“I’m going to be doing some delicate work,” he had said, “and I don’t want any distractions.”
She had put the suit on when they were still in foldspace. So had he. She had sent a shipwide order for everyone to don their environmental suits just in case, but she knew only a handful of people had listened to her. She hoped to hell they had put on their environmental suits before the environmental system shut off to “conserve energy.”
She wasn’t the captain. That was the problem. There was no captain, and that was her fault.
She hadn’t wanted the command. Everyone had given it to her. They didn’t want to be in charge, and she didn’t either. But she had taken over more and more duties as the trip went on. People deferred to her, mostly. But not enough to make this an efficient ship.
She had learned how to operate some parts of the ship, but never the ones she needed in the moment. She learned on the fly, and whatever she learned wasn’t useful in the next emergency.
Like this one.
But Kabac didn’t know what the hell they were doing either. By rights, he should have been running the ship. He was the ranking officer here. If they went by ranking officers.
But she also knew that no one trusted him. He had been on the bridge crew when the Renegat left on the original mission, and he had gotten demoted on the way to the Scrapheap. Then he had bitched about the demotion and had disappeared during the worst of the trouble. But he said he wanted to go back to the Fleet.
He had probably thought he could waltz back into the Fleet, claim he was the one who brought the Renegat back and get a promotion he had not earned.
Although, if he got them out of this now, maybe he would have earned a promotion. Especially considering he had lied to her, and he was still managing to make do.
He had said he knew how all the ship’s systems worked.
She had learned over the last few months that he only knew how they should work, which was more than she had known. He knew what each part of the ship did, and how the ship looked when it functioned properly.
And until they had come out of foldspace into regular space the second time, until they encountered those attacks from the only planet they tried to orbit, everything had functioned properly.
She shouldn’t have listened to the remaining crew’s panic about supplies. She should have simply reminded everyone that they had left much of the crew back at the Scrapheap, and the supplies that they had needed to feed fewer people.
She had made that argument, of course, but not very forcefully. It had been pretty obvious that no one had been comfortable with the supply levels, even though the Renegat had more than enough to get the crew home.
She had found herself on a ship filled with people who were scared to enter foldspace, but who wanted to return to the Fleet. There was no returning without foldspace.
Somehow, she had thought they would bond in their fright, rather than take action based on that fright. Again, her fault for refusing to declare herself captain, and then acting like the captain.
But she wasn’t qualified. Just like everyone else on this stupid ship.
She hadn’t found that out, though, until the Renegat was on its way back to the Fleet, when she had broken into Captain Preemas’s logs to see his insights about the remaining crew.
Breaking in had been another thing she wished she hadn’t done. Maybe if she had remained naïve about what they were facing, maybe if she hadn’t given it any thought at all, she wouldn’t have listened to the crew about supplies, the Renegat wouldn’t have gone into orbit around that stupid planet, and the ship would be all right.
But they weren’t. They were losing atmosphere, the environmental systems had shut down, the lights were going out, and no one on the ship had the technical skill to repair anything at that level.
She wanted to curl into a little ball and hide away, but if she curled up, she’d be banging all over the walls and the ceiling, and her damn suit would leak even worse.
She was going to die here, and she didn’t even know where here was. The Renegat had used the comm system inside her helmet to announce that the ship, of its own accord, was leaving foldspace. Kabac was trying to stop the Renegat from doing so. He thought they hadn’t traveled far enough, that the ship wasn’t following his navigation points.
But he also admitted that the navigation system had been compromised during the attack along with all the other major systems, so, Serpell had asked him—screamed at him, really—How do you know the ship wasn’t following instructions?
And he had screamed back that he hadn’t known anything for sure, and she should have let him captain the ship, and she had said that he didn’t have the temperament to be captain, and he had said look at where her temperament had gotten them, and then she thought about the nights she had spent in her cabin—in her solitary cabin, with India gone—and wondered if he wasn’t right.
Serpell used to have such an even temperament, and now, she was all over the map—angry one moment, nearly in tears the next, panicked a moment later. No one had ever seen her like this—she had never been like this, and it was driving her crazy.
The whole situation was driving her crazy.
And it wouldn’t matter soon. Because in just a few hours she’d be dead.
Or maybe less than that if her suit was to be believed.
Advise leaving hostile environment as soon as possible, it said, as if on cue.
“Shut up,” she whispered. “Shutupshutupshutupshutup.”
And, for the moment, it did.
The Aizsargs Rescue One
Spacebridge
Raul Zarges stood at the closed doors leading into the spacebridge. He had informed the team of the changes in plans quickly, with Sufia Khusru at his side. Morris Ogden didn’t seem upset at all at being left behind.
Ogden was the only one of the seven people in Staging with his environmental suit hood down. He stood behind a small plastic screen, double protection for the person who was at the controls of the spacebridge. That person sometimes had to make tough decisions about the spacebridge.
