The Renegat

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She quieted her thoughts. If she went at the anacapa drive in a panic, she might miss something.

  The bones in her hands ached. She put her teeth together as an old instructor had taught her to do, and she felt a hum inside her mouth.

  Active anacapa drives sometimes caused that hum. It was a vibration that became some kind of sound, something that communicated as soft music rather than as something that registered on a more sensible level.

  That instructor had had her hold an anacapa in the lab. That old drive hadn’t been attached to anything, no ship, no controls, and yet it had felt alive.

  She hadn’t felt anything like it in all the years since.

  Her stomach flipped, and she had to swallow hard to keep down fear-caused bile. Something was going on here. She’d touched this container dozens of times, and it had never felt like this.

  She didn’t look up at Ibori, or over at Preemas. She couldn’t focus on them right now. She needed to focus on this.

  “I need everyone to back away from this part of the bridge,” she said as clearly as she could.

  No one moved. They all seemed to be waiting for Preemas to tell them what to do.

  “Now,” she said. “If something is wrong, then I want to be the only one hurt.”

  Or killed, she thought.

  Ibori didn’t move. A couple people shifted, but no one stepped away. No one looked at Preemas either, although she could tell they were all waiting for him to tell them what to do.

  “For God’s sake,” she said, raising her voice. “Move! Now!”

  A couple people stepped back—those who weren’t in Preemas’s immediate line of sight. Two others looked at Preemas, who gave her a small smile.

  “They don’t believe there’s any danger,” he said. “They think you’re a tool of the traitors.”

  She shook her head, which aggravated the hum in her mouth, and made her feel as if she were falling apart. Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes, which made her realize just how unsettled and on edge she was—partly because of the situation, but partly because of the anacapa drive. When it got into the bones, like it was right now with her, it upset a person’s entire system.

  “All right, fine,” she said. “I can’t protect you, and the captain’s clearly more interested in being right than your well-being. Do what you want. I don’t have the time to mess with any of you.”

  She bent over the container, knowing that she had sounded a little unhinged. But they were all unhinged. That was the problem, wasn’t it? The entire ship had gone completely mad.

  She took a deep breath, trying to expel the hum, even though she knew that wouldn’t work. Then she worked the edge of the container with both thumbs, like she had a dozen times before.

  The lid on the container stuck—not because it was sealed shut, but because some additional force held it in place. If her hands were trembling, she couldn’t feel it now. Because her entire body was vibrating on a tiny level, as if some kind of gigantic machine had activated on a lower level and was rattling the entire ship.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ibori’s feet. They hadn’t moved. She hoped that meant he was still monitoring the controls.

  And then she mentally shook herself, forcing herself to focus only on the container.

  It would take more than the pressure from her thumbs to open the lid. She was going to have to move her hands, something she hated to do, because that meant the container could move a little too.

  So, she crouched, then braced the container with her knees and thighs. The vibration moved to the lower half of her body, making her warm, and interfering with her concentration.

  She slipped the tips of her fingers around the lid, using her nails to slide into the tiny gap between the lid and the rest of the container. Some kind of force kept pulling the lid down.

  She braced herself even more and did something that was against regulations. She tugged upwards, hoping she wouldn’t dislodge the container.

  It moved ever so slightly against her knees, and she felt a little frightened, a little floaty. And then the lid popped up.

  “Oh, thank god,” she breathed, knowing she had spoken aloud and not really caring. No one else seemed to care, either. They hadn’t even looked at her.

  The anacapa glowed golden, just like it was supposed to. A thread of pink ran across it, as if something had bled on it and the blood had found a slight crack in the drive.

  She had never seen that thread of pink before.

  She needed to touch the drive, but she had to do so properly.

  She moved her knees away from the container, grabbed the gloves she kept in the container’s side drawer, and slipped them on. They felt warm against her skin, which was new.

  Then she put her left hand on the side of the container. Before she reached inside with her right, she examined the entire area.

  No foldspace window had opened, at least that she could see with the naked eye.

  “How are the readings?” she asked Ibori.

  “It says everything is normal,” he replied. “But the light coming out of that thing looks a little weird.”

  So apparently the pink was showing up in other ways.

  “No indications of foldspace activation?” she asked.

  “Not here,” he said.

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath, then reached inside the container.

  Her hand vibrated in the air itself. The air actually felt thick, almost like water. And it shook as she forced her hand through it.

  The hum in her teeth grew. It seemed to come from the bones in her hand, going up her arm, into her skull, and down the other side.

  Now the tears pricking her eyes were from pain and the incredible headache she was getting just from reaching into the container.

  She had to do this fast, before something else went wrong.

  She put her hand on the anacapa drive itself. It felt smooth through her gloves, like it was supposed to, but it also moved. More than a vibration, less than an actual shaking. It was as if the drive was trying to escape on its own from the container, but didn’t yet have the power to do so.

  Something hot crossed her upper lip. She licked it, expecting sweat, but tasted blood instead.

  That wasn’t good. None of this was good.

  She tried to pull her hand off the anacapa drive, but the glove stuck to it. She had never seen anything like that, but she had heard about it, and it wasn’t good.

