Pavani glanced at Julian one last time, but the moment was gone. Her legs stood of their own will, taking her over to where Lorne still fiddled with the computer. "Do you have a data connection?"
"It's strange," he said. "Although the Terminal system down in Luccar seems to be locked, I have an active data connection. See," he pointed, "I have access to all my normal engineering databases."
"Okay," Pavani said without looking. "Can you look up any information on the Ancillary?"
"Already have. The Ancillary uploads all manner of data. Battery charge, solar flare activity, you name it. But all of that suddenly cut off. It appears the Ancillary lost all communication several hours before the attack, regaining it just before we received our warning."
"Could you contact the station from here? Speak with the people who warned us of the attack?"
"Yes. However, although I could encrypt the message so nobody could eavesdrop, someone watching would see the data transfer. They would know someone was inside the Chain transmitting information."
Pavani's eyes widened. "But if you're accessing your engineering databases, won't they see that data?"
Lorne chuckled, a comfortable expression for his wrinkled face. "Database queries occur all the time in the background whether humans are here or not. Computers talking to computers. I can access information just fine without raising suspicion."
Pavani considered that a moment. "What about the personnel on the station? Can you access that data?"
"Indeed I can." His fingers were a flurry across the screen. "Here we are."
"Let me see," she said, shouldering-in with Lorne. He changed views on the screen and pulled up a list of names. Mark, Javin, Darren--there, Beth.
The screen changed as she tapped the name. Her sister's photograph appeared, along with height, weight, and other physical details. Military history showed in one box, day-by-day location tracking in another.
Pavani pressed the latter. Rows of data zoomed across the screen. She squinted:
08:22 - sleep initiated
15:49 - sleep terminated
15:50 - departs sleeping bunk 002
15:51 - arrives in cleanliness room
15:55 - sanitation
15:59 - showering
That was the last entry: that Beth had begun showering. Pavani scrolled up through the previous data, but nothing jumped out at her. The data was inconclusive, but that was somehow worse. It didn't seem likely that the Ancillary's transfer laser malfunction was an accident. If Beth were alive, she would have done anything to stop that from happening. So the fact that it had happened anyways...
Lorne resumed control of the computer. "As I was saying," he said, "since the data uploads stopped there we have no way of knowing what happened. But I do know that the only person who can initiate a station realignment is the Ancillary Custodian. I happen to know him, a man named Javin. Always stubborn. He's not like me; he hates people."
I bet he talks less, Pavani thought.
"That's why he took the job out on the Ancillary," Lorne continued, "to get away from everyone. At least until the Exodus Fleet was announced, and a dozen more workers arrived to help take the whole damn thing apart. Anyways, Javin is the only one who could realign the transfer laser. And that's not something he would do, not without good reason."
Pavani nodded.
Lorne glanced back at the computer screen. "Ahh, Beth. Javin told me about her. Daughter of Admiral Acteon, as a matter of fact. Not stuck-up and privileged like most children of high-ranking officials, I've heard. Your friend?"
Pavani smiled wryly. "Sister."
Lorne gaped at her, realization spreading. Pavani relished a moment of pleasure in his discomfort before putting up a hand. "No no, it's okay. You spoke nothing of offense. Just be glad you didn't say more about my father."
To the old man's credit, he recovered quickly. "The Admiral is a good man. With the Olitau taken... oh dear. I'm so sorry."
"My duty is to protect His Luminance," the words came immediately.
To her astonishment, Lorne stepped forward and hugged her. Her height made it awkward--he only came up to her belly, making it feel as though she were hugging a child--but in that moment the gesture meant a great deal to her.
Pavani broke the hug. I need to focus. Eyes forward, not backwards. "If something's wrong at the observation station," she said to change the subject, "what are our other options?"
"Well," Lorne began, happy to explain something, "there are escape pods in the other observation stations too. But the next one is ten hours beyond the first."
