In Nadir's Shadow

by E. J. Heijnis

  She cursed and crouched on her panicked mount. If she did nothing, the Vile would slaughter the rhinos until they turned away. She pushed off, dancing across the animals' dusty backs as she made her way to the front.

  A Vile erupted from below, digging into rhino skin with one claw while reaching for her with the other. As her mount bellowed its pain, she severed both claws with her blades, and the monster was sucked into the chaos. Her balance gone, she used arms and feet any way she could to keep from falling. She'd made it to the front of the herd, but only a handful of rhinos remained. The stench of blood and ruptured entrails saturated the air, driving the beasts deeper into terror.

  Three Vile raced towards her, claws tearing up the dirt and grass. The first threw itself at her. She twisted to avoid its claws and clipped its knee with her blade as it flew past, enough to cripple it for a while. The other two attacked together, one slashing at the frantic rhino, the other coming straight at her. As the animal beneath her shuddered and stumbled, she dodged one claw, knocked the other aside with her blade and slashed at the monster's eyes. It lost track of her long enough for her to leap off her dying mount. The animal crashed to the ground, burying the Vile that had killed it. Seruya barely managed to grab the shoulder of another rhino and hauled herself up. Her new mount shook itself to try and dislodge her, but kept running. Its course would pass the entrance at too great a distance. She had no way to direct the crazed animal.

  A Vile appeared to her left, but its jarring shriek revealed it as one of her allies. The rhino shied away from the new threat, and towards her destination. When the range was at its shortest, she leaped off.

  She'd misjudged the distance, and although she landed as intended, she skidded right into the wall. Pain scoured her mind. The world spun and erupted in colorful stars.

  "There is no time to explain what needs to be done. You must let me into your body and take control, or you will die."

  Her vision cleared. Half a dozen Vile had broken away from the remains of the herd and came at her. She couldn't fight six on the open ground. There was nowhere to run. "Do it."

  Pressure filled her skull. She was no longer alone in her head. Half a dozen incantations and wards came to mind, each sufficient to drive the spirit from her body. She had to fight to keep from uttering them as her body moved without her command and turned to the entrance. Her hand entered a small square opening to the side of the door. Light appeared inside it, and warmth tickled her skin.

  With a deep hum, the door slid aside. She ran inside and turned. The Vile were seconds away. "How do I close it?"

  Her own hand reached out in answer, slapping a large red knob to the side of the door. A discordant honk echoed twice, and far faster than it had opened, the door slammed shut. She was stuck inside.

  Chapter Eleven

  Miron watched in silence with Borya and Gervasi as the conference room display showed the killing of Chief Ludmila. She'd been alone in a corridor far from the engine room, working inside an access hatch. A figure rushed in from outside the view and struck her on the back of the head with a tool. She collapsed, and the attacker leaned down to hit her again. Blood pooled as the figure straightened and his features came into view.

  "I can't believe it," Gervasi muttered.

  Core Chief Nazar glanced at the camera before closing the hatch and running off. Ludmila lay still in a spreading puddle of her blood. Miron knew the recording was genuine, yet he still found it difficult to believe the core chief had murdered a fellow human being.

  "Turn it off," Borya said.

  Gervasi hit a button and the display winked out. "This happened less than a minute before Zakhar found her," she said. "Nazar probably heard him coming. The surveillance system went out a few minutes after that. It's safe to assume he sabotaged it." Her tone was quiet, and her face hadn't recovered any of the color it had lost when she'd realized what had almost happened in Control. She'd refused to look either him or Borya in the eyes ever since. As much as he hated her, he had to admit it seemed she hadn't been aware of the planned mutiny.

  "Is internal tracking working?" Miron said.

  Borya shook his head, staring at the bulkhead. "No. And we need to find him. So we'll do it the old-fashioned way." He glanced at Gervasi. "Gather up the fleet guards, orderlies, any engineers not working on anything critical. Anyone not required to keep the ship on course and at FTL. Take them to the mess hall. We'll pair them up and search the decks that way. It's not such a big ship. We'll find him."

