She wondered why she hadn’t seen it. It was a fungus that her father had encountered in the initial breeding for the organisms that had become the Mission-class ships—rare but deadly to their unique anatomy.
Blyad. Or as Hammond might say, “Oh shit.”
Her heart sank at the implications.
JACKSON HAMMOND awoke.
The ground beneath him was slick and wet. He lifted his hand, and it was covered with golden ichor.
“Where am I?” He stood slowly. He was surrounded by a dim yellow light, like the light from the ship’s skin, but he was most definitely not inside the Dressler.
Jackson turned around, and the light grew gently around him. He was clothed in metal—armor—like a knight of the Round Table, and the ichor at his feet had turned into tall, waving green grass that lapped at his shins.
He stood at the base of a broad green valley, grassy hillsides around him blowing in the wind. Before him the sun crested the ridge, shining a clear, warm light down onto him and the valley floor. The hills around him were topped with old, weathered gray rock formations, and the world was empty except for him. No birds chirped, no insects buzzed—as if it were new. Or fake.
It had to be a dream. He’d fallen on the runway and bumped his head, and this was all in his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to pinch himself, a difficult task in a suit of armor.
Jackson peeked out between slitted eyes. There was no change.
He turned around. There was a tall stone tower on a hill before him now, looking impossibly ancient, covered with thick vines and ivy, along with tattered patches of moss.
“Jackson….” The wind whispered his name.
He spun around awkwardly in the heavy armor, searching for the source of the voice.
There was nothing but the quiet grass-filled valley.
A pathway led up the hillside to the base of the tower.
Subtle. He shrugged. Nothing to do but indulge the dream.
Jackson clambered awkwardly up the path, wishing he knew how to remove the heavy plates of metal that encumbered him. Slowly he mounted the summit, arriving at last at a large old metal-banded wooden door that was twice his height, decorated with a fading, peeling red paint.
“Jackson…,” something called again, this time clearly from inside the tower.
The whole thing was more than a little creepy. He turned to retreat and surveyed the empty valley below. Where would he go? Not a lot of options.
He stood on the threshold for a moment, willing himself once again to wake up.
No such luck.
The sunshine was gone, and a rolling silver mist gathered at his feet, lapping at the base of the tower.
He pushed on the ancient door. Nothing happened. It was solid, as solid as the armor he wore, heavy and made of hardwood… oak, maybe? He’d seen so few trees, growing up in the concrete-and-metal warrens of New York City.
He pushed harder and the door budged. A little.
Jackson backed up and threw his full weight against it, once, twice, three times.
On the last try, it burst open.
He fell to the hard-packed dirt floor inside the tower with a loud metallic clatter amidst a showering of splinters, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
He sat up and struggled raggedly to catch his breath.
After a moment, he managed to suck in a lungful of stale air, dispelling that awful feeling of suffocation.
At last he pulled himself back to his feet and got his bearings, his eyes adjusting to the tower’s dim interior.
The room was bare, save for an aging wooden staircase that wound up the inside wall toward the top, far above.
He eyed the staircase suspiciously, looking up to where it disappeared into darkness. Dream or no, he had no desire to crash down from such a height. People died from falling in their dreams.
Still, the stair looked as solid as the door, so he put one foot after another upon it and began the slow climb to the top.
Jackson wasn’t a great believer in dreams. His were mostly garden-variety—working on his house or fixing a piece of machinery. He’d never dreamed about anything as fantastical as this before.
The stair went on and on. He climbed slowly, concentrating on putting one foot in front of another. The tower was much taller inside than out, which befuddled his engineer’s mind to no end. Let it go. It’s just a dream.
After what seemed like an hour, he reached the top.
He climbed onto a wide wooden platform, surrounded by glassless windows that looked out onto the valley below.
In the middle of the platform, Snow White was waiting for him.
He’d seen the Disney Dimensional often enough to recognize her—a beautiful young woman with dark hair, laid out fast asleep on a stone bier, oblivious to the world around her.
She was the girl from his dreams.
Her jet-black hair spread out across the stone beneath her, and she was dressed in a rich blue silk dress that was buttoned up to her neck. He knew that it would match the color of her eyes.
Her hands were clasped peacefully over her chest, as if in death, and a golden ray of sunshine slanted down from a crack in the roof to light her with an ethereal glow.
Instinct took over, and he leaned in and brushed her lips with his.
Her eyes flew open, and she stared up at him, her vivid blue eyes full of fear. “Jackson, you have to save me.”
“DRESSLER, STATUS,” McAvery ordered.
The ship’s avatar appeared, but she looked distorted, her midsection twisting left and right, the whole image degraded by static. “I’m sorry, Captain, I’m not run-nning optimally.”
“Dressler, please give me the results of the diagnostic.” For some reason, he felt the need to hide his concern from the ship-mind.
“Yes, Captain. There’s something affecting my circulation systems. I’ve lost control of spanner two and part of spanner four.”
“Does this problem endanger the structural integrity of the ship?”
“Not at this time. I will continue to monitor the situation.”
