“Figure three trips per raft,” Turris said. “That’s probably too many, but just in case…”
“I’m figuring four,” Ranaldi said.
“We’d have to be too close for that,” Adeon said. “If we get people here only to lose them when the Renegat explodes—”
“Then we won’t know,” Ranaldi said.
Sometimes the fatalism of certain members of his crew irritated Turris more than he wanted to say. He would rather take a risk at pushing them too hard than risk losing people.
“Three,” Turris said firmly. He was in charge of this mission, and he had the same concerns that Adeon had. “We’ll cram them into the rafts if we have to. Vail, let Zarges know that’s the plan.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, her tone not letting him know either way how she felt about his orders.
Not that he cared. He needed to make sure Rescue One was in the right position so that it could save as many people as possible and escape with all of their lives.
“Yeah,” Ranaldi said as if someone had asked him a question. He was focused on his work. He probably hadn’t even realized that he had spoken aloud about how the crew would feel if everyone they tried to rescue died. “We need to move Rescue One again. I’ve locked in the coordinates.”
With the movement of three fingers, Turris executed the command. Rescue One moved a little closer to the Renegat. He didn’t like that, but he knew they only had so much time.
A little under two hours to rescue two hundred people scattered all over a large ship. That was a tall order in five hours. But two. Everyone would have to move quickly, and they would have to be willing to get on board the life rafts rapidly.
When Zarges had initially said he was going, that comment worried Turris.
Now, he was relieved. Khusru and Zarges were the most experienced at this kind of rescue. Maybe Zarges had known how difficult this would be, after all.
Turris let out a small breath. And it might be even more difficult. Because Zarges didn’t say whether or not the people on board were supposed to be on board. If they had stolen the ship, then the rescue teams might be in even more trouble.
Turris had piloted a few rescues where the people on board the ship weren’t ready to leave, for whatever reason. They had fought the rescue teams, fought getting onto life rafts, tried to escape with the ship—sometimes, people like that had to be subdued.
He hoped his team hadn’t encountered anything like that. He hoped they would be all right.
But he couldn’t worry about it, except to plan what to do with the strangers who would arrive on the Rescue One. He had to keep them isolated while he transported them to the Aizsargs.
The rest would be the rescue team’s problem.
Turris moved Rescue One into place, then looked at the real-time holographic image of the Renegat. Part of the grappler’s claw was visible sticking out of the ship. It drifted, atmosphere still venting. There were no lights that he could see.
He felt his mood lift. Now that he knew what he had to achieve and how quickly he had to achieve it, he had a sense of purpose.
He knew how to do this.
His team knew how to do this.
They would do it well, and everyone would survive.
Or, as Ranaldi had said, they would never know the difference.
The Aizsargs
“Why is Rescue One moving again?” Dauber asked.
She stood in front of the hologram of the entire area, watching as the Renegat still vented atmosphere. The space bridge had been retracted, and Rescue One had removed the grappler, then had gone into the nearest safe position.
Dauber had instructed the fighters to back even farther away, since no other ship had come through foldspace. Her bridge crew was busily researching the Renegat, but so far had found nothing.
She hated this part of the mission; she had no word from the crew on board the Renegat, and now Rescue One was moving sideways from its best position.
She had been multitasking before she noticed the movement of Rescue One. She’d been monitoring her people inside by watching the small gold dots that represented her team as they worked their way through the old ship. So far, the schematics Ullman had found in the Fleet records matched what Dauber had been seeing.
She hadn’t monitored communications in real time, though, because she’d learned long ago that doing so gave her the wrong focus. It made her remember that those gold dots represented human beings she knew and cared about, rather than people upon whom the success or failure of a mission rested.
She couldn’t make good decisions, when she remembered that she cared.
Still, she needed to keep an eye on them. And as she did so, she also worked on moving her people around on the Aizsargs. She needed to make plans, quite quickly, because 200 people might have to board this ship within the next few hours.
They needed a place to clean up, food, and probably medical attention. She was also going to have to figure out exactly what to do with them. She had just helped close the nearest sector base, after all, so she couldn’t just dump them on the base.
She had to make several levels of contingency plans, because she still didn’t know if the people on that ship belonged on that ship, or if they were criminals, or what had happened to them.
Brett Ullman had found a crew manifest—he thought. He was having to dig through a lot of sketchy information. But Dauber had him send the manifest to Khusru and Zarges. Maybe if they called the people on that ship by name, they might gain some trust.
Since Rescue One was moving away from the Renegat. Which meant what, exactly? That no one was worthy of being saved?
“Anyone?” she said because no one had answered her previous question. “Do we know why Rescue One is moving?”
Josephine Ornitz had a hand on one ear, something she did when the information coming through her comm was either too loud or too soft. She was still reaching up to work on the console before her, which, considering she’d been doing that for hours, couldn’t have been comfortable.
She had been the one who had been monitoring the chatter between Rescue One and the team on the Renegat.
