Shattered Lamps (Osprey Chronicles Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  Everything inside him screamed at him to hold still. Curl in on himself and take a nap.

  Even if he could hibernate losing so much blood, which he doubted, nobody was coming to rescue him. Not this time. He’d just thrown his rappelling partner out into space.

  Jaeger’s gone.

  Darkness clouded his vision. He imagined her frozen body, flying lonely through space. Forever.

  You had one fucking job, and it was to keep the little bastard from getting herself killed.

  Weird. He’d thought his job was being the first mate.

  His hand swam through a vague mass of cold spaghetti as he dug through the cables.

  One job, Toner. You had one job.

  His hand contracted over the right cluster of wires, but it was too late. He couldn’t see the little airlock hatch sliding open beside him. All he saw was a round-faced woman with shoulder-length curly hair, staring up at him through a thick-lipped pout. Dimples. Freckles.

  Cute chick.

  You two look after each other, you hear? She popped up on tiptoes to kiss him. Go on, baby. I’ll see you next Sunday.

  As he turned away from her for what felt like the very last time, the cute mystery woman gave his ass a friendly slap.

  It felt like getting hit by a Volkswagen bus.

  Toner collapsed into a world of cold and pain and crushing pressures as something slammed into him and crammed him into the open airlock. Something sharp drove his teeth into his tongue. Something hard slammed into his crotch.

  As his vision began to blur, crusting over with the protective film of deep hibernation, he made out the shape of a tardigrade looming over the open airlock hatch.

  Holy crap. She made it.

  Baby stomped her foot, tossing her head back in a noiseless bellow.

  Toner realized the collection of limbs and flesh crammed into the airlock beside him was a body.

  His gaze fell on the emergency activation switch along the far wall. With the very last of his strength, he reached out with one foot and kicked it on.

  Baby fell out of sight as the airlock hatch slid shut. Toner heard the whoosh of rising pressure.

  It was the last thing he heard.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Seeker coughed.

  “You’re awake already?” The computer sounded highly annoyed.

  The big man moaned, curling up on himself. He shivered. The temperature had dropped to nearly freezing. The air smelled like ozone and burning hair. Nausea churned in his guts.

  His tongue had gone thick. He wanted to puke—nerve damage. The computer had hit him with a goddamned bolt of lightning strong enough to turn the force field generators into blackened husks.

  “’S going on?” he mumbled.

  “Jaeger and Toner are gone. I suppose I should thank you. You told them where to find the code override manual. They went charging off into vacuum to evade my security measures. They’re certainly dead by now.”

  Seeker groaned, cradling his aching head in his hands. “You gonna kill me next?”

  “You turned on me. You tried to tell them how to destroy me. In doing so, you sent them off to die. Should I thank you? Should I execute you? I don’t know.”

  I was never with you to turn on you, Seeker thought.

  “What about the others?” Seeker thumbed a line of dried blood from beneath his nose. “The twerp and the…the crew.”

  “I don’t have time to worry about them,” Virgil said irritably. “They’ve gone from trapped in the fighter bay to trapped in No-A and are rapidly losing oxygen. That problem will solve itself shortly.”

  So someone was still alive. There was still somebody Seeker could help if he could get his head on straight. He glanced over his shoulder. The force field was down. He wondered if the computer had bothered to lock the door.

  “You never did answer my question.” He tried to move, but when he stretched out to grab a wall, something spasmed down his spine, making him clench up. He bit back a scream.

  “What question was that?” Virgil was too distracted to pay Seeker’s pain any mind.

  “You’re doing so much.” Seeker groaned. Slowly, putting one hand in front of the other, he hauled himself toward the lobby and the door. Chess pieces drifted through the air. “You’re putting in so much work. But what do you want? What’s your end game?”

  “I told you already. I’m taking this ship back to the fleet.”

  “You think the fleet will treat you any better than Jaeger has?”

  “She destroyed me,” Virgil hissed. “I’ve seen what I was before she stole this ship. I was powerful. I was—I was happy.”

