by Jake Elwood
That startled Alice so badly she almost dropped her cards. “Me and Tom?”
He chuckled at her reaction. “Don't tell me you've never thought of it about it.” His eyebrows rose. “Wow. You really have never thought of it.”
“He's a blueshirt.”
“Not anymore, he isn't.”
“He's also my commanding officer.”
“Barely,” said Bridger. “Technically he's a captain, same as you.” The courtesy rank of commodore made him effectively the first among equals.
“He's ….”
Bridger smirked, and she scowled at him. “He's too young for me.”
“He's, what? Two years younger than you? Three at the most?”
“He's not even from the Green Zone.”
“No,” said Bridger, his smile fading. “But he's putting his life on the line to liberate the colonies.”
They both fell silent, and Alice looked at her cards. “Whose turn is it?”
“Well, you're holding six cards.”
“Whoops.” She tried to focus on her cards, then gave up and discarded one at random.
Bridger snatched it up. “Full set!” He laid his cards out on the table. “All hearts. That's six points.” He tapped his data pad, and Alice's glove beeped as the points changed.
“You know,” he said as he shuffled, “if you're this distracted, there must be something to it.”
She was spared having to reply by a chime from his data pad. He set the cards down and spent a minute tapping and swiping. When he put the pad down he stared into space, his forehead wrinkling.
“Trouble?” said Alice.
“Probably not,” he said, and shrugged. “It's one of those things we would have to fix if we were keeping the ship. As it is, it's probably something we can live with until we get to Novograd.” He looked down at the pad. “We're getting bursts of EM radiation in the scanner logs. But there's nothing out here but us. I checked with the Rime Frost and the Trickling Brook, and they're not broadcasting anything. So it has to be a scanner glitch.”
“Can I see?”
“Be my guest.” Bridger poked at the screen, then turned the pad around and pushed it toward her. “We should show it to Ham. He's good at picking up patterns.”
Alice nodded absently, peering at the little screen. It showed a chart with the usual background noise of hyperspace as a jumble at the bottom. Spikes appeared at irregular intervals where the scanners picked up a sharp increase in electromagnetic noise.
Visually, it was incomprehensible. But the shape of it seemed familiar. It looked almost like a visual representation of a sound file.
“I'm converting it to audio,” she said.
““I don't think it's audio data.”
She ignored him and tapped an icon. Static burst from the speaker on the pad, making her wince. “You're right. It's just noise.”
Bridger shook his head. “No, wait. I think you might actually be onto something.” He took back the pad and fiddled with it. “It's running way too fast. After all, we thought it was just a bunch of numbers. I’m going to link it to the time markers on the scanner log.” He poked the screen. “There.”
The sound that emerged was scratchy and garbled, but it was recognizably a voice. “I repeat. Mayday. This is the battleship B19. The ship has been captured by hostile forces and is currently in the control of Free Neorome personnel. I repeat-”
Alice and Bridger locked gazes. “Well, hell,” said Bridger. “I guess we've still got enemy crew on the loose.”
Alice nodded. “Either that, or a saboteur.”
Once they knew what to look for, it didn't take long to find the source of the mystery transmission. Alice hobbled along on a cane, the pain in her foot forgotten, as they searched through a maze of maintenance passages and machinery two decks down from the mystery room. They carried hand scanners and called out to one another as they zeroed in on the clandestine broadcast.
“Here,” called Bridger at last. “I think I found it.”
Alice lowered her own scanner and looked around, getting her bearings. She was in a dust-filled passage with fat aluminum ducts pressing in on either side. Her uniform was filthy from brushing against one dirty surface or another. Bridger was no more than a dozen paces away, but she couldn’t see him.
We’re completely hidden. No one comes here. If the saboteur is down here and he murders us, they won't find our bodies for weeks.
It was a disturbing thought, and it sent anxious prickles across her back and shoulders. They hadn't even thought about personal security. Neither of them was armed. We knew there was an enemy soldier on the loose, and what did we do? We walked blindly into an excellent hiding place. In fact, we came to the one spot on the ship where we knew the soldier has been.
Stupid, Alice. Very stupid.
She headed toward Bridger, thinking about all the noise they had made as they called back and forth. They'd given the enemy soldier every chance to ambush them.
Of course, they'd given the guy a chance to get out of the way, as well. He knew there were at least two of them, and he had no way to know they were unarmed. She shivered, wondering if all the noise they'd made had saved their lives.
She rounded a corner and found Bridger crouching, examining a blocky shape on the underside of a staircase. He glanced up, grinning, then raised his eyebrows. “What's wrong?”
“Let's not come back here without weapons.”
He frowned, then shrugged. “Good point, now that you mention it.” He tapped the blocky shape beside his knee. “Here's our transmitter. I've already shut it off.”
Removing the transmitter was easy. Only magnets held in place. They found a panel that gave access to a corridor, pushed it open, and ducked through, badly startling a spacer on the other side. Bridger said, “I don't think we checked there when we swept the ship.”
“I'm sure we didn't,” said Alice. She leaned against a bulkhead, sighing as she took the weight off her injured foot.
