He had gone into the storage and disposal section after talking to Daria Willoughby for a few minutes. She had sounded stressed and frightened and apologetic, none of which he expected from her.
He finally asked her to send images of what she was looking for, and she did, so rapidly he was almost afraid the tablet he was using had malfunctioned.
The storage and disposal area was empty, compared to the area he had just left. The gurneys had taken bodies of his colleagues and placed them into storage pods, where someone would deal with them later (or so he supposed).
All of the gurneys had moved into a decontamination area. Once they were through it, they would return to their docks, to await being summoned again.
God, he hoped no one would need to summon them.
After talking with Willoughby, he understood why the engineers were so panicked. He also felt convinced that their diagnosis was plausible.
He had never seen anyone die like Stephanos had, and even though he had guessed at the time that the anacapa had caused the problem, he was willing to entertain other thoughts.
And while he was entertaining them, he was tamping down his worries about his own health.
The tablet that Orlena had given him worked beautifully. He tapped the first command, and the pod holding Stephanos’s body opened. Everything followed after that, one thing on top of the next.
First, the area around Stephanos’s pod was isolated. A small chamber that reminded him of a clear interior shield formed around the pod. He actually had to give the system a verbal command to allow himself into that chamber, and before he entered, the system verified that his protection gear was functioning properly.
Then a table rose out of the floor. The pod floated onto the table. The table conducted the regular autopsy, which involved a computerized examination of her internal organs without opening her up.
Ibori had been congratulating himself on his ability to watch all of this, when the surgical laser appeared, and, without ceremony, sliced open Stephanos’s torso, shirt and all. That hadn’t been as bad as he expected. But when those claw-like things rose out of the sides of the table, and peeled her skin back, and her skin made a crinkling sound like chicken skin did when it was deep fried and he peeled it off the bone himself, he gagged.
He managed to hold back the vomit—which was good, because vomiting in any kind of suit was always a frightening proposition—but he did have to shut down the sound in the suit for several minutes.
He also looked away while the peeling was going on, sneaking an occasional glance at her body to see if the work was actually finished.
When it was (and that seemed to take forever), he leaned forward to look inside her. In his field medicine training, he had had to examine the interior of the human body. It was a simulation, but a realistic one, with smells and touch and temperature thoroughly controlled. While he was trying not to look at Stephanos’s body being torn apart, he forced himself to remember that old experience, so he could make comparisons.
He didn’t have to recall anything to see the difference.
The engineers had been right.
Her body was threaded with pink goo. It looked like lace. If he hadn’t been so startled, he would have thought the pink stuff beautiful.
Instead, he peered at the gloves of his suit, terrified that somehow the pink had made its way over to him.
It took him a lot of concentration to realize he needed to take images of Stephanos’s body and send it to engineering. Then he contacted Orlena.
“The engineers were right,” he said. “Her body is full of something icky.”
She didn’t respond. He figured she couldn’t, so he sent her the images too. And then he asked her what she wanted him to do next.
Get out of there, she sent. Decontaminate again. Put your suit in the burn pile. Suit up again, and wait for further instructions.
She didn’t tell him what to do with Stephanos’s body, so he left it on the table. But before he did, he double-checked the system, making sure it was isolated. Then he had one of those horrid claw things take a sample of the pink stuff. It needed to be tested to see exactly what it was.
As the claw thing dipped into Stephanos’s body, Ibori frowned. He had been so surprised by the pink that he hadn’t seen what else was going on—and he should have. After all, he had just recalled what a normal human’s insides looked like.
Normally, they were packed together—colon here, kidneys there, heart and lungs and ribs, spine, hips, and all kinds of blood vessels and muscle tissue.
Most of that was gone from Stephanos’s body. Anything that had liquid seemed to have leaked and deflated. The bones looked gray and pockmarked. The spine had almost completely vanished.
He sent notification of that to everyone too, and then he bent at the waist, wishing he had a chair so that he could collapse for a moment.
This could be happening inside of him, albeit slower than what happened to Stephanos.
It could be happening to all of them.
They were screwed. They were all going to die horribly.
And he had no idea what to do to stop it.
Part Thirty-Nine
Mysteries of the Renegat
Now
The Aizsargs
The captain ordered her presence. Serpell sat in the tiny meeting room, which was barely bigger than her quarters here on the Aizsargs, and threaded her hands together.
One of the junior officers had placed her here, brought her a specially made green tea that she was slowly falling in love with, and offered her a raspberry pastry. The last thing Serpell wanted was food, even though the pastries here were unexpectedly delicious.
The pastries—the food—it all was better than anything she had had on the Renegat, even the stuff cooked by Danika Newark.
Once the tea arrived and steamed in its thick mug on the table before her, Serpell didn’t want anything to drink. If she was going to sit here for a long time waiting for the captain, she would need the facilities, and, depending on the kind of discussion this was going to be, the facilities might not be in the offing.
She clasped her hands tightly, fingers pressing against the spaces between her knuckles so hard that her bones ached. She didn’t want to be nervous, but she was. She didn’t want to be frightened, but she was.
There was no reason for the captain to talk to her—not when the captain hadn’t spoken to anyone else. The captain was singling her out because—
Serpell shook her head. Even after her stint as leader of the Renegat, she still didn’t understand captaining a ship. She had never thought of herself as captain. But she wasn’t sure if that made a difference now.