  "Yes, sir." She got up with no further comment and left the room.

  Borya remained still, gazing at the same patch of bulkhead. "Why didn't you come to me about Ilari?" His voice held a hollow tone Miron had never heard him use before.

  "It was the right thing. You didn't need to be involved."

  The Ship Master turned in his chair to face him. "You think you saved me the trouble. It doesn't work like that."

  Miron said, "Would you have done differently?"

  "So now you can speak for me?" Borya demanded.

  Miron breathed deeply, trying to banish the fog that haunted his mind. "It was my intention to do what had to be done without bothering you for a decision I knew you would make anyway. I meant no disrespect, and I don't know why you would choose to see it that way."

  Borya's jaw bunched and his eyes turned colder, and Miron realized with shock that the Ship Master felt betrayed. Borya's regard for him had suffered irreparably. "You took responsibility for this mission. To achieve it, you can tell me to do anything you want. But I was given command of this ship. I took responsibility for her, and for her crew." His voice rose steadily as he spoke. "So if anything needs to be done about either of them, unless immediate danger to life or the ship exists, I expect to be included! You would have demanded no less when you had Inflexible and I had my flag there. How can I be their leader if I'm not responsible for them? If Ilari needed mercy, it was my duty and my right to offer it. You think you did me a favor?" He stabbed the air between them with his finger. "What you did was to salve your guilt over the people that died by your orders! There's no getting away from that, Miron. I know. You made that call, so you live with it. Just like I did. Don't fuck with my crew so you can feel better." He stood. "Gervasi is a piece of shit. But she's not completely wrong about you."

  "You're going too far, Borya," Miron said, fury burning in his throat. "You know you can't talk to me like that."

  Borya spread his arms. "Demote me, then." He disappeared out the door. Miron remained behind, feeling entirely alone.

  Miron studied the available data on their destination until his temper had deflated to the point where he could be in the same room as Borya without voicing any of the retorts he'd been repeating in his mind. Eventually, he made his way to the mess hall, where around twenty fleet hands listened as Borya explained the situation: "She was murdered by one of our own. Chief Nazar. He beat her head in with a spanner. We don't know why, and right now, we don't care. We still have a lot of system trouble, so we can't track him by his implant. We're going to search the decks in pairs. It might be tricky, because he knows the ship; he helped build it. As far as we know, that spanner is his only weapon, so you're not getting sidearms just yet. I don't want anyone shooting a comrade by mistake. If you find him, call in right away and keep him there however you have to. I want to talk to him, but I'd rather have him dead than free. Any questions?" The group exchanged dull glances, but no one spoke up. "Master Second, assign pairs and give them a deck to search."

  Gervasi quickly went through the whole group and sent them on their way, until only Esfir, the jealous orderly, remained. Before Gervasi could ask Borya what to do with her, Miron said, "I'll go with her." The look on her face made it clear that she didn't appreciate the pairing. Part of him hoped she'd push him.

  "Deck Ten is yours, Commander," Gervasi said.

  Miron looked at his partner. "Let's go," he said, and headed for the door.

  The stairway to deck ten lef
t them in a corridor at the front of the ship that led off to the left and right before curving sharply towards the rear. Miron recalled this section held mostly cargo space, designed to hold the PRISM cores once the landing craft brought them up from the surface. He'd given little thought to that stage of the mission ever since keeping the ship functioning had required everyone's constant effort.

  "You should know that if I had been the ship's doctor, I'd never have let you kill one of my patients," Esfir said.

  "I hope you feel better with that off your chest," Miron answered distractedly as he peered down each corridor.

  "I should have been," she said with an edge. "But someone changed the assignment. I'm sure you don't know anything about that."

