The screens showing Preemas and his crew remained large and a focal point. Seeing his colleagues look determined as they headed toward engineering was more disheartening than guessing that such an attack might come.
If Crowe was disheartened, the other engineers had to be as well.
He took a deep breath.
“All right, everyone,” he said. “We knew that this attack might occur. We can deal with it.”
With little or no loss of life, he wanted to say, but he knew that was unrealistic. He wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t fulfill.
“Daria, I need you to continue to monitor the bridge and the anacapa there. Benjamin, I need you to make sure the energy readings outside this ship remain unchanged.”
Willoughby nodded. Bakhr looked both serious and frightened.
“The rest of you need to listen carefully,” Crowe said, “because here’s what we’re going to do.”
The Renegat
Somehow, Captain Preemas managed to gather over thirty people to make this attack on the engineering bay. No one seemed nervous or hesitant. They followed Preemas’s lead, and Preemas was determined.
Romano’s hands still ached, but she ignored that as best she could. The fingers worked, and her arms followed her commands. That was all she cared about.
That, and the fact that the tingle through the rest of her body eased the moment the doors to the bridge closed. That tingle was half a memory by the time she squeezed into the elevator with the rest of the troops.
That was what Preemas was calling them: troops. As if they were an army marching against a shared enemy, which, apparently, they were. Hard to think of former friends and colleagues as enemies, but they were. Fortunately, she hadn’t known anyone in engineering well. She could hate with impunity.
She half-smiled as she left the elevator. Serpell said that Romano was good at hating. It was a skill she would put to use now. She would show none of those betrayers any mercy. They had endangered the Renegat. She would make them pay.
That thought of Serpell made Romano double-check her comm. She didn’t want to be interrupted by her panicked wife in the middle of the attack. Romano couldn’t take the entire thing off-line, but she could set it only to respond to contact from Preemas and the bridge crew, which she did as she stepped into the wide corridor.
It was filled with people—Preemas’s troops. Romano hadn’t been able to stay exactly at his side, but close enough to be in the front of the action. She gripped her laser pistol. Preemas had made them all go through a quick refresher on the bridge—this was how the pistol worked, how to aim it to avoid the troops, how to concentrate the beam.
She went over each detail with him, even though she remembered clearly how to use the weapon. And she was ready to use it.
Her heart pounded, but with something akin to joy, not fear. She was ready for this. She had needed this. It banished that trapped feeling which had been growing during the journey to the Scrapheap. She finally felt useful, really useful.
She hurried past a few members of the bridge crew, walking slowly, as if they weren’t sure they wanted to be beside Preemas. She practically shoved them aside so that she could trail him.
He was talking to Oshie about the shape charges.
“…don’t want to blow a hole in the ship,” Preemas was saying. “I want to use just enough to open that damn door. You think four, strategically placed?”
Oshie tugged on his own bandolier. He was wearing shape charges too. Romano wished Preemas had trusted her enough to give her some extra weapons.
She would prove herself to him this afternoon, though.
“We have to be careful,” Oshie said. “The fewer charges the better.”
Romano managed to reach Preemas’s left flank.
“What about just one?” she asked a little too loudly. Her adrenaline was really pumping. She couldn’t even properly modulate her voice. “Right at the door’s latch?”
Preemas didn’t even look over his shoulder so that he could see her. “That’s fortified, and then the fortification triples in invasion mode. That’s the one area we probably can’t blow.”
He let out a small laugh, as if it all amused him.
“In fact, that’ll probably stay latched while the door blows inward.”
She didn’t find that funny, even though she could see it in her mind’s eye. She felt her cheeks heat. Sometimes it was really clear just how much training she missed when she went to school for linguistics.
And if she had stayed a linguist, she wouldn’t be standing here, at her captain’s side, about ready to retake the ship. She’d be hiding somewhere with her useless soon-to-be-ex-wife, crying and terrified and wondering when it would all end.
“Door’s four corners is what I’m thinking,” Oshie said. “Charges set on the lowest level.”
“And I’m thinking the control panel,” Preemas said. “The door gets fortified in invasion mode and the panel is impossible to access, but no one ever thinks of the way the panel’s attached to the wall. It’s a separate unit. If we can remove that unit with a charge, we cripple Crowe’s ability to control the door, and we have access to the room.”
Romano wanted to say, what about both, but she was beginning to realize just how out of her depth she was.
“Eight charges, set at the lowest setting,” Preemas said. “The door, because it’s expected, and because we might be able to weaken it, and the panel.”
Oshie nodded “If we set them far enough apart, they won’t become one gigantic explosion. That should keep the hull of the ship intact.”
“Always a good thing,” Preemas said with a feral grin. He stopped walking, and Romano almost stepped into him. She leaned back just in time, then stepped to his side.
They were almost to the engineering alcove. They had stopped just shy of it, the troops filling the corridor, shifting uneasily, as if they didn’t want to stop moving.