  None of this was good.

  She could either pull her gloved hand off the drive or slip her hand out of the glove and leave the glove on the drive. But she had no idea what that would do, if it would change anything, or if it would make matters worse.

  A drop of her blood dripped into the container, hitting the edge of the drive. The blood didn’t look like that pink line at all. Instead, the drop of blood spread over the surface like little balls of mercury that had escaped onto a floor.

  She felt warmth against her back. Ibori stood beside her. “Should I pull you free?” he asked.

  She shook her head, making herself dizzy. The blood was spattering on the edges of the container. Tears were running down her cheeks. She had to do this herself, because he could get trapped in here with her.

  But her thoughts were coming slowly, and she knew her thinking had become impaired. If she stayed much longer, she would pass out or—

  She wouldn’t let herself think about that.

  She put her free hand on the side of the container, gripped the inside of the glove so that it moved with her other hand, and yanked.

  For a moment, she thought it wasn’t going to come free.

  And then it did, with such force that she fell backwards, slamming her back and shoulders against one of the consoles.

  “You’ve told me not to mess with anacapa drives ever since we got on board this ship.” Preemas was sneering. He couldn’t even bother to ask if she was okay. “Maybe you should have taken your own advice.”

&nbs
p; Her brain felt loose inside her skull, her head was swelling—or it seemed to be—and blood ran from her nose. Ibori was gesturing at someone, whom she couldn’t see, and a few people were shouting.

  She wanted to close her eyes, just close them and rest for a minute.

  But she couldn’t. She had to say something. She had something to tell them. Only her thoughts were so sluggish, she couldn’t remember what that something was.

  A woman knelt near her, and put a cold compress on her nose. People were shouting about the med bay, about getting Stephanos there. She didn’t want to think about the med bay, and the shouting hurt her ears.

  “Close the container,” she managed to say, trying to focus on Ibori’s face. His skin was gray, and he looked terrified. “Don’t touch it with your bare hands. Just close it.”

  The voice didn’t even sound like hers, all gravely and wrong. Her mouth tasted of iron and salt—blood and tears. Her face felt like it was caving in on itself, even though she knew that was impossible.

  She had been chosen to work on anacapa drives because she did not have a physical reaction to them; some people did, but not her. Never her. This was different.

  This was scary.

  That’s what she had to tell them.

  She grabbed Ibori’s arm. “The problem isn’t the anacapa drive,” she said as clearly—as strongly—as she could. “The problem is the energy that’s surrounding it. It’s causing—”

  Words were failing her. She couldn’t remember the term. That angered her, deep down. She needed to remember the term.

  And then the term hit her brain. If only she could have patience, she would do fine. But they didn’t have time for patience. None of them did.

  Ibori was leaning close to her. Wasn’t she speaking loudly enough? Or was it the others, still shouting, gesturing, seemingly upset. And Preemas, who was blaming her for this injury, using words like stupid and difficult and why was she tampering with it after being told not to?

  She blinked, then pulled Ibori even closer.

  “Chain reaction,” she said, using the words she had nearly lost first. Those were the most important thing. “That energy is causing a chain reaction, creating something new, something dangerous….”

  She was having trouble finding the air to push out the words. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her teeth ached. She had had no idea that teeth could ache like that.

  “Tell Crowe,” she said to Ibori. “Tell him it’s not the anacapa. It’s the other energy. Get us out of here. Tell him.”

  Ibori was nodding.

  “Crowe?” Preemas asked. He had moved toward her. She could see him at the edge of her vision, just barely, looking disgusted. At her? At her words? At her face? “I run this ship.”

  She waved a hand—or tried to. “I don’t care. Someone has to get us out of here. Someone…”

  She couldn’t talk anymore. It took too much effort.

  She closed her eyes. They would have to solve this without her. She needed rest. She needed quiet. And she was getting it. The voices were fading. The pain was easing.

  She sighed.

  And she was done.

  The Renegat

  She was dead.

  Tindo Ibori crouched beside Natalia Stephanos, still clutching her hand in his. She hadn’t acknowledged the clutch. She had grabbed him and pulled him closer, and hadn’t done anything more when he took her hand, squeezing it tight.

  Her face was black and blue. Blood vessels had burst under her skin. Her eyes, still open, were red-rimmed. The tears that leaked out of them were pink. Blood caked along her nose and mouth. Her forehead looked shrunken, as if it was collapsing on itself.

  Yulia Colvin rocked back on her heels. She had put a compress on Stephanos’s nose, but Ibori had taken it off, because it was interfering with Stephanos’s ability to talk. He had needed to hear what she was saying. She had died telling him about the anacapa.

  Telling him not to touch the damn thing, and close the container.

  He looked at it like it was the enemy. The lid was back, and the anacapa drive glowed golden, just like it was supposed to.

  Or at least, like he thought it was supposed to.

  Ibori had had minimal anacapa training. It had all been theory. He hadn’t touched one or interacted with one or done much more than look at one throughout his entire career.

  He knew how to use the controls to turn them on. He knew how to handle a ship entering foldspace.

