The letters P and C bracketed a stylized atom with a red nucleus, all underscored by a heavy red line.
The “others” were PrimeCorp. Kia inferna? What could all of this mean? My stomach churned again, and I pushed the plate of bread away. I couldn’t eat any more. I wasn’t sure if the nausea came from fear or whatever was wrong with me.
“No.” I shook my head, hoping the alien could read the truth in my eyes. “Pita, how do you say, no, we are not of the others? Put it on the screen, would you?”
After a moment, the symbols changed, and I showed it to the Chron. It nodded, seeming satisfied, and chittered something again.
“The others ally with our brother enemies,” Pita said after a pause. “They war against us.”
Sankta merde, I thought. I’m making what amounts to first contact with an alien species. I have to be so careful here. What are “brother enemies?” I remembered Fha mentioning a schism in the Chron—two sides ranged against each other. A civil war. I supposed that, coupled with imprecise translation, could be described as “brother enemies.”
“Pita, you have to be extra careful to get this right.” I considered my words. “Say, we do not want war with you. The others are our enemy as well, but we are not here to war with them. We only want to get home.”
“Merde, you want me to ask its life story while I’m at it?” Pita said. But in seconds, the alien words flashed onto the screen. She was getting faster. Or sloppier, I thought with a pang of worry. Again the Chron read it and nodded.
“We have to find out what happened to everyone else,” I told Pita. “Can you ask it where the others—no, wait, don’t use that word. Do you have a word for crew, or friends, companions—something like that?”
“See what I can do,” she said, and in a minute I was showing the Chron the words. The answer this time was longer, and I hoped Pita would be able to get all of it.
“It says, you had sickness,” Pita translated. “We took you from companions. They are there in the boxes. You are here to be well. We have remove the bad machines.”
“They are there in the boxes? What does that—” I broke off, realizing what else Pita had translated. We have remove the bad machines. My nanobioscavengers? They’d—what? Somehow filtered them out of my blood? All of them? I glanced down at the red, sucker-like markings on my arm. A sudden fear chilled my skin, making it feel clammy and prickled with phantom pain as if stuck with dozens of pins. Much as I feared what might be going wrong with my bioscavs, it terrified me even more to think that these aliens might have completely removed them. How would my body react to that, after decades of relying on its microscopic helpers to keep me healthy?
And overall, since I’d woken up, I felt worse.
The Chron said something else, breaking me out of my reverie. Pita translated quickly. “Fear you are the danger here.”
“We’re the danger?” I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. We don’t have any weapons.”
“All I can do is tell you what it said.”
I puzzled over the words. “Do you think it means we’re in danger?”
“Could be,” Pita said unhelpfully.
Before I could ask Pita to frame a question to find out more, an alarm sounded from the corridor outside. The Chron pulled open a drawer and scrabbled around, coming up with a small, round, button-like object. It motioned for me to hold out my right arm—the one not encased in the resin sheath—and clipped the device onto my t-shirt sleeve. It chattered something.
“To keep safe,” Pita said without waiting for me to ask.
The Chron mimed something enclosing me—a force field of some sort? Then it held up a finger in a “wait” gesture, said something else, and left. The door slid closed behind it.
“Uh-oh,” Pita said.
“Uh-oh what?”
“It said your companions. That doesn’t sound good.”
I had to agree. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I reached out and put a hand on the door. It slid open immediately, and I poked my head out into the empty corridor. I saw the Chron disappear around a corner and, datapad in hand, started after it.
Chapter 33 – Jahelia
Brothers and Sisters in Arms
THE ALARM CONTINUED to blare around us. “Now look what you did,” Baden whispered to Maja, and winked at her.
“Keep moving,” Hirin muttered, and stepped through the doorway.
Footfalls on metal decking echoed from somewhere ahead of us, and as one, we froze. But they faded almost immediately, so whoever was running wasn’t running towards us.
After the first turn, the wide corridor curved out ahead of us. It followed the same arc as the hallway in the brig area, as if we were in one section of a circular ring.
“Only one option,” Maja said breathlessly.
“Stay close, everyone,” Hirin said. He reached out as if to take Maja’s hand but stopped short of touching her, obviously remembering that she still wore the force field generator.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “The field zapped Viss and me when we tried a fast attack, but the aliens were able to pick up trays and use medical stuff. I wonder if a slow, easy motion—” Not waiting for anyone to stop me, I gently reached out and put a hand on Maja’s arm. The field tingled when my hand passed through it, like a frizz of static electricity, but it didn’t repel me.
Hirin nodded. “Good to know. Thanks, Sord.”
It wasn’t much, but the chill had gone from his voice. I felt unreasonably gratified at his approval, and instantly hated myself for it. Was I actually beginning to like these people?
No. It had to be merely that for the moment, we were brothers and sisters in arms. I distracted myself from those weird thoughts by concentrating on where we were.