"Wouldn't we still have time?" Pavani asked. "You said we had twenty-seven hours until the Chain crashed. That means we'd reach the next observation station with seven hours to spare."
"Sure," Lorne nodded, "but by then the Chain will be falling fast. Very fast. Ejecting in an escape pod at that speed would... uhh, not be ideal."
"Oh."
"Oh indeed, madam Shieldwarden. Better to stay in the Chain itself, if it came to that. The Chain is made of such strong carbon nanotubes that someone inside would likely live right up until the moment it crashes into the planet's surface. What a spectacular view that would be." He smiled for a moment and then shuddered. "Let us both hope that the first observation station has what we need."
Pavani returned to the Emperor's side.
Lorne eventually left the glow of the computer screen. He strapped himself into a safety harness and sat on the floor to close his eyes, regardless of whatever safety he had earlier been wary of. Pavani stayed awake, watching the glow of metal streak by the fast-moving platform, listening to the ca-chunk, ca-chunk of the segment doors opening and closing. Thinking of her family. Julian fell asleep, but the stimulant kept Pavani watchful, her eyes wide and worrying.
Hours later the Emperor woke in pain. He moaned and rolled his head, and clawed at the harness keeping him in the seat. Pavani was there immediately, bending over her God and asking what He needed. He mumbled incoherently, eyes open but unseeing.
"Acteon. Should have... should have gone. Acteon."
My father. "Your Luminance? What about Admiral Acteon?"
"You should have gone with him. Your orders..."
Pain gripped Pavani's chest. "My place is at your side, Your Luminance." The words felt hollow. She'd been reassigned to guard her father on the Exodus. The news had frustrated her, and she'd abandoned those orders and returned to the Emperor's side as soon as the attacks began. Acteon himself told her to go, she remembered, but the thought gave little consolation. Would her father be alive if she had stayed with him?
Eyes forward.
The Emperor continued mumbling. Julian woke and bent over him. "He needs his medicine. He's becoming less lucid."
"We have pills for pain," Pavani said, reaching into the pouch between her armor and touching two small vials.
But Julian shook his head. "His body cannot tolerate very much of it. We will use it only if we have to." His voice sounded firm, but his eyes held a world of doubt.
Soon the others began stirring. The Flameguards rose, looking decidedly well-rested. Lorne had woken and was fiddling with the computer screen again. "One hour," he said. "We will begin decelerating momentarily. It will be a gentle transition, but make sure you are secure."
The transition was anything but gentle, a jolt that made Pavani's backside rise out of the seat and hit hard again. The Emperor began mumbling again until Julian calmed him. The sensation of slowing down became more pronounced; she felt lighter with every moment, her body's momentum pulling against her seat harness.
Not deceleration, she realized. Weightlessness.
Lorne confirmed it. "The first observation station is positioned near the equilibrium point where Latea and Melis's gravity are nearly equal," he explained. "Likely all of you are used to the artificial gravity in the Chain car and within the station itself. Not today--today you get to feel what us engineers feel, placed precisely between two giant worlds!"
The maintenance platform continued its deceleration until it came to a stop. They were in a segment of the Chain like any other--it didn't appear to be the observation station. "This is as far as the platform will go," Lorne said, unclipping his strap from the railing. "We have to climb the rest of the way, and join the station through a special room to reacquire the artificial gravity inside."
Pavani looked up. A ladder extended several hundred feet until it reached a metal ceiling, marked with pale yellow lights. She began to say something, but Lorne spoke first.
"Well, not exactly climb. But float. Slowly, now!" he warned. With his harness unhooked, he bent his knees and pushed off their platform. He floated vertically away from them.
The Flameguards followed suit, along with Eovald, the other Shieldwarden. Pavani watched Julian unhook the Emperor, cradle him like a child, and then float upward with the others. Only then did Pavani do the same, taking up the rear.
