Keystones: Tau Prime

by Alexander McKinney

  Jamie sat him up, and the robotic arms cut the rest of his suit off.

  Deklan kept his mouth shut and lay down, not trusting his voice. He knew what was coming. Hundreds of arms were going to penetrate his body and drain his blood, while hundreds more infused him with a fresh supply. It was a painful and drastic procedure, but also the most effective way to rid the body of unknown toxins.

  New needle-like arms spread above Deklan and turned him into a living pincushion. A new type of fire beat against his senses.

  The process went on and on. Jamie’s voice was in the background telling him how much longer it was going to be. The words washed over Deklan almost without meaning. Time didn’t mean much; he was in a world of all-over pain.

  Suddenly it went away. One second Deklan was in torment; the next the arms were gone, and he sagged against the almost comfortable metal table.

  At some point Calm had left the medical bay. Jamie looked worn from the stress and held out a blanket in her hands. “Here,” she said, “for your dignity.”

  Deklan blushed, suddenly aware of his nudity. He reached out for the blanket and was punished by his shoulder. A few deep breaths later he extended his left hand and took the blanket to cover himself. “How long did it take?” he inquired.

  “Hours. The fragments didn’t want to leave your body.”

  It had felt longer to Deklan.

  Jamie sat and rubbed her face. Disheveled blond hair hung around her in a halo of exhaustion. “Anyone else would have died, you know.” She shook her head and yawned. “At the very least we’d have had to freeze them. Even then I’m not sure.” She patted his arm. “I don’t know what The Sweep gave you, but be grateful for it.”

  Deklan sat on the table with a blanket for clothing, his body aching. Grateful seemed to be asking a bit much at the moment. “Are we still above Exo?” he asked.

  Jamie nodded while she searched for bandages.

  “We need to leave a beacon, a warning.”

  “A beacon?” Jamie asked, not yet paying close attention.

  Deklan rapped on the table. “This is important. Pay attention. That planet is close to Earth, looks Earth-normal, and will kill people. There needs to be a warning beacon.”

  “Already taken care of,” said Calm, walking into the room. “Mr. Tobin, good to see you in less pain.” Calm looked Deklan up and down, taking in his state of undress. “I’m glad that I took you in place of Mr. Day. I don’t think he would have survived.”

  “Where’s my Scotch?” replied Deklan.

  Calm showed a flash of amusement. “Mr. Day is busy trying to salvage what he can of Tempest. Unfortunately it looks as though we must scrap the craft. If it had not been for your punctured suit and injury, we probably would never have let her back inside Serenity.”

  Deklan was glad that Calm hadn’t tried transporting him through space with a compromised suit. He’d already been a frozen block of ice one time too many. “Where is she now?” he inquired.

  “She’s a little outside the ship. We can’t seem to find a good way to clean her.” Calm shrugged. “At least not if we want to make sure that there isn’t contamination.”

  Jamie pushed between Calm and Deklan. “Lie down,” she directed. Not waiting for Deklan to do so, she pushed him onto his back.

  Deklan was surprised again by how strong she was.

  She shoved a smart bandage into his open right shoulder. It stung for a moment before the anesthetic kicked in. “This is an absorptive bandage. You don’t take it off. The body grows through it.” Deklan nodded, trying to look at Calm and continue their conversation.

  Jamie grabbed his chin and forced him to look her in the eye. “I want you in a rejuvenation tank for at least twenty-four hours.”

  He opened his mouth to protest but saw her mouth go hard. “Of course,” he mumbled, “whatever you say.”

  Calm cleared his throat. “Your idea of a warning beacon has already been implemented. If someone does go down to Exo, he has been warned.”

  “We need more than just a beacon over Exo,” replied Deklan.

  “Oh?” Calm raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.

  “You need at least one probe stationed at the end of each wormhole.”

