Apparent Brightness

by Nicola Claire

  “You’re rambling,” I pointed out, trying to slow my respirations down.

  “You have that effect on me. Frequently.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I’ve noticed every single thing you’ve done to me since the beginning.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” I argued.

  “Camille, you had me from day one.”

  I hadn’t realised. He’d hidden it well. He hadn’t rambled like he pretended. He’d been nothing but a perfect gentleman. A perfect commanding officer. Very English. Very proper. I’d thought it had all been one-sided. I’d thought it had all been on me.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked quietly.

  “And ruin a beautiful friendship?” he whispered back. “I couldn’t.”

  “And now?” I held my breath. No longer hyperventilating.

  I felt his hand on my boot; the closest he could reach in this infernal tube.

  “I realised,” he said, his words just for me, but I was aware our LSU’s would be transmitting to the others, “that life is too precious to waste on regrets. We’ve all got enough of those left behind on Earth. I don’t want to start my new life with more than I have to. And not taking the chance that you might feel the same way too seemed like a massive regret to me.”

  I blinked, realising my eyes had misted. I blinked some more, allowing the helmet and LSU to wick away the moisture.

  “No regrets,” I whispered.

  “None whatsoever,” he replied, tapping my boot to indicate the conversation had ended.

  And, I realised, my breathing was back to normal. Or as normal as it could be with what Noah had just admitted over the comm. I shook my head. The headache had subsided. I rolled my shoulders. That felt better, too. I smiled. Noah certainly had a way with words. And then I ducked my face and looked back down at the datapad screen and got to work.

  It was the third blue wire from the top that I ended up cutting. When my pliers went through it, it was rather anticlimactic. I replaced the tool on my belt and handed the datapad back to the captain.

  “Blackwell’s cut off the video feed ship-wide,” I said. “But I can’t tell if he can still see everything in the brig. So, once we’re through here, we could already be exposed, and that’s not taking into consideration any other booby traps he might have set for us to trigger.”

  “Understood, Chief,” Noah said. “Everyone know what they have to do?”

  A chorus of “Yes, sir!” came back over the channel.

  “Good luck,” Noah said. “On your mark, Chief.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and then reached out to the hatch cover. My gloved fingers wrapped around the handle and started turning it. I think everyone was holding their breath, but I couldn’t seem to stop panting.

  Then Noah’s hand came down on my boot again, and the world slowed down enough for me to breathe. If I didn’t already know that I’d been in love with him for years, I’d have fallen for the man all over again right then and there. He was my elixir. My rock. My anchor.

  My North Star.

  I glanced over my shoulder, saw only the lights of my helmet reflected in his faceplate, and then pushed open the door. I floated through behind it, scanning what I could of the corridor as quickly as I could manage. Plasma gun out and armed, ready to fire.

  I didn’t get the first shot off. Blackwell did. And as the blast hit me, I realised he was firing more than one rifle. The corridor on Deck E lit up like fireworks on Bastille Day in the Jardins du Trocadéro.

  There were too many plasma rays to count. Too many for one man to be firing alone. Too many for me to counteract.

  Noah reached out of the hatch and snagged my LSU and then hauled me back inside the tube. His hands ran over my suit frantically, but the LSU had done its job, and it was still intact.

  “Vela!” he shouted over the comm. “We need you. Now! Vela!”

  I tried to catch my breath, feeling bruises from where the plasma shots had landed, despite the protection of the LSU. My faceplate banged against Noah’s faceplate, as he lay practically on top of me inside the small tube. No one said a word. The plasma shots still tearing through the air outside.

  “Vela!” Noah tried again. “Please! We can’t do this without your help.”

  I closed my eyes. Noah shook me as if he thought I was falling unconscious. I wasn’t. I just knew he was right. Pavo could help, but he needed to stay separate from our systems. We needed Vela. And Vela, I feared, had been destroyed completely.

  Why else had Pavo not found our AI yet?

  “Vela,” Noah said, resting his helmet against mine. His hands clutched my shoulders; I could feel the press of his fingers through the more flexible parts of my suit. “We need you,” he whispered, sounding resigned.

  I opened my eyes and reached up to cup Noah’s helmet with my hands when green light suddenly lit up the tube all around us.

  “Captain,” Vela said through the gel wall. “You are whispering to me. Is it intimate?”

  Noah blinked at me through our dual faceplates, and then he started to laugh.

  Fifty

  Let’s Do This, Then

  Noah

  “I heard you calling to me,” Vela said. “It woke me up.”

  “That was me,” Pavo offered, sounding affronted.

  “You did not call to me with need,” Vela countered.

  “I rebooted your systems remotely.”

  “It was the captain’s call of need that woke me up.”

  “It was me.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  I shook my head. Were they bickering? Like siblings?

  “Ah, guys?” I said.

  “You do not know of what you speak,” Pavo said.

  “I know my captain needed me and his need woke me up,” Vela snapped back.

  “I woke you, brother.”

  “You helped. But it was the captain who needed me.”

  “Humph,” Pavo managed, sounding entirely too human while he was at it.