The space station—I was still of the opinion that’s what it was, and the surroundings seemed to confirm it—was rough-and-ready, not sleek and completely finished like a corporate office building planetside. Sagan Station was like that, but this one must have been slapped together in a hurry. Maybe it wasn’t even finished yet. The main corridor was a long octagonal tube with support arches reinforcing the eight-sided shape at intervals. Cables and wiring ran along the walls, most of it in recessed channels, but some looped haphazardly through plastic hooks or simply ran along the metal floor next to the wall. Control touchpads appeared at intervals on the walls, but they were useless to us without better knowledge of the Chron alphabet.
A door to the left as we started down the hallway bore a label we couldn’t read. Maja put a hand to it. It slid open to reveal a small, square room, dimly illuminated by the light admitted by the open door. Crates and boxes stamped with Chron symbols stacked along the walls. She hesitated. “No-one there; should we see what’s in the boxes?”
“I don’t know how much time we have, but I’d trade this fork for a pin-beam laser if I found one,” Rei said.
Baden and Viss pulled open a couple of the nearest crates. “Food supplies.”
“I can’t imagine anyone storing weapons right outside the brig,” Yuskeya noted with a grim smile.
What I assumed to be storage hatches lined the angled upper parts of the walls. I opened one out of curiosity, but it was empty.
“Sord, keep up,” Yuskeya told me. “I’m not going hunting for you if you get separated from the group.”
“I care about you, too, Protectorate,” I retorted. In truth, though, I knew my best chance of making it out of here in one piece was to stick with the group.
The next door, also on the left, opened into more storage space, filled with more non-lethal items.
“This is definitely a Chron station,” Gerazan said as we hurried along the corridor. “I’d almost swear we were back in the artifact moon. The shape of the hallways, the symbols, even the colour of the walls.”
“Except it’s cleaner here,” Yuskeya said.
“Not so dusty.”
We saw no-one in the hallway, Chron or otherwise. The alarm continue
d to bleat. “Does it seem weird that we haven’t seen anyone yet?” Rei asked.
“I’m starting to think that alarm is nothing to do with us,” Baden said.
Maja quirked a half-smile. “That’s a less comforting thought than I would have expected.”
But it seemed Baden might be right. As we reached the next door—also on the left, we’d seen none at all on the right—the corridor shook suddenly under our feet as if the entire structure had been hit by something big. Maja lurched into the wall, and her force field flared. Baden put out a hand to help her but she warded him off. “Careful, I’m a live wire, remember? And I didn’t even touch the wall—the field stopped me.”
“I have to get one of those things,” Baden said.
“Yeah, maybe they sell them at the gift shop,” Rei told him. “We’ll check before we leave.”
“Let’s not get distracted, folks,” Hirin chided them. “Here’s another door. Maja, do the honours.”
This room seemed to be a common area—chairs and tables, as well as a run of counters and some devices that I assumed were for food preparation. One of the chairs had been knocked backwards, and I wondered if someone had gotten up from here in a hurry. The room was empty of inhabitants. That might explain the footsteps we’d heard running away from us.
“Is anyone else starting to feel like the Chron on this station have bigger worries than us?” Rei asked.
The next door wouldn’t open, even to Maja’s touch.
“Leave it,” Hirin said. “We don’t have the time or the tools to start breaking into places.”
“What if Mother’s in there?” Maja asked.
Hirin blew out a sigh. “Then we’ll come back when we’ve eliminated all the other possibilities.”
As if to underscore his words, the walls and floor shuddered again.
“I get the feeling we are on a station, and it’s getting pounded,” Viss muttered.
One more door and we came to a junction in the hallway—we could go straight or turn right, finally. This door was windowed, and Rei peered through the opening. “Airlock,” she said, “So this is definitely a station. But I can’t see out the second window, so I don’t know if anything’s docked there or not.”
“It could be the ship,” Baden said.
“Here, let’s see if I can open it,” Maja said, and Baden moved out of her way. She put a hand on the door, but nothing changed.
“This one’s keyed,” Rei said, gesturing to a touchpad set into the wall near the door. “Safety precaution, I guess. Dangerous to have an airlock door you can open merely by falling against it.”
“Damne,” Hirin said. “We must have come halfway around the station by now. Maybe we should have gone out the other door. I really thought Luta and Cerevare would be nearby.”
“Still think we shouldn’t split up?” Maja asked. “This place is bigger than I expected.”
Hirin chewed his lip, obviously considering. “No, we stay together,” he said finally. “If it’s big, that’s one more reason we should stay close. We can’t communicate with each other if we separate.” He gestured with his resin-sheathed arm.
“Let’s take the side corridor, then,” Yuskeya suggested. “It might go straight across, we’ll find ourselves near the other door, and we can check that area.”
Hirin agreed, so we moved cautiously to the right-hand corridor. After only ten feet or so it opened to another, smaller ring corridor that went left and right. Glass-walled, brightly-lit banks on either side swept the inside of the ring, and the bright, many-hued greens of newly sprouted plants made it obvious that this was a hydroponics garden. Directly ahead of us, ringing what must be the central axis of the station, lay a bank of elevators.
The control station for the hydroponics lab was to the left, and a startled-looking Chron began to rise from a chair inside. Even at that distance, and through the glass wall, it seemed—afraid. Its mouth moved, but it couldn’t be talking to us. More likely telling someone else about us. It was impossible to tell if it had a weapon.
