While she worked, Gagnon and Domitian started their sweep of the ship. Whenever one finished sweeping a room, he would tell the other one over the intercom.
“Clear,” said Gagnon.
“Clear,” said Domitian a moment later, his deeper voice rendered staticky and scratchy by its passage through the ship’s wiring. The Ananke’s dark core was harsh on electronics.
The more Althea looked, the more it seemed that Gagnon had been right: the men were thieves, not saboteurs, and their interaction with the ship’s computer had been solely for the purpose of getting on board. They had deceived the computer—and Althea—so well only because they were so practiced at coercing ships’ computers into allowing them to board.
Still, she went through all the important processes, checking, just to be sure.
“Clear,” said Domitian.
A polite chime from another part of the enormous screen caught Althea’s attention. The System had responded to her message. There were files attached to their response, one labeled MATTHEW GALE and the other LEONTIOS IVANOV.
“Clear,” said Gagnon.
The message itself read:
The intruders have been identified as Matthew Gale (of Miranda) and Leontios Ivanov (formerly of Earth). They are known thieves and work together. On occasion they have a female accomplice named Abigail Hunter (of Miranda) [no photograph available]; perform a complete check of your vessel’s premises. Attached are the files for the two identified intruders. Read all flagged items and respond accordingly.
It was not signed. A single person must have typed it, but it had not come from that individual but rather from the System as a whole. The typist, whoever it had been, had been nothing more than the fingers to type it.
“Clear,” said Domitian.
Althea hit the intercom. “The System has identified our two intruders,” she said.
“Clear,” said Gagnon, and, “So who are they?”
“I haven’t read their files yet. The System says they usually work together on their own, but they might have a third accomplice, a woman.”
“Names,” Domitian demanded, as always terse.
“Matthew Gale and Leontios Ivanov,” Althea said, glancing back at the screen to be sure she got the names right. “The woman they might be working with is Abigail Hunter.”
“Ivanov?” said Gagnon. “That sounds familiar.”
“No chatter,” Domitian said. “Althea, read the files and report to us. Gagnon, this room is clear.”
“Yes, sir,” Gagnon said a little more smartly than was wise, and Althea opened the files.
The first file that opened was Matthew Gale’s. The image was immediately familiar to her as the man with the broken arm, although he clearly had been younger when the photo had been taken. Even though the photograph was a mug shot, he was smiling a crooked smile at the camera, looking fairly cheerful about his apparent incarceration. He hadn’t changed his appearance since the photograph had been taken; his brown hair was still just a centimeter away from dangling into his eyes in the front, and he was still clean-shaven.
Althea looked to the next file, already knowing who it would be.
Leontios Ivanov was the name of the man with the wolfish smile, but the man in the photograph and the man she had surprised bent over her computer were so different in affect that she might have doubted that they were the same man but for the blue of their eyes. He was even younger in his photograph than Gale was in his, wearing a brilliant blue high-collared shirt like the ones that were fashionable among the Terran elite, his handsome face as blank as a mask. The man in her hold had been as graceful and controlled as a wolf hunting was; the man in the picture was nothing more than rigid, stiff.
Ivanov’s file had more flags than Gale’s did. She told herself that was why she started with his, and not Gale’s.
The first flag she encountered was POTENTIAL TERRORIST CONNECTIONS.
She hailed her crewmates immediately, checking Gale’s file while she did. “Both our intruders are flagged for terrorist connections.”
“You don’t think maybe they were more than thieves?” Gagnon asked.
Althea thought nothing for sure right now; she only feared. Before she could respond, Domitian said, his deep voice calming, “We’ll find out why they’re here in time. Read the files all the way through, Althea.”
Althea obeyed. The files clarified the terrorism flag, indicating that both Ivanov and Gale probably were connected to the terrorist called the Mallt-y-Nos, but before Althea could really take this in, it went on to say that the System believed the two men were only tangentially connected to the organization, if at all. Ivanov and Gale were hired thieves, grunts, nothing more. It was far more likely they were on the Ananke to rob her than to destroy her.
But why try to rob the Ananke? She was clearly not a merchant vessel. The Ananke was not designed for cargo but for scientific experiments. Perhaps they had hoped to find valuable scientific equipment on board—they would not have had any luck; the ship’s extremely valuable scientific equipment was the ship itself—or perhaps they really had come on to destroy her.
Wondering would get her nowhere. Althea continued to read through Ivanov’s file to the sound of Gagnon and Domitian announcing “Clear” as they checked each room.
The next tag said, GENETIC PREDISPOSITION TO ANTI-SYSTEM VIOLENCE.
Althea got back on the intercom.
“Ivanov’s the son of Connor Ivanov,” she said. “That’s why you’ve heard of him, Gagnon.”
“Connor Ivanov, the man who destroyed Saturn?” Domitian asked.
“Yes, him,” said Althea. She had not yet been born when Connor Ivanov had declared Saturn and its moons independent of the System and begun a civil war; she had not yet been born when he had lost control of the moons almost immediately or when the System had come down like lightning from a wrathful god and restored peace forever. But she knew the story. It was a proud tale for System citizens to tell one another, how the System protected their peace and their safety without flinching, without defeat.
