by Tammy Salyer
Being part of a good crew can get you a lot of places, but one place it will never get you is out of your own head. Mornings on Keum Libre bring that home to me more than anything else. At least, the mornings when I’m not dealing with the tragedy of another colonist’s death or some other kind of emergency. In one sense, I guess we’re all fortunate that those hectic and troubling mornings are growing more and more rare, but in another sense, waking up and having the time to realize—to fully comprehend—that civilization as we knew it will never exist again can really throw off a person’s equilibrium. And discovering how okay with that I am, well, that’s the most unbalancing thing of all.
Which explains the spike of excitement I feel when Vitruzzi walks up to our table as Karl and I eat in the Andromeda’s main chow hall and says, “You’re leaving in thirty-six hours.”
Karl splutters into his coffee. “What?”
“You said there are more med supplies on the derelict you and David found, right? It’s imperative that we have them, sooner rather than later. The drug stock here is too thin already.” She places a cup of coffee on the table and sits down beside me. Drops of the pounding rain, so common in KL’s jungles, bead off the tips of her lank hair, emphasizing how worn down she looks.
Inwardly, I heave a sigh of relief. I’m better in the air. All this staying put makes me restless, and the constant arguing among the colonists makes anywhere else sound like paradise. Life’s hard enough—without people making it harder.
Karl gets over the surprise quickly. Whether he admits it or not, the same jet-setter traits that made him join the Corps all those years ago in the first place still exist. “You know, V,” he says, “maybe you should come with us. Jade and Sánchez can handle the infirmary for a few weeks, and we could use you on the ship to help identify things we need.”
The Millar triplets of about twelve years old run up to our table, giggling and fighting at the same time, and interrupt Karl. “Mr. Strahan,” the silken-black-haired girl says, putting her arm into the chest of her trailing brother to stop him, “can you take us up in one of the scouts? You promised you would when you got back.”
Karl smiles at them, then glances around the mess hall, probably looking for their parents, Jennifer and Ivan. “Looks like I can’t this time, kids.”
“Aw, when?” one of the boys, Jens, I think, asks. Before Karl can answer, the kid stands up straighter and nods at me somberly, like a meter-and-a-half-tall CEO. “Hi, Miz Erikson. How are you?”
His sister and brother start giggling again, and he withers them with his violet glare. Or rather, he tries to wither them, but coming from a twelve-year-old it’s about as intimidating as a puppy chewing on a sock. The giggling continues until I answer, “Good, thanks, um, Jens? Where’s your folks?”
“They’re still asleep,” the other boy answers.
Shouldn’t you be too, then? I want to ask. My facility with children is about the same as it is with kitchen or gardening tools—essentially nonexistent. I’ve been to dozens of planets and encountered all types of creatures and germs that make sleeping anywhere but inside a sealed room a bad idea, but children are by far the most alien.
“Look, we’re heading out again on another scout run in a couple of days,” Karl interjects. As their expressions begin to wilt, he goes on, “It’s an exciting mission! We’re rendezvousing with a mid-class transporter that’s full of supplies and who knows what. If we find anything you’d like, I will definitely bring it back. Maybe we’ll find some hover-skis or bikes.”
“Hey kids,” Vitruzzi breaks in. “We have a lot of planning to do, okay?”
“Okay, Dr. Vitruzzi,” they chime in unison and take off at full throttle again, as if they’d never even slowed down.
Karl’s eyes track them across the chow hall, a strangely bemused glint in them. When he looks back, he’s serious again. “So what do you say, V? We could use you to pick out the necessities. I don’t want to haul in a bunch of aspirin if there’s something more important right there.”
“No, that’s not—”
“You should go. Get away for a while.” Brady comes up behind us with his own tray, apparently overhearing the discussion.
“Patrick, I’m the only doctor this colony has,” Vitruzzi protests, as he grabs the stool across from her and sits.
“Yeah, but you’re also only human. You need to go. Karl is right, and you’re killing yourself right now.”
