by CJ Birch
After dropping Vasa in the brig, I call a staff meeting. Everyone is back on board working on getting the Persephone up and running again. The race is on now, not only because we have to get away from the illya before they make us their never-ending supply of baby makers, but because an invasion force is heading our way.
Yakovich holds up her hand. “So let me get this straight. The leader of the Burrs, the guy who left you for dead—”
“And planted bombs on the ship,” says Hartley.
Yakovich nods at Hartley. “And planted bombs on the ship, sent you a message telling you to blow up the ship we’re on?”
We’re seated around two tables in the officers’ mess. The six of us—Hartley, Mani, Foer, Yakovich, me, and the doctor—are discussing the data dump I received from my mind knot a few hours ago. It’s hard to explain what it felt like to just suddenly know things I don’t remember accumulating the normal way. I have to assume it’s from Sarka, because how else would they have transmitted it except through his mind knot? Plus, the information is a memory of him telling me all these things I don’t remember hearing before.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Why would we listen to a Burr?” asks Yakovich.
I sigh. I knew this would be a hard sell. “He’s stuck in this galaxy as much as we are.” I haven’t filled the crew in on what we learned from Vasa. “He doesn’t gain much by lying to us. Plus, he’s with the captain. And I don’t believe she’d be on board with a plan that would harm us.”
Foer leans back and folds his arms across his chest. “If that’s even true. What if he’s lying and the captain is dead?”
“She was alive a few days ago. I saw her on the other ship’s bridge.” And I have to believe she’s still alive. My world doesn’t make sense if she’s not.
Yakovich and I share a look. We’d decided—I decided—that we wouldn’t tell the crew what we knew, but this looks like it’s going to be a harder sell than I thought. Trusting a Burr just isn’t in people’s natures. I make a choice. They need to know, to be fully informed about why it’s so urgent we get away from the illya.
“There’s something else,” I say. “Something Yakovich and I discovered about the illya and it’s not—”
“The Commons stabbed us in the back,” Yakovich says.
I glare at Yakovich. I’m trying to explain this situation in the least inflammatory way. “It appears our entire mission was a cover. We were actually payment to keep the illya out of the Milky Way.” This doesn’t sound any less inflammatory, and the room erupts. It takes the better part of an hour to calm everyone and explain what we know.
Hartley stands up and sneaks behind the mess counter. He grabs a container of wasabi peas—the only snack we have left on board—and places them on the table in front of us. Mani and Foer scoop a handful each. The room fills with loud crunches as they munch and think. Hartley takes a pile and places them in front of himself, eating one at a time.
“So what was the plan?” Foer asks around a mouthful of peas.
I take a moment. If the last bit wasn’t digested well, I can’t imagine this will go over any better. “They want us to blow up the main computer. But also, we have to find a way to get them on the ship.”
Hartley shakes his head and pops another pea into his mouth. “Three computers comprise the main one. All are located on different parts of the ship, and all are heavily guarded. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but we don’t have the time.”
“Well, what do we have time for?” I ask.
“Plant a bomb in the waste-management system,” he says and grins.
I hear other groans. We all remember how effective it was at crippling the Persephone.
“It makes sense. It’s a major system we have access to,” Hartley says.
“Can you build a bomb?” It’s a stupid question. I hold up my hand to stop him from answering before I’m even finished. “What do you need? And how long will it take?”
“Lucky for us it’s not that hard. Foer and I can rig that thing in under an hour. The real question is, when should I set it to go off? We’re not anywhere near ready to go.”
Soon after, the meeting breaks up. Once I relay our day-and-a-half time frame and the need to create a way for Sarka and Jordan to gain access to the ship, I dismiss everyone to get started. The way Hartley put it, we have three weeks’ worth of work to do in thirty-six hours. I’ve broken the crew into three groups. The first is in charge of getting the Persephone up and running. Their priority is to get her spaceworthy. We don’t need everything at a hundred percent; we just need to get her out of the bay and away from the resulting conflict.
