“You better decontam yourself for about a solid decade before you step foot on campus,” Walters shot back. “Or on my ship.”
“Our ship, thanks. And no arguments there. Anything in the bio database?”
“Nope, plenty of similar samples but nothing with that exact molecular structure. Closest thing I’m seeing here is Mycena manipularis, from Borneo, and something in the MSC database that I don’t have the security clearance to view.”
“Damn it,” she muttered, turning and pausing, finding the Servitor huddled in the corner to the far right of where she had entered the ship. It was practically vintage. More modern models were skinned with simple, humanlike white latex to hide the metal skeleton. She preferred these older versions, with their charmingly mismatched eye sizes and three-fingered “hands.” The ones made to look more humanoid were creepy, dead-eyed and unsettling. JAX’s body was pure function, with a beak-like head and one “eye” for scanning and detecting crewmates’ identities, as well as an “eye” for holographic projections and lighting in dark rooms. He was just over six feet, a sealed, tubelike chassis containing the hardware to keep him running.
“Found our Servitor friend,” she told Walters. Rosalyn took the AI by its thin, metal shoulders and pulled herself closer, studying the front of the chassis until she located a small universal port on the left lower half. She fished a spare VIT power cell from her case and opened the small hatch next to the port on the AI. A smooth panel waited there for surface-to-surface wireless charging.
“I’m going to juice it back up with a spare battery. We need his data.”
“Seems like you were right about the Servitor,” Walters replied. His breathing had calmed. “If the crew were alive, you would have run into them by now. We haven’t exactly been stealthy.”
Rosalyn nodded to herself, lining up the battery with the charge surface before sitting down heavily on the stool near the AI. “The least hysterical interpretation of events is usually the right one.”
“Yeah, yeah. You know, the cantina does a late-night tiki thing once a month—”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please stop.”
“Oh, come on, ice princess, thaw out a little. Where are you from, anyway? Pakistan? Pakistani girls love me.”
The Servitor thrummed softly, one eye flickering as the power began transferring and it booted into safe mode. “I’m Indian. Half. The furious half.”
“I knew it. You’re warming up to me.” Walters coughed and then sighed. “Sorry. I . . . I babble and flirt when I’m nervous.”
“Spare us both and try some deep breathing instead. There. We’ve got power,” she told him, moving on swiftly. She would need to decontaminate for a decade for more reasons than one, she thought with a grimace. “You can come back online now, JAX, and hopefully, if my pilot is done making a fool of himself, we can sort out this mess.” And I can get back to my job, and then back to the station, and make sure HR knows I’m never partnering with Walters again.
The Servitor blinked both “eyes” and found her, standing to its imposing height before nodding its head once. “Power levels at six percent and climbing.” His larger orb eye had already scanned and identified her. “Greetings, Merchantia Junior Salvager Devar. Welcome aboard the Brigantine, a Class A—”
“No time for that, friend, sorry,” she interjected, holding up a gloved hand. “JAX, access the Brigantine’s itinerary, try a month out from failure.”
Walters had begun breathing heavily on the other end again. Hopefully he would keep the nervous flirtations to himself.
JAX’s crisp, automated voice filled the galley, echoing slightly. “Mission day sixty, refueling contact with unidentified civilian craft. Mission day sixty-three, scheduled resupply stop with MSC vessel 809-T, freighter class; mission day seventy, scheduled stop with moon base Terralon, Proxima Centauri system; mission day seventy-five, unscheduled contact, Coeur d’Alene Station, Proxima Centauri system. Unavailable, unavailable . . .”
“Unavailable?” Rosalyn sat back on the stool, crossing her arms and studying the Servitor with a puzzled frown. There was more than one red flag waving wildly in front of her face. Civilian contact. Unscheduled stops. Maybe Girdy’s instincts were right. Something strange was going on.
“Define ‘unavailable’ for me, JAX. That’s a new one.”
“You’ve never gotten that from a Servitor before?” Walters asked. He sounded winded. Spooked.