Well, neither did we, not counting the forks.
“Run!” Hirin barked, and darted toward the elevators. The corridor curved around them to each side, and we sped past. A series of reverberations beat through the walls and floor at that moment. Not enough to knock anyone off-balance, but enough to feel.
“Station’s firing at something,” Viss said. “Those were some kind of torps launching.”
“So the station’s under attack, and that last Chron seemed afraid of us,” Baden said. So he’d noticed the facial expression, too. “I don’t like this scenario.”
“At least if most of them are busy, they’re not looking for us,” Gerazan said.
No corridor opened directly across from us when we passed the other side of the hydroponics wing, but there was one about ten feet to the left. We ran in and found ourselves at a dead end; a door in front of us and another corridor to the left. Maja put a hand to the door and it opened to reveal the brig’s anteroom. The first cell—the one I’d been in—lay around the corner through an open door.
“Okej, here’s where we started,” Hirin said. “Maybe down this left-hand corridor—”
“Hang on,” Viss said. “I’m pretty sick of this thing.” He gestured to the greenish sheath on his arm. “Maybe there’s something in here that will release them.”
“Good thinking,” Yuskeya said, and she and Viss moved as one to open the cupboards and drawers stacked against the rear wall.
I kept watching over my shoulder, waiting for Chron soldiers to descend and take us into custody—if we were lucky, and they didn’t do worse. But another minute ticked by without incident, and then Yuskeya said, “Got it!”
She turned from one of the lower cupboards holding a sort of hex key, but with a wavy shape on the bottom. In the open cupboard behind her, a pile of what looked like the sheaths was stacked. These were soft and formless, though, not rigid like those we wore.
“These guys take a lot of prisoners from Nearspace?” I asked.
“Maybe they have different uses,” Hirin said. “I think there’s a lot more going on here than we understand.”
“Gee, ya think?” I muttered, but it didn’t seem like a good time to get anyone pissed off at me.
Yuskeya slotted the key into her sheath and turned. With a soft pop, the two halves pulled away from each other, and she slipped it off. Remarkably, once unlocked, it collapsed into a soft, malleable material, pliant as thin silicone. Viss held his arm out wordlessly, and she did the same for his.
“What is this stuff?” Baden wondered, as his softened and released.
Something worth hanging on to, I thought, and surreptitiously tucked mine inside my bandolier once it was unlocked. I pulled the sleeve of my jacket down into place with a sigh of relief.
In less than a minute we’d all removed them. Hirin pressed his implant. “Luta, are you there? Cerevare?”
He couldn’t really have been hoping to get an answer, but he still seemed dejected when none came.
“The captain had one on, too, and probably the Lobor as well,” I reminded him. “So unless someone else took it off for them . . .”
He nodded. “I know. Figured it was worth a try, though.”
“They’re routed through the Tane Ikai’s comm system,” Baden said gently. “If that’s shut down, they won’t work until the ship is live again.”
Hirin nodded and turned to the other hallway. “Right, let’s check this way.”
The doors on either side of this hallway stood open, and the rooms seemed to be medical bays. Each held a gurney, cupboards, a counter, and some unidentifiable machines and electronics. Again things seemed unfinished, haphazard—boxes and crates, things shoved onto shelves with no apparent organization.
The third bay might have been recently vacated. A pale yellow sheet had slipped off a gurney in the center of the room, and lay pooled on the floor beside it. A cart on wheels sat at the head of the gurney. Translucent
tubing hung from it, connected to a soft-looking sleeve of some sort. Reddish streaks and drips marred the inside surfaces of the tubing, as if blood had run through it. Curious, I examined the sleeve part. The inside held a row of some kind of sucker-like things that would probably hurt like hell attached to your skin. A tray similar to the ones used to bring us our food sat on the counter, holding a plate with a half-eaten slice of cinnamon bread. A shallow bowl of water, still beaded with condensation, stood beside it.
Maja crossed to it and gently laid her hand against the side of the bowl. “Still cold,” she said. “If Mother was here, she’s not long gone.”
From out in the hallway, Viss said, “End of the corridor opens up into a big ward. Empty, though.”
I’d turned to look at him and saw his eyes widen as he glanced in the other direction, from where we’d just come.
“Captain!” he said, but he didn’t sound at all happy to see her.
Chapter 34 – Luta
The Body’s Betrayal
WHEN I TURNED the corner to follow the Chron, I damn near ran into it. It had gone only a few feet, into a small anteroom, and stood before an open door, staring.
It turned and saw me, and shook its head. Said something, but it didn’t seem angry that I’d left the medical bay and followed it.
I joined it and peered through the door. A curving corridor stretched away from us, lined on both sides with barred cells. All the doors stood open. Outside one, on the floor, lay a mound of torn pale yellow cloth. Two Chron stood over it, looking startled at our arrival.
“Companions are no longer in the here,” Pita translated.
“You don’t have to give me word for word if it doesn’t make sense,” I told her, exasperated. “I’m pretty sure, advanced as you seem to be, that you can paraphrase what it’s trying to say.”
The voice coming from the datapad held a note of humour. “Sure I could. But that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.”
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