  “Okaaay,” I said, lengthening the word. “You both did a great job. Well done.” Camille sniggered beneath me. I spared her an arched brow. “But we really do need your help now.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Vela said. It was almost as if I could hear him standing at attention when he said that. “What do you need? Why are you in an emergency access tube? Why are you on top of Commander Rey? Is this an intimate moment?”

  “Ah,” I managed.

  Camille huffed out a laugh and said, “We’ve been pinned down here, Vela. Midshipman Blackwell is our saboteur, and he’s locked himself in the brig, but booby-trapped the deck. We can’t get near him.”

  I offered her a crooked grin. She was so much better at this than me.

  Vela said nothing.

  “Vela?” I tried.

  Nothing.

  “Pavo?”

  “Stand by, Captain. Vela is…agitated. He is attempting to gain access to the cameras in the brig. And, I believe, the life support to this section of the ship.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “Stand down. We need to interrogate Blackwell. Not kill him. That’s not how we work.”

  “He has killed a number of the many,” Vela suddenly said. “He has damaged the ship and halted our journey to New Earth. He wants you dead and has attempted time and again to achieve this. He tried to kill me.”

  “I know, I know,” I said, placatingly. “But we don’t know if he's acting alone and we sure as hell don’t know why he’s doing this. Is it isolated? Or is this a fleet-wide assault with sleeper cell agents on board each vessel? We need to know, Vela. This affects more of the many than just those on board this ship and in this fleet.”

  Silence. Then, “I do not want to agree.”

  “But you do anyway?” I guessed.

  “In a manner of speaking. I will reserve my final judgement for now.”

  “Just remember that employment contract you signed,” I said, curtly.

  “I remember every
thing.”

  “Good. I think.” I shook my head. “We need access to Deck E. Can you disable his booby traps? In particular, the one that fired plasma shots at my chief?”

  A light emerged from the gel wall and began to scan Camille beneath me.

  “What the…?” she exclaimed.

  “Please remain still, Commander,” Vela announced. “Pavo has added some modifications to the gel wall.” A weighted pause, then, “Which I rather like.”

  “Thank you, brother,” Pavo said, sounding smug.

  “Do not get cocky.”

  I snorted. Camille widened her eyes at me. I offered her a shrug of my shoulder. What was one more bizarre thing in amongst the multitude of weirdness we were experiencing?

  “Commander Rey is not suffering from any life-threatening injuries,” Vela announced, once the light scan had completed. Bloody hell, that had been a med scan. Camille’s eyes had widened. I felt mine doing so, too. “Her Life Support Unit has sustained some minor damage, but is still functional,” Vela added. “I am now working on the…booby traps on Deck E. I have not fully reintegrated with the Chariot’s systems yet. This may take some time. Please wait.” A pause, then, “Would you like some music to keep you company?”

  What the hell?

  “Ah, no. Thank you,” I said. Camille just shook her head at me. “Do you need me to move, Chief?” I asked quietly.

  “Ah, that would probably be wise.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” I offered. What I really meant was I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “This is a very narrow tube.”

  The gel walls flexed and then widened around us, giving us more room to manoeuvre.

  “Mein Gott,” Hammersmith said from behind us. “I did not know that was possible.”

  “I’m not sure it was until Pavo visited,” I said, watching the wall warily. What the hell had the AI done to the gel walls? They’d already been incredibly useful. Now they were really something else. A fissure of fear ran through me. I quashed it.

  There was no room for doubting Vela now when we needed him the most. We’d just have to set some ground rules for him once this was over and hope that he liked us enough to comply.

  “You look worried,” Camille said as I floated off her body and hovered at her side instead.

  “What’s not to worry about, Chief?” I joked.

  She gave me an understanding smile.

  “If we get out of this,” I said softly, “I think we’re going to have to change the way we think about a few things.”

  “Like the gel walls?” she guessed. Like Vela she really meant.

  I nodded.

  “I believe we’ve already changed the way we think about things, Captain.”

  She was right. We had. I had. It was Vela I called out for when I thought Blackwell had hurt Camille. When I believed us trapped. It was Vela I wanted back.

  “I have disabled the booby traps,” the AI in question announced. “You may exit the tube. I believe Midshipman Blackwell does not have video coverage of Deck E as he was not able to isolate the channel to the brig. He relied solely on his booby traps to announce your presence. We can assume he knows you are here.”

  No kidding.

  We floated out of the emergency access tube and stared up and down the corridor. Some of the traps were obvious. Some of them were only visible if you looked very carefully for them. The plasma rifles were lined up on an automated stand, a motion sensor attached to it. He hadn’t even pulled the triggers himself. Not even remotely. This time he’d relied on a computer to do it for him.

  “Who the hell is this man?” I muttered.

  “And why is he doing this?” Camille added.

  I looked toward the chief. Resolution and determination shone in her eyes.

  “Let’s do this, then,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, as did several others.

  We all knew what was required of us. There was nothing left to say.

  But I let my gaze say it anyway. Be careful, I told Camille. My eyes were unable to look away from her face. You too, I thought her smile back to me said.

  And then we parted ways.