Gagnon sounded triumphant. “That means his mother is Milla Ivanov. Doctor Milla Ivanov. The astrophysicist. That’s how I know his name.”
“Discuss this later,” said Domitian. His voice was absolute, like the fall of a gavel, and stopped Althea before she could mention that she’d been to several of Doctor Milla Ivanov’s lectures before, too.
Leontios Ivanov looked a good deal like his mother now that Althea remembered her, and it seemed he had inherited her intelligence as well. From his father it appeared that all he had inherited had been heavy System surveillance. Althea could tell exactly the kind of man he was from his file: Terran, rich, intelligent—blessed. He had been at the top of his class at the North American branch of the Terran University. The System had sought to employ him.
Except that there was one more tag on his file, the oldest of the tags, and it read MOOD DISORDER.
At the age of nineteen he had tried to kill himself and nearly succeeded.
Althea looked back in the file at his blessed life and then back at the bare, sparse details of the attempted suicide and did not understand.
But sitting and wondering would get nothing done. For the moment, she dismissed her curiosity and moved on to Gale’s file.
“Clear,” said Gagnon.
Gale had many of the same tags as Ivanov—from what Althea could tell, they had started working together ten years earlier and had never stopped since—but his list of crimes stretched back much further than Ivanov’s, back to when Gale was still a child in the foster system. Gale’s file was straightforward; there was no incongruity of attempted suicide. Without disparagement she saw someone: lower class, from the outer planets, a problem child. It seemed strange that the two men would partner up.
“Clear,” said Domitian.
The oldest tag on Matthew Gale’s file was labeled FLIGHT RISK. For a moment, she did not understand what she was reading; then comprehension stru
ck her like a bullet.
“Domitian, Gagnon,” she said, interrupting Gagnon’s announcement of “Clear!” He and Domitian were hardly halfway down the Ananke’s central hall; they were far away from the two prisoners in their cells. “Gale is an escape artist. Gale’s the one in the storage closet.”
She glanced up at the tiled video displays and sought the one of Gale’s cell. It was up near the top, far out of her line of sight when she had been reading the files. In the image she could see Matthew Gale, with his broken arm bent up awkwardly against his chest, hand stuck into the neck of his shirt to brace it and hold it partly still, kneeling in front of the door and picking the lock. The heel of his boot had been twisted to the side, exposing a hollow place within; that must have been where he had kept the picks.
Althea turned back to the intercom and was about to warn Domitian and Gagnon, but before she could, Gale shoved his boot back into place, stood unsteadily up, and swung open the door; the sound of the Ananke’s pealing alarm rang out throughout the ship.
“Gale?” Domitian asked with tension in his voice that was like anger.
“He just picked the door to his room,” Althea shouted back over the sound of the alarms. She had to find the display of the camera in the hallway outside Gale’s cell to see what he was doing next. “He’s in front of Ivanov’s door now.”
“Stay in the control room; we’ll handle this,” Domitian said, and in the corner of her eye she saw them leave the rooms they were sweeping and take off running down the hallway. She heard their boots thunder past her door as they ran, and she sat and opened the videos showing Gale and Ivanov, turning on the sound, unable to do anything but watch.
Gale was fumbling with one arm broken, holding some picks in his teeth, having trouble getting leverage, getting torque. She watched him drop a pick and heard the quiet sharp exhalation of what must have been a swear, too low for the camera to pick up.
There was a camera in Ivanov’s cell. Through that camera, Althea saw Ivanov rise from the cell’s slender cot to come stand before the cell door, his face as expressionless as it was in the picture on his file.
Up in the main display of camera screens, Gagnon and Domitian ran down the hall, passing from one camera’s sight to another, appearing at seemingly random places in the mosaic of images, only to leave each image again a moment later.
“Mattie,” Ivanov said quietly, with the static sound of empty air making it hard to hear. Althea turned up the volume and listened.
Gale seemed to be determined to ignore his partner in crime and continued to try to force the lock.
Gagnon and Domitian were getting closer.
“Mattie,” Ivanov said again, louder, and knelt down so that his face was level with the one opening in his cell door, the food slot. Gale still ignored him.
“Matthew Gale!” Ivanov said, so suddenly loud that Althea startled, and Gale stopped trying to undo the lock to slam his hand, open-palmed, against the door. Ivanov didn’t flinch but waited, and Althea watched his hands flex into fists.
Gagnon and Domitian were almost in sight of the two. They were blocking the only way up to the docking bay or the escape pods; they were armed and hale, and Gale was unarmed and injured. He would be captured soon, Althea assured herself, and continued to watch, silently urging Domitian and Gagnon to run faster.
Gale opened the food slot, and Althea saw the two men staring at each other through the narrow opening.
“Go,” Ivanov said, and Althea watched Gale hesitate, looking up the hall to where he must have known pursuit would come. “Go,” Ivanov urged when Gale still knelt there and looked in at him, and Althea felt a curious uncomfortable churning in her gut.
Domitian and Gagnon would catch Gale soon, she told herself, but somehow that did not help the churning, which felt almost like the beginnings of guilt.