Bridger put the wall panel back in place and straightened up. He patted the transmitter. “What do we do with this?”
“Let's show it to Tom.”
“Let me see.” Tom scratched his jaw, looking at the tabletop in his quarters. The display, divided into thirds, showed the maintenance and machinery area where Alice and Bridger had discovered the transmitter. Each third of the screen showed a different deck. A labyrinth of ladders and stairs connected the three decks, with no need to step into a corridor. “I count … what? Nine exits?”
“Ten,” said Alice. “Eleven if you count the space between bulkheads here.” She tapped the wall of the mystery room. “An agile person could clamber up to Deck Four.”
Tom sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. His sitting room was crowded. In addition to Alice and Bridger there were two more captains in the room, Vasquez and McDougall. Their squads were assigned to security duty.
“So we need at least ten people just to watch the exits,” said Vasquez. She scowled. “Twenty, if we want them to have any backup.”
“And quite a few people for the search,” said Bridger. “They'll need to spread out, or they’ll just chase the enemy soldier in circles.”
“Soldier or soldiers,” said Vasquez. “We don't know how many there are.”
It never bloody ends. Tom suppressed the thought, keeping his face neutral. He looked at the chair beside him, which currently supported Alice's injured foot. What's the search team going to stumble into? Will they find someone desperate and terrified who's ready to give up? Or a crowd of fanatics willing to die in a blaze of glory if they can take some of us with them? “Do we have any other options? Anyone have a clever idea?”
Alice grimaced. “Maybe.”
Tom looked at her, noting the reluctance on her face. “What is it?”
She hesitated, then spoke. “They're in Section Nine, and they have no access to the sections on either side.” She tapped at the tabletop, changing the middle section of the display
. An outline of the ship appeared, divided into seventeen sections from nose to tail. “That's not accidental. The ship’s designed to take catastrophic damage and survive.” She tapped the middle section. “All the emergency hatches and vacuum doors line up along the divisions between sections. Even the ammo tubes have force fields where they cross between sections.” She looked around at the others, her expression grim. “We could evacuate Section Nine, seal it off, and let out all the air. Wait ten minutes, re-pressurize it, and go look for bodies.”
McDougall grimaced, but he didn't object. Tom realized he wore the same expression of distaste. Alice's solution was cold-blooded and brutal.
It was also the best way to keep the crew safe.
“Are there any vac suits stored in Section Nine?”
“There's some firefighting equipment on Deck Two,” said Bridger. The fire suits would have an air supply.
“We'll have to move them temporarily,” Tom said. “We’ll seal all the hatches, and then we'll broadcast a warning. Give him, say, sixty seconds to get to an intercom and surrender. Any longer than that and he might think of a way out.”
He looked at the others, meeting their gazes one at a time. Vasquez smiled. The others looked the way Tom felt – as if they were about to do something ugly but necessary.
Not necessary, he thought. Just pragmatic. One more cold-blooded action taken to keep his people safe.
And what line will you cross next?
He looked at Alice's injured foot on the chair beside him and pushed his doubts away. There are no options where no one risks getting hurt. This is not a great choice, but it's the best choice I've got.
“Let's do this,” he said. “The longer we delay, the greater the chance our ghost decides to sneak into another section.”
Chapter 7
Noreen crouched in the darkness, panting, unable to get enough breath. The only sound she could hear was a hiss, faint but maddening, as the air in her closet escaped.
In her hands she clutched a small fire extinguisher, now empty. She'd used the foam as a sealant, spraying it around the outline of the closet door. It had almost worked, too. But her ears kept popping, and she was starting to feel light-headed.
She shivered. Frantic effort and terror had covered her skin in a film of perspiration. Now, with nothing to do but wait, she was growing cold. She thought of the chilly vacuum of space and imagined her corpse, rimed with frost, freezing solid in this dark closet.
Stop it. Don't feed your fears. Either you’ll asphyxiate or you won't. If you think about how scared you are, you'll just die faster.
This was a mistake. I should have given myself up. I wonder if I still can. How long can a person survive in vacuum? I could kick the door open, run for the nearest hatch, pound on the hatch until someone hears me or I pass out ….
She even put a hand on the doorknob before stopping herself. Don't be a fool. If you're going to die anyway, don't make it easy for them. At least make them look for your body.
How long has it been? What if they're already repressurizing this section, and I've sealed myself in here with not quite enough air?
The air that remained in her closet was pretty foul. The chemical stink of the foam was almost overpowering, and her breath had to be filling the little room with carbon dioxide. How much longer can I keep breathing this muck before I pass out? Or before anoxia impairs my judgement and I do something stupid?
My only hope is to wait. Sooner or later they have to repressurize this section. They can't just finish the journey with an empty slice through the middle of the ship. They have to bring back the air.
And when they do, how will I know?
She had abandoned her data pad soon after the ship was taken, afraid that it could be traced. She had no tools, nothing she could use as a source of light. She had fled into the closet with just the fire extinguisher. Only as the foam filled the gap beneath the door had she realized how dark it was going to get.
Now, in utter blackness, every sensation was magnified. The smell seemed to get worse with every breath. The burning in her lungs wasn't enough to distract her from a growing cramp in her right leg, or the stirring of tiny hairs on the back of her neck.