“All right, everyone,” Preemas said. “Remember your orders. No weapons until I say so.”
Heads nodded around Romano. She didn’t nod. She just held her laser pistol as tightly as she could.
“You will hang back here, while Oshie and I set the charges. We’ll come back and join you. Lakinas, are you able to access the corridor control panel?” Preemas asked.
Romano looked in the same direction Preemas was looking. She hadn’t even noticed Jorja Lakinas, one of the few people who had said she knew how to use laser rifles. Lakinas apparently knew some engineering tricks too.
Dammit.
Lakinas had crouched near the corridor control panel, apparently without being told to. Initiative, that all-important initiative.
But it seemed like she wasn’t having much luck. She had the panel door open, but she was shaking her head. Her face should have been illuminated by various blinking lights, but it wasn’t.
Her features were shrouded in shadow.
“I can access it,” Lakinas said, “but I can’t use it. Even that has been compromised by First Officer Crowe.”
Every time someone called Crowe First Officer, Preemas’s expression narrowed. It was as if he took Crowe’s former rank personally, as if Preemas hated to be reminded of the mistake he had made.
“I expected that,” he said. To Romano’s surprise, Preemas’s voice remained level—or maybe tinged with just a hint of disappointment.
He took a deep breath, and his entire posture squared up, as if he were bracing himself.
Captain Preemas was nervous? Romano hadn’t expected that. Perhaps he had wanted Crowe to give in. Crowe had to be seeing this. Perhaps Preemas thought the presence of so many armed crew would make Crowe give up.
Romano had half-thought about it as well. She had kinda hoped for it. Part of her didn’t want to attack at all. That same part of her wanted to hide.
But she wasn’t going to. The other part of her was ready to go. She was shifting back and forth on her feet, not enough for everyone to notice, but enough so
that she felt the movement, knew it was out of her control. It was her way of managing the adrenaline and the stress. She wanted to move. She hadn’t had a lot of training (she hadn’t had any training), but she knew that if she let that energy out wrong, she would get trigger happy. And she didn’t dare. Not in such close quarters, with people she valued near her.
“All right.” Preemas reached into his bandolier and grabbed one of the shape charges. It fit into the palm of his hand. He hefted the charge as if he were weighing his decision.
Then he looked up.
Romano followed his gaze, saw the faint green light of an active camera—the kind that existed on top of all of the department doors. She had no idea if anyone was monitoring that camera, but she would be surprised if it were unattended.
She would be watching Preemas closely if she had rebelled against him.
Preemas lifted the shape charge, then hefted it again. The threat was obvious. Come out, or we will blow our way in and…
Kill you all? Capture you all?
Romano didn’t know the rest of that threat, but that wasn’t her concern. She had her orders.
She focused on her hand, the one holding the laser pistol. She was going to have to concentrate to make sure she didn’t move too fast, didn’t let the adrenaline take over. And she had to watch her grip as well, given how her hand ached.
She couldn’t quite tell how much tension was in her fingers, so she kept her finger away from the trigger.
At least for now.
No one responded to Preemas’s threat. Maybe no one had been watching.
Preemas looked at Oshie.
“Let’s do it,” Preemas said. “I’ll take the control panel. You handle the door.”
“Got it,” Oshie replied.
Romano held her breath, and watched as the men stepped forward.
And so it began.
Part Thirty-One
Survival
Now
The Aizsargs Rescue One
CLOSE TO two hundred people crowded the room on Rescue One. When Serpell had initially arrived, she had thought the room large. Now it seemed small, with bodies pushing against each other.
Part of the problem was that no one wanted to sit down. Every time a new group entered, the automated voice made that announcement again, about welcoming them to Rescue One, and waiting while the ship finished the rescue. Everyone knew they weren’t going to be here long and, it seemed, no one wanted to get too comfortable.
Serpell had sucked down two large bottles of water, placing them into the recycling when she was done. Each time she did, another bottle popped up on the beverage table. There was no glassware, just like there were no plates or dishes on the food table. Everything was in small containers, and floating instructions told anyone taking the food to recycle it.
The fact that all the instructions were in Standard was something she was clinging to. She was truly a linguist deep in her soul. The language she had grown up with gave her comfort.
She could have handled one of a dozen different languages easily, and another twenty not so easily, and a whole bunches of variations on Standard, but regular Standard? That eased her mind more than almost anything else.
Except that the oxygen, the gravity, the fact that this ship—or at least this room—was clean.
She had gone to the restroom once, and found a crew member she knew by sight leaning against the sink, sobbing. The crew member didn’t even seem to know Serpell was there. Serpell opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind.
She wasn’t sure she could give comfort—not sincere comfort—so she hadn’t tried.
Her lack of compassion had bothered her after she left the restroom. She finally got enough nerve to go back in, but the sobbing person was gone, and Serpell didn’t know how to look for her.