Weightlessness was a strange sensation. Her senses, evolved over millions of years on the comforts of a planet, couldn't make sense of it. She felt as if she was standing still, or floating in water, while the walls of the Chain moved around her. She allowed herself to enjoy the peacefulness of it, until another thought crept into her head. Beth was always afraid of zero gravity. She hated spacewalking.
She stretched out her arms to cushion herself as she reached the ceiling. The two Flameguards stared at her, upside-down, with their feet against the ceiling. "Manual reorientation," Lorne said. This station is oriented to have Melis below it.
Pavani nodded. The Chain cars on the outside did the same thing here, turning on the track to switch whether Melis or Latea was "below", depending on which direction they were traveling. That way their destination always lay below them.
With her feet hooked into recessed ceiling sockets built for the purpose, the female Flameguard reached out and spun Pavani in the air. She blinked a few times to convince her brain that up was now down.
Lorne led them all across the ceiling--no, the floor--to a door recessed in the wall. He pulled a thin computer terminal from a hidden socket and began working.
It was immediately obvious that something was wrong. Lorne's face grew dark, his brow furrowed. He began tapping at the screen harder, as if angry with what he saw. They all drifted in place while they waited, feet hooked into the floor to keep them from floating away.
"Well then," he finally said. "Something has happened."
"What is it?" Julian asked, not bothering to hide his concern. "Can we not get inside the station?"
"Oh we can get inside the station," Lorne said. "It's just that... I need to go first to verify something." Julian looked suspicious, so Lorne added, "better to risk just my life than all of yours."
The door opened. It was a small chamber, the same as any other airlock. With the spryness of a child Lorne disappeared inside, the sound of the door snapping shut behind him echoing in the Chain.
Nothing happened for several minutes.
The door abruptly opened, revealing a floating Lorne, in exactly the same place they'd seen him before. "Okay, follow me through. It's safe. But there's no artificial gravity." He didn't explain anything more, and nobody asked as they piled into the room. The door closed behind them, and immediately the inner door opened, revealing the interior of the observation station.
A strange fog hung in the air, making it difficult to see. It took Pavani several moments to realize it was smoke, dispersing strangely in the zero gravity. The air tasted acrid, like burned metal.
Julian covered his mouth with a hand while cradling the Emperor in the other. "I thought you said it was safe."
"Well, safe enough, comparatively," Lorne admitted. "At first I thought the station had lost all atmospheric pressure altogether! This is paradise compared to that, believe me." He grabbed the doorframe and pulled himself inside, disappearing among the smoke.
The Emperor began coughing. One of the Flameguards tore off a length of his thin gown and handed out strips to everyone. Pavani tied one around His Luminance's mouth.
The God's pain distressed Julian. "There has to be an easier way to get planetside," he growled.
They could barely hear Lorne inside the room. "Oh aye, there's an easier way. Go sit down and take a nap, you'll get planetside without any effort. But if you want to get there alive..."
One by one they moved into the observation station, disappearing into the smoke. Again Pavani was the last.
"Follow my voice," called Lorne, drifting through the sea of grey. Pavani kept her hands outstretched, grabbing wall corners and pushing against the floor or ceiling when she felt them. "This way. Over here!"
Suddenly the smoke disappeared, revealing a clear pocket of perfect air. The far wall was made of glass; they were in the observation ring, at the outer edge of the station. As she drifted inside Pavani could feel the movement of air from a vent above. "Nothing to it," Lorne announced, bent over yet another computer terminal, "just had to reactivate the air circulation and create some positive air pressure."
Julian floated near the glass, looking outside. In his arms, the Emperor's eyes opened, displaying a strange clarity. "Ohh, I must do this more often," the holy man said. "This is wonderful! It's as if the pain itself has become weightless, spreading away from my joints until it's hardly noticeable at all."
