elarne,” Lai’a said in the same composed tone. “I have no information about their situation, but according to sensors in number two hold, three life forms continue to survive in the hull I took aboard. Recommend retrieval and treatment, earliest possible.”
Jazinsky was still intent on the screens, and Travers’s eyes had begun to skim the same data. “Am I reading this right?” he wondered. “I’m only seeing one life sign. Are you sure there are three, Lai’a?”
“Two survivors are in rudimentary cryogen tanks,” Lai’a reported. “The third is injured and only intermittently coherent. Recommend swift retrieval before life is extinguished.”
“Human?” Marin leaned closer to the navtank, the better to see the display, where structures inside the Intrepid were being peeled away, layer by layer, as reliable data accumulated. “Barb, can you tell if the survivor is human?”
“As opposed to what?” Vaurien said softly. “You mean, you’re wondering if Lai’a might have brought back one of them?”
A Zunshu? Travers’s heart gave a peculiar skip, but Jazinsky was already saying, “Relax, it’s human. I thought for a moment it might be Resalq, but the heartbeat and body temp are wrong. The two in the tanks, though … I have no idea. And as for the tanks – Richard, look at this. When’s the last time you saw cryotanks like these?”
With a terrible fascination, Travers joined Vaurien at the edge of the display, trying to pick details out of the mess of false color. Vaurien had more experience with such images – they were common in the salvage trade – and he was making negative noises.
“Never,” he said reluctantly. “At least, not outside of a colonial history museum.”
“Like parts of the rest of that thing that calls itself a ship,” Jazinsky muttered, “they’re so old, technically, they shouldn’t even be functional.”
“It’s a good thing they are.” Marin gestured at the hazmat data. “The whole ship is rotten with five kinds of fallout, some off the Drift itself, some off our own hyper-Weimanns, and some I never saw before. The one guy who’s not tanked is going to need some heavy-duty treatment.”
Vaurien touched the bug in his right ear. “Tully, wh
ere are you?”
The engineer’s voice was broken up by the same distortion as crackled and hissed through every transmission Lai’a made. “In the tractor, boss, wrangling drones … and I can hear you, just barely. Like Lai’a says, I’m seeing one human, two tanks, and I’m guessing the one who ain’t tanked is the pilot. Best I can do is get him – or her, damnit! – into one of our own tanks, and hand him to Bill. Then we can get a hazmat crew working out here. How’s that suit you, Billy-boy?”
And Grant: “Fast as you can, Tully. I’m set up in number four hangar, ready to receive the wreckage. Leave them to me now. Good enough, boss?”
“Good enough,” Vaurien agreed. “Do what you can, Bill. I’m not expecting miracles. God knows how the poor sods have made it this far. I’m looking at the energy signatures off that hull.”
A strange hull, Travers thought, misshapen as a gnome, ugly, like a hybrid gone hideously wrong. Mark was right, it seemed to be three ships nested together, and more than likely held in place with Arago fields, which would only contribute to the overall toxic fallout. He and Marin peered closer as the repeated scans and imaging passes drew out enough information to make a coherent image, and something was nagging at the back of Travers’s mind when Jazinsky said,
“Richard, I’m right. I knew I was.”
“You can’t be, kiddo. It’s not possible.” Vaurien did not seem ready to consider what she had said.
“Then you tell me what it is,” she challenged. “Mark?”
“In a moment, Barb.” Mark was engrossed in his own work.
“Now, Mark,” she said sharply. “Run this again, see if you can get another result, tell me I’m not losing my mind. Richard thinks I am.”
He peered at her through the mist of the threedee, and without a word picked up the gauntlet she had thrown down.
“What?” Marin wondered. “Barb, what?”
But her head shook. “I’m not going to be the one to say it. Tully! How are those tanks coming?”
“They’re coming,” he growled. “We just figured out how to get into the hull. There’s no airlock you and me would recognize, and none of our codes worked. The pilot just unbuttoned her, or we’d never have gotten in at all. Give me ten minutes.”
“The pilot doesn’t have ten minutes,” Bill Grant warned. “I’m seeing the same energy signatures as the rest of you. It’s hot as hell, and he’s taking twenty times any safe dose.”
“Five minutes,” Ingersol promised. “Best I can do.”
Jazinsky pushed away from the navtank. “I’m going down to hangar four. I want to see this.”
“There’s nothing you can do down there,” Vaurien began, but she did not turn back.
Travers dropped a hand on Marin’s arm. “I’m with her.”
“Yes. I think you’re right.” Curtis hesitated only a moment. “Mark, if you need us –”
“I know where to find you.” Mark was gazing into the threedee Jazinsky had just left.
His eyes were vast, unblinking, and his mouth had dropped open in an expression of astonishment Travers had never seen on his face before. A hundred questions were clamoring, demanding to be answered, but Travers clenched his teeth to lock them in, and hurried in Jazinsky’s wake.
The loop was alive with the crosstalk from the tech gang, the medics, the tug pilots, the ops room and Lai’a itself. They were in the chill, battered car of a freight lift when Ingersol reported the third survivor safely tanked, and part of Travers relaxed a fraction. Cryogen tanks were absolutely hermetic, and tougher than marines armor. The moment the kevlex titanium pod sealed around him, the pilot would absorb no more of the terrible storm of fallout, and his life would be indefinitely suspended, until he could be treated. Travers did not envy him the ordeal. He and Curtis remembered it all too well.
“Drones away,” Ingersol said into the loop as the lift opened onto the dark, cold belly level, by the hangars. “They’re on their way to you, Bill. Three minutes to make the transfer, and your patient is safe.”
