He placed his hand on the security pad by the door to unlock and open the door, but nothing happened. The pad remained dark under his palm. There was a small manual release control behind a panel by the door and he pressed the codes to unlock the door. Still nothing happened. The crowd around him began to murmur their concern.
“Chief,” Henry called on his radio. “We’ve got passengers stuck in the airlock. Can you open it from there?”
“Negative, Henry,” said the security chief a few moments later. “I’m sending Justin and Ragunathan down to you. Ragu has some engineering experience. He might be able to get in there. Just keep them calm and wait for help.”
Henry shook his head at the thought of trying to keep the people in the airlock any calmer than they already were. The man closest to him was tall, with a placid expression on his thin face. He was wearing the uniform of a deckhand from the main hangar bay. His hair was longer than the company liked, but Henry didn’t think that mattered anymore.
A woman just slightly shorter than Henry pushed past him and pressed against the glass with her right hand. She stared into the face of the man he had been looking at. She also wore the uniform of a deck hand.
“Alan?” she asked the man. “Alan can you hear me?”
“He can’t hear through the door,” someone in the crowd said, laughing at the girl. “You have to press the intercom.”
The deckhand reached to the frame of the door and pressed the intercom button. Henry was surprised that that panel was still operational when the rest of the door controls were inoperative.
“Alan, what the hell are you doing?” the girl demanded. “Come out and we can talk about it.”
Henry glanced at the woman. It seemed that he and Priya were not the only couples having trouble on the cruise ship. He looked back at the man, who was staring into the eyes of the young woman with a dead smile on his face. When he spoke, a chill ran down Henry’s spine. He sounded just like Priya when she was in her most depressed state.
“Alice,” he said to the girl. “It’s better this way.”
“What are you saying, Alan?” the girl asked, now pressing both of her hands against the glass. “What is better?”
“He said it would all go away, now,” said Alan. “We are all going to be better.”
Henry pressed the button on his collar that signaled an immediate medical emergency. A signal would be sent to the infirmary and a team would come right away. The man sounded so calm when he spoke, but his words had a chilling effect on the crowd.
“Oh no,” whispered Alice to the glass. “I’ve got to stop this.”
The deckhand shot over to the door and began to pull at an access panel beneath the controls. Henry stepped back and gestured to the crowd to clear away as she worked. He didn’t know if this woman had the skills to open the door, but she seemed to be his only hope at this moment.
“Pati?” a voice sounded at Henry’s back. “Is that you?”
Henry’s world suddenly began to swirl around his head. He turned back to the airlock glass and looked into the eyes of his wife, Priya. She was standing near the glass, looking as calm as Alan had a moment before. As Henry looked at his wife, he saw that at her waist was his daughter. He stepped back to the glass.
“Priya?” he yelled, activating the intercom. “Priya, what are you doing in there?”
“He promised to make us better, Pati,” she said, calling her husband in Hindi. “You know this will be better.”
“Priya,” he responded, desperation and confusion mixing in his voice. “Who is telling you this? Come out, please. Come out so that Annie can play. Remember, we’re supposed to eat together tonight?”
Priya looked back at him with her dark brown eyes. She smiled at him and pressed her hand against the glass. With her other hand, she stroked the top of her daughter’s head. She still had the same placid smile on her face.
Henry looked at Alice, who was now pulling wiring out of the access panel and trying to read the markings. “Get this damn door open, NOW!”
She ignored him and continued to trace the circuitry in the hatch with her finger. He pressed the radio button again and yelled at his chief. “Where in the hell is that backup!”
Just then, Doctor Reeves, wearing a white doctor’s uniform, pushed through the crowd with two nurses in tow. The nurses began to herd the crowd away from the door as the doctor tried to evaluate the situation. In Henry’s experience, the doctor had always been professional and competent, but he was unsure if the man had ever faced this sort of situation before.
“Doctor,” he asked, “what is wrong with them?”
“They looked drugged, Mister Moore,” he replied, his cultured British accent adding to his authority. “When can we get them out?”
“We can’t,” Henry answered. “The door has been hacked.
A look of concern passed over the doctor’s lined face as he looked back at Priya and the others. His eyes glanced to the others in the airlock, pausing for only a moment on each placid face. His skin turned pale and he turned back to Henry.
“Oh my God,” he said. “These people are all my patients. They are all being treated for severe depression.”
Henry looked back at the airlock. He had trouble with the idea that all of these people were so dependent that they had to medicate themselves into this state.
“Doctor, is this something you gave them?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “They are all on the same medication as your wife, but they had to have taken a massive dose to induce this kind of stupor.”
Just then, the green light over the outer airlock door began to flash. A cry went up from the crowd behind Henry and the doctor. The light meant that the outer airlock had been engaged and was beginning the decompression cycle. Henry pressed himself back to the glass.
“Priya, you have to stop this,” he begged his wife, who still looked serene. “Priya, just press the release button by the door. Stop this, Priya!”
His wife showed only the same calm expression as the flashing light over the outer door began to blink faster. Henry only had a few seconds, but he had no idea how to stop the cycle. He looked at Alice who now had tears streaming down her face as she tried to rewire the door controls. Doctor Reeves just stared into the faces of his patients, staggered by the horror of the situation. Henry kneeled to look at his daughter.