“It’s probably just an error, like the life-forms reading. He’s a second-run model, practically a relic now. No offense, JAX.”
The Servitor tilted its head to the side. She imagined it grinning wryly at her. “None taken, Junior Salvager.”
“Define, please,” she prompted it.
“Unavailable: designated classified or otherwise corrupted.”
“Fantastic,” she muttered. What a headache. She was going to get herself and Walters fired over a faulty robot. Sighing, she pulled a cable out of her bag and ran it from one of many small data link ports in the Servitor’s chassis to the lifeless monitor near the door covered with flowering blue growth. “All right, JAX, access the ship’s data directly. Search for anything relevant in itinerary, manifest and navigation. I want to know about these ‘unavailable’ stops, specifically the unscheduled and civilian contact.”
“Might I remind you that our job is to just clean this shit up and leave? Let the lawyers deal with this Sherlock shit.”
“There’s unidentifiable blue matter all over the walls, and something is suspicious with both the life-reading scanner and now their Servitor. I’m not going another step farther inside this wreck without knowing what I’m getting myself into.”
Walters swore incoherently on the other end.
“Unavailable.”
“What?” She turned back to the Servitor, which appeared to be staring somewhere over her shoulder. “Say again.”
“The data you requested is unavailable, Junior Salvager, my apologies.”
Her helmet was going to fog from so much sighing and mumbling. “JAX, run a self-diagnostic. Has anyone tampered with you recently?”
The lights in the Servitor’s eyes went very dim and then brightened. “Permissions accessed and altered, mission day eighty-three.”
Rosalyn blinked. Shit. “Eighty-three?” She consulted her VIT briefly and shook her head. “No, that isn’t possible. The salvage signal started beaming on mission day seventy-nine. Who changed your permissions?”
“Unavailable.”
“Agh!” She smacked the domed Plexiglas of her helmet with her fist. “I’m getting seriously tired of that word.” Standing up fast, she kicked the stool back with her heel. Her foot connected harder than she intended, and the chair tumbled across the room, knocking loudly into the card table. One of the abandoned hands of cards skittered softly to the floor.
She was about to turn back to the Servitor when she heard an answering noise through the sealed door. It was like a groan, a deep, metal scrape, the sound of something huge and hard and inhuman waking up.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered, freezing.
“Get out of there,” Walters said, just as softly. “Devar? Get out.”
The noise came again, louder, and when her gaze drifted to the sealed, growth-covered door, she noticed it had begun to shiver. She heard scrabbling through the mic, as if Walters had fallen off his chair or ripped off his headset.
“The crew,” she breathed, feeling insane. How could they be alive? The oxygen levels were dangerously low. The ship had beamed a code blue.
“Life signs green,” the Servitor chirped back, almost cheerful. It swiveled, facing the door with her as if expectant.
“That’s not possible.” She knew the AI would contradict her, but she wasn’t saying it for the bot. The door hissed, and she felt the galley lurch under her feet. She stumbled, half t
umbling to the card table and using it to hold herself upright. Her hands buzzed with fear, tingling, and she shook them out, trying to regain feeling. Trying to regain control. The jungle drums sounded in her head again. If only she could have a drink, sit down, just close her eyes and think for a moment.
It’s just the ship settling, or one of the engines trying to cycle.
“Look at the live schematics!” she demanded, shouting into her mic. More shifting and scratching on the other end. What the fuck was Walters up to? She actually needed him now and of course he was completely useless. “The door . . . the, um, the east door of the air lock galley, is it locked?”
“Uh, yes! Both locks are functioning,” Walters finally stammered back. “Shit, sorry, I’m getting my suit on, you can’t be alone in there. Something is going on . . .”
“Idiot. Stay on the Salvager!”
“I’m not leaving you alone!” he thundered back, voice breaking.
Rosalyn shook her head hard, clutching the table again. No, no, no, stupid idea . . . “Servitor,” she said, breathless, “lock down this area. Do you understand? Nobody in or out.”