Hartley’s group is in charge of building the bomb and planting it in the waste-management system. He says one bomb in the system won’t be enough to take this ship out. Not like the Persephone. So they’re working on a three-part plan to cripple the ship. His group is the smallest since it won’t take much time or resources. Once he completes that mission, he’ll be in charge of the first group.
And my group is in charge of finding a way to get Jordan and Sarka on board. We need to make it obvious, since we have no way to communicate with them. Our task is also the most dangerous, since we’ll have to do a little reconnaissance on the Kudo to learn what weaknesses, if any, they have. Yakovich and Ito are on my team. I’ve also asked the doctor to join us because I find he has interesting solutions to hard problems. And that’s what it feels like, a puzzle we need to solve on a deadline. I used to love these as a kid. It’s less fun when people’s lives are at stake.
The four of us are standing on the track. This is my place to think, plus it gives us a good view of the Kudo’s ship bay.
“What if we found a way to open the main doors to the bay?” Yakovich asks. “I mean, we’re going to have to eventually anyway, to get the Persephone out.”
“Eventually, but shouldn’t that be the last thing we do? We’ll be escaping. I highly doubt the illya will let us go once we detonate a bomb on their ship.” Ito is lying on the track with her feet propped on the windows. Every so often she taps them in a rhythm only she can hear.
My forehead is pressed to the glass. From this angle I can see all the way to the bottom of the bay. It’s dark and not much is going on. “And we don’t know if they’ve got some mechanism in place to keep us here. Our biggest problem is our ignorance.” So far the illya have been nothing but kind and welcoming. But after learning their real motives, it’s obvious they must have some sort of system to keep an eye on us. They wouldn’t let us run around their ship without knowing what we were up to. We don’t know what the illya are capable of, not fully.
“What about the venting system?” Ito asks. “When we have an emergency on the Persephone, we automatically dump all gray water into space.”
Yakovich laughs. “Sort of like shitting your pants when you’re scared?” She’s sitting crossed-legged on the track next to the doctor.
Ito giggles. “Yeah, I guess. But those vents would be open at that point. Why can’t they use those?”
“Would they be big enough?” Yakovich asks.
“I think so. This ship is massive. The system they use for heating is a meter wide. Of course, we don’t know what kind of ship the captain will be on. It’s too bad they couldn’t enter in enviro-suits.”
Yakovich perks up. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”
I clap my hands together before they get away with themselves. “Guys, this is all great, but we have no way to relay this information to the captain. It has to be obvious.” I walk around to the other side of the track, the side where we can see the door that opens out into space. It’s huge and most certainly guarded with a million security features that we couldn’t hope to elude. We can’t set a bomb because that’ll tip off the illya. This problem doesn’t appear to have a solution.
“Why can’t we let them know the plan?” It’s the first time the doctor’s said anything since we got to the track. “If Sarka can send a message
to you, then why can’t we send a message to him? It shouldn’t be very hard to figure out how.”
I didn’t like the first invasion. The idea of doing it again sounds horrible. “I’m not sure I want to do that.”
He spreads his hands. I know he’s leaving it up to me.
“What other choice do we have? We could do a million things to help the captain get on this ship, but how will they know which it is? The idea that they’ll just know is ridiculous. Besides opening the bay doors here and throwing out a giant sign that says, ‘this way, guys,’ there’s no other way,” Yakovich says.
She’s right, of course. There isn’t any other way. I nod. “Okay. But we still need to find a foolproof plan to get them on the ship.”
I leave it to the doctor to work out how to communicate with Sarka’s mind knot while Ito, Yakovich, and I work out the kinks of getting them through the gray water vents. We just need to hurry. If this is going to work, we need to give them enough advance warning of our plan.
The next day I find the doctor in the med center. He says he’s figured out a way to send a message to Sarka through the mind knot. Now we just have to hope that what we’ve come up with will work.
Chapter Twenty-six
Jordan
I’m clinging to the side of the illya’s ship with only one arm as the gray water spurts past, crystallizing as soon as it hits the vacuum of space.