“Ananja,” he said, pleading with the little girl. “Ananja, you have to open the door. Just press that big button by the door, darling.”
His daughter smiled at him as he pointed at the door controls. Her face was so sweet as she looked at the door and then back at her father. Henry’s heart broke as she stepped away from her mother and closer to the glass. She pressed her hand wide against the glass and Henry mirrored the movement on his side. She laughed as he began to cry.
“Daddy—” she began.
The light over the door turned red. There was a loud pop and suddenly the people in the airlock were gone. Henry kept his hand pressed up against the glass. He stared out into open space where once his wife and daughter had stood. He could hear screams from the crowd behind him as if they were at the end of a long tunnel. The world swam as he tried to make sense of what he had just seen.
Henry stayed on the ground, kneeling with his hand up against the glass until his colleagues arrived and pulled him away. After that, the world went dark and he dreamed of an empty playground.
11
Now
Lee walked up the ramp to the upper command deck to see Henry Moore holding his rifle towards Admiral Hathaway. The man’s dark skin glistened with sweat and his uniform appeared to be several sizes too big for him. There were hollows beneath his eyes and Lee thought he appeared to be about to fall down with exhaustion.
“Who the hell are you people?” the admiral asked, backing towards the command chair at the back of the deck. “How did you find me?”
Lee exchanged glances with Moore as he advanced on the older man. Henry w
alked over to the edge of the pit and signaled his men to round up the soldiers. It occurred to Lee that the soldiers that had attacked them seemed to be unarmed except for the weapons they had taken off of his team. The security team quickly disarmed those soldiers and gathered them together near a destroyed console.
“My name is Commander Lee Pearce,” said the pilot to the admiral. “These men are a civilian security force from the Earth cruise liner Terran Princess. We have been following the trail your fleet left.”
The admiral stepped back to where his command chair sat, slightly melted. He practically collapsed into the seat. He ran his hand through his short black hair and stared at Lee in bewilderment.
“Trail?” he asked. “We left no trail. That would be tantamount to suicide. Who gave away our location?”
“Apparently, a ship called the Resolute dropped a buoy when you fled during the invasion,” Lee told the man, who seemed to get stronger as he told the story. “The crew of the Edison found it.”
“The Edison!” the admiral exclaimed, sitting higher in his chair. “The Edison survived? Where is she? Let me speak to Captain Ditzler.”
“Captain Ditzler was killed in action,” Lee said. “The engineering team was captured and taken to a Ch’Tauk prison.”
Hathaway looked confused. “But you said that—”
“They escaped during a transfer and stole the Ch’Tauk prison ship,” Lee explained. “We rescued them when the escort ships attacked.”
The admiral’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment. He looked back at Lee, trying to make sense of what he had just heard. He looked at the burnt floor under his feet for a second, and then took a deep breath, seeming to regain some strength. He stood and approached Lee.
The man was taller than Lee by several centimeters, and broader in the chest as well, giving him an imposing aura of command. The apparent loss of body mass had not diminished his command ability at all. Now that he had regained some of his composure, Lee could see how he had risen to his rank in the service.
“Commander Pearce,” he started, “I want to thank you and your men for finding us. Baal is dead in space. Our fusion reactor has been disabled and our solar batteries are almost depleted. I would like to talk to the captain of the Terran Princess as soon as possible.”
Lee nodded to the man and turned to Henry Moore, who was still holding his rifle on the admiral. Lee gestured to the security chief and he lowered his weapon. Henry then signaled to his own men to lower their weapons as well. The soldiers seemed to relax as the guards shouldered their rifles, although a few continued to hold their stun batons at the ready. Lee turned back to the admiral.
“I am sure Captain Ortiz will be happy to speak to you as soon as he can,” Lee began. “I would like to speak with the captain of the Resolute as well.”
“Captain Ortiz?” the admiral asked, looking surprised. “Alfredo Ortiz?”
“Actually, I have no idea what his first name is,” Lee replied. “I always thought his name was Captain.”
The admiral looked to Henry, who nodded back in acknowledgement. Hathaway returned his gaze to the pilot without amusement. Lee noticed that the admiral’s dark skin was grayish in the flickering light of the command bridge. Lee wondered if the man was actually starving to death in front of him.
“As for the Resolute,” the admiral continued, “she has no captain of her own. I put the captain of Baal in command of that floating trash pile. Now I see that he betrayed me when I sent the ship to protect the support fleet.”
“The support fleet, Admiral?” Lee asked. “We didn’t detect any more ships in this system.”
“We were under fire and needed to make a quick jump,” the admiral explained, pacing the edge of his command deck. “Baal was severely damaged. We had to make a quick jump with Austerlitz and Mars in tow. I ordered Captain Chang to take Resolute and the support fleet to a safe location and wait for us. That treasonous bastard must have wanted to get us destroyed so he could take command.”