The AI swiveled away from the door and regarded her, one eye flashing as it attempted to do what she said. The light dimmed a little and its head drooped. “Command failed, override in place. Portal Two unsealed. Portal Two unsealed . . .”
Rosalyn’s eyes bugged. Portal Two? The doors were numbered clockwise from the air lock, which meant . . .
She gasped and spun, the ship creaking around and under her, all the air, all the focus rushing out of her as she turned and stared directly into the big, bright glowing blue eyes of a human. Blue. Glowing. Her mind raced as she went suddenly deaf to the Servitor and Walters’s hyperventilating panic on the headset. She knew this face, but not with those eyes.
The dossier. The crew.
Rosalyn searched helplessly for words but nothing came out. Her eyes roamed over him desperately, from his face—tinged a deathly, unhealthy robin’s-egg color—to his hair, black and ruffled, part of it missing, his skull gleaming and exposed, and over that, a pulsing web of the glowing blue growth. Oh God, where was his helmet? How could he breathe?
“Hello,” Rayan Yasin said with a curious half smile and a squint. “Have you come to join us?”
8
“Join . . . you?” Rosalyn’s gaze slid back and forth between Rayan’s huge doe eyes and the open wound on his head. She hadn’t trained for this, but had anybody?
“Devar? Devar! Hey, tell me what’s going on over there!” Walters shrieked at her over the comms, but in between the words she could hear frantic scrambling. “Tell me what the fuck is going on!”
There was a solution here if she just kept calm and prevented the situation from spinning further out of control. Her heart wanted to fly out through her mouth, but fainting in fright wouldn’t save anybody, least of all her.
So the crew was alive, or maybe that was too big of an assumption. Join us. So there was more than one person left alive on the ship, and that would have to be dealt with. Rayan Yasin looked at her steadily, his smile hopeful, like a kid on his first day of school hoping to make best friends.
She thought of the training emergency vids they had showed her on the station, and one in particular sprang to mind. A salvaging vessel had been boarded, and the quick-thinking woman piloting the ship managed to record a hail right in front of the pirates. She kept it vague. She didn’t give her attackers any reason to retaliate. Communicate the situation. Remain concise.
Avoid escalation at all costs.
“Your name is Rayan?” Rosalyn asked slowly, sweeping her eyes behind him, keen to know if the rest of the crew was hiding in the cockpit with him. Her pulse hammered, but she could control this if she just played it safe. Strange as he appeared, the researcher did not seem hostile, and she might still negotiate her way back onto the ship with Walters.
“That’s me,” he said, laughing, almost goofy. What the fuck. He ducked his head shyly and nodded toward the cockpit. “I had JAX keep an eye on your ship; we scanned you when you docked. You’re the salvager, so that makes you Rosalyn Devar.”
“And my pilot is Dave Walters,” she replied. Clear and slow. The internal systems on the Salvager 6 would record all of this, and if this went south, the recovery people back on the station needed a perfect file. Otherwise they would be walking straight into a trap, just like she had. “He’s listening in right now, and he wants to come aboard and see what’s going on in here. He’s worried that I might be in danger. I’m not in any danger, am I?”
“Devar! Shut up! It’s not much of an ambush if you tell them what’s coming . . . Shit, shit, shit!”
Rayan’s eyes blew wide. “Oh. No, that’s not good. Please, tell him not to do that.” He flinched, his eyes flaring even brighter, so bright they were nearly two beaming white lights. Muttering in another language, he smacked the side of his head. She took the opportunity to sidle closer to the air lock bay. Walters wouldn’t be much help in the ship, but if he successfully opened the doors, they might have a chance of fleeing back to the Salvager. “Please . . .” Rayan’s head flew up. “You have to tell him to stay where he is.”
“Did you hear that, Walters?” she asked, licking her lips nervously. “Rayan wants you to stay put. He’s injured, major damage to the top of the skull.”
“How major?” Walters was out of breath and still fumbling. Any minute now he would be finished suiting up, and then Rosalyn needed to be at the air lock door, ready to make an escape.
