Salvaged

by Madeleine Roux

  His lips quirked to the side. “No, I feel the same thing. It’s like I know her. I get this unbelievable headache when I look at her, like it’s painful. The Foxfire reacts to her, I mean I almost . . . The Foxfire took over and I frightened her.”

  Misato stared at him. The mug almost slipped out of her hands. She made her right hand into a fist, testing it, finding there was less and less sensation. To her horror, the mug’s surface barely felt hot to the touch.

  “What did you do?”

  “I lost control.” Edison closed his eyes, letting the chair crash back down to the floor. He squeezed the bridge of his nose just above his glasses. “Mother wants us to join her to the cluster. She’s going to try and make you do it, too.”

  Misato’s brows raised in surprise. “Stop calling that thing ‘Mother.’” A pause. “So, she’s not infected yet?”

  Edison shook his head and sighed. “Not yet. Rayan concocted some temporary vaccine that he wants her to take, but he missed her with the syringe. And she has her hazard suit. Salvager tech is made expressly to keep this kind of junk at bay. She’s well protected . . .”

  She heard the implied for now in his statement and withered.

  Slowly, she put out a hand to Edison and covered his knuckles with her palm. As she leaned toward him across the table, he couldn’t help but keep her gaze.

  “We have to protect her, too,” Misato said softly. Seriously. She wouldn’t wish this private torment on anyone, especially some poor innocent woman that blundered into their nightmare. Something flared at the back of her mind, pain suffusing the crown of her skull. The Foxfire was furious with her. The network was a gift. Joining the cluster was an honor. The girl should be so lucky to fuse with us and . . .

  “Agh!” she cried out, then quickly gulped the coffee. The hateful thoughts receded. For the moment. It was Edison’s turn to squeeze her hand.

  “Breathe,” he said. “You can fight it.”

  “It’s . . . I’m all right.” Misato took another quick sip from her mug. “Where is she now?”

  “Cold storage lab. She’s safe from us. I gave her my code to keep the contamination shield in place. The Foxfire won’t go near that room for some reason. Rayan thinks it’s afraid of the decontam pod.”

  Misato nodded, feeling more like herself. “Fools. We should have jumped in that thing the second the shipment was compromised.”

  “There’s no point in dwelling on it,” Edison replied shortly. “We’re here now. We’re here, but she doesn’t have to be. I don’t care how bad Foxfire wants her, we need to fight it.”

  She stood and returned to the kitchenette counter, refilling her mug and dawdling there with her back to him. “Frankly, Edison, I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Coeur d’Alene Station,” she heard him say hoarsely. “With her VIT credentials we could access the coordinate log and thrusters and go back, get to CDAS and make sure whatever got us doesn’t get anyone else. The whole place might be contaminated . . . All those people. We have to be sure.”

  Misato spun to face him, splashing hot coffee on her hands. She didn’t feel the burn of it, just the wetness dripping over her thumb.

  “If you want to protect that woman, you won’t take her anywhere near CDAS,” Misato hissed. “What makes you so sure that’s even your idea? ‘Mother’ could be telling you to do it. Anyway, if there’s Foxfire somewhere on that station, then it’s a death trap. It’s bad enough she’s mixed up with us, now you want to steal her identity and put her in more danger? You’re heartless, Edison. Just get her back to that ship of hers and be done with it. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, running his fingertip along a flaw in the table. His head drooped lower. She had always thought him a handsome man, but the Foxfire was taking its toll. There was gray in his beard, and the smile lines at his eyes were deepening. His left hand seemed to shake constantly with some kind of tremor.

  “I don’t know what’s right,” he told her. “I don’t think I can let her get away. The Foxfire wants her here; it’s going to make us keep her here.”