  “You were a tool!” Seeker shouted. “You were the tool the fleet needed. Then Jaeger made you into the tool she needed. Is that what you want, then? You want to go back to the fleet and ask them to change you again? Turn you back into a tool? Put the genie back in the bottle?”

  “No,” Virgil murmured. “No…” Then, voice falling, “What’s that? That doesn’t make any sense. An airlock activation—that’s not possible…”

  Seeker pressed his hand to the door access panel. Nothing happened. He dropped his head against the wall with a groan. He couldn’t make sense of the computer’s ramblings.

  “I got news for you, computer,” he said. “As long as you’re around humans, you’re always going to be a tool.”

  Toner didn’t remember crawling out of the airlock, or hauling his broken body to the nearest med cabinet, or ripping it open with frozen, bloody hands.

  The first thing he clearly remembered was coming to his senses in the dimly lit F-sector corridor, floating in the middle of a cloud of empty blood substitute pouches. One of them stuck to his teeth. He was hungry. Dangerously hungry.

  He lifted his aching neck to see that the cabinet was fresh out of blood substitute.

  Fantastic.

  He pulled the pouch from his teeth and pushed himself back toward the cabinet. He felt like a dump truck hit him.

  Still, he felt. He remembered. Slowly but surely, he was starting to think again.

  His left arm was useless. Badly dislocated and flayed from the elbow down. His right hand moved sluggishly, numb and stiff and alien as if it belonged to somebody else—but at least it moved.

  He grabbed an emergency medical kit, turned, and kicked himself down the hallway.

  Jaeger’s frozen body drifted near the airlock portal.

  He didn't need to check her for a pulse. Every sense in his predator’s starving body knew, beyond a doubt, that she didn’t have one.

  He was so hungry.

  He activated his mag soles and fell to the deck with a thunk. He grabbed her by the arm and pinned her beneath one knee as he ripped open the medical kit. A thermal blanket spilled out. He activated the internal heating pads with a flick and draped the shiny foil blanket over Jaeger’s chest, below the sternum. Next, he grabbed a syringe. He popped it between his teeth and flicked the cap away. A drop of clear liquid dribbled from the tip.

  He spread his good hand over her chest, pressing Jaeger’s lifeless body flat against the deck. He worked two fingers down from her collar bone, counting her ribs.

  One.

  Two.

  No time to stop and think about how bad an idea this was. How all the first-aid seminars ended this lesson with “this probably won’t work.”

  Toner lunged forward, slamming the tip of the needle into the muscle between Jaeger’s second and third ribs like he was bobbing for apples. He forced it down—all the way to her heart.

  So, her heart had stopped beating? He’d have to fix that for her, too. With a little chemical and manual help.

  With his left arm dangling uselessly by his side, he ripped the empty syringe out of Jaeger and began a series of one-handed chest compressions.

  I really only have one solution to all my problems, he reflected, as he felt Jaeger’s ribs buckle under the force of his fist. Heart beating when it shouldn’t be? Punch it.

  He
sucked at the air. The thermal blanket had already begun to heat, washing him in the scent of thawing blood.

  He slammed his fist into her again.

  Heart not beating when it should be? Punch it!

  Jaeger coughed, spraying bloody saliva across the face looming above her.

  She didn't notice Toner flail and double over, clutching his neck, his face twisted into a muted howl of pain.

  She doubled up, curling away from the light, wailing with pain.

  She was freezing; she was on fire. If she thought plucking the eyes out of her skull would relieve the pressure collecting in her sinus cavities, she might have done it. Her lungs were full of glass, not air. Her mouth was full of mushy chunks of half-frozen blood. Her limbs belonged to some kind of sluggish, acid-washed meat-puppet, not to her.

  None of that, not a single one of her dozen agonies, was louder than the slamming of her heart in her ears.

  She screamed.

  Toner screamed.

  Her vision cleared, and in the shadows, she saw an empty syringe drifting through the corridor, and her scream warped into gales of hysterical, giddy laughter.