As if it’s any less hazardous for her health to be flying through airspace that’s infested with scavengers, and worse—the desperate. The rumors about what’s happening in some of the more remote outposts, the lengths settlements have gone to for the sake of survival, get worse with every salvaging op we run. Some people who were only marginally civilized before the war have become outright animals, and pirates, slavers, and marauding raiders are now just part of daily life beyond KL. I don’t mention this, though. Karl and Brady are both right. Vitruzzi is killing herself, and she’s the best judge of the colony’s medical needs.
She sighs, warring with her sense of duty and her sense of reality. She can’t keep up the pace she’s going, and if there’s something else going on in her head, maybe a change of scenery will help her work it out. That’s always been my best fix. And I’m completely well-adjusted.
She seems to decide and asks, “How much more cargo is there?”
“A lot more than we can take on one ship,” Karl responds. “We’ll probably need two. The Orika and the Nebula have the most capacity, but the Teibo is in the best condition. And there’s this other thing we found—some kind of materials processor, but small. Pretty interesting. It may be worth hauling back and having Kittinger look over.”
It hits me. “Materials,” I blurt.
Brady stares at me curiously until I go on. “Like all those sealed-up chemicals that were in the haul you brought back yesterday,” I tell Karl. “Maybe this thing you’re talking about uses those.”
“For what?” Karl asks.
I shrug, then Vitruzzi says, “I want Quantum with us.”
“Why?” I ask, clamping down on a stronger protest lodged right behind my teeth. I guess you just never stop disliking someone who once kidnapped you. Unless they become your crew, that is.
“I don’t want him near the soil compound.”
“Look, V,” I reason. “Let’s just drop him off at Obal 6 like he’s asking. You don’t trust him, I don’t like or trust him, and he doesn’t want to be here.”
“We’ve offered, Aly,” Brady says and takes a swallow of his coffee. “But he doesn’t want to go without ‘assets,’ as he puts it.”
“Last time I looked, no one here signed a socialist charter,” I respond. “Life’s tough. He can either take the offer of a ride, or he can shut up, right?” If Karl were an eye roller, he’d be rolling them at me. When no one answers, I sigh. “Fine. Then I’d like Desto to come too.”
“With Zeta pregnant? He’s not going anywhere,” Brady remarks.
“She’s a good pilot; she can fly the Teibo. Besides, they’ve been wanting a honeymoon.” My joke falls flat. Tough crowd.
Brady continues to argue. “She was a commercial pilot. Tactical flying is a different matter. I don’t want to put anyone in harm’s way, but especially not someone in her condition.”
“Condition?” Vitruzzi asks. “Pat, she’s pregnant, not dying of cancer. There’s nothing stopping her from flying.”
Awkward silence. Outside myself and Karl, I’ve never met two more stubborn people. Vitruzzi and Brady never fight, at least not that I’ve heard, but they disagree at a level that makes anyone in their orbit feel like they’re being tractor beamed into a volcano.
Eventually, Karl says, “Aly, why don’t we run it by them before I head out to the platform today. Thirty-six hours?” He raises an eyebrow at Vitruzzi, who nods. “Then I guess I don’t need to unpack.”
SIX
Spinning slowly in a vertical position, like a carousel with a dying engine, the Admin s
upply transporter seems to have been pinned to its section of empty space and left there to dry up and wither away. The name—PCA GALATEA—hovers into view for a moment before disappearing with the ship’s next rotation. The funny thing about out here, though, is that a hundred, two hundred, even a thousand years from now, as long as nothing barrels into the derelict or knocks it out of its orbit, it will still look pretty much the same.
Our sensors pick up no trace of electrical or other energy fields, and just as David and Karl had said in the pre-mission briefing, there’s no one on board answering our hails. It’s just as dead in the air as it looks.
While Venus maneuvers us onto a wide, flat surface and engages the magnetic clingers, Karl, Vitruzzi, Hoogs, and I get suited up. Vitruzzi contacts the Teibo and directs Desto, David, and Mason to do the same and then join us on the derelict. We’ll be able to scour the transport quickly with every able body available to help. That leaves Zeta, who hadn’t needed to be asked twice to join the excursion, alone on the ’Bo with Quantum. If he’s wondering why Vitruzzi wanted him along, he hasn’t said anything. I wonder how he likes being left out of the search, then realize he’s probably more than happy not to be floating around in space aboard a ship that could be home to hundreds of potential hazards. Quantum is not a fool.