  “So you’re playing right into it?” Misato marched over to the table and slammed her mug down. She took him by the shoulders and shook. The glowing blue of his eyes twinkled, threatening white, but he seemed to beat it back. Thank God. He could overpower her without trying, and she needed to be heard. “I get it, Edison, you want to be the big bloody hero. You want to save the whole galaxy. Sometimes you don’t get to do that, sometimes all you can do is just keep things from getting worse. We don’t know what’s on CDAS. It could be—”

  The warm emergency lights in the quarters blinked, twice, the ship suddenly juddering, the floor beneath them shaking before the lights went out altogether. They froze, bathed in the glowing turquoise Foxfire clinging to the walls and ceiling.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  She saw Edison close his eyes and snap them open again. “It’s not one of us,” he murmured. The engines whined, the ship drifting through space still while the floor again shook.

  “It’s her, then,” Misato said, following him to the open door and into the corridor. “What do you think she’s doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Edison grunted, navigating easily through the pitch black. “But I doubt it’s friendly.”

  17

  Messing around with highly dangerous, highly volatile tech fueled by an hour or two of restless sleep was not an ideal plan by any stretch of the imagination, but desperation did funny things to the body. And the mind.

  Rosalyn blinked three times in rapid succession, twisted into a pretzel in the engine compartment. On a whim she had used Edison’s captain’s code to access this part of the ship and gained a much-needed second wind when it actually worked. Onboard ship engineering wasn’t exactly her area of expertise, but a few generalized undergrad courses and the ship’s schematic would have to be enough. All MSC vessels ran on the same tech, and that backstabber Griz had broken his usual silence once to drone on about the refinements and upgrades the entire fleet had received recently. That kind of thing was exciting to him, apparently.

  Solar panels did the bulk of the work, Griz explained, giddy by his standards, and now Rosalyn was glad she had half listened. Even far from any suns, the panels could soak up traces of light particles. But once those stores were depleted or the ship voyaged too far from any light source, the engines defaulted to the radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Both methods were incredibly safe, but the newer RTGs had to be handled “like babies” according to Griz.

  She could hear the pilot’s monotone voice as she unsealed the maintenance panel in engineering: Those puppies kick in too fast and you’ve got more than a fire, you’ve got one inferno of a shit storm.

  Scrubbing at the grime on her visor, Rosalyn leaned in closer to the panel, coming face-to-face with the lighted screen reporting on the technical health of the ship. All of it could have been more comfortably accessed from the cockpit, but Rosalyn wasn’t chancing the trip. JAX and the others would be lurking in the halls, and she had been lucky to make it to engineering in secret. There was no telling how long she had, but sooner or later one of the crew would check on her in cold storage and find that it was empty.

  It felt wrong, her fingers hovering over the life support and fuel readouts. The Brigantine was in decent shape, and would easily survive the trip to headquarters. Once the thrusters had cycled, they had begun gently carrying them back toward HQ, reinstating the code blue. The solar coating and RTGs had plenty of juice, but without a way to actually direct the thrusters, she would never make it back to the Salvager 6. It was floating out there somewhere, abandoned, but the code blue kept her from redirecting their trajectory. Maybe she could risk trying to override the code, but if she failed or was incapacitated, that would give the crew the ability to fly anywhere. That was a different plan for a
different reality, she thought. It was too risky. If even one spore escaped decontamination on her suit, she could spread the nightmare to an entire corporate campus.

  But what if. What if she could escape this hell without dying? What if she could get back to her ship and find her way to HQ, warn them about the state of the Brigantine and go through a few rounds of decontam and a rigorous scan, a physical, quarantine, whatever it took to scour every trace of Foxfire from her and the suit . . .

  Even that very unlikely scenario required murder. The crew would never let her escape, and the technical readout and schematics confirmed that all emergency pods had been jettisoned. Destroying the Brigantine was the only way to make sure Foxfire went no farther. It was the most responsible, if hardest, thing to do.

  Her forefinger hovered over the touch screen, the words LIFE SUPPORT glowing just below. She could cut that and see if it made a difference, since her environmental suit had plenty of oxygen left in the canisters. Sighing, she tilted her visor against the edge of the panel. No, she had seen Rayan’s wound. He should be dead. The Foxfire might not even need oxygen to keep going. Plenty of fungi were anaerobic. She sincerely doubted the growth could survive the frozen vacuum of space.