“Dressler, can you speculate on the cause?” He glanced at the photo of Trip that was taped to the console. It was old-fashioned, sure, but it could never be lost in computer memory.
Trip smiled back at him, his blue eyes sparkling, the tiny ball of the Earth visible through the plasform window behind him.
Dressler’s voice came back, steadier. “There is an unknown agent affecting my systems. My interior walls have lost 3.4 percent of their integrity in the hold, but the effects are not yet so severe elsewhere.”
Three percent didn’t sound like much, but if there was a similar issue with the hull, it could be devastating. He looked down at his hands, surprised to find them pressed together as if in prayer. “Dressler, estimate time until the damage becomes fatal?”
“Fatal to the ship’s occupants, twelve hours at current rate of change. Fatal to the Dressler, fifteen hours.”
He looked up, surprised. He hadn’t considered the Dressler’s “life”… and he hadn’t known she was capable of considering it either.
“Are… are you all right?” It was a strange thing to ask a ship-mind, but it felt right.
The image frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Dressler—”
He was interrupted by the opening of the bridge’s doorway, a whoosh of air. “Captain, come quickly,” Dr. Anatov called through the opening. “It’s Hammond.”
“What happened?” He released the seat straps and followed her out the door.
“I’m not sure. I think he may have hit his head. But I need your help.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “No time to explain, but I need you to get the cross he wears from around his neck and bring it back to the lab.”
“I’VE BEEN waiting for you.” Lex sat up and stretched her arms above her head. “You are the only one I can reach this way.”
The ship engineer’s mouth was comically open, and Lex would have laughed if
she hadn’t been in such pain. Her situation was getting worse, and quickly.
“Who are you? Where am I? What is this….” He started to fade. “What’s happening to me?”
Alarmed, Lex reached out for him, but he was already gone.
Chapter Five: Cross
SOMEONE WAS shaking Jackson’s shoulder. He blinked, and light flooded into his eyes.
Everything was fuzzy.
He struggled to get up, but two pairs of hands held him down.
“It’s okay, Hammond. We’ve got you.” The captain was frowning at him.
Jackson settled back down onto the hard metal of the runway deck. What the hell happened to me?
“You had a bit of a mishap, that’s all.”
Something touched his neck. Then McAvery’s face came into focus, hovering over him, concern creasing his features.
Dr. Anatov’s beautiful, cold features loomed close. “I’m just going to take a quick look at you, Engineer Hammond.” The doc maintained her usual emotional distance.
He closed his eyes and once again saw the beautiful woman from his dream. Who was she?
“Look up at me,” the doctor ordered.
He complied, and she peered into his eyes with a penlight.
“His pupils are reactive. That’s good.” To him, she said, “Hammond, do you remember where you are?”
“On the runway of the Dressler.” He tried to get up again, but they held him down. “Captain, I feel fine….”
“I’m not letting you up off this floor until you answer my questions.” Anatov’s stern features softened. “Your health is my priority. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three, but I bet you’d rather hold up just one.”
McAvery chuckled somewhere off to the side.
“Save your jokes for later.” Dr. Anatov’s voice was sharp, but he thought he detected the ghost of a smile on her face. “Can you hear me clearly?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to run my finger along your palm. Tell me when you feel it.”
“Nothing yet… oh, now.” An electric thrill rushed up his arm, and he frowned. He was happily married, and here he was kissing dream girls and flirting with his doctor, all in the space of five minutes. Glory would beat me senseless with a stick. “How long was I out?”
“Just for a minute or two, I think. What happened?”
“I dunno, Captain. I touched the wall and there was some kind of shock, and then I had the strangest dream….”
“Okay. I want you to sit, slowly.” Anatov helped him.
He complied, pushing himself up against the ship’s wall, holding one of the rungs to keep himself from drifting.
“How do you feel?”
“None the worse for wear.” It was true. Mostly he just felt disoriented from the dream. “Can I get back to work, Doctor? I still have the cabins and common rooms to check.”
She nodded. “One more thing…. We’ll help you stand, and then I want you to take a few steps for me.” The captain slipped an arm around his waist, and he started to protest, but McAvery gave him a harsh look and he subsided.
He found his footing and took a few steps down the runway, his magnetized boots clamping down firmly on the metal surface.
“No dizziness? Balance issues?”
He shook his head. “No, I feel just fine. I told you.”
“Okay, given the circumstances, I’ll let you get back to work, though normally I’d want to observe you for a few hours. You are not to go to sleep without telling me. We’ll need to keep an eye on you the next time you are unconscious, and I’m not sure the Dressler’s up to the task right now.”
He nodded. “Got it, Doc. Though I’m not sure how much sleep any of us will be getting in the next coupla hours.”
COLIN MET the doctor in the lab, handing her another specimen bag. Inside was Hammond’s tarnished cross on a chain. “This what you wanted?” He felt like a common thief.
She nodded. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“He’ll be missing it soon enough. You better run your tests quickly.” He shook his head. “Doc, I hope you’re wrong about this.” Jackson was a good man. His gut told him so. And yet….