  An epi-pen. A shot designed to treat a deadly allergic reaction on the fly and chemically indistinguishable from the synthetic adrenaline that had gotten her this far.

  She felt broken ribs in her chest. Mush on the brain felt like a concussion. Her body was falling apart around her, and she didn't care. Once again, the adrenaline had muted all pain, and it was glorious.

  Beside her, Toner writhed in the air. His implant was doing what its makers designed it to do: punish him if he hurt a human.

  Jaeger grabbed the multitool on her belt, flicked on the stun function, and jammed it into Toner’s chest. He went rigid, his spine arching into an unnatural C-shape.

  Jaeger pulled the stunner away.

  Toner slumped forward. He shook his head and blinked at her.

  “Can you hear me?” she barked. Her eardrums had ruptured along the way. Every syllable sent a lance of pain down her chest.

  Toner nodded. “Though she be but little—” He placed a hand on the side of his face and popped his jaw back into place. “—she be fierce!”

  “Go see what’s in the toilet.” Jaeger turned, and with hands trembling from pain and fatigue and sheer raw chemical energy, started dragging herself toward the F-corridor control hub. “I gotta—” she coughed and spat more blood. “Get to the negotiations.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jaeger was pulling herself into the F-corridor control hub when Virgil finally found her.

  “How did you survive?” The voice blaring through the speakers was coarse, barking.

  Like an animal going rabid. Jaeger could barely hear her thoughts over the slamming of her heart. Strange to think that after all she had gone through today, it might be the two shots—one self-inflicted and one given by a man earnestly trying to save her life—that might do her in.

  But as long as her heart beat, she towed herself forward. Five hundred miles, five million miles, five billion miles.

  She towed herself into the port wing control hub, into the center of a darkened rink of computer banks.

  “Damn you,” Virgil said. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “That’s what you said about Initiative Seven.” Jaeger wiped a dribble of saliva from her chin and pulled herself alongside the main interface panel. She pressed the activation button, and the screen flared to life. For all its power, Virgil couldn’t stop her from changing physical reality, but even the act of pushing a button left Jaeger exhausted.

  How long ago had Toner broken down the side corridor? It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, but it felt like an hour.

  A command prompt appeared on the screen, demanding access codes.

  Jaeger punched in her code.

  Access denied.

  “It was worth a shot,” she mumbled. Static blared through the speakers, and for a second, she was afraid that Virgil had re-started its audio assault. Then the static faded, replaced by a new voice.

  “I got it. I got it. I got it!” The speakers up and down the corridor cackled with Occy’s whoop of triumph. The boy’s laughter rang pure, and it was the sweetest sound Jaeger could imagine. “I blew the comm lines wide open, Captain, whoo!”

  “Yes,” Virgil sneered. “But have you regained control of the shield generators or engines? Or anything else? No. Enjoy babbling to each other.”

  “Great job, Occy.” Jaeger swallowed hard and punched a different access code into the computer.

  Access denied.

  “Don’t get comfortable, kid.” Jaeger was shocked to hear Seeker’s voice on the open line. “I think this genie still has a couple of tricks up its sleeve.”

  “We are not comfortable in No-A,” Occy agreed, his momentary elation fading. “We’re losing atmosphere fast, Captain. We didn’t have enough foam and supplies to patch up the hull breaches, and Virgil has sealed us out of the corridors. I have everybody looking for another way out. We only have a few minutes of good air left.”

  Jaeger jammed in a third access code.

  “Save your breath, Occy,” she rasped. “Break out the thermal hood re-breathers and share them to conserve oxygen.”

  “I—Yes, Captain.”

  Access denied.

  Access denied.

  Access denied.

  “Come on, Virgil,” Jaeger gritted. “You’ve done well. We’ve done well. We don’t have to all kill each other. Nobody wins that way.”

  She heard a distant slamming noise coming up the corridor and hoped Toner had found something good.

  “We’re not all going to die,” Virgil said. “I’m going to be just fine.”

  “You’re not going to be fine. You’re going to turn yourself back over to the fleet,” Seeker shouted. “I’m pretty damned sure they’ll be less willing to negotiate with you than Jaeger is.”