Sometimes that person would have to leave colleagues behind on a dying ship. Other rescue vehicles had had to sever the spacebridge to prevent some kind of disaster from coming through it—anything from a fireball to weapons fire to an actual attack.
Ogden had the right kind of calm, sensible nature. He was the person Zarges wanted in that position—not sentimental enough to sacrifice Rescue One because he didn’t want to leave colleagues behind.
That gave Zarges confidence. He could focus on the task at hand. He and his team, Palmer and Iqbar, would go through the spacebridge first. They would head to engineering to see if they could stabilize the ship from there.
Khusru and her team, Cayden and Niane, would go to the bridge, and maybe talk with whoever they found up there, before they could see if the controls worked.
Zarges grabbed the strap near the tunnel door. Dorthea Iqbar grabbed the strap beside Zarges’, not crowding him, but as close as possible so they could get into the spacebridge quickly. Palmer clutched the strap just behind Iqbar, also close and ready to go.
On the other side of the tunnel door, Khusru and her team grabbed their straps. Zarges couldn’t see their faces, since everyone had their hoods up. If it weren’t for their different body shapes inside those environmental suits, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone apart.
Zarges hoped the specs for the old SC-Class vessel they were about to enter had been accurate, because he had uploaded them into his suit. The teams needed to move quickly, and the best way to do that was following the shortest route, rather than exploring and guessing.
Engineering was the most important task because, if he could get the systems working again, everyone could remain on board the Renegat, and the Aizsargs could tow them back to the nearest sector base for more extensive repairs. Or they might be able to send over a team and do the work themselves as the ships traveled side by side out of this secto
r.
He didn’t see it, though. Something about this ship, something he couldn’t quite explain, looked too damaged for that plan to work.
“We’re ready,” he said to Ogden.
Ogden shut off the artificial gravity, and Zarges slowly floated. So did the other team members, remaining in place only because they held the straps.
Then the door slid open, revealing the familiar sight of the spacebridge. It really didn’t deserve the name “bridge,” or even the word “space.” It was a tunnel. On easy rescues, a person could walk the length of the tunnel, and step through the door on either end.
But on tougher rescues, like this one, the spacebridge’s atmosphere was on, but not its artificial gravity. No sense in walking into the other ship when that ship’s gravity wasn’t working.
The tunnel was made of black nanobits, just like Rescue One (and the Aizsargs, for that matter) but looked less substantial. The tunnel’s walls were thinner and more pliable than a ship’s. They also had ripples every few feet, because the nanobits hadn’t had time to reset so that the tunnel’s surface was smooth.
Even though a thin circle of light illuminated the path every three feet or so, the tunnel was dark. Zarges couldn’t see the door on the opposite side, which wasn’t that unusual. But he didn’t like it.
There had clearly been a slight curve to the tunnel so that it could reach the door, and curves like that caused the occasional problem.
“All right,” he said into the comm. “My team will go first.”
He didn’t have to give any more specific orders than that. The team—and Ogden—knew the drill. The other team would follow according to protocol, and the spacebridge would remain until the life rafts were deployed or until Zarges or Khusru gave an order otherwise.
Zarges’s team entered single file. Iqbar, as the second-most experienced member of his team, led, followed by Zarges, with Palmer bringing up the rear. They would use that formation as they made their way through the ship.
As Zarges pushed himself into the tunnel, using an old skill that made sure his pace matched Iqbar’s, his environmental suit felt a little too tight. Sweat pooled under his arms and along his back. He had already double- and triple-checked the system, so he knew the problem wasn’t the suit.
The problem was him.
The last mission he had gone on had ended in catastrophe, with only five survivors out of a team of thirty. They had managed to save over 100 people, but as the Aizsargs’s counselor had pointed out, he never saw that as a victory. Too many lives had been lost for him to ever consider that mission a success.
And that old mission was the last thing he should have been thinking about in this narrow passageway.
The circle lights that he floated through did very little to illuminate the entire tunnel. They only cast light in the small area around the circle itself. As a result, the lights from the gloves of the team’s suits brightened the tunnel before them.
Iqbar pointed her hands forward to illuminate the darkness ahead of them, Zarges kept his hands trained downward to illuminate the path, and Palmer had his hands pointed behind him.
When Palmer’s lights changed direction, Khusru’s team would start their way through the tunnel.
The journey only took about twenty seconds, but it felt like an entire lifetime had gone by.
Iqbar stopped only a few seconds before Zarges arrived. She tapped the edge of the door. It had an old Fleet marking, one that meant the controls for the door were ninety degrees to the left of that point.
She looked at Zarges. As she did, Palmer arrived.
Zarges nodded, silently giving her approval to try the controls before they opened the door either manually or with weapons.