The rest of us on the other hand…
After we’re all gathered and tethered together at the outer man-door that served as Karl and David’s entrance on their pass a couple weeks back, V tells Zeta to hang back and keep the ’Bo on low power with cloaks on until we’ve had some time to get a look inside the Galatea, and Venus keeps the Orika attached and waiting. Now we just have to hope that David and Karl’s luck held on and no other salvagers have come through.
We drift in one by one, but my scavenger’s sense is already telling me what I need to know, and I exchange a glance with Karl. The expression on his face says exactly what I’m thinking: nobody’s home, or if they are, they gave up the habit of breathing long before we arrived.
No pressure, no gravity, no air, and no lights. We flip on the high-beam LEDs attached to our face shields, then split up to start a search. Karl and I head toward the lower deck, David and Vitruzzi take a right-hand corridor, and Hoogs, Desto, and Mason go left. Usually, the need to hurry in salvage jobs like this is paramount, but today is different. We have two ships and a lot of personal firepower, which should serve as a buffer to let us take our time going through every room. Vitruzzi’s made clear that our main needs are medical supplies and, as always, weapons and food, but with the limited capacity for salvage and cargo aboard our two scout ships, we have no choice but to be selective. Still, an Admin supply ship this size out in Spectra territory is unusual; maybe we can find something on board that will explain why it was here. And just maybe it will be something we can use.
After about an hour, Hoogs contacts us. They’ve reached the engine room and found severe damage to the flight controls from an electrical fire. By all appearances, the original crew had managed to get the meltdown under control, but not before it had moved into the central grid for the life support systems. Since we’ve found no bodies or signs of a struggle, the working theory is that, once their systems went offline, they’d been forced to take their landing craft down to Eruo Pium, a moon orbiting Spectra 3, in search of parts and aid to get the ship back together. The theory is further supported when we find no landing craft in the hangar or cargo bay. We know they’ve already been gone for at least four weeks—between the time it took for David and Karl’s scout team to return to KL after finding it and then turn around and come back—so whatever is keeping the original crew away may well be permanent. Bad for them; good for us.
There hasn’t been a peep on board, and Vitruzzi lets everyone know she and David are heading toward the bridge, leaving Karl and me to go down the last corridor to where the crew quarters probably are.
“Bingo,” I whisper after my first glance down the hallway. Three rooms labeled MEDICAL are lined up in a row. I know how excited this will make Vitruzzi.
I get Karl’s attention and gesture toward the first. Inside, it appears that the room has never been touched. Aside from sundry items floating around, the wall cabinets are all closed and locked, and the equipment that’s strapped to the ground is in pristine condition. If the other two infirmaries are this mint, we’ll be able to gather enough med supplies to stock the settlement for at least six months. Maybe it’ll help get Vitruzzi out of whatever funk she’s in.
Karl hovers in behind me and shoots me a gleeful grin after getting a look around. “We’re in business. Vitruzzi,” he says into the com’s open channel, “we hit pay dirt. Looks like the medical stations are all intact and still stocked.” He puts a gloved hand on the arm of my suit and nods toward the doorway. “There could be more storage nearby where they keep the extra supplies, drugs, what have you. I’ll get a look down the corridor and also see what I can find in the way of containers or boxes. Get to work on these cabinet locks until the rest get here to help.”
I nod affirmatively and he pulls himself back outside, then lets the others know where we are while I start dismantling the first row of cabinets, hoping to find a healthy supply of antibiotics. Infections stemming from wounds are the primary problem back on KL and cause us to use up antibiotics faster than anything else.
Both scout teams arrive and we pick the place bleached-bone clean. While the antibiotic supply isn’t as big as I’d hoped for, a major bonus comes in the form of a data-mesh that lists the contents of a bunch of unlabeled boxes we’d found in the cargo hold: a holographic surgical scanner that will assist Vitruzzi with diagnosing and potentially performing surgery on the more serious patients, as well as several more containers with lab-testing assays and equipment. The manifest doesn’t list where any of this stuff was to be delivered, or why the ship was way out here near the Spectras, but with this excellent haul and the good it will do for the colony on KL, it hardly matters.
