As soon as she was settled, she took the opportunity to look around. With the huge hole blown in the floor, the bridge area seemed barely recognisable. All the workstations on the left-hand side had either been destroyed or reduced to mere blackened stumps and the air was filled with the smell of burnt metal and melted polymers.
She inclined her head in the direction of the ruptured deck plates.
“What happened there?”
“Seems they hit one of our magazines on C deck. Pure bad luck on our part. There’s fires breaking out all over and life support’s struggling to cope.”
“My God,” she looked around, trying to take it all in. “How long was I out?”
“Couple of minutes, no more.”
It had felt like the work of only a few seconds.
She had to get on top of this. Take control. Yet, at the same time, the idea of getting up and walking across the deck seemed like too much for her.
“Where’s Whaites? We need to get that second salvo away.”
McNeill was suddenly sombre.
“Lieutenant Whaites is lying over there, in what’s left of the comms section,” when she leaned over to get a better look, he pulled a face. “I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s not very pretty.”
She sank back against the wall.
“Oh my God, this is awful!”
“I know. Stay there and I’ll get someone to have a look at that head of yours.”
*
“What the hell is this?” Noah said.
He dropped the jacket on the control deck in front of Elina and waited for her to react.
Only she didn’t. She kept her attention fixed on the screens.
“I’m busy.”
“I don’t care how busy you are,” he was angry with her and very much wanted her to look at him, only she wouldn’t. “I need to know what this is doing here.”
Elina finished entering the current data before glancing over. It was an old-fashioned baseball jacket. Green body, grey sleeves. Somebody had taken a lot of trouble to look after it but, in every other sense, it was completely unremarkable. She lifted one of the sleeves, sniffed at it before laying it down again.
“Why are you wasting my time with this …” she sneered as she tried to think of the right word. “This shit.”
Noah leaned across the control desk. “Because of this.”
He pulled back part of the jacket to reveal the lining.
She gave a noncommittal shrug. “What am I looking at?”
“Here!” he pointed to the inside breast pocket. “Look!”
She squinted at the hand-written name tag.
“I don’t understand?”
“It’s Tomaz’s jacket. See? That’s his name there.”
She looked again and then nodded.
“Okay. What do you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t want you to do anything about it. I want you to tell me what it’s doing here.” Then he blurted out, “Is Tomaz on this ship?”
Elina gave him a long hard look. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re not telling me the truth. Now, where is he?”
She stood up, her hands on her hips.
“You don’t get it, do you? He’s had this thing for, like, forever,” he smiled. “I mean, look at it. What’s it doing here?”
Elina picked up the radio mic. “Bruin. I’m in the office. Get here, now.”
Noah was confused. She was going to have him thrown out.
He held the jacket up to her.
“I need to know what’s this doing on your ship?”
“Tomaz must have left it lying around.” But she sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him. “One of the guys must have picked it up. You know what they’re like.”
Noah was shaking his head.
“No. No. He only ever wore this when he was off duty. Rest of the time, it was in his cabin. And he kept his cabin locked. The only way you’d even see this is if you’d been in there. Were you in his cabin, Elina? Is that where you went?”
She started to deny it but then her face hardened. “I told him that it wasn’t too late for us. That we could still make it work. We were good for one another.”
“I see,” Noah’s head dropped at that. “And he turned you down. Is that it?”
Elina’s eyes fixed on him. “No.”
She went over to her desk and took out a small black box.
She gave it to Noah who opened it.
“A ring?”
“He’d been carrying it around with him for over a year. Biding his time, he said. Only, one night, he got into a conversation with some guys in a bar. They told him this horrible story about a ship load of refugees trying to escape from some slaver ship. Eventually, their air ran out. Can you imagine that? Being so frightened of something you’d rather suffocate than face them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That this was the slaver ship they were running from. Peter the Great. It was us. That’s when Tomaz realised,” she smiled a thin, bitter smile. “Realised who I really was.”
The door behind Noah flew open and he was quickly overpowered with men flooding into the cabin.
Yet he still managed to keep hold of the box.
“But, if that’s true, why give you the ring?”
She came around to confront him.
“He didn’t give it to me,” she said dismissively. “Don’t you see? I took it.”
Noah tried to grab her then but the men holding him were stronger.
“What shall we do with him?” one of them asked.
She picked up the baseball jacket and threw it at Noah.
“You’d best take that with you,” she said. “You’re going to need it if you’re walking home.”
She waved her hand and he was gone.
*
Webster and Dalbiri stood in the ship’s observation chamber. It consisted of an entire wall which became transparent at the touch of a button.