Iqbar slid her gloved hand to the exact spot on the hull, then pressed her palm against it. The glove had a chip that ran all the known security override entry codes for every ship registered with the Fleet, starting with the most current and working backwards.
Palmer had just reached for his tool belt to pry the door, when the door eased open as if it had opened just a few hours before. That easy movement surprised Zarges. For some reason, he had thought opening the door would be a fight—especially since the ship had just emerged from foldspace.
Sometimes, in some of the Fleet ship models, the doors sealed tightly for hours after the activation of an anacapa drive. That was to protect the integrity of the ship’s interior, in case the ship unexpectedly found itself in a truly hostile environment.
Blackness extended beyond the door’s interior. Palmer stuck his fist inside, exploring with the knuckle lights on his glove.
The interior was black and small. An airlock built to an old design, one Zarges had never liked. In this design, only one or two people could use that airlock at the same time.
Palmer’s light caught the edge of another control panel as Iqbar had rejoined them.
“I don’t know how long that door will remain open on its own,” she said. “Better go inside.”
“If the power’s out,” Zarges said, “we need to be ready to open the interior door ourselves.”
Exterior doors usually worked on a mechanical system if the power was out, but on some of the larger ships, that system had not been designed into the airlock door. That door wasn’t supposed to open until the environment in the airlock matched the environment in the ship.
Zarges put his hand on his tool belt, and Iqbar did the same. Palmer used his free hand to propel himself into the airlock. He examined every part of the airlock again, then encouraged both of them to join him.
Zarges went in next, followed by Iqbar as per protocol. They squeezed tight enough to fit in the small space. As the door eased shut, he saw bobbing lights at the other end of the tunnel.
Khusru’s team was on their way.
Then the exterior door closed, and he was shoved against the other two members of his team so tight that it was almost impossible to move.
If they had to open the interior door from inside this airlock, it would take a lot of negotiation and work.
He had to brace himself for that. He had to be ready.
But he wasn’t. His heart hammered against his chest, and he willed his entire system to settle down. It wouldn’t do to have an attack of nerves in the middle of a mission.
“How long do we wait for the door to disengage?” Palmer asked.
Then the interior door opened. All three of them shifted in surprise.
Iqbar worked around them, so that she could go first. Zarges followed. He half-expected to tumble to the floor as gravity engaged, but there didn’t appear to be any.
“I guess the environment in the airlock matched the environment on the ship,” he said, feeling no small sense of irony. The airlock wasn’t designed for the vacuum of space; it had been designed to protect an atmosphere that had apparently already vented out of this place.
“This does not look promising,” Iqbar said as she moved to the side of the interior door.
Zarges entered and moved to the other side. Palmer entered and as he activated the gravity on his boots, pulling him downward, the door behind him closed.
He looked over his shoulder—nervously, Zarges thought, although he could have been projecting.
“We’ve only got a few minutes before the other team joins us,” Zarges said.
He really didn’t want to waste time joining up. His team needed to go to Engineering to see if they could stop the atmosphere dump.
Khusru’s team had the tougher task: they were to go to the bridge, and try to work controls from there. The scans had shown that there were two people on the bridge, which meant that Khusru’s team might have to deal with personnel first, and rescue second.
That would give Zarges time to determine if the ship was salvageable. If not, then he would let Khusru’s team know and she would try to access the bridge communications system to inform the survivors that help was here, and that they would all be rescued.
He did not want to ev
acuate the ship one person at a time. He wasn’t sure they could. There was a clock here, although he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
Not yet, anyway.
Iqbar pointed one fist down the long hallway. The light didn’t illuminate much. A shiny path on the side.
“No emergency interior lights back here,” Palmer said. “They’re losing power as well as atmosphere.”
Zarges double-checked the specs that he had uploaded to his system. They weren’t that far from Engineering. Since Engineering was so close, they could move faster without gravity.
“Follow me,” he said, and propelled himself forward.
The Renegat
The Renegat rocked. The ship shouldn’t be rocking, should it? It didn’t have power, and it was huge, and there was nothing in space that would cause anything to rock.
Serpell only knew it rocked because she was clinging to the control panel. Bits of the panel floated around her, which she was convinced wasn’t normal, not even in an emergency situation.
Kabac had looked up when the rocking began, then put his head back down, focusing on his work.
She wanted to scream at him again—hadn’t he noticed the rocking?—but screaming at him never seemed to work. Talking to him didn’t work either, so she was better off just keeping quiet.
She wanted the displays back on. She wanted to touch something or ask a question, and get an answer.
Advise leaving hostile environment as soon as possible, her suit said.
“Fuck you,” she said under her breath.
“Excuse me?” Kabac sounded shocked. He had heard that? Everything else was going wrong on this damn ship and her communication link to his suit was set on exceedingly touchy? Great. Good. What else had he heard in the past several hours?
The backup power was sending pale yellow light everywhere, clashing with the white light coming from the arms of Kabac’s suit.
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