I shouldn’t be hanging onto the ship in an oversized enviro-suit. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation in the past month. They try to prepare you for everything in the academy, and not once did we have a class that trained us how to break into a ship. There isn’t a lot of call for that sort of thing in the Milky Way, but here, wherever the hell here is, it’s popular.
On reflection, I shouldn’t have left the ship. This is so out of character for me. There’s always a better way, always a less rash way to get things done. And here I am, again, making a stupid decision instead of finding a more reasonable course of action. I swear if I get through this, I’m hiding in my cabin for a week. I won’t even come out for food. I’ll just have it passed in on a tray. I’m sick of all this daredevil shit.
Sarka and Tup have taken off. Tup declined our offer of asylum on the Posterus. I don’t blame him. How could our tiny ship keep him safe? In a way I’m relieved. No way Sarka was coming back with me. If he does, he’ll face charges, a slapdash trial, and imprisonment. No one trusts him enough to let him do anything, so he’s useless.
And here I am, alone again. I’ve spent the majority of my life alone. Not that I wanted Sarka to come. This is a relief. And it’s not like I’m some twelve-year-old who needs her hand held. But being out here, with my back to the vast emptiness of space, I can’t help but wonder if given the chance I would do it the same way again. Since meeting Ash I’ve almost died more times than I care to think about, but I’ve also lived more. Being around her I feel more alive. It’s the only way I can explain why I’m hanging off the side of a giant ship watching piss crystallize in the vacuum of space. I’m a captain in the Union fleet. It’s not like I signed on hoping for an easy life. If I’d wanted that, I would’ve stayed back on Delta and taken over Kate’s farm. But there’s exciting and then there’s shit-your-pants terrifying. I could use a little less of that.
The water flow lessens, which is my cue. I can’t wait for it to finish, or I risk the hatches closing and trapping me in the tube. I’m thankful I’m in an enviro-suit, because I’m wading through sewage to make it onto the ship. I’m sure there are worse ways to gain access, but I’m stumped to think of one right now.
I swing around and straddle the opening. The flow is slow enough that I can crawl into the tube. Almost as soon as I do, the hatch closes and I’m left in complete darkness. I switch on my helmet light, and a strong beam illuminates the tunnel. It stretches in front of me, an unwavering line into the depth of the ship. The tunnel is broad at this end. I can crawl with room to spare above my head.
As I crawl, I can’t get Sarka’s last expression out of my mind. He had this strange look, like he couldn’t believe I was actually going through with the plan. I think he figured that when it came down to it, I’d abandon Ash and go with them. Not that their way doesn’t have its share of dangers. Those pilot ships don’t have much range. Still, I would’ve hoped he knew better than to think I could leave my crew behind. Even if Ash wasn’t on this ship, I wouldn’t desert them.
I make it twenty-five meters in and find the rest of my way blocked by a hatch. I pull out the small torch Tup gave me. I was worried something like this might happen. I fire it up and start burning a hole through the hatch doors. The red-and-blue flame throws off a strange light. It hits the water droplets on the damp tunnel walls, and sparkles dance along the way I came. As soon as I’ve broken through, I reach in and pull the door open manually. It takes minimal effort for it to release and open.
It’s possible I’ve set off certain alarms, but I refuse to worry about that until it becomes an actual problem. In the message Ash sent Sarka, they said to push through, and I should end up in a service corridor. That’s if Sarka’s telling the truth. Although at this point, I’m not sure why he’d lie. He only lies when it benefits him. And since he’s gone, it doesn’t matter to him what I do. It’s not like we’d go after him. We have more important things to worry about.
As I move farther into the ship, the tube gets smaller as it meets several others. I’m no longer able to crawl on my hands and knees. I have to pull myself through on my stomach. I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I reach a point where it branches off and becomes any smaller. I’m not claustrophobic, but a small bubble of anxiety is forming in the pit of my stomach. If I get stuck, there’s no way to turn around, which means I’ll have to push myself back through on my stomach. The enviro-suit isn’t helping much. It’s not my size and is a little bulkier than I’m used to, but still a hundred times better than the one from the Roebuck when Ash and I retook the Persephone.