  He poured his disgust and frustration into his voice: "As much as I would enjoy listening to you justify your petty jealousy, we have work to do. We'll split up, and at least cover ground more quickly that way. If you find him, call it out." He left her seething and headed down the left corridor.

  He had no clue what Nazar's motivation had been for murdering Ludmila. They'd worked together during Tenacious's construction, so a personal conflict was a possibility. Ludmila hadn't liked the man, and she'd avoided him as much as possible. Perhaps a concern for her safety had been part of the reason why.

  He opened the door to one of the cargo bays and looked inside. Other than the cargo restraints, it was empty. The cavernous space offered no place to hide, so he moved on.

  He'd long ago developed his own misgivings about core crew. On every ship he'd commanded, the core chamber and its caretakers had felt apart from the rest of the ship, and although his orders had never been refused, he'd always had the impression that the core chiefs considered themselves his equal. Miron suspected that somehow, even though the full details of the PRISM cores' origins were supposedly restricted to officers of high rank, they were aware of the life that generated the power they used. Other than the core operators themselves, few people knew what their training entailed, or how far the Core Guild's influence truly reached.

  Another junction to the right connected to the corridor Esfir had taken. He watched her steal past before continuing.

  He considered the possibility that Nazar had simply snapped. The thought had a comforting simplicity, but he couldn't deny that even the insane have goals, though they make no sense to anyone else.

  What could an insane core chief want?

  He opened another door, leading to the docking bay for one of the landing craft designed to haul the power cores back to the Tenacious. The blocky craft sat silently in its cradle, front loading hatch facing a massive pressure door that separated the docking area from the cargo bay he'd just visited. Access to the vehicle should have been restricted, but he'd have to check anyway. As he entered, he twitched his finger and contacted his search partner. "Esfir, make sure you check the landing craft."

  "Doing that right now."

  A very large part of him wanted to strangle the Gervasis and Esfirs of the world. Just do away with them, to be replaced by skilled, rational people who acted out of common sense instead of blind, selfish emotion. But somewhere, he knew that even these people had value to the Commonwealth, and that much of their behavior was due to having barely slept for weeks.

  He searched behind docking equipment and bulkheads, circling the docking bay before testing the landing craft's access door. It was locked, but what if Nazar had gained access and locked the door behind him? He could open the door to check, but the tight space of the control section meant he wouldn't see his quarry until he was very close. There was a chance he wouldn't even have the opportunity to voice a warning.

  Instead, he responded to the lock's queries with random security codes until it shut down. Now, only a unique key and the Ship Master's voice and pass code could open the door. Unless Nazar forced an emergency exit, which would set off enough alarms to bring the entire crew down on him. Miron left the docking bay and continued down the corridor.

  He passed another intersection, leading to a stairwell on his left and the far corridor on his right, and waited for Esfir to appear.

  Minutes passed. No Esfir. He contacted her. "Where are you? I'm waiting."

  "Leaving the docking bay. It took a minute to search the lander, you know."

  He'd neglected to tell her to just seal the door. Oh, well. Too bad she didn't find Nazar in there. Finally, she appeared around the corner, glancing his way before continuing―She looked back at him and straightened, a cold smile thinning her lips.

  Realization came just in time for Miron to spin around, hands raised. Something struck his right arm where his head had been a moment before. He cried out, pain shooting up his arm. Nazar stood before him, drawing back for another swing. Miron threw himself at the core chief, slamming him into the bulkhead before both went down. His right arm wouldn't work right, and Nazar easily got on top of him. Before the core chief could strike again, Miron managed to put his foot on the man's hip and pushed him away. He gasped for air as he twitched his finger. "He's here! Deck ten!" Nazar backed away, seething hate in his eyes. He turned and fled up the stairs. "He's heading up to deck nine! Stairwell B!"

  With a groan, Miron rolled upright. If Esfir had been a better actor, he would have been dead now. There was no sign of the traitorous bitch. He imagined she'd deny the whole thing later, claim he'd seen an apparition instead of her. So he would say nothing, and remember.

