Not that she knew what a quick getaway meant. There was nowhere to go.
Although they had arrived at the Scrapheap. And that was something, at least. It was what everyone was working on. They were all comparing the Scrapheap to the images that came through the first communications. They also searching for something that the captain called Ready Vessels, to see if they remained in the Scrapheap.
And they were supposed to figure out if there was a direct way in or if they would have to use what looked like breaches in the force field protecting the Scrapheap.
All of the researchers were working on this, all five of them, plus people with different specialties like Serpell. She had hoped that her linguistic skills would be put into play by now, but maybe they would be useful once the Renegat investigated the Scrapheap itself.
A couple of the researchers had left about an hour ago. They had joined the ship on Sector Base Z, and they had never really coalesced with everyone else working in this area.
Still, the fact that they left, along with the rumors that the captain and the first officer were coming to blows, made Serpell even more nervous than normal, especially since India wasn’t contacting her.
Serpell didn’t know how to deal with that at all, and she didn’t want to be here, and she felt like she was here because of India (well, she was) and now India was unavailable. It felt like a betrayal on top of all the danger and the uncertainty of this trip.
The betrayal was making Serpell alternately clingy and angry. So she mostly tried to work. Work had been her salvation so far, but it wasn’t helping right now.
“Anyone know what’s going on?” she asked.
Clyde Hammersmith, who worked on the console closest to her, said, “I haven’t been able to get any information at all. No one is answering on the bridge and engineering is cut off.”
“Cut off?” someone asked in a strangled voice. Serpell couldn’t see who that voice belonged to. Fear had changed the tone enough that the voice sounded only vaguely familiar.
“My messages keep bouncing back,” Hammersmith said.
Serpell’s mouth was dry. Maybe India hadn’t deliberately cut off communications. Maybe it was an order from the captain.
“What could be going on?” she asked, and her voice sounded a bit strangled with fear too.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Hammersmith said quietly. “But I’ve been trying to find out. I don’t have high enough clearance to get into some of the systems.”
“Me either,” said Ariel Dover. “And I’ve been trying since a friend contacted me, asking if I still had the laser pistol I’d been issued when I joined up.”
Serpell raised her head in surprise. She still had hers, but India hadn’t asked. India knew where it was though, and India knew the password to get the pistol out of the storage panel Serpell kept it in.
India wouldn’t do that, though, would she?
Serpell wasn’t sure anymore.
“Why would they want our personal weapons?” Hammersmith asked.
“No one can reach engineering,” Dover said.
“That’s not a reason to use weapons,” Serpell said.
No one responded. They all looked down at their consoles.
Serpell stood up. India was out there, and she was doing something, and it might involve laser pistols. Weapons.
“I’m going to go see what’s happening,” Serpell said.
Hammersmith grabbed her arm. “You don’t want to do that,” he said. “What if they are using weapons? You’re going to get into the middle of something—”
“My wife is out there,” Serpell said. She had no idea what she could do to help India. Serpell wasn’t even sure India wanted help. But Serpell wasn’t going to let India go into danger alone.
Serpell looked down at Hammersmith’s hand. He let her go.
“You don’t want to be out there,” he said. He knew more than he was saying. She could tell from the set of his head, the way his eyes glinted.
“I’m sure India doesn’t want to be there either,” Serpell said.
“If something’s going wrong, you’re not going to be able to save anyone,” Hammersmith said.
Serpell nodded, just once. He was probably right.
But at least she was going to try.
Part Thirty-Five
Somewhere New
Now
The Aizsargs
“They’re hiding something from us,” Kabac said, his arms crossed.
He had scuttled over to Serpell’s side just as the meeting started, and she had not moved or rolled her eyes, although she had wanted to do both.
The meeting was in a large room that clearly could have several different functions. There were circles in the floor for furniture to rise up and populate the room. But for the purposes of this meeting, the only furniture were sideboards lining three of the four walls. One of the sideboards was broken up by the only visible door, which the survivors of the Renegat had entered through.
The fourth wall seemed blank. A few of the survivors had walked up to it to investigate, but stopped doing that when crew members entered, pushing a few of the survivors in wheelchairs.
The wheelchairs were smooth and sleek and clearly could have brought the non-mobile survivors on their own. But for some reason, someone in charge of the Renegat felt that these survivors needed help getting here.
Serpell recognized several of the people in the chairs. Most hadn’t been injured the last time she saw them, but a few were survivors of Preemas’s battle for the ship. They had sustained terrible injuries and no one on the Renegat had the skills to do much more than keep-them-alive repair. Not even the automated programs in the med bay could handle some of those injuries.
Serpell found herself staring at Jorja Lakinas, who tilted sideways in the chair, arms twisted and legs useless. Lakinas had been taken to the med bay that horrid day, not to the brig, and she had gotten enough help to continue breathing. Although whenever Serpell had tried to talk with her—and Serpell had tried several times—Lakinas’s bitterness made Serpell cut the conversations short.