Her gaze met Dauber’s, mouth a thin line.
“Rescue One is running into some difficulties,” Ornitz said.
“Clearly,” Dauber said.
Her sarcasm was lost on Ornitz, who had grown pale.
“They’re saying the anacapa drive on the Renegat is failing. They want us to get as far from the ship as possible. They’ll come back to us, if and when they have completed the rescue.”
The entire bridge was silent for a half second. If and when. Dauber didn’t like the sound of that.
“Did this come from Zarges?” she asked Ornitz.
“From Zarges directly, yes,” Ornitz said. “He had been talking to Rescue One ahead of us. His message to us was short, sir. He needs us to get out of here now.”
Dauber nodded. She took a deep breath. Anacapa explosions were scary for surrounding ships. Sometimes they could get sucked into foldspace because of an anacapa explosion nearby.
Sometimes, they could explode as well. One exploding anacapa drive could set off something in another drive, and that drive could go critical in a matter of seconds.
Even when an anacapa went critical and didn’t explode, the energy waves could still catapult another ship with a similar drive into foldspace, or destroy the other ship’s drive.
Dauber knew better than to ask if Zarges could shut down the anacapa drive on the Renegat. He would have sent a different message if he had thought there was time to save that ship.
If and when.
If.
He wasn’t sure he would get anyone off the Renegat before it exploded.
But she would act like he was going to.
“Let me see what I can do for that anacapa drive,” Ribisi said. If anyone could repair an anacapa drive, it would be Massai Ribisi. He was the most gifted engineer she knew.
“From a distance,” Dauber said. �
��We’re moving the Aizsargs as far from the Renegat as we can and still provide support to Rescue One.”
She reached over to Brett Ullman’s holoscreen. He’d been researching the Renegat. She tapped the screen with her forefinger. The screen vanished.
He looked at her, surprised.
She needed him on navigation right now, not handling data flow.
“Plot the fastest course without using foldspace,” she said. “We need to move. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and got to work.
The Renegat
Serpell felt stupid being on the bridge. What could she do here, anyway? She couldn’t do anything. She had been slapping her hand on the console for a long time now. Every once in a while, she’d pause and try to speak some shorthand voice commands she had learned during her time as the person nominally in charge. Those voice commands weren’t working either.
Nothing was working. It was dark, it was creepy, the power was gone, the atmosphere was leaking, and her suit was dying. The best thing she could do was save herself. There were escape pods somewhere on this vessel. All she needed was to carry a new environmental suit with her, and she was good to go.
Let Kabac continue frantically slapping panels and cursing the dwindling power. He wasn’t asking for her help. He wouldn’t want it if she offered it.
He probably wouldn’t even notice if she propelled herself out of this bridge, maybe wouldn’t even notice if she took one of the escape pods.
So she got off the ship. Then what? A pod with a month, maybe, of life support, as she drifted—where? And what did she know about escape pods anyway? Her training in escape pods had been DV training, nearly a decade ago, before she gave up her career to follow the downward spiral that had been India’s lot.
India.
Serpell’s heart clenched, and she forced herself to think about something else.
“You know,” Kabac said. “You could try to fix something.”
Serpell could. And she could fail.
“I’m going for a new suit first,” she said. “Do you know of any extras close?”
“I’d be able to find you something if the ship’s computers were up and running,” he said.
She could have too. They could do anything with computers. That was the beauty of it. That was why she thought the Renegat would be able to make the trip back. Hell, the ship did 90% of the work—most of the time.
When the ship was functioning.
Before it had gotten attacked.
A beam of light hit Kabac, outlining his shadow against the dead screen on the wall.
“You did something,” Serpell said, feeling excited for the first time. “You got partial lights—”
“That’s not me,” he said. “I’m not working the lights at the moment.”
She would have snapped at him, she should have snapped at him, because the lights were part of the environmental system, and if he could fix that, then the atmosphere would return and it would buy them time.
Another light hit him, and then a third. Suddenly light blinded her.
She had to turn sideways to get the light out of her eyes.
“What the hell?” Kabac snapped. He looked up and cursed.
Serpell looked over, saw three people in unfamiliar environmental suits near the entrance to the bridge, glowing in the darkness.
“Captain Preemas?” a woman’s voice said. It sounded thin and crackly as if it were coming from very far away.
Serpell glanced at Kabac, but couldn’t see his face through his helmet. He was staring at the three people like he couldn’t believe they were there.
Serpell couldn’t either. They were looking for Captain Preemas? He wasn’t here. If the woman was part of the crew flying home, she would know that.
“Who are you?” Serpell asked, because Kabac hadn’t done anything—not since he’d looked up and cursed. It was as if his brain had stopped working.
“I’m Sufia Khusru,” the woman said. Serpell couldn’t tell which of the three people was speaking. With the way the lights fell on the environmental suits, Serpell couldn’t even tell if all three of the people facing her were women or if only one of them was.
“I’m from the Aizsargs,” the woman was saying. “We saw you, saw your distress, and are here to get you off this ship.”
