He shook his head, as if to say, Idiots, it was for you that I was doing all of this. Instead, he asked, “I don’t suppose when you set him loose, you thought far enough ahead to… actually show him how to get back to the Habitation Areas of the ship.”
Her silence told him that she had not thought that far ahead, which meant she had also probably not thought ahead to how Executive Commander Lear might respond to her son’s injury, or whatever worse damages he might suffer alone in the UnderDecks, or in the Utility Decks through which he would have to pass to reach the Habitation Areas.
“He’ll be all right,” she tried to sound reassuring. “As soon as he gets to a Comm Station, he can…”
“I gave him the ‘bath,” Liz.”
“You did what?”
“How do you think I could have carried him past every detector between here and Deck minus twenty-eight? He’s turned off.”
He felt her wrists tense inside his grip. He let her go.
He stood. “Did you see which direction he ran in?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t meant to put the boy in danger. He picked up the restraint, and gathered a few more objects from around the room into the pockets and pouches of his overalls. He was disappointed to see that his hand-held tracker had cracked from the force of being hurled against the doorframe. They should design those things better.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Without turning, he answered her. “I am either going to find the kid and bring him back here, or I am going to make sure he doesn’t kill himself. One outcome is only slightly more likely than the other.”
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
Trajan was unaware how much time had passed while he was in the shaft and climbing. He had so excluded other thoughts from his mind that there might have been no prior existence other than being in the shaft. He was nothing more than aching hands grasping rungs, feet that sang with fatigue at the ankles from supporting his whole weight on those two anatomical hinges for such a long time, and an ache of emptiness and low-blood sugar that consumed his entire body. His head felt light and sore at the same time, the muscles in his neck were as tense as cello strings. He could not tell how much progress he had made. The only clues to his gradual ascent were the regular double spaces that marked the transition from one deck to another, and these he had not bothered to count.
Occasionally, thoughts of food would cross his mind. He had decided, when this ordeal was over, he was going to stuff himself until he burst. His mother had been planning a traditional feast --- Was that still in the offing? Did she know about his abduction? ---A traditional feast would have featured the finest delicacies of his world, in ample quantities, but that was not he wanted. He was thinking about the big thick fried meat sandwiches Sapphireans liked. With ground beef, cheese, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and juices from the meat soaking into the bread. With a big pile of deep-fried potatoes and a thick chocolate milkshake. His mom would have had a conniption. He remembered eating such a meal, with a boy named Ian BrewMaker, only a few days before his Passage; a large boy with curly dark hair and eyes that were brown-almost-black. Ian was a good companion, with a sly sense of humor, and a great collection of Graphic Action comics, but might have benefited from an occasional meal of pod casserole and biotic salad.
The shaft ended abruptly at Deck –21. With neither resentment nor disappointment, he wedged open an access hatch. It took a lot of effort and left him, for a time, balanced above hundreds of meters of empty shaft on the toe-grip of a single shoe. He swung himself onto Deck –21, which did not look promising for encountering others of the crew. It was an ugly, utilitarian gray-green, with huge power conduits running floor to ceiling as far as he could see. He walked among them for more than a hundred meters before finding a lateral passageway …
little more than a catwalk. He had to duck to enter it, but it soon led him to another upward shaft. It was just a maintenance shaft, narrower than the transport shaft, but with thick-padded rungs that made climbing easier. It stank of ozone, but it took him all the way up to Deck –8. Trajan allowed himself a taste of elation at this. He was only eight decks from the Topside. He permitted himself a rest on the deck-floor. His wrists and ankles were aching, and he was blistering on his fingers and toes.
Deck Minus 8 was better lit then the decks beneath it, and the light seemed to dapple slightly. The air was also fresher and cooler. It felt almost as clean as the air on the Upper Decks, and this filled him with hope. The deck was fairly open, filled mainly with conduits and structural supports, but not divided into corridors or chambers. A muffled rushing sound came from somewhere nearby. He moved back and forth, listening carefully, until he could discern the direction the noise was coming from.
The sound led him to a huge conduit, half of it was above the deck and half beneath. An ident marker on its mottled blue and green surface showed it to be Pegasus’s primary water exchange conduit. Trajan thought back to his orientation. The conduit ran along the centerline of the ship and served as an exchange point, as well as a center of mass for orienting the Gravity Engines. Water from the purification plants in the UnderDecks was sent upward to the drinking water, irrigation, personal use, and atmospheric regulators of the Upper Decks. Wastewater from the Upper Decks was pumped downward to be purified. He walked along the conduit, one hand idly stroking its curving surface until he came to a ladder. It was a quick climb to the top. There was an access hatch there. Its tactile interface did not respond to him, but there was a manual over-ride switch. He pulled it up, and the hatch slid out of the way, revealing a river of fast, cold water.
Trajan fell onto his stomach and greedily took great handfuls of water, quenching his thirst and somewhat relieving the emptiness in his stomach. He hoped the water was coming from the purification plants below, and not the sewers above, but this concern seemed almost academic. It was cold, and its taste was pure.