  But he didn’t know how to deal with a broken anacapa that had just killed someone.

  “If she hadn’t listened to Crowe, she would be fine,” Preemas was saying to the sycophants around him.

  “You don’t know that,” Ibori said, almost to himself.

  “Crowe rigged the anacapa drive so that it would hurt anyone who touched it,” Preemas said. Ibori couldn’t tell if Preemas was responding to him or if Preemas was still just mouthing off.

  “I don’t think you can rig an anacapa drive,” Ibori said, a little louder.

  “He’s trying to take over the ship permanently by getting rid of everyone who helped me,” Preemas said. “I tried to tell Stephanos that, but of course, she didn’t listen.”

  Ibori put a hand on Stephanos’s shoulder. Her skin, through her soft uniform, was still warm.

  “Stop blaming her for doing her job,” Ibori said even louder this time.

  Preemas looked down at him, and clearly saw Stephanos’s body. Preemas’s mouth formed a moue of disgust, and then he looked away.

  Ibori shot to his feet. “Don’t you look away,” he said. “You did this to her. And you’ll do it to all of us.”

  Preemas’s eyes narrowed. “I told her not to—”

  “You haven’t listened to anyone since you received command of this ship, and now one of us is dead,” Ibori said. “Horribly, awfully dead, killed by the thing she was the expert in. She—”

  “Yeah,” Preemas said. “She was the expert so Crowe took her out.”

  Ibori took a step toward Preemas. Ibori wanted to punch the man in the face, and end it all right, there.

  “Even I know how impossible it is to tamper with an anacapa drive,” Ibori said. “And I’m not captain. I haven’t had the years of training on anacapa drives. I haven’t commanded ships that had anacapa drives, forcing me to understand them, in theory. I am frankly scared that you know so little about the drives. I’m worried—”

  “If you’re scared of the work on the bridge,” Preemas said, picking up the exact wrong word. The wrong message, the wrong word, “then you can step down.”

  “We could all die like this,” Ibori said, sweeping his hand toward Stephanos’s body. “Because she couldn’t fix it in the time she had, and everyone else who can has bolted themselves into engineering trying to save the ship.”

  Preemas’s eyes narrowed even more. His silence was palpable. No one else on the bridge moved.

  “Is that what you believe?” he asked, finally. “You believe that they’re trying to save the ship? From me?”

  Ibori’s career was already over. He’d already made his choices. And Stephanos’s body, still oozing blood near his feet, made him realize the stakes were more than doing the right thing. The stakes had moved to survival.

  “I believe,” he said slowly, “that once we arrived in this sector, we were in some kind of trouble, and everyone in engineering realized that you wouldn’t listen to them or take the right action. I mean, the first thing they did was move the ship away from the Scrapheap.”

  “The Scrapheap’s the reason we’re here,” Preemas said. “They’re showing cowardice.”

  Everyone was watching them both, but no one was speaking up. The rest of the bridge crew held their positions next to Preemas. They were watching, but they weren’t participating. They weren’t helping.

  Didn’t they realize their lives were at stake as well? Or had they already given up? Or did they just find it easier to follow orders, even if the guy giving the orders was a clue
less idiot who was going to kill them all?

  “They’re showing initiative,” Ibori said. “Natalia said that there’s some kind of energy interacting with the drive. And she thought the energy was coming from the Scrapheap.”

  At least, that’s what he had understood her to say. But he wasn’t an engineer. His specialty was navigation.

  He looked at that container, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he was amazed that his chest didn’t burst open.

  “She told me to put the lid back on the container,” Ibori said.

  “Probably the only sensible remark that she had made all afternoon,” Preemas said.

  That was it. That was all Ibori could take.

  “Then you fucking do it,” he snapped. “Because I’m not touching any of this. And I’m not helping your little raid or whatever it is. I want Chief Engineer Crowe to handle this emergency. He’s smart, and he actually knows how ships work.”

  “You’re being insubordinate,” Preemas said.

  “I’m being sensible,” Ibori said.

  “You close that container, then get a weapon and join me as I go down to engineering,” Preemas said.

  “No.” Ibori didn’t add the other thing that almost blurted out of his mouth. He didn’t say, If I had a weapon, I’d turn it on you.

  The fierceness of that thought startled him. He wasn’t a violent man.

  “Then I suppose we should start the arrests.” Preemas looked at Fernando Oshie, the new head of security. Ibori hated Oshie. The man had muscles on muscles, and often used them to shove some of the crew around. “Let’s take him to the brig and get him out of our way.”

  A ripple of movement went through the bridge crew. A few people looked stunned. Were they finally realizing just how serious this could be? Was it the fact that someone—anyone, one of their colleagues—could go to the brig that caught their attention? More than Stephanos’s death did?

  Ibori held up a hand.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take care of Natalia here, since none of you seem to even acknowledge she’s dead, and then I’ll report to the brig like a good soldier.”

  He sounded convincing, but even as he spoke, he knew he was lying. After he got Stephanos to the med bay, so that she could be preserved until they could deal with her body, he wasn’t going to report anywhere.