She looked again at the splintered skull, the bits of flesh and black hair tufted up around the edges, and the pulsating blue net of something covering it like a strange bandage.
“Catastrophic,” she breathed.
“Is he staying away?” Rayan asked, insistent now and advancing on her. The walls around them glowed brighter, dazzling and sapphire. The Servitor followed obediently behind Rayan, clearly no help to her at all.
“Yes,” she lied. “He’s not going to board, he promises. I promise, too.”
“That’s . . . that’s good.” The intense brightness in Rayan’s eyes dimmed a little and he glanced sheepishly at his boots. “I don’t want to do this at all, but you need to follow directions. If you don’t follow directions, then I’ll have to restrain you. Mother just wants what’s best for us.”
Mother?
He was reaching for something in his off-duty crew suit. The jumpsuit had multiple deep pockets, a few sewn across the chest, others positioned under his hips. She braced, expecting him to pull out a knife, or some kind of makeshift weapon, but instead he produced a clean, new syringe device.
Rosalyn fixated on the glistening needle, taking another tiny step toward the air lock doors. “There’s no need to make threats, Rayan, we’re on the same side here. We both work for Merchantia, right? You wouldn’t hurt a coworker. We only came because of the code blue signal; we thought you and the others were hurt or dead.”
“Threats!? Shit, I’m equalizing the tunnel, Devar, I’ll be there soon, okay? Just . . . fuck, I don’t know, just keep him distracted!” Through his mic, she heard the distinct hiss of the Salvager’s door decompressing.
Suddenly, JAX shifted closer to Rayan, standing at his side, its automated voice overlapping with her pilot’s. “Air lock doors engaged, Salvager 6 safely linked to Brigantine main galley.”
“No!” Rayan slapped the side of his head again and lunged for Rosalyn. She wasn’t prepared to fight him off, but she tried to dodge, yanking her arm out of his grasp and backing up toward the exit. “Hold her, JAX, we need to . . .” He flinched, head jerking to the side as if pulled by a leash. “Hold her!”
Fighting a metallic, inhumanly strong AI was not the same as fending off a lanky lab researcher, and JAX’s hand closed around her wrist tight as a cuff. She screamed, sure now that she had lost complete control. The
Servitor would not unclamp no matter how hard she pulled and twisted. Sweat gathered in her helmet, pouring into her eyes, condensation filming her view now that her breathing grew too fast and panicked for the suit to automatically dehumidify the polycarbonate visor. Still, even through that fog, she could make out Rayan’s glowing, crazed eyes.
He lunged for her again as she heard the air lock on their side whir to life. Dave was coming. Dave would be there any second, she thought, but still too late.
The syringe in Rayan’s grasp plunged toward her, and she shrieked, writhing and punching at him with her free hand until the syringe flew out of his hand, clinking softly against the wall.
“He . . . he tried to stab me! Fuck!” Calm, calm, calm. But she couldn’t pull herself back from the fear now, from the rage.
“I’m hurrying!” Walters reassured, his mic crackling as he passed into the equalized tunnel. So close. She just needed to get in range and hope that Walters was smart enough to come armed.
“Do not let those doors open!” Rayan screamed. He was not a large man, but his voice boomed through the galley.
JAX’s grip did not slacken as he attempted to block Walters’s access to the ship. She could see the flicker in his “eye” as the Servitor connected, and he answered a moment later. “Error. The Salvager 6 maintains priority access to our vessel.”
Gasping, Rayan scrambled away, toward the cockpit, his voice trailing behind him as he threw himself through the arch. “No! That’s not right!”
“Researcher Yasin,” the Servitor prompted stoically, “the Salvager 6 will retain priority access until the code blue is lifted. The Brigantine’s autonomy cannot be restored until—”
“Then lift it, lift the code!” Rayan screamed back.
Rosalyn clamped her hand over her bruised forearm, commanding herself to regain control of the situation. That started with her doing whatever she could to help Walters when—if—he got through the doors.
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