When he had taken in as much as he could, he stopped to ponder his situation, lying on his stomach with his hands in the stream, cooling and soothing. Was it wishful thinking to consider that the hatch he had just opened must be connected to a monitor somewhere in Environmental Systems, which would show an unauthorized access, and bring some Environmental Technician – an and/oroid or autobot at least –to investigate?
He had been in the UnderDecks too long to believe his salvation could come so easily. On the other hand, he was tired and sore. His position seemed pretty safe. There was no reason not to wait by the open hatch and rest for a little while. Someone might come, and even if no one did, this was a good time to rest. He lay down on the top of the conduit and closed his eyes, just for a moment.
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
“I can’t believe she called off the search and brought in the regulars,” Constantine was saying. The three Centurions had been searching through a honeycomb of storage areas when the call came in to desist from the search and report above for standard-issue uniforms. Bellisarius was gruff, but unmoved. “When it comes to intelligence, Commander Lear is not exactly a star of the brightest magnitude.”
“Then, how did she get to be the Executive Commander?”
“The question should be, why is she not the Captain? Lear plays the game extremely well. She pretty much lived inside the Ministry of Space for the last ten years, did everything but sleep in the office of the Minister of Space. She showed up at every meeting, got her name on every report, and gave deep soul kisses to every ministerial posterior she could get close to. Lear is a player, all right, but not quite so good at real life.”
“She was supposed to command one of the later missions, but it got cut.”
“Like everybody knew it would.” He sighed, and shot a scanning beam down an adjacent passageway. “You know who I have developed a respect for?”
“Who?”
“Keeler.”
Constantine affected an appropriate look of surprise. “You’re mad.”
Bellisairus explained
. “I would have expected by now that Keeler would be spending all of his time hunkered in his quarters, wondering what hit him. I thought as soon as we cleared Space Dock, she would have taken him down and given him an honorable way out — Ship’s Historian. All of our profiles said that’s what he really wanted, anyway.”
They entered a lift. Bellisarius continued talking. “I honestly thought during the Meridian Crisis, we would see Keeler go down. I didn’t think he could handle that many crises at the same time. I under-estimated him.”
“It may yet come to that,” Constantine reminded him. “Commander Lear might still be laying traps for him.”
“The longer she waits, the less likely it is she could pull it off. The crew likes Keeler, and even more, they’ve started to respect him. I do not even know that she is inclined to move against him, any more.”
“If she asked you to sanction Keeler, would you?”
Bellisarius looked at him, slightly stunned.
“Truth,” Constantine persisted. 100100101 cocked his mirror-faced head, as though he, too were curious about Bellisarius loyalty.
“She’s not going to ask to have Keeler sanctioned,” Bellisarius stated again.
“But if she did…”
“’If’ is a game for children and the weak-of-mind.”
The and/oroid began making and gestures, putting together a question as to what conditions might compel Lear to order a sanction. Before Constantine could pursue this line of questioning, they three received an alert.
“Someone accessed a hatch in the primary water conduit about two minutes ago,”
Constantine said aloud. “The Isolationists can’t be trying to get at the water supply again. Not after last time?”
“There are very few Isolationists going to the City of Knowledge on Brightling Scholarships,” Bellisarius answered. “It’s better if we got there and assessed the situation before Environmental Control. We’re closer than anyone else.”
They quickly made their way to a transport platform, hailed a transport pod, and shot away. They exited the transport at Deck Minus Eight.
Pegasus – Hangar Bay Annex
“Eddie asked you to what?”
“Don’t have an uncontrolled fusion reaction,” Eliza Jane Change told Matthew Driver moderately. She had chosen a bad time to bring it up. Right after the final mission briefing, but before they had to embark on the ship for the recovery mission of the object embedded in the moon of the outer planet. “Eddie’s desperate, and he thinks marrying me is the last life pod in the Escape System.”
Matthew was not placated. “I can’t believe he would ask you to do that? He’s out of his mind.”
“No more so than anyone trying to out-weasel Exec. Commander Lear. He’s just desperate. He thinks there is no other way out of his situation.”
“He could go back and do his job. That would be one way out of his ‘situation,’” Matthew said.
“Easy for you to say that. You like your job.”
Matthew cut in front of her, and put his arm against the wall to keep her from progressing, an unusually assertive gesture for him. “Eliza, I like Eddie. Off-duty, he’s a fun guy to spend time with, and underneath his juvenile skin I think there’s a good and decent person… but if he didn’t want to go, he should have stayed behind.”
“If he stayed behind, I might not be here.”
This was old familiar territory. Matthew did not need to hear again how Eddie had kept Eliza from quitting during the training program. He swerved back onto subject. “So, was he angry when you refused?”
“I didn’t refuse, but I didn’t tell him I would either.”
Matthew was shocked. “You are really thinking about it aren’t you?”
“I owe him that much… to think about it. It would only be temporary… just until he worked out a better solution.”
“How can you even?” Matthew said, and Eliza realized that this wasn’t just jealousy, but a genuine sense of righteous indignation at what Eddie had suggested.