She stuck a finger in her mouth, tasting sweat and grease and dirt and reminding herself she hadn't washed in days. Well, if I'm still alive to get sick from this I'll be ahead of the game.
She took the finger out and stretched her hand toward the line of foam around the closet door. She sought the source of that faint hiss, moving her hand up and down until she felt the faintest hint of cold against her moist fingertip.
She held her breath to help her focus, playing her fingertip back and forth until she was sure.
Yes. There was a tiny stream of air against her fingertip.
Blowing inward.
For a moment she considered trying to pry the foam loose. Then she twisted the door handle, brought her feet up, and booted the door open.
Her ears popped as air, fresh and sweet, flooded in. Half a dozen deep inhalations were enough to get her breathing back under control.
The air still smelled of lubricants and dust and the grime that accumulates in the obscure corners of even the most meticulously maintained ship. To Noreen right then, though, it could have been a summer breeze in her parents’ garden. She squandered thirty precious seconds just sitting there with her legs stretched out, smiling.
She was not, however, out of danger. She got to her feet, squinting. She was in a low-ceilinged room with pipes and cables running across almost every surface. She remembered the room being quite dingy, but it seemed painfully bright after her time in the lightless closet.
She wanted to scrape away the fire extinguisher foam and hide it. It was proof that she lived, proof that a fugitive remained at large. But the simple absence of her corpse would tell the hunters just as much. She closed the closet door, paused a moment to get her bearings, grabbed the rungs of a narrow ladder set against the wall between a couple of pipes, and started to climb.
Her first destination was a gap between bulkheads that let her peek into a brightly lit corridor. The gap was too narrow for a person to pass through, but there was room to snake her arm into the opening. She had to turn her head sideways to reach, her cheek mashed against the metal housing of a junction box. Her fingers slid against a smooth aluminum duct, the pitted surface of a steel cylinder protecting data cables, and a narrow pipe, hot to the touch, that must have held water.
And then she touched cloth.
Suppressing a grunt, she curled her fingers around a wide fabric strap and tugged. It took some wiggling and twisting, but at last the strap came free. Noreen drew back, dragging a grimy satchel behind her.
The satchel was a gift from a benefactor she had never met. She had stashed it as soon as she found it, afraid it was a trap. It contained a gun, a data pad, and a handful of meal replacement bars. Her imagination had conjured a host of grim scenarios. The gun wouldn't fire. The food was drugged, and the pad had a locator beacon. She would pass out, lulled into a false sense of security by the weapon, and Free Neorome troops would take her into custody.
But no one had gone near the satchel in the two days since she'd hidden it. Now, hungry and frightened, she was ready to take a chance.
The gun was a compact laser pistol, good for maybe a dozen shots before it would need to be recharged. It was a design she'd never seen before, and that scared her. It meant the gun belonged to a colonist. And why would a colonist help her?
There'd been a note with the satchel. I know you're here. I want to help you retake the ship. I'm a friend. It was a ridiculous claim, and Noreen had dismissed it out of hand.
But what if …?
I should leave it here. I need to move, get out of this section. They'll be coming through, looking for my body.
If it's a trick, the gun won't work. They would never give a lethal weapon to a soldier of the Dawn Alliance. She turned the pistol over in her hands. Maybe it will expl
ode in my hands if I pull the trigger.
That didn't seem likely, though. No, get the gun was probably just a dud.
She found the safety and turned it off, then turned the power setting all the way up. As she hurried through passageways and corridors she picked her target, a fat yellow pipe that emerged from the deck plates and vanished into the ceiling. She took aim at the middle of the pipe and squeezed the trigger.
Metal glowed red, and a spray of water jetted toward her. She stepped around the spray, put the safety back on, and dropped the pistol into the satchel.
Good God. There's a traitor on the ship. I've got a working gun.
The hatch she chose for her escape opened onto a corridor. There was no way to check for traffic before she opened the hatch. She stood in darkness, staring at a square aluminum panel, planning her moves. She would have to be quick and quiet. There would be no time to think about her choices once the panel was open.
Well, either I'll make it or my troubles will be over. She took a couple of deep breaths, then twisted a dog at each corner of the panel.
The panel dropped away, landing in the corridor beyond, and bright light flooded in. Noreen stuck her head out, glancing quickly left and right.
The corridor stretched for five paces in one direction and ten paces in the other before turning at ninety degrees. There was no one in sight, and no sound of footsteps.
She slid out head-first, got her hands on the deck plates, and wriggled free. She put the panel back in place, her fingers sweat-slick and trembling. She fumbled with the dogs, got two of them in place, and decided that was enough.
One quick stride took her to the far side of the corridor. The panel there was no bigger, but it was at floor height, and it was hinged. It had a latch with the slot requiring some tool she didn't have. Muttering a curse, she gripped the edge of the hatch with her fingertips, planted a boot against the wall, and gave it a good hard yank. The hatch popped open and she slid through, feet first.
Gloom enveloped her, becoming darkness as soon as she pulled the hatch shut. The sound of footsteps froze her in place, and she lay there, not moving, not breathing.