At the next junction I find I can’t go any farther. My air tank hits on a ledge and won’t budge. It’s likely this area of the ship isn’t pressurized, so I don’t want to risk removing my tank and suffocating. I stare down the long tunnel as it curves out of sight. I know what I have to do, yet I just don’t want to admit defeat. I’m going to have to crawl backward on my stomach through twenty meters of tube, which will take forever.
I count to ten and breathe in and out, willing my frustration to stay buried. This isn’t the time to fall apart. I manage—barely—to keep it together and slowly push myself backward. It takes forty-five minutes to struggle to the place where the tunnel gets bigger.
I lean my head back and reassess my situation. It’s possible these tubes won’t lead me anywhere useful, although I doubt Ash would’ve suggested it unless she checked that this would get me onto the ship. I’ve evidently taken a wrong turn somewhere. Where I’m sitting, the tube curves around to a fork. I’ll just have to try another direction. Of course, it may lead into the ship, but they might not have checked the width of the tubes. I don’t want to believe that’s true. There has to be a way onto this ship.
As I’m about to start again, I hear a grunt coming from around the bend. Shit. I must have set off an alarm, and a security detail is coming to apprehend me. I flick my headlight off and tighten my grip on the torch, ready to ignite it the second they come around the corner. There’s a loud bang and another grunt. I raise the torch, my finger on the switch. When the lone silhouette appears, I flick it on. Sarka looks surprised by my greeting.
“Holy shit. What are you doing here?” I turn off the torch and switch my headlamp back on. He squints into the light.
“Rescuing you. What the hell do you think?” He’s cradling his injured leg. The knife is missing from his thigh. The noise and effort make sense now. Without medical attention he’s going to bleed out quickly.
“I don’t need rescuing.”
“No? You’re going the w
rong way. The turnoff is this way.”
I narrow my eyes. “How would you know I’m going the wrong way?”
He shrugs in his heavy enviro-suit but doesn’t say anything, just turns around and begins heading back the way he came.
I grit my teeth. I don’t need him to rescue me. I was already on my way back when he showed up. And why the hell did he even come back?
He looks over his shoulder. “You gonna sit there and sulk? Or do you want to get the fuck out of here before we run out of air?”
“What are you doing here?” I start toward him on my hands and knees. “I’m capable of looking after myself. Have been for years now.”
“No one said you weren’t.”
“Then why’d you come?”
He doesn’t answer and I let it drop. The more I talk, the more air I use. We reach the fork where I veered left. Without stopping, he turns down the right tunnel and keeps up a steady pace.
“How do you know this was the right way?”
“I just do. There was probably a map included in the information sent. When that happens, it usually translates into knowing where to go rather than a visual representation.”
“So you came back out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I came back because I couldn’t leave it like that.”
“Leave what like that?”
He stops and huffs. When he turns to me, his face is frozen in a pained expression. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him with creases on his brow. “I know what everyone thinks about us, and I don’t blame them. But I always thought you knew better. But you don’t, do you? You see us as the monsters they do. Even though you’ve seen how we live. Do you think I like living ostracized? After the years I’ve spent serving my country? My planet? And the thanks I got was to become a pariah? To have to steal to feed myself and my family? I don’t deny that some of the things I’ve done are atrocious. It’s not like I ever wanted to end up like this.” He raises his hands and lets them drop at his side in defeat. “Do you think when I signed up to serve my country, to protect my mom and dad and brothers, I was doing it because I thought one day, hey, wouldn’t it be cool to become some freak of nature my own people don’t want anything to do with?” His voice is deep and gruff, reverberating through the glass of his helmet. It echoes down the tunnel, along the walls, invading every speck of space. It reminds me of when I was younger and he’d sit on my bed and tell me stories before bedtime. That voice was once comforting. Now it sounds like failure.