“Be calm,” she said to him. “It wouldn’t be a real marriage.”
“That only makes it worse,” he answered her. “Marriage is supposed to mean something. It is supposed to be an eternal union between two souls whom God intended to be together. If you marry Eddie, you demean marriage, and you insult God.”
In a way, she was impressed. Matthew had never argued with her before, and she liked that he had a confrontational side. “You feel very strongly about this.”
He hesitated, looking as though he were about to tell her some secret he seldom shared with anyone.
“What?” she asked.
“When we had to move to Midlothian,” he answered slowly, “it was a very, very hard time for the family. My father had been away for a long time, and when he rejoined us, we had to leave our home and travel to the most remote, desolate city on the whole planet. I lost all the friends I had. Our new home was half the size of our old one, and everything around it was old machinery. Father told us we could stay in the City of Research, and he would go alone, live in a dormitory, support us from afar. My mother wouldn’t let him. She held our family together. No matter how terrible everything was, at the very, very least we knew my mom and my dad were with us.”
“You were lucky to have such a blessed childhood,” she told him. “My dad disappeared before I was even born. My mother became second wife to a shipmaster named ChainBreaker. They did it to keep her on his ship, and later, it kept me out of the Guild Orphanage. It wasn’t a real marriage, but it was a compassionate thing for him to do. Things come around, Matthew. They always come around.”
It was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “So, what? Sham marriages are like a family tradition with you?”
She slapped him. His cheek and her hand both stung, and at that moment, they were both sorry, but not prepared to admit it.
Matthew stroked his cheek, and flushed red, hot with anger and embarrassment. He turned away from her and charged down the passageway toward Prudence, reflecting bitterly that an Aves was a more faithful companion than any woman.
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
Bellisarius and Constantine walked along the primary water conduit. 100100101 walked along the other side, hanging close to the shadows. “The open hatch is fifty meters ahead,”
Constantine reported.
“Life signatures?”
“Nothing on the alpha registers. Switching to … we have a heartbeat.”
They drew their weapons. “Sapphirean or Republicker?” Bellisarius asked.
“Indeterminate.”
“Indeterminate?”
“Tracker can’t determine… but it’s male, and he’s sitting on top of the conduit next to the open hatchway.”
“Stealth mode.” The two men became shadows. The and/oroid became practically a ghost, moving over the deck with no discernible movement in his legs. They advanced along the pipeline, feeling their way along. A side-effect of the stealth technology, the two Centurions could only see as well as they could be seen. The chamber, the pipeline, the deck itself all became forms made out of mist and fog.
“Forty meters ahead,” Constantine reported. Bellisairus squinted, although he knew it was useless. Not only had the top of the conduit disappeared in the mist of fog, but the view was obstructed by pillars, posts, and adjacent ductwork.
“Thirty-five meters,” Constantine whispered.
“Any word on a maintenance dispatch?”
Constantine checked his intra-ship communication channel. “Technical Core is sending down one Automech. Tango class. ETA fourteen minutes.”
“We will go out of stealth mode at twenty five meters, secure the area and be gone before the automech reaches this deck.”
“Confirmed. Thirty meters,” Constantine reported. “I’m getting some bio-stats on our intruder. Mass: 44.42 kilograms. Height, approximately 1.57 meters. “
Awfully small for an Isolationist Saboteur, Bellisarius was thinking. Then
something clicked in his head. Mass: 44.42 kilograms. Height, approximately 1.57 meters. He had seen bio-stats damb close to those before. “Lear’s kid,” he said out loud.
Constantine double-checked his readings. “Close match. How did he get here?”
“If it is him, that doesn’t matter. Stealth mode deactivate.”
They revealed themselves, twenty-five meters from where Trajan was straddling the conduit. He was sitting up, and apparently unaware of them.
“Trajan Lear!” Bellisarius called.
Trajan heard his name and stood up. He had been in a near doze, but now he snapped to attention. Coming quickly toward him were two figures calling his name. They wore strange black outfits — not like any uniforms he had seen among the crew, not unlike those of the man who had taken him captive. They called to him again. “Trajan Johannes Lear, come down. You’re safe now.”
If there truly was a population secretly living in the UnderDecks, then these men could be their enforcers. The Isolationists would never release you, Hunter’s voice came back. After coming so far, at such risk, Trajan Lear was not about to be captured again. Frantically, he looked right and left for a means of escape. He looked down the conduit behind him. If he could run across it without falling, could he outrun them. The surface looked slippery, and it curved slightly. If he fell off…
A clanking noise brought his attention around. A metallic and/oroid had ascended the conduit and was coming toward him at a frightening rate of speed.
“Stay where you are,” the men were yelling. “We’re here to rescue you.”
Trajan frantically looked all around for an escape route, but could find only one. He looked down at the rushing stream beneath the open hatch of the conduit. The water was dark, rushing to Vesta only knew where. There was only about half a meter of air at the top and he didn’t know if he could open another hatch from the inside.
How long could he hold his breath? Ten minutes? Twelve? Fifteen?
Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld Page 28