  Calm looked confused. “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know what’s out here. Send a few dozen probes out ahead of us looking for new wormholes and have them monitor the systems. Maybe they’ll find something as dangerous as Exo and be able to warn us. If it doesn’t pan out, you still have dozens more, and it’s no great loss.”

  “You may have a point,” conceded Calm. He was back to his unflappable tone. “It’ll be done before you wake up again.”

  Day 20

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Burningsworth

  Deklan’s eyes snapped open, and he flexed his arms and legs before he remembered. He was in a rejuvenation tank. He hated rejuvenation tanks. He never remembered where he was when he woke up in them. He hoped that Michael was okay in his or, better yet, already healed.

  The room was distorted through the glass and the healing gel, but he was pretty sure that the blond woman was Jamie. He pointed at his chest and then in the air. She’d better understand the universal signal for “Get me out of this miserable tank.” It least it wasn’t one of the claustrophobic small tanks.

  A circle of green lights lit above Deklan, and the top of the tank cycled open. Robotic arms came down and lifted him out of the tank. As his head cleared the surface, he blinked, trying to get the gel out so that he could see properly. The arms then lowered him to the floor so that Jamie could help him with the mask.

  Jamie unstrapped the mask and helped him to pull more than a foot of tubing out of his trachea. The feeling as it cleared the epiglottis was always unpleasant, almost as bad as what came next.

  As his lungs tried to resume respiration, Deklan choked on the gel. He knelt on the floor and gagged as the thick slurry streamed out of his mouth and nose. A short eternity later he sucked in a sweet breath of air.

  “How’s your shoulder?” asked Jamie.

  Deklan rotated his right arm without pain. He nodded and gave a thumbs-up, not ready to talk for another minute or so.

  Jamie sounded almost embarrassed as she continued to say, “Good. Calm will be pleased. I’d wanted you to sleep for another day or so, but we have a job for you.”

  “What is it?” he asked, feeling weary because of the rapid transition between rejuvenation tank and work.

  “We found a distress beacon more than a day ago.”

  More than a day ago? wondered Deklan. “How long was I out for?”

  “Eight days.”

  “Eight days! You said at least twenty-four hours.”

  Jamie gripped Deklan’s right shoulder and ground her thumb into it. “Does that hurt?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then stop complaining. You and I have work to do.”

  “Tell me more about the distress beacon,” he said.

  Jamie gave a quick summary of events. Deklan understood that the news wasn’t good. “It’s from a ship called The Burningsworth, explained Jamie. “We should have a visual in less than an hour. We’ve been traveling nonstop since the probes got the message.”

  Deklan nodded his understanding. He could fuss all he liked about his extended time in the rejuvenation tank, but right now all of his focus had to be on the distress beacon. It was time to get dressed and be useful.

  All four crew members sat on the bridge. The Burningsworth would be visible any second now.

  Deklan had gone over the laws of salvage with them. He had been unsurprised to learn that Jonny was already familiar with the broad strokes.

  “Visual acquired,” announced Jonny. “Slave to main screen?” His voice was muted as he concentrated on the task at hand.

  “Yes.”

  An image overlaid the view out of the main forward window. Still small but growing was a spacecraft. As it came into focus, everyone
except Calm gasped. The ship was marked with a logo that proclaimed its home port to be Tau Prime. On the side of its triangular hull was its name, The Burningsworth. The outer surface of the ship was torn open in dozens of places, revealing empty passageways and compartments.

  Deklan broke the silence. “This is the ship that sent out a distress call?” It was hard to believe that anyone could be alive to send out such a call. “Jonny,” he asked, “are you hailing them?”

  Calm answered for him. “No. I instructed Mr. Day not to hail until we saw what we were dealing with. Begin hailing now.”

  Seeing the extent of the damage, Deklan wasn’t optimistic about the chances of a reply, but the bridge was silent as everyone waited for a response. Calm then said, “I didn’t expect anything like this when I recruited you, but we’re going to have to board her. That job will go to Mr. Tobin and Dr. Beal.”