It was hard to tell who was who in this large room. Everyone was wearing robes, and the robes were all the same whitish beige. Some people she recognized because of their unusual height. A few others had their hoods down, so that she could see their hair or their faces.
But most people left the hoods up and had hidden their hands in their sleeves, as if the robes were a different version of an environmental suit.
Serpell kept her hood down, only because she wanted to be able to see everything around her. But she felt so very unsettled that she wished for the comfort of her own clothes. She wanted her possessions, what few she had left.
Mostly, she wanted the jewelry that India had given her for their wedding. The relationship had been horrible at the end, but it had been good in the beginning. Serpell had held on to the jewelry like a talisman, placing it inside a cubby in her quarters so that the jewelry would make it through tough times with no gravity.
Maybe, when the rescue was over and this Aizsargs ship’s crew figured out what was wrong with the Renegat, everyone could go back on board and retrieve their stuff.
Serpell wanted to ask questions like that, but there was no one to ask. Since she arrived on board, she had only seen crew members from the Renegat. No one else had talked to them. Everything had been automated.
That fact unnerved her. She wanted to ask questions from real people. She wanted to find out what was going on.
She finally saw Kabac. He was hovering near the food table as if he couldn’t decide if he was hungry. His black hair was matted against the back of his head, and his beard looked crushed against his face.
She pushed her way past dozens of robed figures to reach him. No one looked at her. Most didn’t even acknowledge her when she touched them. They were just standing, waiting, maybe not even completely conscious, as if they had shut themselves down the way that computer systems did when those systems weren’t being used.
Maybe they had. Everyone knew how close they had come to dying.
That was bound to sober up anyone.
She reached Kabac’s side as he set down a container of food without opening it. His hands lingered over another container, before he let his hand drop to his side. He turned, and saw Serpell.
His hands instantly came up, as if he thought she was going to hurt him somehow.
“You volunteered to run the door,” she said quickly, so that he would know she wasn’t going to yell at him. “And now you’re here. Does that mean everyone got out?”
His eyes were sunken in his face. He didn’t just look exhausted. He looked defeated.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The guy—that one from the ship? He stayed behind. He made me get in a life raft. He said there were six people who hadn’t arrived yet, even though we were well past the countdown.”
Kabac’s voice was shaking. His eyes were lined with tears.
“I didn’t think we’d make it.” He looked down.
Serpell’s throat closed. That was the emotion. It wasn’t relief. It was disbelief. They had survived, and yet it didn’t feel like survival. Not at the moment. It felt like they were still waiting.
“I haven’t seen him,” Kabac said. “I haven’t seen them.”
“Do you know who the six were?” she asked.
A few other people were watching, as if they were awaiting news of friends. Maybe they were. But Serpell had not seen anyone from the Renegat’s crew ask where their companions were. Maybe they had found those companions on the life raft.
But she had been just as guilty. Although she had no one close on the Renegat. Not after India died.
“I don’t know,” Kabac said. “I don’t know who made it and who didn’t.”
He didn’t sound curious. He sounded tired.
“And I have been watching for six stragglers to come in here, but I haven’t seen that either.” He glanced at the food again, but didn’t get any.
“I think it would be hard to tell,” Serpell said. She wasn’t trying to comfort him. She meant that. It would be hard to tell, what with the robes and the silence and the subdued nature of everyone here.
“Maybe,” Kabac said. “But something’s o
ff. Doesn’t it seem like something is off?”
She nodded. Everything seemed off. She had never felt this dislocated in her life.
“I wish they’d tell us what’s going on,” she said.
“Me, too,” Kabac said. “But they’re probably waiting for everyone to get through decontamination.”
He sounded like he didn’t believe that. It was as if someone had told him to speak the words.
But that was the logical assumption. Or maybe they were traveling to the bigger ship, the Aizsargs, and no one was going to talk to them until they arrived.
Was Rescue One completely automated, like the life rafts? That very idea made Serpell’s stomach twist, and she nearly lost the water she’d drunk. She didn’t want to be at the mercy of any ship, not ever again.
She had never craved land before.
She did now.
She patted Kabac on the arm. “You should eat something,” she said. “It’s okay to eat.”
“Yeah,” he said in a way that made her think he wouldn’t eat at all. “I know.”
Then he gave her a tentative smile.
“I’m glad you got out,” he said.
“You too,” she said, and meant it.
She was glad they had all gotten out.
Part Thirty-Two
Battle
100 Years Ago
The Renegat
100 Years Ago
Shape charges. Even after he saw all of them laced through the bandoliers, Crowe hadn’t believed that Preemas would use them. Crowe had believed, somehow, that Preemas was smarter than that.
Crowe stood near all of his screens in engineering, mouth slightly open. He felt dumbfounded. Preemas had to know what those charges would do, not just to the door, but to the people around him.
Preemas had stood in front of the main camera into engineering and made his plans clear. The bastard. He clearly hadn’t thought it through. Placing the shape charges all around the entrance to engineering would have an impact throughout the ship.
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