Finally Gale seemed to decide.
“This is for Europa, Scheherazade,” he said, and let the food slot cover fall, clanging shut. Then he rose to his feet and started to run just as Gagnon and Domitian came into sight, still far distant.
In his cell, Ivanov leaned his head against the door across from where Gale had been, and Althea closed that window and instead focused on following Gale as he ran down, down, down to the very base of the ship’s spine. She watched him pull up short at the downward curve of the ceiling that terminated the hall, looking around as if for some way out. Farther up the hall, still quite distant, Domitian and Gagnon still pursued. Gale had nowhere to go.
All throughout the Ananke there were computer interfaces in the hallway, separated by about thirty feet. Such frequent access to the computer was necessary in a ship so large with a crew so small, but it meant that there was a way to access the computer at any point on the ship, including at its very base.
Matthew Gale bent over the computer terminal nearest to him and began to type.
“What?” Althea said aloud, and rose to her feet without anywhere to go. “No, no, no,” she muttered, and looked to see where Domitian and Gagnon were—they were there, they were running, they were getting closer but weren’t close enough yet—and then back at Gale, who was frowning with concentration and still typing. If Althea could connect to the specific interface he was working from, she could try to stop whatever he was doing, but first she would have to find out which one it was. The interfaces weren’t numbered in order, and she’d have to force access; he’d probably stop her, but if she could just delay him from doing anything, Domitian and Gagnon could catch up to him and stop him—
Before she could do anything, every screen in front of her—the hundred video feeds, her connection to Ananke’s bowels, the still-open files on Gale and Ivanov—went black and still, dead with the lights, leaving Althea blind in the dark.
—
When the Ananke came back online a few minutes later, the lights flaring on with a suddenness that nearly blinded Althea again, she knew that something was wrong in the computer.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she muttered as the screen brightened slowly and the videos from the cameras blinked on and off, black spaces in the grid of video. “Come on, Ananke.”
The screen glowed featureless, white.
There was a screen in the corner of the room that played System official news at all hours of the day. It could not be turned off, but Althea had long since muted it, finding that it interfered with her concentration. Even when it was muted, subtitles streamed across the bottom of the screen endlessly.
Now, jolted by the sudden shutdown and restart of the ship’s systems, the screen blared to life.
“Twelve insurgents were caught this morning in a residential home on Triton,” said a beautiful woman with emotionless eyes and a crisp Terran accent; the volume was too high, and her voice slammed into Althea’s head like a physical blow.
“God damn it,” said Althea, and briefly abandoned her post to dash the few steps across the room and lunge for the mute button.
“Surveillance in their residence recorded discussion of treasonous sympathies,” said the screen.
“Althea!” It was Domitian’s voice on the intercom.
“I’m coming,” said Althea, though she knew he could not hear her, and punched the mute on the news just as the newscaster said, “Interrogation commences in—”
Althea spun back around to the interface by the camera screens and hit the intercom. “Did you get him? What did he do?”
“He’s not here,” Domitian said, and Althea looked up at the grid of videos, which was studded with empty places where the Ananke should have been receiving signals from cameras and wasn’t. One of the few visible displays showed the base of the ship’s spine, where Althea had seen Gale last, bent over her machine; now Domitian and Gagnon stood a few paces apart in an empty hallway.
“That isn’t possible,” said Althea. There were no rooms that far down in the ship, no doors for him to hide behind. The hallway did not continue on or loop around itself; it simply ended.
In the video, Althea watched Gagnon spread his arms out and look up at the camera, demonstrating the emptiness of the hallway for her benefit.
The computer screens sizzled with static again, went black, then sharply turned back on.
“Gagnon, what does the screen on the terminal down there say?” Althea demanded. The interface Gale had used had to show some sign of what he’d done.
“Gale is our priority right now,” said Domitian. “Althea, are there any other ways to leave the base of the ship or places to hide?”
She hardly listened to him. The screen before her kept flickering like murmurs in a heart. “He’s done something to the computer,” she said. “It’s bad; I need to fix it.”
“He didn’t have enough time to do anything,” Gagnon said.
“I’m coming down there,” Althea said, and ignored Domitian’s immediate “Althea, stay there!” as she left the control room, locked the door behind herself, and started running down the Ananke’s hallway.
She passed Gagnon halfway down.
“Domitian’s pissed,” he warned as he passed her. It was all he had time to say; Althea did not slow down. Doubtless Gagnon had been sent to take the position she’d abandoned.
If something happened to the ship because Althea had not been fast enough to care for the computer, they would all be in trouble. She did not slow down.
Domitian was waiting for her when she arrived, his gun out, his expression black. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded as she ran past him to kneel in front of the machine. “Disobeying a direct order?”
“There’s something wrong with the ship!”
“I don’t care; you obey!” Domitian roared, and Althea flinched. The screen before her showed nothing but the smooth blankness of an empty workspace; Gale had covered his tracks.
“What if Gale had gotten to the control room and found it empty?” Domitian demanded.
“He couldn’t have,” said Althea. “There’s no way…”
Lightless Page 2