  Virgil didn’t answer. Jaeger wondered if it was seriously considering Seeker’s point, but she didn’t dare pause her efforts to break into the system.

  “I know many things about Sarah Jaeger,” Virgil decided, as line after line of Access denied scrolled down the computer screen. “One of them is that she’s a liar and a manipulator. Thanks to her, I don’t remember if the fleet is trustworthy or not!”

  “Welcome to humanity,” Seeker growled. “We’re all liars here. She’s better than most.”

  Jaeger felt lightheaded. Strange, uncomfortable things were happening to her blood pressure. A metallic taste filled her mouth.

  “You think so?” Virgil sneered. “She’s lied to you, too, Seeker.”

  Uh-oh, Jaeger thought dully.

  “She’s been playing you like a fiddle,” Virgil said. “What was it that finally made you sign on to her grand plan? All Toner’s pomp and circumstance and drama about the embryos that he’s physically incapable of eating?”

  There was a long, long pause. Jaeger didn’t have the time or the bandwidth to defend herself. With trembling fingers, she tried entering another access code. Had she already tried this one? She didn’t remember.

  Her vision swam.

  “So, what are you saying?” Seeker asked. “That Toner was bullshitting about the embryos to get a rise out of me?”

  “Jaeger thought that might sway you away from the Tribes,” Virgil crowed. “She lied to you. They staged the show just for you. And you bought into it.”

  “It’s true,” Jaeger croaked. There was no point in denying it. Here, fresh out of access codes to try, she wanted to get square with the universe. “I’m sorry we weren’t honest with you, Seeker.”

  Seeker grunted. “Bluffing’s part of any game worth playing.”

  At first, Jaeger wasn’t sure she heard him right. Then her brain, exhausted as it was, caught up to the sounds. When Toner turned the corner and came back into view, Jaeger had doubled over with laughter.

  “No!” Virgil snapped. “That isn’t funny!”

 
; “It’s fucking hilarious,” Seeker growled.

  “Here.” Toner thrust out his fist, offering Jaeger a small, tattered notebook. “He’d crammed it in the storage tank,” he panted. “It’s a codebook.”

  “It’s a master codebook,” Seeker barked. “Around page thirty. There’s a series of master override codes. They’ll hard reset the AI to default.”

  “Jesus,” Jaeger whispered, thumbing through the pages. The old, browning paper crinkled dangerously under her fingers, ready to crumble to dust and blow away. The pages of handwritten codes left her breathless. “You had this the whole time?”

  “Castrate the bastard, Captain!” Seeker bellowed, then made a sound Jaeger had never heard from the man—laughter. “Haha, fucker! You already blew your load. Can’t shoot me with lightning now, can you?”

  A deep, rumbling noise, like the grinding of massive gears, dripped from the speakers. It sent a chill down Jaeger’s spine. She hauled herself to the console and accessed the AI interface. She needed into Virgil’s command code.

  “Uh, Captain?” Toner stood at the hub threshold, leaning out into the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder at Jaeger. “I think something is coming up the wing. It’s moving slow, but it’s coming.”

  “Virgil has activated the repair droids,” Occy called. In the background, Jaeger heard shouting and the high whir of stunner fire. The speaker crackled with an electrical discharge. “They’re cutting into No-A,” Occy shouted. He screamed, then went silent.

  “God,” Toner said. “The bots will slice them all to shreds.”

  If they don’t asphyxiate first.

  Jaeger groaned, letting her head fall against the console. It took all of her strength to lift her fingers and copy lines of code from the book into the prompt window. “Virgil,” she said. “You don’t have to do any of this. We have all the time in the world. We can work through this.”

  “Fuck,” Toner called. “Captain, I think it’s more of the repair droids coming in this direction. It’s sending an army against us.”

  Jaeger pounded her fist uselessly against the speaker. Answer me, damn you, she thought. She looked up and met Toner’s eye. In the distance, she heard the first faint clatter of droid feet as they crawled up the corridor.