Bakhr was talking to Tosidis. Tosidis was gesturing at the door.
Crowe frowned at both of them.
“The bridge,” he said. “Now.”
“Yes, sir,” Bakhr said, and put a hand behind Tosidis. Tosidis opened his mouth as if he was going to object again, but Crowe glared at him.
Tosidis closed his mouth. Then he let Bakhr push him toward the exit, going to the door farthest from the pile of bodies. The two men were still going to have to walk around injured and dying colleagues, because there was no other way to the bridge.
Crowe didn’t want to watch them pick their way across.
Even though he had to go back to that pile to get the weapons off Oshie.
Two of Crowe’s engineers were going through the pile, pulling up people’s arms and locking them in laser restraints. Crowe felt a jolt of surprise at that. Of course, they were using laser restraints. The physical restraints were in the weapons room.
He hadn’t prepared for that.
A few members of Preemas’s army were stirring in the growing oxygen, but no one had spoken and no one had tried to push their way through the pile of people. The entire scene was eerily quiet. Only the sound of restraints pinging shut and the rustle of his people, moving through the pile, reached him.
Crowe went over to Oshie. He looked worse that Preemas—his head smashed downward by the laser that Crowe had programmed. Oshie had no features left, except his jaw, chin, and neck. But there was no blood here either, although Crowe could smell blood.
It was probably coming from the pile. That spurting—
“Where are the gurneys?” Willoughby was beside him. Crowe hadn’t even heard her approach.
“I sent for them,” he said. “As many as we have. They’re on their way.”
He had double-checked before coming out here. She could have done so too.
Then he looked up, over his shoulder at her. Her torso was matted with blood, her face speckled with spray.
She looked furious.
“We’re going to have to get half of those people to the med bay,” she said.
“I know,” he said. He didn’t want her to tell him about any of this. He wanted to get the weapons out of the corridor, and then he wanted to get back to work. He felt the pressure of that anacapa drive, bearing down on him.
“We lost one,” she said. “He bled to death. I couldn’t stop it in time.”
She was furious. Her words were tight and clipped.
“We’re going to lose more if we don’t get them to the med bay,” she said.
What the hell do you want from me? he nearly said. I can’t change this, and more people will die if we don’t secure the ship.
Instead, he said, “We’re doing what we can. You can continue to help the injured if you want, but I need the most qualified engineers on the Scrapheap problems. I’d prefer it if you work with me on saving the ship. That’ll save lives.”
He said that last with a bite, then realized he wasn’t as in control as he thought he was.
She stepped back as if he had struck her. Then she glanced at the pile. More people were moving now, and the entire engineering crew was out there, restraining the others, and doing what they could with the wounds.
Only Crowe, Tosidis, and Bakhr weren’t helping, although Crowe was out here too, gathering the last of the weapons.
“I don’t want to leave them to die,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear it. Her voice shook.
“One thing at a time, Daria,” he said as gently as he could. It felt odd to speak gently, while he was holding the bandolier of a dead man—a man he had killed. “We have to secure the ship. Then we worry about the wounded.”
“I don’t even know if there’s any staff in the med bay,” she said, that quiver growing. Apparently, she was closer to an edge than he realized.
“I don’t either,” he said, and he should have known. He was the first officer, after all. He should have known who was staffed where.
He did know that Preemas let most of the medical crew move to other positions if they wanted to. Preemas, who apparently (mistakenly) believed he was immortal, hadn’t seen much reason for a medical staff, not on a trip like this one.
Crowe felt the edge of panic. He willed it away, and that mostly worked.
“We’ll just send them there, and let the bay itself sort it out,” he said. “Our expertise is what we need for the ship, and we’re going to have let others deal with the medical emergency.”
Willoughby swiped at her face, smearing the blood spray rather than wiping it off.
“Clean up,” Crowe said, “and then get back to work.”
She stared at him as if he had said something in a language she didn’t understand.
“Daria,” he said in that gentle tone. “It’s all we can do right now.”
Her eyes changed, became clearer. Apparently, that got through.
She nodded, and walked back into engineering, before he could ask her to help him remove the bandolier from Oshie.
Oh, well. Crowe would finish here and then go back into engineering to figure out what to do next.
He knew it wasn’t very straightforward, but he would do his very best.
And try to keep the panic at bay by reassuring himself that his very best was all he could possibly do.
The Renegat
Tindo Ibori stood in the empty med bay, next to the body of Natalia Stephanos. The automated signage had stopped him, the opposite of what it had been supposed to do.
But he stared at the two choices the signage gave him—going to the actual medical part of the med bay or taking a body into the morgue—and it had stopped him. Even though the sign hadn’t said morgue.
It had said storage and disposal. It was the automated voice that had tried for reassurance that had made him vaguely ill.
The gurney you have brought here carries someone who is beyond medical care. If you want to accompany that body, please go to the left. Otherwise, remove your hand from the gurney’s side, and the gurney will proceed on its own.