  Deklan frowned. His last trip off Serenity hadn’t gone so well that he was eager for another, but at least Jamie’s assignment made sense. If anyone were still alive on The Burningsworth, a doctor could be needed.

  “If there are people left to evacuate, you, Mr. Day, will pilot Whirlwind over.”

  Calm didn’t have to say how remote that possibility was. For a few seconds no one moved. “Now people,” said Calm.

  Deklan and Jamie left the bridge and headed to the EVA locker to suit up. Less than ten minutes later they stepped into Serenity’s airlock and initiated the cycle that would let them step into space. “Is this your first practical EVA?” asked Jamie.

  All of his other EVAs had been simulated practice runs. “Yep.” Deklan kept his unease to himself. He had a bad track record with space.

  Jamie snorted. “Hell of a way to start.” The airlock slid open. “Don’t stare out at the black too much. It tends to bother most people. Focus on nearby objects such as the ship, your feet, The Burningsworth.”

  Deklan nodded while paying attention to the magnetic grips on his suit that let his boots anchor him to the ship.

  Jonny then spoke to them over the com system, his voice clinical and professional. “We’re matching velocity and will be steady with them in about a minute. You’ll be positioned best from the underside of Serenity.”

  Jamie led the way to the underbelly of their craft. Deklan mimicked her slow and steady steps, gripping with one foot before releasing with the other. “Why the underside?” he asked.

  “So if we need to leave in a hurry there’s nothing blocking our way,” she answered.

  “Velocities matched,” reported Jonny. “Jump when ready.”

  Again Jamie led the way, releasing with both boots and jumping without even using her attitude thrusters.

  Deklan leaped after her, relying on a quick blast of gas to push him into the right trajectory. He landed feet first, boots automatically activating and locking him into place. He’d just jumped between two spaceships and felt giddy. This was much cooler than any stunt he’d ever been part of.

  Now on The Burningsworth, Deklan could see the severe damage to her hull. “Jonny,” he asked, “do we have any idea what caused this?”

  “Sensors have given us no useful information.”

  Deklan plodded behind Jamie as they made their way toward the ship’s airlock. She looked at Deklan and made a gesture with her hands. It was time for the skeleton key.

  Attached to his belt was a small code-cracker used to bypass security systems. Their use was illegal except under situations of duress, such as trying to find survivors on an incapacitated ship. The skeleton key could make use of all the processing power available in Serenity’s quantum-photonic circuitry. Wider than Deklan’s hand, the little device locked onto the access panel by the airlock, and eight red lights lit up. One by one the red lights turned green, and the airlock cycled open.

  The smaller internal airlock was a squeeze for the two of them as they waited for the external lock to seal again. The inner door opened almost immediately after the external door closed. There should have been a pause as the ship equalized the atmosphere in the airlock with that of the ship, but as the second door opened a readout on their helmets indicated that there was only a vacuum. Deklan had hoped that they’d find sections of the ship that had escaped depressurization. He closed his eyes before speaking over the com. “There’s no atmosphere in here. Our legal responsibility is to retrieve any dead we find and hand the bodies over to the appropriate authorities.” Who the appropriate authorities would be in this case was unclear. Tau Prime and all of its inhabitants had seceded from the space federation and cut off all contact with outsiders before Deklan was born.

  The interior corridor onto which the airlock opened was Spartan. Exposed metal was everywhere, with little in the way of the comforts that abounded on board Serenity. The lighting systems were still functional, however, boding well for following standard protocol, which was to head to the bridge and access ship logs to see whether they could shed any light on the situation.

  The bridge was a disaster zone. Two men wearing odd red clothing were frozen solid at their terminals. The normally open forward viewport had armored plating drawn across it. Such plating was mandatory in all ship designs, regardless of proposed end function, but was rarely used. Deklan made his way over to a terminal and used a transmitter to grant Serenity access to the ship’s computer. Icons moved around on the screen as information was pulled up. “We have two bodies,” reported Deklan. “Any idea what happened here or what the total crew count was?”

