Silence fell again soon, no more questions to be asked that could make any difference. There were no hints about what was going on around them, no countdown clock ticking away the remaining moments of their lives. Only silence and darkness, the hallmarks of this hell.
Evie had fallen asleep when the Lexiconis was rocked by a nearby impact again, her eyes popping open only to be greeted by darkness all over again, her heart racing all over again. Was it an attack? Was this the end?
"Are they gone?" someone's voice asked.
"I do not know," Torque answered.
Evie was quickly learning to hate the dark.
"We'll give it a few minutes for them to leave, then see if we can start up just sensors and backup life support," Captain Briggs said.
The next five minutes felt far longer than the previous hour. No matter what came next, they were nowhere near safe. But it was starting to feel like all of this uncertainty would be enough to kill her without any help from the void at all.
Chapter Fourteen – Oliver
Sprocket wouldn't look at him, not on purpose. And it wasn't hard to see why. But since it was one of the many things that had gone wrong, Oliver had to file it away to worry about later. He had been playing through the past day repeatedly ever since the ship had landed and gone dark. There were so many questions and almost no answers. Even trying to think through their current situation felt absurd.
His ship was nestled inside the wreckage of an alien space station, hiding out from an alien race that no human had ever heard of yesterday, hoping not to be discovered and blown out into the void along with their two alien passengers. It shouldn't have been possible.
And yet here they were. And Oliver had been the one to get them there. Every decision he'd ever made had led to this moment with these people. He was the reason they were all in this position, unsure of how much longer they'd be alive, increasingly doubtful they'd ever see anyone they loved again.
A part of Oliver had always wanted this, and that was the part he doubted he'd ever forgive. He'd fulfilled a childhood dream by becoming the captain of his own ship. Why hadn't that been enough?
No. That wasn't the question he needed to answer, not for himself and not for his crew. That wouldn't make a difference now. What could he do to help? How could he give these people their best chance of getting home?
What would Captain Singh do? Oliver almost laughed out loud at the thought. Almost. Captain Singh had been the commander on board the Songbird, a fictional ship he'd spent countless hours on through his library's virtual reality headset as a kid. He always played the ship's security officer, taking down bad guys and trying to learn from Captain Singh as they worked through every dilemma the program threw at them, learning from how he responded each time to make the next mission more dangerous.
The program had been cancelled after three years, but there hadn't been anything stopping Oliver from playing through each season repeatedly, figuring out how each decision he made could lead to a new set of results, playing off his favorite captain and never once trying to take command of the ship like some of his friends from school had done. He'd been there because he wanted to learn, wanted to see how the best of the best captained a ship.
And what did he have to show for it? What had he learned? Not self-pity. Or guilt, or regret. The one thing all his characters had shown constantly was perseverance. Yes, in those games, it was hard to permanently end your story. Every scenario offered new opportunities to learn or come out on top.
Sure, real life wasn't like that. But until today, real life also hadn't been about unknown space, alien races, and weapons that could destroy ships that were more than a hundred stories high.
He had to adapt, to keep trying, to find a way. It was what his crew deserved, and the only answer he could ever truly accept from himself. He was a starship captain, and it was well past time he started acting like one.
Maybe, it would end in disaster, but they were already the middle of one. He had to at least try.
"Let's see what's out there."
The secondary lighting system flickered to life, illuminating the bridge in a dull blue glow. It was enough to push away the shadows, which was all Oliver needed. "Anything?" he asked, speaking, and signing.
Answers didn't come quickly, but knowing that new air was being cycled through the ship helped to build patience. He and his crew were still breathing and that was what was important.
Sensors confirmed not only that the other ship had left, but that the section where they'd landed the ship was stable.
For once, they were safer than they had been a few minutes ago. Which left the next question. How could they use this safety, not knowing how temporary it might be, and actually start to dig themselves out of this hole?
"We've found a few things that might be useful already," he said, mostly thinking out loud. "But we still don't have nearly enough to survive for any real length of time. And we don't know for sure that as soon as we boot up again, the Hshazir won't pick up our energy signature turn around and head right back here. So, we're going to stay put, at least for a few hours. We need to eat, we need to sleep, and we need to find a way to help ourselves. There are probably plenty of things on board Torque's vessel that while useless to the Hshazir, might be helpful to us."
While his crew considered his word, Oliver studied their faces. Every single one of them were clearly exhausted, even the aliens who were still difficult to read. Fatigue radiated from all of them, and he didn't feel any better. "We'll break into two teams—Sprocket, Gwynn, you're with me this time around. Torque, if you don't mind accompanying us, you can probably give us a good idea of what we're actually looking for. Everyone else grabs something to eat, then get some sleep. When we get back, we switch off."
Nobody argued. Nobody even asked any questions. Even Gwynn kept her mouth shut, despite looking like she had some serious reservations about not getting the first sleeping shift. But if anyone could get information off a completely alien computer system, it would be her, now that they had a guide to point them in the right direction, and make sense of the impossible.
