The Ancillary (Tales of a Dying Star Book 2)

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The Ancillary (Tales of a Dying Star Book 2) Page 6

by David Kristoph


  Another problem with the new facilities was that it warped her perspective. The old quarters she and Javin had shared were small, simple. A single space with four narrow beds and a desk with a computer, with an adjoining cleanliness room for bathing and excretion. Ceilings their heads barely cleared, and metal walls that had long since lost their paint. It was comforting, like a den an animal might crawl into for safety. It reminded her of the military asteroids in the outer part of the Sarian system.

  But the new facilities were spacious and pristine, bright with new light. Which was a wonderful upgrade until one ventured into the rest of the station. Now the Ancillary's age, its thousands of years of use, was obvious, every flaw magnified. The ceiling of the ring was too low, its walls too narrow. The beacons nestled in the wall every few feet didn't shine brightly enough, and gave off a yellow, dirty light. She had to duck to pass through the blast doors that were spaced every fifty feet. Beth wasn't claustrophobic, but it felt like being deep within a cave that may collapse at any moment.

  Except there were no caves out here. There was only the asteroid's millions of tons of iron and nickel, and the black beyond. That thought wasn't any more comforting.

  She reached a corridor at the far end of the Ancillary. One hallway led to the dock where ships came and went, and the other led into core three. She chose the latter, typed a code into the security panel, and entered.

  Core three of the Ancillary power station towered over Beth, tall and imposing, disappearing into the ceiling fifty feet above. Blue plasma swirled inside the clear cylinder, spinning up and down its length like a cyclone. Wires and tubes spread across the floor like tree roots, connecting to equipment within the walls, dispersing energy throughout the Ancillary.

  Mark was crouched over Darren, another one of the maintenance workers. They were both new, arriving on the last shuttle two weeks prior. Darren was Beth's age, somewhere close to thirty years, she gauged. He lay on the floor with his back against the wall, his left hand cradled in his right.

  He looked up as she approached, his face as white as his uniform. When he shifted she could see why: the tops of three fingers were sliced away in a clean line. The cuts were black, still giving off tendrils of smoke.

  "What the stars happened here?"

  Darren looked away, and instead Mark answered. "He was cleaning one of the transfer tubes when a failover bolt went through. It took his fingers."

  "I can see that," Beth said. "Disabling the core isn't enough. You need to manually select which transfer tubes stay open, in case there's a failover event."

  Darren nodded weakly. "I understand, I just--"

  "No," she cut him off, "you don't understand. If you did you would have followed the documentation, and you wouldn't be missing your fingers." Her voice echoed loudly in the chamber. "You're lucky that's all you lost."

  Darren stared off blankly as if he didn't hear.

  She turned to Mark. "I understand Darren forgetting, but you should have been backing him up. Why didn't you check his work?"

  This time Mark looked away, and Darren answered, weakly. "He was gone. In the cleanliness room."

  Beth sighed. Javin somehow kept the workers on track, but under Beth's command they seemed to lose their wits. "Why did I need to come down here? Take Darren to medical, then come back and finish the job." Her instincts told her the wound needed to be cut and cleaned, and she was wearing her knife, but that was what the med room was for.

  Mark stood. "Who will replace Darren? Two people are needed--"

  "One person can do the job," she said. "I did it by myself for years before all of you arrived."

  Mark frowned. "I was hoping to go down to the dock..."

  Beth shook her head. "Get the work done or you'll envy Darren's fate."

  She strode away before he had the chance to argue.

  Idiots, all of them, she thought as she walked along the ring. The Ancillary was a power station, harnessing Saria's energy before sending it back to Melis. All of the star's wrath, captured and contained within the asteroid. The new workers didn't have an appreciation for the power, the danger of it. Darren's sloppiness could have caused significant damage to the core. Or worse: Darren could have been killed, forcing Beth to deal with the paperwork.