While providing awesome views, it was also slightly unsettling as it gave the impression that one false step would cause you to slip out into the void. They could see The Naked Spur alongside two vast super freighters which appeared to be just hanging in space. It was like finding three cathedrals dropped in the middle of the jungle. Opposite them, dark and foreboding was another Da’al ship.
If there had been any action between the various ships it appeared that they’d arrived too late to see it. All the Confederation ships showed signs of being involved in a major engagement.
Dalbiri turned to Webster.
“Why do you think they’re showing us this now?” he said.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps they want us to consider our options.”
“You think they might be considering letting us go?”
“Well, so far, they’ve made no attempt to stop us moving around, though that’s not the same as arranging for a shuttle to get us out of here.”
Dalbiri dropped down onto his haunches and started rubbing his wrist. “We haven’t asked, and they haven’t offered but I think it’s clear they want us to stay.”
“Yeah, you get the idea this is some kind of test. I get the impression that they want to share more stuff with us but before they do, they want to know that we’re committed to their cause.”
“But we’re not actually staying though, are we? I mean, it’s a great view, and all, but to be honest, if I had to make a choice between staying put and taking my chances out there, I know which way I’d vote.”
“Are you not a little tempted to review some of that data they’ve managed to collect? Not just a little?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I love all that stuff but …” his voice trailed off. “I’ve had enough of being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Time I went and hooked up with someone special. Been thinking about settling down for quite a while now. Maybe get a lecturing job somewhere. Know what I mean?”
Webster nodded in agreement. He k
new exactly what Dalbiri was talking about because he’d been thinking about doing exactly the same thing himself. Only, that had been with Joanna. And now, that was never going to happen.
“What about Maria?” he said in a bid to change the subject. “Won’t she get jealous, you talking like that?”
Dalbiri squinted out of one eye. “I should’ve known you’d bring that up: Maria, the dream lady.”
“Well, you seemed so adamant that she was real. Even set up a second date.”
“Far as I was concerned, she was real. I can even recall the things we talked about. Whole conversations.”
“Have you seen her since?”
Dalbiri eyed him suspiciously. “You serious?”
“Very serious. Remember, I sat on a Tuscan hillside that came straight out of your head. I think anything’s possible.”
“Then you’ll be glad to know that I haven’t. Not unless dreams count.”
“You still dream about her?”
Dalbiri waved the question away. “That’s my business.”
“Okay,” Webster rolled his shoulders, attempting to get the knots out of his neck. “Well, now she’s out of the picture, what do you say, first opportunity that comes up, we get the hell out of here. Agreed?”
Dalbiri giggled at that. “You know they’re probably listening to all this, don’t you?”
“They’ve been watching us ever since we came aboard. We can’t hold off forever.”
“I’m surprised you’re so keen. Back there in the lab it sounded like they were lining you up to be their next captain.”
“Stuck out here with this one guy wearing six different shirts? I think that’d get real old, real fast. But you, on the other hand, you strike me as ideal management material.”
“No, not me,” Dalbiri said. “I’m just some old red leg. Back in the infantry, I just did what I was told. I’ve not got the temperament for any of this captain nonsense.”
“So, we’re agreed then? First chance we get…”
Dalbiri fist bumped Webster.
“We’re out of here.”
*
When Webster awoke, he started to panic, fearing that he was back on his first posting.
It had nearly been his last.
The bunks on the old destroyer had been so tightly packed that he had struggled with so called coffin dreams. Unrelenting night terrors linked to the fear of being buried alive.
When he finally managed to figure out where he was, he let out a long tremulous sigh. It was dark in the room but not so dark that he couldn’t make out the rectangle of the door. But there was another shape there which he couldn’t account for.
Or, maybe he could.
Perhaps he’d left his jacket on the back of the chair. Perhaps the hood of that jacket had fallen in such a way as to suggest the back of someone’s head.
Only he didn’t have a jacket and had spent time neatly folding his clothes and putting them to one side. In fact, if he squinted hard enough, he thought he might still be able to see them.
He shifted his weight onto one elbow.
“Hello?”
There was a long pause. Then.
“Hello.”
A woman’s voice.
Webster sat bolt upright, the covers pooling around his waist.
“Let me get the light,” he said.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” her voice was cool and dark. “I don’t want to disturb you any more than is necessary.”
Webster wanted to know who he was speaking to while at the same time a part of his brain was saying that he already knew.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“It’s been hard for me too.”
Webster was suddenly very aware of his breathing. Was this really happening?
He said, “Why did it take you so long to come and see me?”
“The sub-minds watch everything. You must have worked that out by now, surely.”
“And they didn’t send you?”
She turned to look directly at him then but all he could make out was her silhouette.
“I’m trying to decide whether you’re a part of all this,” he said. “Are they controlling you now?”