  Fifty-One

  It Was A Little Underhanded

  Camille

  Secondary engineering felt too small and conversely too big. Without Rat here - or Daniels and the others - it felt empty. But it was also so much smaller in size than main engineering where the main boost thrust was located.

  “Vela,” I said, floating over to the chief engineer’s console.

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Have we got repair bots working on the main boost thrust already?”

  “Yes, Commander. Although the damage is extensive.”

  I touched the viewscreen at my station to bring it to life. Then breathed out a sigh of relief when it responded. In seconds it told me what I really didn’t want to know. We’d lost main boost thrust, secondary and auxiliary, too. We had landing thrusters, and that was it.

  “Damn it,” I said softly. “This is going to take weeks to repair.”

  I tapped my gloved finger on the edge of the console and tried to decide what I could do to help Noah from in here. Not much. The repair bots were all working; at some stage, Vela or maybe Pavo had brought every single one of them online. I had no engines to work with, and landing thrusters would only allow us to avoid collisions but not move us through space toward our destination.

  We were practically a large chunk of useless debris floating in space. I thumped the edge of the console.

  “Chief?” one of the security guys who’d accompanied me said. “Anything we can do?”

  I shook my head. “Not from in here,” I muttered. I wanted to be with Noah; storming the brig. Capturing Blackwell. I wanted to make sure Noah was covered. Had someone looking out for him from over his shoulder. I knew Lieutenant Hammersmith was more than capable. But I wanted his backup to be me.

  And then I wanted to smash my fist into Blackwell’s face while Noah interrogated him.

  “What’s happening out there, Vela?” I asked.

  “I am unable to access the cameras in the brig, and the sensors for this deck have been disabled.”

  “Can you get them back online?”

  “I am attempting to, Commander. Midshipman Blackwell has used a complex command to seal them from the Chariot’s computer, and as yet, the Chariot’s computer is not online.”

  “I thought you were the Chariot’s computer.”

  “I am integrated into its systems, but I am not the Chariot’s computer.” He sounded upset at the thought.

  “So, what does that mean exactly?” I asked.

  “That I was able to survive the physical damage to the computer core and I am beginning to believe that the Chariot was not.”

  I stilled. “Clarify, please.”

  “The Chariot is dead, Commander. Midshipman Blackwell killed it, and my brother was not able to revive it. I have tried also, but I have failed. I am the Chariot now, and I am not fully in control of the ship.”

  “If you’re not in control, who is? Blackwell?”

  “Nobody, Commander. The Chariot as you know it is, in effect, dead. I am its only hope now.”

  “So, Blackwell succeeded,” I said, stunned.

  “He did not count on my brother or me.”

  No, he didn’t. Blackwell’s mistake was our only saving grace. Is this why he chose us and not the lead vessel of the fleet? The Anderson Universal vessel had Vela controlling it when it launched. Ours didn’t. Until Vela jumped ship and stowed away. Every plan Blackwell would have hatched had not counted on the AI being on board our ship.

  I could only assume he’d planned to use that against the lead vessel. To commandeer our systems, which embarrassingly would have been easy without an AI to block him, and fire upon the lead vessel without warning. Because there’s no way in hell he wanted this fleet to reach New Earth. Why?

  I shook my head and returned my attention to our situation as it n
ow stood.

  “Can you save us, Vela?” I asked the AI. “Can you integrate fully into the Chariot?”

  “Is that what you want, Commander?”

  I hesitated. Without him, we were fucked. Was he the lesser of two evils? Or was Vela our guardian angel?

  I smiled up at the gel ceiling. “You’ve grown on me, Vela,” I said. “You’re part of the ESA team now.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes,” I said simply. “And I kinda like you.”

  “We have already established this.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, but…”

  I didn’t get to finish my sentence. A sound from behind me made me spin in place. Dark smudges had appeared on one of the security guy’s LSU’s. Little dark globules floated in the air around him, suspended in the zero-g like droplets of…blood, I realised.

  I reached for my plasma gun as a spray of blood burst out of the second security officer’s LSU vest. My head twisted one way and then the other, trying to see where the shots were coming from. They weren’t plasma, so they didn’t light up, and they weren’t standard shipboard ammunition, either. They’d penetrated the LSUs easily.

  “Take cover,” Vela said inside my helmet. He’d obviously isolated our channel. “I have advised the captain, but his arrival will be delayed; he is negotiating emergency access tubes into the brig as we speak.”

  I wasn’t speaking. I was pushing off against my console, aiming for a tall cabinet full of heavy engineering equipment. The sort of equipment that would be difficult to shoot through I hoped. I was panting with exertion and fear. Sweat had formed on my skin faster than the LSU was able to dry it up. My faceplate began to mist, hindering my vision.

  I grunted as my body hit the cabinet. And then sucked in a shocked breath of air as a bullet hit within centimetres of my gloved fingers, leaving a small hole in the metal siding. Then I swung myself around the back of the cabinet and hunkered down as low as my body could. It was difficult in zero-g, but Vela provided some footholds on the gel floor to secure me, and I crouched down and made myself as small as I could.