Serpell had finally given up spending any time near the remaining wounded from that battle, primarily because of Lakinas. Intellectually, Serpell was glad that Lakinas had survived, but emotionally, Serpell still couldn’t deal with her.
Just like she wanted nothing to do with Kabac. He had hovered near her during the entire talk, watching the woman who was in charge of the entire group speak to them calmly and slowly, as if everyone were injured as badly as Lakinas.
Serpell had had a feeling that something was off too. She just didn’t like discussing it with Kabac.
She stood near the back of the room for the entire speech—and it had been a speech, filled with cautions and rules, although it was couched in welcoming language.
The woman who talked with them, Anna Vail, hadn’t given her rank but she was clearly not the captain. She said her specialty was coordinating things, and apparently the survivors of the Renegat were things to be coordinated.
She had answered some of Serpell’s questions, though. The Aizsargs was in this sector on a mission when they saw the Renegat emerge from foldspace. And she broke the news that the Renegat had exploded after all but six had escaped.
Who the six were that died was something she and the team of the Aizsargs would help the rest of the survivors figure out. If anyone was missing relatives or friends, though, they were to talk with Vail.
And a few people were already lined up to talk with Vail. Serpell had had to move slightly to the left to see Vail, because she was a small woman. But she was visible amongst the survivors. Every survivor wore white, beige, or light gray shirts. Every survivor wore black pants and sandals. Vail had told them that they would be able to customize their clothing later in the day, as the system readied itself for the demand. The ship was recycling most of the clothes that the survivors had arrived in, since the clothes were unworthy of salvage—whatever that meant.
&n
bsp; Not that Serpell wanted to keep the outfit she had been wearing underneath her horrid environmental suit. But the loss of the clothing felt like an odd blow. The clothing had been the only thing she had managed to salvage from her entire life, the only thing she had brought with her off that ship, and now that clothing was gone.
“I mean it,” Kabac said. “They’re hiding something. Something big.”
Serpell looked over at him. He had deep shadows under his eyes. He had trimmed his beard, and his hair was no longer matted. He looked like a real person now, albeit one who was under severe stress.
“Why didn’t you ask Vail about your suspicions after she was done talking?” Serpell asked.
Kabac’s mouth thinned. “What kind of question is what are you hiding? Besides rude. I mean, they did save our lives.”
“Yes,” Serpell said. “They did.”
And they were doling out information in organized chunks. Serpell leaned against the lip of the sideboard. She had been standing far away from most of the food. Her appetite had not returned, although she did make herself some eggs for breakfast in the tiny private kitchen of her room.
The room was nicer than anything she had ever seen on a ship. The room had a couch/bed combination that she could change as needed. Built into the wall, it had three cushions in its couch form, and one very soft mattress in its bed form. There was the small cooking area, and a counter with a chair so she could eat.
And a wall full of entertainment options, none of which contained news or the ability to contact anyone off ship.
She supposed that was all right. After all, no one on the Aizsargs knew this crew. They hadn’t known who they had picked up.
That was one of the first things Vail had told them: the rescue was following strict protocol and the survivors wouldn’t be allowed shipwide access unless or until the captain of the Aizsargs determined it was necessary.
They were being taken to the nearest base, although Vail did not say whether it was a sector base or a starbase, which Serpell also found to be unusual.
“I’m sure they’ll tell us what they feel we need to know,” she said, sounding more passive than she felt. But Kabac’s paranoia fed her own.
“Exactly,” he said. “‘What they feel we need to know.’ Why are they keeping us in the dark?”
She frowned. There were always Fleet policies that kept crew members in the dark. Officers knew more than regular crew. And then there were missions that no one knew about—or very few. Like theirs.
“Maybe they’re on a top secret mission,” she said.
Kabac leaned his head back, his frown deepening. “Or maybe they can’t find us in the records.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Our mission was probably top secret too.” He scanned the room as if he were looking for someone.
She did too, and saw that Vail had left. Most of the other survivors stayed, though, and were taking food off the sideboards and talking quietly. She wondered if they felt as uncomfortable as she did.
“There’s no one to ask right now,” he said, “but I’ll bet that’s it. Maybe they think we stole the ship.”
“The ship will be in the records,” she said. She knew that for a fact. She’d been researching so much at the behest of Captain Preemas that she knew what was in Fleet records and what wasn’t. “And so would we. But there wouldn’t be any record of this particular mission or it would be blocked from view. If someone on board has the proper clearance, they could see it.”
He nodded, but looked distracted. It was almost as if he hadn’t heard her.
“If no one does,” she said, making sure she sounded reasonable, “then they’re probably contacting someone with the proper clearance.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said and walked away.
Serpell felt a surge of irritation. She greatly disliked that man, and the dislike had not changed since they arrived.