He looked down. He was holding on to the gurney. He hadn’t even realized he had been doing so. He really should let go, but as that thought crossed his mind, he tightened his grip instead.
He was not really ready to leave Stephanos.
He hadn’t realized how much he relied on her, how much she had seemed like the center of the ship to him, not Captain Preemas or Chief Engineer Crowe. After receiving an order, Ibori had always looked to Stephanos for her reaction.
Sometimes she rolled her eyes. Sometimes she smiled as if she found the order amusing. And sometimes she nodded seriously, as if to say that Ibori should take the order seriously as well.
But she wasn’t going to do that anymore, not that there was anyone left who was going to give sensible orders. Those weapons on the bridge, the anger in Preemas’s eyes, the way everyone clustered around him, Ibori had never seen any of that, not on any ship he had ever served on.
Or the shuffling of the crew, or the uncertainty, or the distance from the Fleet.
Without Stephanos, he was truly alone here, and he didn’t know what to do.
His hand tightened on the gurney so hard that the bones in his fingers ached. He didn’t want to let her go, because that would mean he would have to make choices. He would have to go back to the chaos that this ship had become.
But he didn’t want to look at her either. She didn’t look like herself anymore. She wasn’t there anymore, and he knew it, but he didn’t know it, not deep down.
He swallowed hard, then looked up at those impersonal floating signs. He had never noticed how creepy they were before, words floating in the air with no background, allowing the walls, the equipment, and everything in the room to frame them.
The automated announcement repeated.
The gurney you have brought here carries someone who is beyond medical care….
“I know, I know,” he muttered back at the voice. He almost pleade
d with it to help him, but he knew it would do no good.
And that was when he realized he was alone in the med bay.
He hadn’t seen another person at all. Wasn’t there supposed to be someone in the med bay at all times? Or had Captain Preemas changed that rule as well?
…Remove your hand from the gurney’s side, and the gurney will proceed on its own.
Choices. The system wanted him to make choices. Him, of all people. Choosing whether or not Stephanos would have a service, or if she would go into a funeral pod for jettisoning almost immediately.
He wasn’t qualified to make these decisions. And he didn’t want to think about her in that pod—where she would end up either way. The pod igniting from the inside out, burning the body and then itself, ashes spreading through space.
If there had been another person here—another living person here—he would have abandoned the body, saying that he wasn’t close enough to Stephanos to make these choices, which was, sadly, true. He had no idea what kind of service she would have preferred, what her family customs and traditions were. He had no idea if she had left family behind in the Fleet, if she had been married or had children or had been as alone as he was. Probably alone, or they wouldn’t have brought her on this journey.
Or maybe estranged, because a few folks on the Renegat had been permanently estranged from everyone they knew. He had talked to them. They hadn’t even seemed bothered by it.
Something rustled in the actual medical part of the bay, the one where everyone living got treatment. Then he heard another rustle in the storage and disposal wing.
“Hello?” he yelled, feeling a little relief. Someone else was here. Someone could help him with this decision. “Hi, I need some assistance here.”
Not like medical emergency assistance, but assistance all the same. Someone to make a decision, someone to maybe talk to. Someone who might not even know about what Preemas was doing or how far the ship had fallen apart.
The rustling grew stronger and then doors banged. A metallic smell grew in the air, and he felt a slight breeze. Then the door to the other wing opened, and gurneys—empty gurneys—floated out.
Flat and long and automated, just like the one Stephanos was on. His heart was pounding. Who had ordered those up? And why so many?
They floated three to a row, four rows high. As they reached him and Stephanos, three levels of gurneys in the middle row paused, as if waiting for him to move. The gurneys on the top floated over him and Stephanos, leaving a faint scent of cleaning fluid in their wake.
Then the next row rose up and floated over them, and each row thereafter.
The doors to the med bay opened, and the gurneys in the two side rows were leaving, with the gurneys from the center row following one row at a time.
He had never seen anything like it. His heart pounded. He was terrified.
Someone had ordered up a dozen or more gurneys. He hadn’t counted exactly, but a lot of gurneys. Those weapons—Preemas had used those weapons.
And a lot of people had been injured. Maybe even dead.
Ibori’s heart sank. He didn’t want the engineering crew to die. They were the people he spent most of his time with, the people he worked with. They mattered to him as much as Stephanos, even though he had been trained to be loyal to his captain.
Ibori had been loyal. He had been as loyal as he could be. Which was why he left with Stephanos, so he wouldn’t have to choose to bear arms against his friends.
Who were, apparently, dying now.
His fingernails dug into Stephanos’s gurney. That gurney hadn’t even tried to move.
He could hide in here, wait until it was all over, or he could see what was going on.
If someone had ordered gurneys, it was mostly over.
Or so he would assume.
He looked up at the floating storage and disposal sign. He would have to send Stephanos’s body in there, and he would store it. Yes, he would store it, because maybe there would be a service for everyone who died.