Serpell hadn’t heard of the Aizsargs, but she wasn’t sure that meant anything. She wasn’t sure she could recite the names of all the ships in the Fleet.
Still, it should have sounded familiar, right?
She swallowed hard. “What’s the Aizsargs?”
The newcomers glanced at each other, or rather, at the person in the middle. That had to be who was speaking.
“It’s a Fleet vessel,” the woman said, and she sounded a bit cautious, as if she wasn’t sure Serpell would know what the Fleet was. “DV-Class. We have enough room for everyone on board, but we have limited time to get you to our ship.”
Fleet vessel. DV-Class. The biggest the Fleet had to offer outside of a few warships—at least these days. Serpell’s eyes filled with tears, and she willed them away.
Someone who knew what they were doing. How had that happened? How had they found a Fleet vessel?
“How do we know you’re who you say you are?” Kabac said.
The woman held up the palm of her hand and an image flared, showing a woman’s face, and something that looked like a file about her and the Fleet.
Serpell had seen such things buried in the personnel files, but never attached to an environmental suit.
“We’re with the rescue unit,” the woman—Khusru—said. “We need to hurry. And we need to let everyone on the ship know they need to evacuate. We want to use the bridge systems to do that.”
“This is too fast,” Kabac said. “We don’t know who you are—”
“Shut up,” Serpell snapped. She didn’t care if these people were lying about being Fleet. It didn’t matter at all. They had come from outside the Renegat, they clearly had a ship, and they were offering rescue. “Control panels aren’t working here.”
“Cayden can handle that,” Khusru said, as if Serpell knew who this Cayden was. Serpell guessed it didn’t matter. He—she?—would do what needed to be done anyway.
One of the newcomers detached from the others and entered the bridge. He—?—moved toward the communications panel. The third member headed toward Kabac, who held up his hands like he was trying to stop that person.
“Can we help?” Serpell asked, trying to forestall any crisis. She didn’t care what Kabac wanted. Serpell wanted—she needed—to get off this ship.
“Get me the captain,” Khusru said. “We need him to verify the evacuation.”
Serpell’s face grew warm. She was trembling. If they were Fleet like they said they were, then they would want to know what happened to him.
“Um.” God, Serpell had no idea how to handle this. Not that she had had any idea how to handle any of it in any way all along. “He’s not…he’s not…a lot of…we’re…”
She looked at Kabac who was watching the third new person. Kabac stood near the anacapa and that person was heading toward it.
Serpell tried again. “We’re…just trying to get home.”
“Home?” Khusru asked.
“Back to the Fleet,” Serpell said.
“Well,” Khusru’s tone was all business. “You’ve done that. Now go to the cargo bay on, I believe, Deck Four. Right? You have a cargo bay on Deck Four?”
Serpell swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was hammering so hard that she could feel it throughout her system. Maybe that was because the suit was failing, not because she was scared.
“We have a cargo bay on four,” she confirmed. “Um, and I don’t know how you’re getting us out of here, but you should know my suit’s failing.”
“Are there other suits on board that you could use?” Khusru asked.
“I don’t know,” Serpell said. “I was just going to look.”
“
I’d rather have you evacuate than search for a new suit,” Khusru said. “Can you make it to Deck Four without assistance?”
Serpell dry-swallowed again, an involuntary movement. God, she was scared.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Good. I need both of you off this bridge,” Khusru said.
“We have no idea you are who you say you are.” Kabac finally found his voice. “We’re not leaving the bridge to you.”
“Then die with the ship,” snapped someone else—another woman. “Because that’s what’ll happen if you stay here. The problem is, if you don’t let us use the comms, the rest of your crew will die too.”
“Kabac,” Serpell said. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not leaving the bridge,” he said. “I’m the only bridge officer left. It would be wrong—”
“You were demoted,” Serpell said, because she felt she had to. “You were asked to leave the bridge before we even made it to the Scrapheap. You are only up here because I needed the help.”
The Cayden person wasn’t paying attention to anything she was saying. He—?—was doing something to the comm center.
“Arguing won’t help anyone,” Khusru said. “Our people have determined that this ship will blow, and it’ll be an anacapa-based explosion. None of us will survive that.”
Khusru pushed herself further into the bridge, heading toward Kabac just like the other person had.
“You can choose to stay,” Khusru said. “I have no authority over whether or not you evacuate. Only your captain had that, and I assume he’s no longer with the ship. So, it’s your choice. But stay the hell out of the way of my people.”
Serpell didn’t want to hear any more. She wasn’t cut out for any of this. She wasn’t heroic. That was why she had come home in the first place.
She swallowed a third time. Dammit, that was irritating.
“Deck Four, Cargo Bay One,” she said. “Someone will be there?”
“My team knows what to do.” Khusru’s tone alone dismissed Serpell. And Serpell didn’t care.
People were here.
They could save her.
She might live after all.
The Renegat Page 25