She scanned the room again, and looked to see if there was someone else she wanted to talk with. She saw many familiar faces, but those faces belonged to people who had pressured her at one point or another, demanding that she do something for them as acting captain (which she hadn’t been, not technically) or screaming at her for all of the things that had gone wrong on the ship.
She didn’t want to talk with any of those people.
Exhaustion hit her. She hadn’t been able to sleep much in that new room, and she had been so tired before. She was really tired now.
She wiped a hand over her face, and started out of the room. As she passed the others, she overheard wisps of conversation.
“…never seen a bed quite like the one in my room…”
“…the coffee tastes weird. Doesn’t it taste weird to you? I used my regular settings…”
“…even in the corridor, the design is different. I mean, it curves where it should be straight…”
She had reached the door by the time the words penetrated. Everyone felt dislocated, and not just because they were new to this ship.
The ship was unfamiliar in a non-Fleet kinda way. The details were off. Her heart started to pound, and the exhaustion took a step back.
Once again, she had that sense that she wasn’t on a Fleet vessel, but on a vessel that mimicked the Fleet.
She glanced at the door as she walked through it. Whoever had been speaking had been right: the door didn’t have edges. It seemed vaguely rectangular until she really looked at it. And then she saw the curve in the design.
She hadn’t been on the Fleet’s newest ships. She didn’t know much about their designs. And she had been gone on this journey for nearly a year. A lot could have changed.
But this ship hadn’t been built in the past year. She’d served on new ships, and it took five years for all the flashy-shiny new to wear off. The new had worn off here. This ship looked used. The sideboards had a few scratches—gaps where the nanobits didn’t repair themselves as well as other parts of the surface. Because the sideboards weren’t essential systems, either no one noticed or no one cared enough to fix them.
She didn’t know what this meant. She also didn’t know what she could do about any of it, except worry. And she’d done enough worrying.
She was here, and safe for the moment at least.
Maybe she was wrong.
Maybe Kabac’s paranoia had rubbed off.
Or maybe nothing was as it seemed.
Part Thirty-Six
Aftermath
100 Years Ago
The Renegat
Crowe was going to have to inspect the anacapa drive himself. He didn’t want to. He really wanted someone else to do it, someone with more expertise. But there was no one.
He had to leave engineering, which he really did not want to do. He wanted to stay there and work, but of course, he could not.
He also didn’t want to cross the bloody part of the corridor. It still smelled like burned flesh, and that particular sharp stink caused by fear-sweat. The smell alone made the hackles rise on the back of his neck, not counting the smears of blood and other fluids all over the usually clean floor, and the holes in, and near, the equipment.
The weapons were gone at least, and so were the bodies, finally. The injured were heading to the med bay, and a few of his people—people he couldn’t afford to lose on the engineering side—were taking everyone else to the brig. They’d be ensconced there, until Crowe could figure out what to do with them.
He’d already made certain that only he and Willoughby could authorize anyone being released from the brig. He was still afraid someone would turn on them—heck, he was afraid most of the ship would turn on him.
He carried a laser pistol now, which he had never done on any ship he had worked on throughout his long career. The pistol felt heavy against his hip. He wasn’t even sure he could fire the damn thing.
But he might have to.
He took the elevator to bridge level against his better judgment—considering what was going on, h
e should probably never trap himself in any small environment—but he was in a hurry. The sooner he solved one problem, the faster he could move on to the next.
The elevator opened onto a better-smelling corridor. The air was fresh, which surprised him. He half-expected it to still feel “alive” as Bakhr had deemed it, but the residual effects of that energy seemed to have dissipated.
He was having Vezner in engineering monitor the shields, making sure that the energy didn’t compromise their integrity.
He would put someone else on monitoring those shields as well, as soon as he had someone else.
Crowe rubbed a hand over his face, willing the exhaustion away. He had a lot to do before he could execute any commands—any real commands.
Because he wanted—he needed—to get the Renegat out of here. Given what Bakhr had told him about the sector in which Bakhr had grown up in, and given what Crowe was seeing from the readings, he couldn’t just move the Renegat to another part of this sector. That energy probably permeated the entire region.
What he needed to do was start the long journey back to the Fleet.
The very idea made him wince.
The moment he got back, he would be court-martialed. It was inevitable. From the day the Fleet had decided to forgive him for destroying an entire Scrapheap, the court-martial was only delayed. Some would probably have said that killing the captain was inevitable as well.
Crowe staggered a little as he approached the bridge doors. He felt like a very old man, because his body ached from the stress and the aftereffects of that energy slamming into him for hours.
He also felt like a kid, about to be tested on a subject he had never studied. He had never in his entire life been so completely out of his depth.
The doors to the bridge stood open, which was not standard procedure. He didn’t even remark on that, as he walked through them, because who really gave a damn about standard procedure on this day? Even if standard procedure protected them all.
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