  “The data’s been corrupted,” replied Jonny. “It’s going to take me some time. See whether you can find a passenger manifest anywhere. If you can’t, I recommend that you sweep the ship.”

  Together Deklan and Jamie scoured the bridge for a manifest until Jamie said, “Here it is.” There were eighteen names, which meant that there were sixteen more bodies to find.

  Jamie and Deklan nodded at each other and retraced their footsteps back toward the living quarters. Once there they discovered that the living quarters held a grisly cargo of the remaining crew members. Some were in the process of getting to the locker that held EVA gear. Deklan surmised that they had figured out what was going on too late to make a difference.

  Deklan kept his voice quiet out of respect for the dead. “We have eighteen bodies,” he announced. “Everyone is present and accounted for.”

  Calm’s sigh was audible over the com system. “We don’t have facilities to accommodate eighteen bodies and preserve them.”

  “It’s neither moral nor legal to leave them,” replied Deklan.

  “Obviously not. I was going to say that if they have any cargo containers, it would be for the best if you could repurpose them. Perhaps we can find a way to keep them vacuum-sealed.”

  Moving woodenly and keeping his mind off the task at hand, Deklan worked with Jamie to move the corpses down to The Burningworth’s cargo bay. The only benefit of the ship’s damaged condition was that centrifugal gravity was non-functional, as was the gravity normally provided by the Doppler Bubble Drive, so Deklan only needed to focus on maneuvering in the still unfamiliar zero-gravity environment rather than straining against the dead bodies’ weight.

  As they waited for Jonny to bring a shuttle to the rear cargo bay, Jamie concentrated on finding a solution to the storage problem.

  By the time Jonny brought Whirlwind over, the bay doors had been opened and the bodies interred in makeshift coffins. Deklan stacked the containers in the shuttle. “Calm,” he then asked, “is there anything like a cargo manifest among the files you’re reading?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I wanted to know whether there was anything else we needed to pick up or whether we could bring this to a close.”

  “Bring it to a close. It’s doubtful that there’s anything useful aboard, and if there is I’d rather not be a looter.”

  Deklan stood on the bridge, unable to relax. Both he and Jamie had been asked whether they wanted to go off duty, but neither of them was ready yet. Deklan
felt disconnected after the experience of carrying dead bodies through the corridors. He needed answers to why those people had died.

  Deklan stared at his terminal as partially recovered data and log fragments teased him with their meanings. Some of the story was coming together. Everyone except Jamie was collaborating to guess at the missing pieces to the puzzle. It seemed that The Burningsworth had gone through an unstable wormhole and suffered heavy damage as a result. The problem with that hypothesis was twofold: there was no unstable wormhole in the system, and no one would venture into an unstable wormhole.

  Jamie meanwhile was scanning the bodies to see whether there was a medical emergency that might conceivably justify such a risk.

  Every probe that Serenity had fired into unstable wormholes while Deklan was recuperating in the rejuvenation tank had failed to return. Anyone mapping the wormhole network would have known that, or should have, through similar testing. Analysis of The Burningsworth systems did yield what they had mapped, but most of the data was meaningless.

  Day 22

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fugue

  It was just past three in the morning. Deklan sat on the bridge in a near fugue state. He’d been sitting there for two days watching the computers piece together the corrupted data and scan drives from The Burningsworth for fragments. The information had come together slowly, but he couldn’t abandon the task. Jamie watched him with concern on her face. She hadn’t yet said anything, for which Deklan was grateful.

  There had been further revelations. The solar system that had housed the unstable wormhole was indeed the same one in which they had found The Burningsworth. By extrapolating time of entry and the constant speed of objects in a frictionless environment, the computer was able to calculate where the wormhole should be, but it was not. They also knew that the hull breaches that occurred on The Burningsworth had occurred while in transit in the wormhole.