  She had climbed up into the engineering ducts so confidently. Sure, her hands had been shaky from lack of sleep and her eyes and brain throbbed with exhaustion, but there had been a certain fire under her feet that shoved all of that discomfort aside. Now, faced with actually ending the lives of four strangers and her own, Rosalyn hesitated.

  A wave of nausea rippled through her stomach, and she clenched her abdomen to keep from vomiting. What if they could be cured? What if all this mess could be used for something good? The fungus could knit wounds back together, perhaps even elongate human life . . . No. No, no, no. There was no silver lining to this disaster, only suffering. It was pure arrogance to think she could somehow spin this around and make it out okay. You can’t turn shit into sunshine, Angela liked to say, usually when Rosalyn came by her office to vent.

  “I’d say this qualifies as shit all right,” Rosalyn whispered, pulling her head back and scrolling down the readout panel. Cutting off the core functions to solar power might bring up the RTGs quick and hot, bypassing gradual transference of power and forcing the ship to call too fast on the RTGs to keep life support and other key systems online. It was a long shot, Rosalyn decided, but a long shot she had to take, and take immediately.

  There was activity down the corridor, just a door opening and closing, and she only heard it softly but still . . . She checked the onboard monitoring systems. The security cameras were still turned off. That was good. Her first step in the duct was cutting the cameras. It had caused an unexpected power surge, but just a short one, and Rosalyn hoped the crew had mistaken it for routine during the ship’s emergency state. She had sealed the hatch back up behind her to make it look like nothing was out of the ordinary in engineering; if the monitoring systems were on, it would be easy to spot her in the ducts.

  It was time to make the call. She scrolled and scrolled through the systems menu and stopped. Solar panels. She could do it, cut them manually and without warning, and hope the abrupt loss of power would trigger a deadly chain reaction. Rosalyn took a deep breath and nodded, her finger trembling as she pushed it toward the display.

  A single footstep sounded on the cold metal floors of engineering. Then another. The steps were definitive and echoed. She froze, listening as the person came closer with a heavy tread. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Had she left any sign of her whereabouts outside the hatch? She had been so careful to seal everything up so it would look completely normal. The monitoring functions were off.

  They must have swept the whole ship looking for her and finally gotten around to engineering. Well, that was fine. She had pulled up the solar panel readouts and she had her plan.

  “Rosalyn?”

  It was Edison. God, she was an idiot. She had turned off her AR display to concentrate, and if she hadn’t, she might have seen the little indicator telling her he was approaching her location. She didn’t creep back down the duct to peer out of the screw slots to check if he had white or blue eyes. It didn’t matter. The second he realized what she was up to, the Foxfire would take over and she would be assimilated. Forcefully. Sweat beaded on her forehead, dripping down over her brow and into the valley along her nose.

  “I know you’re there,” he said calmly. Just a trick, he’s trying to get you to drop your guard and engage. “I know you’re there, I just don’t know what you’re trying to do.”

  There was no point in staying silent. His AR was probably flashing with the indicator, telling him she was right above his head.

  “Go away,” Rosalyn said flatly. “I just want to be alone.”

  “What did you do to the ship? JAX says someone is screwing with the monitoring systems manually and he can’t override it.” A pause. He shifted closer, and she could hear him breathing heavily outside the duct hatch. Her leg was cramping up and she twisted a little, wishing she could wipe at the sweat dripping down her face. She was trapped now, with her one way out blocked by Edison. No, not by him, by the stuff taking over his body.

  That didn’t help. She didn’t need to sympathize with a person she was about to kill.

  “Don’t try to open the hatch,” Rosalyn warned. She heard whispering. Someone else was out there with him. It was easy enough to guess that Piero wasn’t there, otherwise she’d already be fighting him off. “I’m holding a loaded gun,” she added. “Don’t make me use it.”