“They don’t know about me yet and I’d rather keep it that way,” she said. “They pride themselves on the idea that they control everything but they’re not infallible. There are ways around their systems. Not many but a few.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“The ship knows, so I know.”
That disturbed him more than he’d care to admit.
“And, so, who are you exactly?”
She turned her head sideways. In the near dark he could just make out her patrician nose, her strong, slightly masculine jawline.
“Who did you think I am?”
“I’m not saying that you don’t look like her but that’s not the same thing as being her. The ship’s done a great job of harvesting our memories so far. But I know what I know.”
“And that is?”
“That Joanna is dead. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You saw the ship destroyed. Don’t tell me that a part of you didn’t hold out some hope.”
Webster felt something twist inside his chest, making it difficult to draw breath.
“I loved you,” he said.
“Though not enough to tell me when it mattered.”
“Are you really here? I mean, really?”
“The Drasin are real enough. Hundreds of thousands of them trapped in the walls of this ship, having given up their physical form millennia ago. And yet they still exist.”
He squinted at her in the dark. How did she know all this?
“But you. Are you real or just some electronic ghost?”
“You can be very cruel, Alex. I’d forgotten that about you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and found that he meant it. “I’m just trying to make sense of all this.”
“I know, it’s difficult. They want to warn you. About the sub-minds. You can’t trust them.”
Webster could only nod. He’d laughed at Dalbiri’s stories and now here he was doing the same thing. Talking to himself.
“I think you’d better go,” he said.
“So soon? I thought you might want to talk. About us.”
He opened his hand towards her, as if to fend her off.
“Too painful.”
She reached out to touch him, but he drew away. Horrified.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t.”
“Okay,” she pulled her hand back. “But before I go, there’s something you should know.”
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
“I understand your scepticism but I have to tell you this. I just want you to know what’s at stake. What you’re risking.”
“I’m assuming that they want to try and harness my skills in some way.”
Her laugh came out as a harsh bark.
“Yes, something like that. They’ve been at this for a long time now but they’re old and they lack agency. That’s what they want from you. They want to act through you somehow.”
“What about Dalbiri? Why not use him?”
“They don’t want him, they want you.”
Webster would have happily laughed at that in any other context as a blatant appeal to his ego but now found that he couldn’t. It was all just so heartbreakingly sad.
Him. Joanna. Everything.
The whole thing felt like some kind of clever double bluff. Getting him to agree by involving him in his own deception. Make him think that he was in control when, really, little by little, he was allowing them to guide him in the direction they wanted to go.
“Why are they doing this?”
“They need your strength…” she broke off, as if hearing something. “I’m going to have to go.”
Suddenly, that felt like the most terrible thing in the world.
“But you’ll come back? Yes?”
Her eyes flashed in the da
rkness.
“The sub-minds are degrading. How many did you say there were?”
“Three, why?”
She ignored the question.
“And how many have you actually seen?”
“Just the three so far.”
“Ever think why that is?”
CHAPTER 18
“Sir, we need to drop back if we’re to have any chance of staying in this fight.”
Schwartz was still sitting in the little recessed area while a member of the medical team sutered her wound. Faulkner stood in front of her. His fingers had been strapped together where he’d been struck by something but, other than that, he seemed fine.
The medic had given her a shot for the pain so she couldn’t feel anything and was just conscious of her neck being tugged around.
“Much as I would love to back off,” Faulkner said. “I’m afraid we can’t. We have to press our advantage.”
“Advantage? Sir, what advantage? They have us at a complete disadvantage here.”
She threw out a hand to take in the chaos which surrounded her but in doing so clearly upset the medic who was tending to her, so she decided to stay still.
She was starting to feel a little woozy, as if she was wrapped in a protective bubble. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.
“I’d disagree,” Faulkner continued. “We must continue to harry them. They want us to go away so that they can concentrate on completing their mission: destroying the Henrietta Gate. And we have to stop them.”
Schwartz patted the medic’s arm, forcing him to stop working.
She needed to look Faulkner in the eye.
“Sir, we can’t hope to survive another attack like that last one. We’re struggling to keep all our engines on-line; our shields are shot and Mr McNeill tells me that we’re down to only two laser batteries. We’ve already lost a significant number of crew with many others injured or completely incapacitated. So far, our missile strikes have proved ineffective. I don’t see what more we can do.”
A young second lieutenant came over. He was offering them a data tablet.
“Not now, son,” Faulkner said, the annoyance in his voice plain.
“Apologies, sir, but the main screen’s down and you perhaps should see this.”
Faulkner rolled his eyes but took the tablet anyway. Because of his shattered fingers, he had to hold it in his left hand and then couldn’t operate it.
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