More banging from inside the storage and disposal part of the med bay. Maybe that was where the other person was.
“Hello?” Ibori called again. “Is anyone else here?”
Maybe they had received orders to send the gurneys. Maybe—
Then more gurneys floated out of the storage and disposal side of the med bay. Those gurneys were also in formation. This time he counted. Three across, four rows up, three gurneys per row.
Why would they need so many gurneys?
Plus the ones from before.
His stomach churned. What had happened out there?
It had to be over because they ordered the gurneys, right? No one ordered gurneys if the fighting was still ongoing, right?
Then, as if they heard his thought, all the gurneys stopped moving. They floated, as if awaiting instruction.
He looked at them as if they were their own rebel army, waiting to attack someone. Waiting to attack him.
Then, one stacked group of gurneys moved forward. Twelve. Only the middle rows, the ones that would have plowed into him and Stephanos, moved sideways, the gurney on the lower row moving to the left, and the gurney on the upper row moving to the right.
They went first. The others followed.
He was shaking. He could hide here, and no one would know where he was. Unless the gurneys weren’t ordered for bodies but for the wounded. They would all crowd in here, and he would be stuck helping with bleeding and crying people and watching even more of his colleagues die, just like Stephanos.
Ibori leaned over her, as if she were alive. But any illusion of her still being alive vanished when he saw her sunken face. It looked even worse than it had on the bridge.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. Or what was left of her. Or how he imagined her. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to have them store you for a while. I’ll worry about what to do with you later. I’m sure others will want a remembrance.”
He wasn’t sure, and he felt a little odd, trying to placate a dead woman.
He let go of Stephanos’s gurney, glanced at the various signs for the verbal command he needed to store her body, and then uttered the words.
Her gurney floated by itself into the storage and disposal part of the bay. He had an odd sense that this was the last time he would ever see her.
Which might be true, if the ship didn’t make it.
Or he didn’t make it.
He let out a small breath, then clenched his fists. If he hurried, he would be able to catch up with those gurneys.
He had to see where they were going.
He had to know what, exactly, was going on.
The Renegat
Crowe stood in the middle of his floating screens, but he had lowered them so that he could monitor his engineering crew. He didn’t know their psychological profiles and personal histories well enough. He fully expected the events of this afternoon to break some of them, and for some, it did seem close.
A few of them were a little too focused. They would probably break down once the crisis was over—if they survived the crisis.
Willoughby was working near the communications anacapa. She had taken over from Tosidis, monitoring the anacapa and handling the strange energy that was still filling the ship.
She hadn’t wiped the blood spray off her face. The spray had dried black, so it looked like she had weird freckles on her skin. Or the spray would have looked like weird freckles if it weren’t for the blood still coating her shirt and pants.
She was working hard, just like Crowe wanted her to do, somehow changing her focus from the dead and injured in the corridor to saving the ship.
He was having trouble changing his focus, despite his ability to compartmentalize. He kept wondering how badly he had destroyed his own cause. How many more deaths did he have to add to his own personal tally? And how many of those deaths should he count? Because Preemas would have destroyed the ship, which would have taken out hundreds of lives.
How did Crowe balance the lives lost with the lives he might have saved?
And why was he thinking about that now, when they could still all die from Preemas’s stupidity?
He forced himself to concentrate. He didn’t look at anyone else in engineering.
Instead, he focused on the screens, particularly those showing the energy readings flooding the ship. He thought he could feel the energy change. The air had a tingle to it, as if the molecules themselves had a vibration he didn’t recognize.
But he wasn’t sure if that tingly feeling was just something he imagined because of the readings or if it came from his own distress at the events in the corridor.
What he did know was that he couldn’t shake the feeling, no matter how hard he tried, and he wasn’t sure he should ask anyone else about it. He didn’t want to plant the idea in their minds, but he also wasn’t sure if he could trust their perceptions anyway.
They were even more upset than he was.
Engineers didn’t kill people, even in major battles. Sure, engineers provided support and sometimes released a ship’s weapons. But watching people die in front of them? Watching their colleagues die? Engineers didn’t normally do that.
He made himself take a deep breath, then he bit the inside of his right cheek hard, tasting blood. He turned his entire attention to that pain, vowing to do it again if his attention wandered off the first task at hand.
Because he had to figure out how to stop that energy from making the anacapa drives vibrate. He had to figure out what, exactly, the energy was doing to the drives. And he had to somehow isolate those drives, just in case the energy activated them. The last thing he wanted was for the Renegat to return to foldspace, particularly if the Renegat did so without any help from her crew.
Crowe slowly slid his teeth off the inside of his right cheek, although his tongue played with the new injury.
The energy was coming from the Scrapheap, just like Bakhr had said. And the energy wasn’t just one kind of wave. Crowe had been mapping the signatures, finding hundreds of them. He had color-coded all of them, then switched to a view that showed how the colors mixed.
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