“Safe?” Grant echoed. “Now, there’s a moot point.”
“You know what I mean,” Ingersol remonstrated.
“I know what you mean. And before anybody asks, I’ll tell you what I can do for the poor bastard, if anything, when I’ve had a look at him.” Grant paused for some moments, and then, “Hazmat detail, standby. Come on, people, hustle! You think we’re taking this gear aboard before it’s been cleaned up? Move!”
The ‘gear’ was a cluster of three pods powered by two big industrial drones which came jetting back from Lai’a at speed. Travers, Marin and Jazinsky had come to a halt at the big armorglass panels, where they had an uninterrupted view of Grant’s people. The status monitor beside the wide, locked blastdoors was alive with data relayed from the hangar sensors and every handy in the bay.
Number four hangar was wide, steel blue, lit by the harsh light of twenty fluoros, and at the moment depressurized. Open to space, it was deeply cold. Grant and his two medics were in full armor, Arago-tethered to the deck, surrounded by medbay equipment and lights that hovered and angled where they were pointed.
Silent, grave, Travers made no comment as he watched the activity in the hangar mouth. He had seen such work many times before, when personnel made it back to the Intrepid from assignments in the Drift, sizzling and dangerous. The hazmat drones converged on the incoming tanks, swarming over them like so many locusts. A fine mist of vapor shrouded both the tanks and the drones which had brought them back from Lai’a, and almost three minutes went by before the readings cleared.
At last, Grant recalled his machines. “All right,” he whispered into the loop, “let’s have them aboard.”
The old tanks were almost twice the bulk as the Wastrel’s own, and Marin whistled as they saw the corrosion on the surfaces. “Where the hell did they come from? They look like museum pieces!”
“They are,” Jazinsky muttered, engrossed in the data which scrolled rapidly through the side of the screen, beside the image.
It was Vaurien, over the loop, who said, “Those contraptions are two hundred years out of date, Curtis. It’s a miracle they’re still working at all, and I wouldn’t trust them to keep on working for another ten minutes! Bill, can you get any readings off them?”
“No problem,” Grant assured him. “They’re clean enough to handle them now … vectoring you a visual, boss. Hold on.”
A viddrone was even then moving into position. Three spotlights brightened in the hangar to permit high quality images, and Travers and Marin stepped aside from the armorglass panes to look at the display. The image warbled, stabilized. The drone adjusted the exposure, angle and zoom as it closed in on the observation panel of the tank supplied minutes before by the Wastrel.
A face was framed there, half obscured by reflection off the transparency. The drone moved around to adjust the glare, and Travers made out a man, gaunt, thin, his face twisted even in sleep.
And then it seemed a fist punched Travers in the pit of his belly, driving the air from his lungs, and he took an involuntary step back from the display. Marin’s hand clenched into his sleeve, as if he thought he must make a grab for him, before he staggered.
“Neil, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Neil!”
“Richard.” Travers heard the hoarseness of his own voice, and cleared his throat. “Richard, for Christ’s sake, are you seeing this?”
“Yes.” Vaurien was terse, bass. “Barb?”
Jazinsky’s face, reflected in the screen, was white. “Oh, yeah,” she whispered. “I mean … you’re seeing what you’re seeing, Richard. Bill, talk to me.”
“He’s in a bad way,” Grant said, preoccupied with his work. “He’s taken some heavy duty shit … serious contamination. He’s also – damnit, boss, he’s emaciated. He’s wrecked. The organs look dodgy, but that’s the contamination. I can’t tell you much more till I get him in the Infirmary. I’m going to have to take the poor bugger apart, put him back together aga
in. Give me some time.”
“You can do it?” Mark’s voice was sharp with concern. “If you don’t feel qualified, Bill, don’t hesitate to send for assistance. I’ll get you the best in the business, as fast as they can be here.”
The Australian accent thickened. “I can bloody handle it, Doc Sherratt. Thanks a whole bunch for the vote of confidence.”
“That’s not what I said, Bill, and you know it,” Mark reproached. “Are you getting readings off the other tanks?”
“These pieces of crap? Not really,” Grant mused. “They’re so old, they don’t interface. The most I can tell before I crack ’em open is, they’re working, there’s two live bodies inside, and they’re not contaminated – which is a bloody mercy to me. I wouldn’t like to have to handle three of these jobs at once!” Then, to his crew, “Okay, lads, get the sleds under ’em. They’re clean enough to shove ’em into the Infirmary, and at least I’ve got half an idea of what we’re doing from here on.”
“Etienne, seal the hangar,” Jazinsky instructed the AI. “Standby to open inner armordoors.”
And Vaurien: “All of you, get back up here.”
Travers had not yet moved a muscle. His feet felt frozen in place, and it was Marin’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him there, that stirred him at last. “Tell me I’m not crazy, Richard.”
“If you are, we all are,” Vaurien said darkly. “You haven’t seen the half of it, Neil. Get back to the ops room, and we’ll show you the rest. Barb, I want you back here, right now!”
“On our way.” Jazinsky was already moving.
“The rest?” Travers blinked into Marin’s face, but Curtis could only shrug. “You didn’t see?”
“I didn’t get a close look,” Marin admitted. “Not close enough to see details. Wait till we’ve seen the data,” he suggested, and took several long steps away from the blast doors as they began to grind open.
Freezing air spilled out into the passage, stinging the sinuses and shriveling the eyeballs. The hangar lights were going out, leaving a dense blackness, like a pit into which a human could fall, and keep falling forever. Travers felt a peculiar giddiness and looked away, forcing his feet to move.