Pavani joined them at the window. They'd stopped in the observation station on their journey from Melis to Latea a few days earlier. It was the first time His Luminance had braved the trip since Pavani had become a Shieldwarden, and she had cherished the view of the planet sprawled below them. Close enough to see individual details, like oceans and coastlines and cities illuminated at night, yet far enough above that they maintained a full picture. She remembered pressing herself against the glass, both in the car and observation station, to get as complete of a view as possible.
She had an entirely different view, now. Darkness greeted her at the window. As she drifted next to Julian their star came into view, brilliantly bright even in the tinted windows. She pressed her face against the glass and looked down but saw nothing. Are we disconnected entirely? Are we floating in space?
Her alarm must have been obvious, because Julian chuckled and tapped her on the shoulder. "Up there." She followed his gaze and saw Latea, hanging above them like some ancient street lantern. It appeared circular now, the curvature of its horizon smaller than she would have expected. They had come quite far in the past ten hours.
"The Chain has drifted too far for you to see Melis," Lorne explained. "At least on this side of the station. The other side will have quite a good view. And that just so happens to be where the escape pods are located." He reached above him to grab a recessed hand-hold in the ceiling--awfully convenient, in their situation--and pulled himself along.
The station was shaped like a wheel, with the Chain at the center and several levels of rings around the outside. Four "spokes" connected the outer rings to the Chain in the center, which left room in between the spokes for the Chain cars to pass through.
Lorne must have activated the air ventilation in the observation ring, because although some smoke drifted inside it stayed mostly clear. They followed him around the ring, pulling themselves along the ceiling. Pavani felt decidedly like one of the six-armed monkars that climbed through Melisao jungles.
Melis itself slowly came into view as they rounded the ring. Cloud cover blocked most of the surface, but even still the view filled Pavani with awe. "Your creation is mighty beautiful, Your Luminance," Lorne said reverently. "I'll never get tired of the view you've blessed me with."
That sent the Emperor into a fit of coughing, though the air was as clear as could be. He stuttered to himself, sending spittle flying through the air, until one of the Flameguards whispered something into his ear to soothe him.
They reached the end of the observation ring, where a metal wall barred the
ir way. Lorne spent several minutes at the door computer, tapping at the screen with something akin to frustration. Finally the door opened and Lorne quickly pulled himself inside. Even from her place at the back of the parade Pavani could hear him let out a long, defeated sigh.
"Something wrong?" Pavani asked when she arrived.
"There's only two escape pods," he said, softly so only she could hear. "The third jettisoned already. Probably the crew who survived whatever battle happened here."
She stared at him until he elaborated.
His eyes drew tight. "Each pod has space for three."
"Oh," she said again. Three Shieldwardens, two Flameguards, the Emperor, and Lorne. Seven bodies, six seats. She shook her head. "There has to be a way. Can't someone fit--"
"Get on, then," Lorne announced to the group, suddenly pretending as if nothing were wrong. "Three to a pod. I'll be staying back to check a few things, make sure you all get off safely."
"You're not coming with us?" Julian asked. One of the Flameguards cocked her head at Lorne.
"Not enough room for us all. But I'll head on to the next observation station and take the escape pods from there."
"It's ten hours away," Julian said, nodding. "You should have seven hours to spare. Get going as soon as our pods are away." He clasped the man's hand.
"You've done us all a great service," the Emperor said, floating toward them. Julian reached out and grabbed him, stopping him in front of the engineer. "When you reach the surface, when all of this is done, find your way to the palace. I'll see to it that you are given a proper reward."
Lorne beamed as the Emperor drifted toward the first escape pod, followed closely by Julian and Eovald.
Pavani stared. This is not right. It was happening too fast, there had to be another way. She wanted to tell the others that no, he would not have enough time to reach the other station, that the Chain would be moving too fast by then and he wouldn't be able to escape. But the wrinkles on Lorne's face were stretched tight with joy and pride. She could not take that away from him.
Drowned by Fire (Tales of a Dying Star Book 4) Page 9