  Javin would have laughed at her for being so cold and unflinching. But gore had never bothered Beth. A man's fingers burned away wasn't the most gruesome thing she'd seen, not even close.

  When she was a child her father was proud of her uncaring behavior. Crushing bugs was all she did at first, but soon she was running through the woods on Melis, hunting hares and rodents.

  Her younger brother was the opposite, born with all the empathy Beth lacked. He would cry whenever she smashed an insect or brought home a kill, as if he truly mourned the animal's death. Her father only watched and smiled.

  But that was a long time ago. Now her brother was a rookie on his first tour somewhere, and she was a veteran of two, stuck babysitting civilians on a hunk of iron far from any action. She wondered how her brother was doing, if he'd ever become hardened like Beth. Their father wanted to transfer him to the Exodus Fleet after his first tour, she knew. That should be an easy assignment. She hoped he would find a way to remain innocent, unchanged.

  She missed him the most, more than her sisters. He and Beth were the youngest of the four children, and their older sisters were more mystery than blood. Beth barely remembered Sandrakari, the eldest who was sent off to the espionage seminary at age ten. She was nothing but a name.

  Beth had more memories of Pavani, but she was one of the Shieldwardens now, always at the Emperor's side. Beth tried visiting her the last time she was on Melis but the closest she came was a few hundred feet. From that distance her sister was a blue-armored figure next to the Emperor, taught and alert like a coiled snake.

  It was years since she'd seen her father, too. He was too distinguished for standard tour lengths, spending all of his time with the Exodus Fleet preparations. She wondered if he ever thought of Beth, or if he was as cold and uncaring as she.

  "You're not uncaring," she knew Javin would say. "You just don't flinch away from the uncomfortable."

  Whether it was true or not, the words soothed her. Javin was more of a father to her, anyways, after their years together on the Ancillary, though in truth he was old enough to be her father's father. He only completed the one mandatory tour when he was young, and had never composed a family. She pictured him bouncing a baby on his lap and laughed to herself. The old man was uncomfortable with anything that couldn't be programmed with code.

  She passed a worker in the hallway carrying a box of electronics in her arms. She nearly bumped into Beth, mumbling an apology before hurrying along.

  Beth smiled. Javin would have called all the workers sloppy and complained that the Empire was falling apart. He didn't mind if an electroid malfunctioned, because there was always a definitive cause, a problem that could be identified and fixed. But humans were vague, confusing. A human could be thoroughly trained, and given documentation for reference, and he would still forget to manually choose the failover sequence before sticking his hand in a transfer tube. It only frustrated Beth, but it confounded Javin.

  The stress was getting to him, she knew. She heard it in his voice on the last flyby. He may have initially gone to the solar ring to avoid all the Ancillary workers, but now he stayed out there because their work was behind schedule. No matter the cause, he would suffer the blame if they were delayed. As if dismantling the ring, the structure he'd spent his entire life maintaining, wasn't painful enough.

  She came to a crossway in the hall and stopped. The living quarters lay ahead. Her hair was still wet and uncombed, but that was just another excuse to put off her duties. With a sigh she turned left, down the hall that led to the command room.

  The command room was a wide rectangle on the outside of the asteroid, with the edge of Saria just in view outside the long window. Endless terminals and screens along
the walls displayed data: station alignment, battery charge, core temperature. The energy needs of the entire Melisao Empire flowed through this room.

  The Ancillary functioned automatically, in normal circumstances. One massive photovoltaic receptor was fixed to the side of the asteroid facing the ring, where the panel groupings discharged their power as the Ancillary flew by. The power was collected in batteries, then transferred to the four plasma cores in the center of the asteroid. Then when the Ancillary aligned with Melis, every ten days, the power was fired from the external laser in one long burst. A relay station similar to the Ancillary was placed on Melis's moon Latea. It received the energy, and from there it could be sent to the shipyard or planet surface.