  Nazar got away for the moment. By the time they reached the stairwell he'd used to escape, he was long gone. Despite Borya's assertion, the Tenacious was just too large for twenty people to find someone who knew the ship well. With the Ship Master's blessing, the crew began sealing the spacetight hatches that secured the stairwells in times of emergency.

  "We're running out of time," Gervasi said through the comm. "Less than thirteen hours left before we arrive."

  "With the hatches sealed, he's not getting off whatever deck he's on right now," Borya said. "We search again, in teams of four now. We secure decks one at a time until he runs out of places to hide. Gervasi, reassign the teams. Let's get it done."

  Miron didn't contribute to the conversation. He'd begun to suspect that Nazar wouldn't be caught so easily. Sealing the stairwell hatches was supposed to close off every other means of access as well, but the sorry state of the ship's systems meant Nazar might still be able to find a way to move around.

  He headed for deck six, the place where Ludmila had been murdered. He couldn't get his earlier thought out of his head, that Nazar wanted to achieve something. Maybe the site of his first crime would trigger some insight.

  Someone else had beaten him there. An engineer in grease-streaked, yellow overalls stood with half their torso buried in the access hatch Ludmila had been working in. Miron kept quiet until he stood next to the fleet hand. "What are you doing?"

  A strangled grunt and the sound of a skull impacting metal. The fleet hand withdrew from the panel, and Miron recognized Anisim, the engineer he'd caught sleeping when he first visited the engine room. "Sorry, sir," he said.

  "You should either be searching the ship or keeping it together. Which is it?"

  "I'm on the search crew, sir. This is my deck. No sign of him yet."

  The man had evaded his original question. "What were you doing in that hatch?"

  He glanced away and hesitated. Miron said, "Anisim, right now I'm beginning to suspect you may have been in on Ludmila's murder. If that's not the truth, then this would be the time to spit it out."

  Angry, horrified eyes met his own. "No, sir! I didn't know a thing about it! I came to check on something."

  "Be more specific."

  Anisim straightened and took a deep breath. "Before the chief was killed, she was in the engine room. She said something to me before she walked out. She said, "Anisim, how would you like to have a good night's sleep tonight?" I was tired and I didn't really understand her question, but she was excited. She went straight here. She must have, there was no time
for her to go anywhere else. I wondered why."

  "You're sure that's what she said?"

  Anisim nodded. "Yes, sir. I didn't get it, but that's why I remember."

  Miron gave him a hard stare. "Do you think she was talking about the shield?"

  A furtive nod. "Yes, sir."

  "So what's inside this panel?"

  "Command processors. Instructions from command stations route through here to resolve conflicts before they're sent to each system. This is the main cluster, that's why it's right in the middle of the ship, so enemy fire won't damage it. There are two backups elsewhere, but they only kick in if this one fails."

  "How does this processor affect shield operation?"

  Anisim hesitated, no doubt translating his answer into terms Miron would understand. "A command to activate the shield passes through here like any other command. If all the backup processors failed together with these, the command wouldn't get through. But we would know, because we wouldn't be able to control the ship."

  "Ludmila came here for a reason. She was too busy to waste time." He scratched his chin. "Stick your head back in there. I'll keep an eye out. See if you can find anything."

  Miron spent the time keeping his expectations in check. Part of him desperately wanted the shield to work again, but he had to remind himself that they were only pursuing a lead, with no guarantee it would go anywhere.

  "Ha!"

  Like clouds parted by the sun, the red overhead lights smoothly shifted back to daylight. Miron blinked, fighting the relief that threatened to rush in. "What happened?"

  Anisim emerged from the panel, his face split by a mad grin. "It's working again!" He laughed, squeezing tears from his eyes. "I can sleep!"

  Miron grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "Damn it, are you sure?"