"Captain Briggs." Evie stood awkwardly from where she'd been crumpled in a corner. "I'd like to help. I'm pretty good with tech, and if nothing else I've got two good hands. I slept a little in the darkness, while we waited. I'm good to go. Take me with you."
Oliver started to argue. He even considered keeping her here on the ship throughout. He didn't know Evie, and still had no reason to trust her. If he was honest with himself, he was still angry with her, and angry with himself for listening to her.
But she was able-bodied, and there was no scenario Oliver could envision where she could deliberately make their situation worse. Evelyn Casseract was in this as much as anyone now, and was asking to pull her own weight. He'd be a fool to say no.
"You're in."
"Does that mean I can sleep?" Gwynn asked, too quickly.
"Not yet. We're all going to need to push through for a few more hours. I have no intention of rushing off half-cocked, so we'll all get plenty of chances to sleep today. And as many opportunities to help out. Now, the sooner we start talking about this and actually get working, the sooner we all get to sleep."
The first group’s trek out into the alien ship, back in their suits, wasn't entirely useful. It had taken Torque a long time to orient himself in the near darkness, then it turned out that the ship was parked in one of the least useful places they could have managed. But after a couple of hours, they found their way up to one of the central areas of the ship, equipped with everything from restaurants to living-quarters.
Far more of these spaces were littered with bodies, some of which had died from gunshot wounds rather than exposure. And most of the obvious spaces had been picked clean of any food or water.
When they found their first stash of what Torque promised them was food, it was time to head back, each burdened down with as much as they could carry.
It wasn't much
, but it was a start.
Waking Lincoln and Safa was easier said than done, though the alien woman who they still had no name for was up and alert almost as soon as Oliver entered the boardroom where all three of them had spread out on the floor, with the furry creature the aliens had brought on board curled up against Safa's body.
They'd needed someone to show them the fastest way up from the parts of the ship too destroyed to be helpful, so Oliver had taken the second shift as well as the first, especially since this group only had one set of working ears between them, the downside of taking Evie up on her offer. At least they could make two trips back to the ship with food during their time slot. During their third hour, Lincoln practically stumbled onto what looked like a computer lab or an office. But with no one to interpret what they were seeing, and no way to power the computers, another trip with a different configuration of team mates was in order, to see what information they could pull up from the alien system.
Oliver joined that team too. Then the next, and the next. It was exhausting and exhilarating at once, but mostly he didn't want to leave his team in case they got in trouble. In case they needed their captain. At least after the first trip they could reengage their comms so each team could stay in touch with the ship as they went.
After five trips into the alien ship, he finally let himself take a five-minute break in his chair on the bridge while the others switched off with the next group. Two minutes later, Gwynn showed up, handing him a bowl of something brown and warm as soon as she made it up the stairs. "Eat," she said.
"Any luck figuring out how their system works?"
Gwynn stared at him until Oliver put a spoonful of the brown sludge into his mouth, bracing himself for whatever alien assortment of flavors he was about to experience. Something chunky brushed against his teeth, but he was too hungry to turn anything away. He bit down, and found potato.
It was canned stew from his own, very human, supply.
"No progress yet," Gwynn said once Oliver had swallowed a few bites. "We don't need to do this right now," Gwynn said. "I'm not convinced we can do this at all. Their technology works with electricity, I even think they built it with code, but it's all so different from what I've learned, and Torque can't read English, so he's not going to be any help unless we can get one of their machines working on our power supply, and even then, he'd have to sort through everything on his own. I don't know where to start, and you need to get some sleep."
"I'm fine, I promise," Oliver said with a wave of his hand. "Sprocket is going to take a group to see what he can find that might be adaptable with our technology. I should go with him."
"You should sleep."
Oliver moved to stand anyway, wobbling a little with the effort.
"We'll be fine without you for a shift or two, Oliver. We won't be fine if you exhaust yourself into a super coma, and we're stuck without a captain for whatever comes next. Because there will be a next, and a next and a next, until we're out of there. So, get some sleep. I'll wake you if anything interesting happens."
It was an extremely tempting offer.
Oliver was asleep in his chair less than two minutes later, the empty bowl of stew balanced in his lap.
"Time to wake up, oh captain my captain!"
"Huh?" Oliver jumped from sleeping to awake in an instant, his body still tired but his mind ready to jump into whatever problem was waiting for him now.
"Relax," Sprocket said, before letting out a harsh laugh. "Gwynn said I should come wake you up, suggest you move to a bed or something."
"How long have I been out?"
"Three hours, as far as I can tell. Safa and the others should be back soon. How long are we planning to keep this up? We've already got hundreds of items in the cargo hold that I don't understand or know how to use."
"We'll take as much as we can. We don't know how long we'll be here, or what we're going to need."
"Why bother? We're dead anyway."
Sprocket was looking for a fight. Oliver knew it, and his friend probably knew it to. What Oliver didn't have was the energy to give it to him. Sprocket was already working harder than anyone, desperate for any scrap of hope or progress. There wasn't time to upset the system now, even if it meant things would go smoother between them moving forward.