  But the dismantling process meant power was harvested from the ring unevenly. The Ancillary was aged, and reacted poorly to the disproportionate power collection. Javin called it "moody". Three technicians sat in front of a variety of computer screens. They didn't appear to be doing anything more than stare at data, but Beth knew they were focused, ready to rearrange the battery and core load as needed. Theirs was the most critical job on the station.

  A fourth person sat against the wall. Elo was the Custodian's assistant--Javin's assistant, she thought stubbornly--sent to the station when dismantling began. He monitored the rest of the workers and relayed all important information.

  And with Javin gone, that information went to Beth.

  "Madam Custodian!" Elo said, rising from his seat. He was short and pudgy like a child, though he was several decades older than Beth. His head was bald and fleshy. A portable computer nestled in the crook of his arm, and he rocked back and forth on his heels while he waited for acknowledgement. Beth saw a long list of information there, waiting to be explained to her. She tried not to groan.

  "I'm not the Custodian," she said.

  "You are until Javin returns," Elo said, "but that's what I wanted to tell you. We're nearing the third quadrant. Javin's ship is returning."

  Chapter 9

  Beth walked to the navigation screen, which covered an entire wall floor-to-ceiling. A top-down view of the inner part of the Sarian system was shown, with the roiling star in the center. The solar ring rotated around it, dangerously close. One-fourth of the ring was missing, the quadrant already dismantled. The Ancillary and its path was outlined in green, orbiting the ring in the opposite direction.

  And there, moving away from the ring, was Javin's Carrion. Its route was a tight semi-circle, where it would expel significant energy reversing its orbit to match the Ancillary. The transfer had already begun, and a timer showed that he would dock with them in thirty minutes.

  Thank the stars, Beth thought. Javin was indeed returning. She'd been afraid he would stay out there for another rotation and didn't think she could suffer the custodial responsibility for another ten days without stabbing someone.

  "Go tell Julius to get the other Carrion ready," she said. "He'll take over where Custodian Javin left off."

  She hoped that would occupy Elo's time. The assistant would prattle on about every nut and bolt of the Ancillary if he had nothing else to do, and sending him to relay messages was one of Beth's only means of respite.

  But instead Elo glanced at the portable screen in his arm and said, "Your father left another message while you were sleeping."

  Beth stiffened. It was the second time he'd tried contacting her that week. "What did he want?"

  "Same as before: he wishes to speak with you. He would not tell me any details."

  "Fine. I'll contact him after my shift. Now if that was all..."

  But Elo didn't leave. "There's more."

  "Yes?"

  "It's the long-range array," he said. "It began malfunctioning thirty minutes ago."

  More problems? was Beth's first thought. She'd worked on the Ancillary with Javin for nearly a decade, and despite the station's age they rarely had any system problems. But now that there were dozens of workers running around things seemed to break constantly.

  She shrugged. It would soon be Javin's problem again. "Send Keld down to work on it. We won't need long-range communications until we're aligned with Melis, anyways."

  "I already sent Keld," Elo said. "He wants you to take a look."

  Beth ran a hand through her hair. It was still wet. Her stomach complained too, a reminder that she hadn't eaten. Being in charge meant she was always needed, regardless of her own requirements. "Fine. But this is the last thing I do before Javin returns. Then you can pester him."

  But as they turned to leave, one of the technicians spoke up. "Madam Custodian? My computer shows that Javin dismantled one thousand, four hundred and fifty panels."

  "I don't need every detail, thank you."

  The technician pursed her lips. "I mention it because it's critical to know how much power is being relayed from the ring to the Ancillary. If the number of functional groupings is incorrect, then we have trouble relaying the energy."

  "Yes, I know," Beth said, halfway out the door. "What makes you think the number of active groupings is incorrect?"

  "Javin's cargo bay is empty," she said. "He's not returning with anything."

  Beth stopped. "That can't be right," she said, turning to Elo. "His ship was half-full on our last flyby."

  Elo nodded.