We direct all of the supplies to the main hangar and stage them with the cargo bins we want to take, along with the machine Karl spoke of—the matter printer, or whatever it is. Small containers can be pushed through the hull breach Karl and David’s crew created last time, and someone on the outside will be able to walk them to the Orika. It’s going to be a different matter to get the bigger containers out.
“If we can link them all together with a rope or a chain, we can secure them to a sturdy wall, then cut a larger opening through the main cargo hatch and the airlock to haul everything out,” Karl suggests.
“If we destroy the airlock,” Hoogs says, “this bird’s never leaving orbit again.”
No one says anything. While it may be true, the likelihood anyone will ever be around to try and fix it is, among other things, not our problem.
The comment goes unanswered, and Hoogs seems inclined to drop it. I’m standing next to him, the magnetic grippers of our boots making us and the rest of the boarding crew the only things touching the floor in the hangar. “Then just have the Teibo move into range, open the hull, and we can each grab a box and use our suit jump-thrusters to push us out through the airlock and into the ’Bo.”
The group agrees on it being the best idea and we relay the plan to Zeta. Vitruzzi and I start moving the smaller cargo to the Orika while the rest tether everything together in preparation. In another forty-five minutes, we’re all ready for the Teibo.
“What the…?” Venus’s incredulous query comes through our radio, followed by several seconds of silence. I’m about to decide she forgot she was broadcasting, when: “That’s just not right!”
“Venus, what’s your status?” Vitruzzi asks, her eyes fixed on the expanse of space outside the breach we created.
“Cap’n, I’d say we have at least one visitor. I’m reading another ship moving toward us.”
“Zeta, are you picking anything up?” V asks.
“Yeah, oh yeah,” she replies. “Sure am.”
“No, dammit,”
Karl cries. “Not a chance! This boat’s been out here for weeks. No way another ship randomly shows up now.”
“How long until they arrive, can you tell?” Vitruzzi asks.
“Soon,” both pilots respond simultaneously.
Karl and I exchange a glance. “V,” he says, “maybe Venus should unlink. She’s a sitting duck if they’re hostile.”
Vitruzzi nods and passes on the order.
“Guys, what about you?” Venus asks. “What happens if they board?”
“I think we’ll be able to handle them,” Vitruzzi answers. “You two need to put some distance between this boat and yourselves—right now. Keep eyes on and transceiver links up. If you don’t hear anything, come back in two hours and do a sweep. Most importantly, keep yourselves clear of engagement. The colony can’t afford to lose you or those scouts.”
She turns to the rest of us. “The only people with rights to this salvage are the people who own the ship. If it’s them, and they can prove it, we’ll leave in peace. Otherwise…” The statement hangs, but we all know what it means.
I quickly unharness the T-Max laser I carry for outer-atmosphere jobs, everyone else copying the action with their own choice of firearm. We could open a black-market dealership with the range of weapons among this crew. “We don’t want to give away our numbers,” I remark. “Looks like good vantages from along that wall, up there on the catwalk, and…” I gesture at several potential cover positions.
“I’ll stay put. Talk to them,” Vitruzzi says.
“V, do you want—?” David starts.
“Yes,” she answers before he can finish.
“Okay”—he nods—“we’ll cover you.”
The crew moves out to wait. Karl and I take the uppermost story, while Hoogs, a stringy marvel with chameleonlike powers, finds an out-of-sight niche to occupy on the main deck, and David digs in near the hull’s primary hatch. Desto and Mason stand beside Vitruzzi. It’s most likely whoever is out there will see our hatch demolition on their own scout pass. They won’t see our ships, so they won’t expect anyone else to be on board, which gives them every reason to take advantage of the invitation of an already open door. It’s possible that they could even decide to go on by once they’ve seen another salvage crew has already come through. But if they don’t, and they enter through some other means, we’ll have plenty of time to regroup and confront them from new positions.