Lee looked at the man’s back. The buoys they found had been encrypted and coded for Confederacy tech only. The jump coordinates were based on human geometry that the Ch’Tauk had never seemed to fully understand. If the captain of the Resolute had wanted to expose the rest of the fleet, it didn’t make sense that he would have gone to all of the trouble.
“Sir,” Lee said, “I don’t think that Captain Chang meant for the Ch’Tauk to find you. Some of the data we received was pretty well hidden. The only reason we found them was because of the Edison crew and because we knew what to look for.”
“Chang is a traitor,” said the admiral, rounding on Lee with fury in his eyes. “As soon as we can, we have to track them down. If it weren’t for that ship, we would have been able to continue the war with the Ch’Tauk!”
Henry had stepped over to Lee as soon as the man raised his voice. They both looked at the admiral with alarm. Although he seemed to be coherent, they both were beginning to wonder about the sanity of the man. Hathaway looked back at the two men and then seemed to deflate. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” said the man. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a decent meal over here. We are really running on empty. I’ve only got a skeleton crew on this ship and life support has been failing for months. I must sound pretty crazy.”
Lee exhaled, not realizing that he had been holding his breath. The man did look exhausted and must have been under a terrific strain. As he glanced around the bridge, he realized the extent of the damage to Baal for the first time.
The bridge, which should have been alive with glowing panels and lights, was dark and painted with scorch marks, and what Lee suspected may have been blood. The long central walkway that should have run from the captain’s chair to the large forward viewport looked to have been torn up by some giant invisible hand. Ragged, melted edges turned upwards towards the smoke-stained ceiling. Most of the consoles were dark and damaged except for two engineering screens that looked to have been wired together from pieces of other panels.
The port door to the bridge opened and two soldiers entered carrying a hooded prisoner kicking between them. Roaring screams came from under the black hood, startling the men on the bridge and causing Henry’s team to raise their weapons towards the soldiers.
“Release the prisoner, gentlemen,” ordered Hathaway, looking back at Lee. “We’re all friends here.”
The soldiers set the prisoner down. One of them stepped away while the other grasped the hood and pulled it off. Lee noticed a growing bruise on the side of the one who had stepped away, and blood trickling down the arm of the other. As he pulled the hood off, another bellowing roar erupted from the prisoner.
“You bastards,” screamed Alice. “That was my hair!”
Alice took a swing at the closest of the soldiers. She hit the man squarely on the nose and Lee heard bone crack. The man staggered backwards, blood erupting from his nose.
“Alice!” Lee yelled, walking to the edge of the pit to see her. “Stand down.”
Alice looked up to where Lee was standing. She had rage in her eyes and a slight tear in her uniform’s shoulder. Lee had seen the woman in passion, but never had he expected to see the depth of pain that he saw now.
“Alice,” he said in a soothing tone. “It’s alright. We are alright now, calm down.”
Recognition dawned in Alice’s face as she looked around the bridge. She was breathing heavily after her capture, and she blinked and shook her head to clear her vision. Henry sent on of his men around to check on the injured soldier. The security guard stepped lightly past the enraged woman.
“Lee,” she began, “those bastards ambushed me! They pulled me out of the transport as I was calibrating the communications array.”
“Alice,” Lee replied, “it’s okay. It was just a misunderstanding. These are our allies.”
The security guards looked up at Lee after examining the soldier. The man was coughing badl
y and blood was pooling under his face.
“Sir, we really need to get this man to see a doctor,” said the guard. “Where is the sickbay?”
“The sickbay is exposed to space,” said Hathaway. “We lost almost the entire medical staff about six months ago. The rest went with Resolute.”
“We’ll have to take him back to the Princess,” said Henry. “With your permission, Admiral?"
“It seems that I have little choice,” replied Hathaway. “Besides, I have heard that those ships have great restaurants. I think we may all need a good meal.”
Lee nodded to the admiral. Hathaway really did look on the edge of collapse, and his men didn’t seem to be too far off. Each of them looked shrunken, as if they had barely eaten in months. The weakness of their bodies, however, did not seem to extend to their spirits.
“We can set something up, sir,” Lee said. “Let’s get the ones most in need first and then we’ll start a rotation. How many people are on this ship?”
Hathaway’s eyes darkened as he looked back at Pearce. There should have been almost twenty-five thousand people on board a ship this size. Lee had not seen a single person on his way to the bridge. He knew that this ship needed at least seven hundred to stay operational at the minimum.
“Commander, there are three hundred people on board Baal at this moment,” he replied slowly, as if the information were his own life blood. “The bulk of the remaining fleet personnel are on Mars. Austerlitz has about seventy people.”
Lee’s mind reeled. Where there should have been almost a quarter of a million people in the fleet, there now seemed to be only a fraction left alive to operate the ships. Lee wondered at the scale of the casualties inflicted on the carrier group and about the rogue battleship that was still out there somewhere.
The door that Lee’s team had entered the bridge from opened again and the engineer who had stayed behind entered with his colleagues in tow. The three men stopped when they entered, looking first at the soldiers being watched by the guards, then at Hathaway and Lee, and finally at Alice and the bleeding soldier across the bridge. They looked back at each other and then returned to look at Lee.
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