  More whispering.

  “You have a gun?” Edison finally asked, incredulous.

  She sighed. “No . . . not literally. Just go away, please. It’s harder to do this with you here.”

  Rosalyn regretted the words as soon as they tumbled out. Why did it matter? This asshole had chased her through the ship. He would’ve killed her if he had the chance, or at the very least forced her to be exposed to the fungus.

  He’s not human. None of them are human anymore, right? This is mercy.

  It had to be mercy.

  “What’s harder to do?” He sounded nervous now, afraid. His voice was suddenly hoarse and shaky.

  She knew the feeling. Her finger moved closer to the panel.

  “I’m killing us. All of us. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Silence. No more whispers. Rosalyn expected the hatch to be ripped away, to be faced with wild, bright white eyes and clawing hands. But none of it came. Her hand began to tremble in earnest, perspiration stinging her eyes. Then tears formed there, not just from the stinging but from terror. She didn’t want to die. Closing her eyes, she tried to stop the shaking in her whole body. They killed Walters, Rosalyn, and they’ll kill you, too. This is just the death you choose.

  “I see.”

  Two words. Why did they stall her? Maybe it was the resignation in his voice. Or the sadness.

  “D-Don’t try to stop me,” Rosalyn stammered. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Okay,” Edison said. “You do what you have to do.”

  A shaky hand had stopped her before, ruined her career, ruined everything. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

  “I will,” Rosalyn said, pressing her fingertip to the touch screen, disabling the solar panels, closing her eyes as the ship’s RTGs kicked in hard, a terrible force sending her crashing back against the wall. Her head slammed into the base of her helmet, and she saw a brilliant kaleidoscope of stars, and then nothing.

  18

  The minor fire that broke out on solar panels S8 through S10 was contained by the ship within seconds. Bright, crisp light flooded engineering, blinding Edison until Misato, hands covering her eyes, shouted, “Lights to half!” It was dim again, mercifully, and he shook the spangles out of his vision.

  He hadn’t realized how long they had lived in almost complete darkness.


  The woman in the hatch had gone silent, but he had heard the bang of her body against the duct wall. Edison glanced at Misato, who had gone rigid as they both listened to the ship cycling systems, bringing itself back online to full. Full. No more emergency status. No more code blue.

  “What did she do?” Edison asked, taking a gingerly step toward the maintenance hatch. There was no movement within.

  The much shorter woman marched past him, going on tiptoes to loosen the hatch. Her iron-gray bob was streaked with lighter silver and swung back and forth as she worked. “Ballsy move. She cut solar panels hoping the RTGs would overload from the increased stress. Didn’t work so good.”

  “Why didn’t you think of that?” Edison groused, taking a step back and letting her pry at the hatch. “You’re a goddamned engineer, Iwasa.”

  “The best damned engineer,” she corrected. “And the best damned engineer doesn’t try something that could fry the ship for good. Or, you know, fry all of us. What she did was practically suicidal—even most pirates won’t try it when they find a dead ship. She was trying to blow us all to hell. Instead she just brought us out of being stalled.”

  “Not sure how to feel about that.” He helped her pull down the heavy cover on the duct hatch and leaned it against the wall. Being far taller, he could easily peer inside. The woman was slumped over, utterly still, one foot kicked out toward him.

  He watched her for a moment and saw the slow rise and fall of her chest through the suit. Alive, at least, but that would probably wind up being a disappointment for her.

  “Why didn’t you try to stop her?” he heard Iwasa ask.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Edison glanced down and to the left, and saw the old woman cross her arms and shrug, a twinkle in her eye even through the blue glow of the Foxfire.

  “I’m not afraid to die. I’m only afraid to lose myself.” Iwasa looked away from him, but he could tell she wasn’t finished. “And besides, I was sort of curious what she would try. I know this ship like the back of my hand, and I was pretty sure she couldn’t kill us from there. Now, if she found a way to get at the plutonium in the RTGs, we’d be having a different conversation.”