"I'll go with the next group," he said instead. His bowl from earlier clattered to the ground when he stood, but he did his best not to flinch at the sound. "You should get some more sleep."
Sprocket rolled his eyes, tilting his head up slightly with the weight of his exasperation. It was an identical expression to one Oliver had seen on Elaine's face countless times, usually while she was regaling them with stories about the women she worked with. "It's my turn. I'm coming too."
Oliver wasn't about to argue that one either. "Fine. Who else is coming?"
"Safa and the alien woman."
"Great."
"Great."
Despite the growing uncertainty of their survival, Oliver was stuck in some sort of playground battle for dominance, and had no idea how to pull himself out of it again.
A few minutes later, down in the cargo hold, Gwynn cast him a withering glare as she peeled off her suit, clearly unimpressed that he was awake again. But they had all fallen so far into this new routine that no one felt the need to speak as they traded one group for the next. There was a job to be done, everything else could wait until later.
Eventually, Oliver would have to figure out when later was. How many of these trips did they need to make? What would be most useful to them? Could they at least take a longer break all together sometime soon? They were all good questions. But Oliver knew that until they found something undeniably helpful for more than just feeding everyone, that he'd keep going back in. Food and water would keep them alive, but he had no intention of running and hiding forever.
They'd been focusing in on taking what they could get from whatever they were lucky enough to find. It wasn't going to be enough. What they needed was more refined sensor reading of the void, or the energy wave that had brought this ship here, or of the alien weapons. Of course, what they needed was going to be the hardest stuff to find.
"Do we know where we can find the bridge, or a command center?" he asked Torque, before putting on his helmet and following the others into the airlock.
"There's no bridge like you have. And central control would take days to get to, assuming there isn't any significant damage between here and there." Torque paused, lost in thought. "But there's a security station a few decks below us."
"Would that computer system be tied in with central control in any way?"
"Maybe. I am unsure. What is it you're looking for?"
"I don't know yet. Something more than we have. We need more than people's personal computers."
"That is the best option I know to give you. But I can accompany you in case something else occurs to me. There are two entrances you should be able to get access too." Torque thumped his chest. "I will get you there."
"No, no, you should rest." While Torque had been invaluable, he was also the slowest moving member of their group. Now that Oliver knew what he was looking for, he wanted to get in and out. "If you can give us directions, we'll get you on comms if we need anything else. Then we'll bring what we find back here." Worst case, they would try again, bringing everyone along if they had to.
To Torque's credit, his directions were excellent in their level of detail and efficiency. Safa navigating for the rest, they worked their way through several levels, at times trying to match up landmarks the alien had mentioned with the wreckage in front of them. They even managed to find a large segment that seemed to have at least some functional atmosphere of its own, if not gravity, but no one was about to risk wandering around without a suit.
"This is it," Safa said, safely tucked in the center of their foursome with Sprocket when they stopped in front of a still closed door. No matter how they'd gestured, Linna had insisted on taking up the rear.
<
br /> Nearby, too close for comfort, something rumbled in the distance, like metal had crashed into more metal nearby. Everyone froze at once.
"What was that?" he asked.
The sound came again, louder now. Something was blasting its way through the ship, and coming right for their location.
"Could it be one of us?" Sprocket asked. "Gwynn or Lincoln coming along for the ride?"
Safa's voice came out with a rattle. "Wrong direction. There's someone else here."
Light illuminated the promenade where they'd stopped from the opposite end, bright enough to hide whatever source it was coming from. A glowing green projectile flew overhead right as Gwynn's voice came through his suit. "Guys?" Damn it.
They were under attack! Oliver pulled out his gun, grateful for the courses he'd splurged on to learn how to best use his weapon in zero gravity. He'd had money to burn, and it had seemed like a good way to spend a weekend.
Oliver's first shot hit the lead intruder straight in the chest. He kept coming, completely oblivious or uncaring about the damage he should have endured. This was a lot less fun than he remembered. "Our weapons are useless! Everyone down! We need to get out of here." Oliver let out a steady string of curse words. Sprocket was already moving but Safa needed to be pulled down by force, her small hand trembling.
Together he started to move toward what was hopefully the safety of their destination when he remembered the fourth member of their team. When he turned back, she was already missing, more shots firing at them every second. Hit? "Shit! Sprocket, get Safa inside. Stay down."
Oliver let go of Safa's wrist right as their new alien friend somersaulted over his head, guns firing as she moved. The light instantly died by half. She was shooting for the light sources! He would have stopped to applaud if it weren't for the shot that exploded the ornate pottery he was stooped behind.
Time to get to safety and regroup. Torque had mentioned a second access way to the security center, they'd take that and backtrack to the ship as quickly as they could. But first, human or not, he was responsible for the woman who had just charged into an oncoming attack.
Into the Void (Beyond Humanity Book 1) Page 11