“So do I, Captain.” She took the bag from him, eased the cross out, and pulled it off its chain. She turned away to her workstation and placed it under a magnifying glass. “Here. Take a look.”
He peered over her right shoulder. “What am I looking at?”
“There’s a pinprick hole on the back of the cross. If I’m right, this is how the fungus was delivered.”
Under the magnification, it looked like the small hole had been blown out of the metal from the inside. There was a yellow residue all around the edge.
“So it’s a fungus? I’ll be damned. He carried it in right under our noses. How did you know?” Dammit, Jackson. He hated being wrong about people.
“Once I identified the pathogen, I guessed it must have been brought in on something personal by one of the three of us. Everything else went through quarantine and was too carefully checked to allow something like this to get through.” She scraped a little of the residue onto a slide and slipped it under the microscope. “So I went back over the ship’s video logs of the three of us as we arrived and noticed Hammond’s cross was shiny and new when he arrived on ship three days ago. See how the metal is tarnished now?”
Colin nodded. “What does that mean?”
“This cross isn’t made of metal. It just has a thin metal coating.” She took up a ball-peen hammer and smashed it down on the cross, shattering it into pieces.
Colin winced.
“Take a look. It’s ship’s bone—and infected at that. Someone knew what they were doing when they put this together.” She held out one of the pieces. Her hand was shaking.
They were all tired. He took it and turned it over in his hand. It was porous inside, a dingy gray shot through with jagged yellow lines. Ship’s bone was really strong. It shouldn’t have broken to pieces like that under the doctor’s blow. It must have been badly compromised.
“That’s what’s going on inside the Dressler right now.” She stared into the microscope. “Bingo.” She moved over to let him see. “Same fungus.”
He nodded. “We have our culprit. But if Hammond was ready to go down with the ship, what can we do with him? He might take desperate measures if he finds out we’re onto him, and we certainly can’t give him back his cross now….” He looked down at the broken pieces.
She shook her head. “You’re right. That was rather stupid of me, wasn’t it? I don’t suppose you have an extra silver cross lying around?”
JACKSON WAS finishing up his manual inspection of the Dressler when he noticed his cross was missing. Stupid me, he thought, must’ve dropped it when I fell. He’d found no lesions yet in the ship’s cabins; he was almost certain this thing had started down in the hold.
He reentered the runway from the captain’s cabin. It was surprisingly disheveled. He’d expected the captain to keep an immaculate room. After all, his workspace was always in perfect order.
The cross had to be somewhere. There were only so many places it could have gone on such a small ship.
The captain was waiting for him just outside the doorway. “Where are you going?” McAvery asked. He was frowning, and his tone sounded off.
“Just lost my cross, Captain. Silly thing, really. I must have dropped it.” He tried to push past the captain into the runway.
McAvery blocked him. “Hammond, we know what you’ve done.”
“Know what?” Now Jackson was confused. He was the one who had fallen. Why was the captain acting so strangely? What the hell?
“We know what you brought on board the ship. Dr. Anatov found it, and we know how you did it.” The man sounded dangerously calm.
“What do you mean?” He shook his head. “What did I bring on the ship? My duffel bag? My tools? Captain, I didn’t bring anything forbidden….” Holy crap. It dawned on him wha
t he was being accused of. “Captain, I’d never do that.”
The captain pushed him back hard against the closed door to his room. “Come on, Hammond. I checked your records. I know you used to work for the Red Badge. Is that when the Interveners got to you?”
Jackson shook his head. “I swear, Captain, I left all that behind. I have a wife, two sons. I don’t get involved in politics.”
“The doctor checked your cross. We know that’s how the fungus got on board the Dressler. What did you do, rub some of it into one of the joints when you were refitting the pipes in the hold?” The captain’s face was inches from his. “Did you plan to get us all killed?”
“The cross. My cross?” He didn’t understand what the captain was saying.
“Yes, the cross,” Anatov’s voice said in his ear.
There was a sharp whoosh of air on the side of his neck, and then everything went dark.
COLIN HELPED the doctor pull Hammond’s limp body into his cabin. Together, they managed to maneuver his large frame up onto his sleeping cot. He was still having a hard time believing Jackson had sabotaged the ship.
The captain used some heavy cord from storage to bind the engineer’s hands and feet to the corners. He wasn’t sure how long it would hold the big man, but it would have to do for now.
“Are you sure it’s okay for him to be knocked out? You said he might have a concussion.”
“We don’t have much choice,” she snapped. “We can’t sit here watching him.” She seemed edgier than usual, but they were all in uncharted waters.
“How long do we have?”
She caught his gaze, then looked away. “Maybe eight or ten hours before the ship’s integrity is compromised, at the current rate.”
He frowned. “That’s hardly enough to reach rendezvous. The Dressler said twelve hours.”
“I’m not sure how accurate her systems are, Captain.”
Colin sighed, glancing down at his now-bound engineer. The man looked peaceful, innocent, as if he’d just fallen asleep. Why did you do it?
The Stark Divide Page 4