  It was probably a mistake. If the long-range relay was having issues, maybe the computer system was too. More likely the technician is wrong. For a long moment Beth considered ignoring it. "Is the short-range comm relay still functional?"

  "It is," Elo said.

  "I want to speak to Javin."

  Elo led her to a terminal in the center of the room. He bent to the screen and tapped in a few commands. There was a long pause, longer than normal. Elo frowned. "I don't know understand what the delay is."

  "Maybe the short-range comm is malfunctioning too."

  Elo shook his head. "No. This says the request went through fine."

  They both stared at the blank screen. Time stretched. Elo began fidgeting.

  Just as Beth was about to give up the screen flickered and Javin's face appeared. There was a strange color around his eyes, like bruising. He's not sleeping much. The Carrion's crowded cockpit showed behind him.

  "Hey there, old man," Beth said. "Finally decided to take me up on that bottle of sweetwater?"

  Javin smiled tightly. "Hello Beth. I'll be there soon, then we can talk in person."

  "We're showing something strange on our screens," she said. "It says your ship is empty of cargo."

  He opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He turned his head slightly, as if he was checking another computer screen out of view.

  "I know it's probably just a glitch," Beth continued. "We've been having some problems with the long-range communication array, too. But I wanted to ask, to be sure."

  Javin's eyes widened in alarm. He probably already regrets returning, Beth thought with a smile. It gave her a small sense of satisfaction, bombarding him with problems before he even set foot on the asteroid. Serves him right for leaving me in charge.

  "I had some electrical problems," Javin said, "so I had to dump them."

  Beth snorted. "You dumped the panels? In open space? What kind of electrical problem made you do that?"

  Javin waved a hand. "They're just hunks of metal, Beth. They'll be fine until we return to retrieve them. I'll tell you about it when I'm rock-side." Javin pushed a button and the screen went blank.

  Beth frowned at the computer. "I'll go look at the relay," she finally told Elo, "but then I'm getting something to eat. Save all other problems for Javin. Only bother me if the Ancillary is on fire."

  The long-range communications relay was a quarter of the way around the ring, on the other side of the living facilities. She could have cut through, but the smell of food would be too tempting, so she continued along the ring instead. Workers mumbled greetings as they passed her in the tight hallway, but her thoughts were on Javin. Hunks of metal? She'd never heard
him refer to electronics with anything other than affection. And it surprised her that he would just leave the panels behind. There must have been a critical problem.

  Javin worked too hard. He sometimes carried a spare suit with him, so he could swap batteries and oxygen without needing to return to his ship. He denied it, but she'd seen him do it before. A man his age couldn't labor like that in the black for months without the stress affecting him.

  Beth almost felt guilty for relinquishing the Ancillary's responsibilities. Maybe I'll help him with some of the management, she thought. Help him ease back into it.

  She passed the personnel airlocks and entered the communication room. If it could even be called a room; it was scarcely larger than a closet, crowded for two people. Keld was crouched in one corner where a metal panel had been removed revealing the circuitry inside. He was stocky and bald, maybe forty years old. He was one of the few workers who was competent, so he was one of the few workers Beth liked.

  "I wouldn't have called you down here," he said without looking up. "I know you've enough to do. But this problem is atypical."

  She crouched next to him to look inside. The space was thick with cables. A junction box was on the left with wires running out of it horizontally before splitting in all directions. There were more electronics and bundles of wire behind it.

  It only took a glance to notice what was wrong. "Looks like something shorted the connection," she said, pointing at a bundle of cables. They were burned through, leaving exposed wires on either side of the gap. They were singed black around the edges.

  "Yeah, it looks like that," Keld said. He reached inside and moved some of the damaged wires, revealing another junction box underneath. "Except the metal on this box is lanced. See the line, here?"

  He pointed with his other hand, and Beth had to lean forward to see. There was a vertical line in the steel, so thin and faint that she wouldn't have noticed it if she weren't looking. She felt along it with a finger, but it was just a slight discoloration, and felt no different than the rest of the metal.

 

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