The walls in this room were black and shiny. They absorbed the bright lights from overhead. The shine wasn’t from light reflection. It seemed to be from something else—something more like a glistening of the material itself.
The walls almost seemed alive. Or maybe that was her imagination. She was getting tired of being inside rooms with nothing to do but wait. She had always worked, usually on the research or linguistic problems, but then, after she had to run the Renegat, she was busy every moment she was awake.
And now, here, she felt as if she had been dropped into emptiness and forced to sit very very still.
The door opened, and the captain of the Aizsargs walked in. She was taller than Serpell expected. The captain’s shoulders were narrow, her face careworn, as if she had lived hard and long. Her eyes were an odd brownish-gray, and her hair looked like it had been recently and reluctantly combed.
“I’m Captain Dauber,” she said, extending a hand as she leaned across the table.
Serpell had to stand to take Captain Dauber’s hand. Serpell’s cheeks warmed just a little as she realized she should have been standing from the moment Dauber entered the room.
“Let’s sit,” Dauber said, as if she could read Serpell’s mind. “This isn’t the most comfortable room, is it? Unfortunately it’s what we have on this
level, unless we want to use one of the excessively large meeting rooms.”
Serpell nodded, her voice already caught in her throat.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Dauber said, “and we will answer them strategically. Some things have changed since you were away, and it’s best to discuss those changes with all of the survivors.”
Serpell swallowed hard. She nodded again, then felt just a little stupid for doing so. She probably should talk. She probably should have introduced herself, even though that was one of those societally stupid things—making introductions when both parties knew who the other was.
“First though,” Dauber said, seemingly unconcerned that Serpell hadn’t spoken yet, “I need to know a few things. We’ve gleaned from the others that you were the one who brought the ship back to the Fleet…?”
Serpell let out a small sound of surprise before she could even block it. “No,” she said. “I don’t know anything about operating a ship the size of the Renegat.”
Dauber frowned. “That’s not what we heard. We heard that you were in charge.”
Serpell resisted the urge to close her eyes. She didn’t want to be singled out. She didn’t want anyone to pay attention to her again.
“Not exactly,” she said. “I, um, no one was, um….”
Dauber watched her, not saying a word. Serpell would have spoken up if someone else were having this much trouble talking to her. She would have said something soothing like, It’s okay. Take your time.
Dauber did nothing to put Serpell at ease. It was almost as if Dauber wanted her to be uncomfortable.
“I…um…I’m a linguist,” Serpell said.
“That’s in your file,” Dauber said.
“And a control freak,” Serpell said.
That got a half smile from Dauber.
“When everyone was refusing to take on the captain’s role, and it became clear that someone had to make the decisions, I made them.” Serpell was now speaking too fast, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, um, no one else would, and we had to move forward, so I did my best. I had thought that the ship would just get us home, but it wasn’t that easy.”
“It never is,” Dauber said.
Was that sympathy? Serpell couldn’t tell.
“Only a handful of people listened to me anyway and only when we got into trouble. I…um…am not cut out to lead anyone. That was clear. I just did some things because no one else would.”
Then Serpell bit her lower lip, and shook her head. Kabac would probably contradict her on that, so she had to address it.
“I mean,” she added, “the one or two people who really really really wanted the job were the ones who shouldn’t have it.”
Dauber’s face changed ever so slightly, as if she felt like Serpell had revealed something important.
And maybe she had. Because if she went too far down this road, she’d have to discuss India, and India was the last topic she ever wanted to broach with anyone.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Serpell said, trying to sound as friendly as possible and not sound desperate. “You’ve met Yusef Kabac.”
“You’re the first person I’ve talked with,” Dauber said. Her voice was flat, almost like an automated voice.
Serpell’s heart rate increased. Of course she was. Because that was just her luck. And Dauber, apparently, saw her as someone in charge.
“Well, then, you’ll see what I mean,” Serpell said. “Yusef was the only person left on the ship who had been on the bridge crew, but he was fired long before we even got to the Scrapheap. I let him handle the anacapa drive because he was the only one who knew where the controls were, and you saw how that ended up.”
Dauber’s eyes narrowed slightly. Serpell replayed what she had said, heard I let him and winced. Here she was, denying that she had had anything to do with running the ship in one breath and then in another, saying she had let him do something.
“Well,” Dauber said after a moment. “You’re the only one who even approximates leadership on the Renegat, and so I need to talk with you first. I need to know what happened on your mission. I’m not even sure what it was.”
Serpell swallowed. She had thought about this meeting every day since she had arrived on the Aizsargs. And it scared her.
It wasn’t that she was unprepared. She had discussed this with the bridge crew ever since they started the trip back from the Scrapheap. Eventually, they had a meeting with the entire crew—after the debacle near that weird planet Amnthra. Everyone knew what to say.
But, faced with it all now, it felt inadequate, as if it was clear that every word she spoke was a lie.
“You need a high security clearance to know what the mission is,” Serpell said.
“I have a high clearance,” Dauber said.
“I’d rather you talk with Vice Admiral Gāo,” Serpell said. She had never spoken with Vice Admiral Gāo. In fact, she had only heard Vice Admiral Gāo’s name raised a few times before Serpell left on this mission, as in Vice Admiral Gāo chose all of the crew personally, and Vice Admiral Gāo believes in this mission.
Serpell saw more about Vice Admiral Gāo in Preemas’s records, enough to know that Vice Admiral Gāo had chosen a group of failures on purpose and that Vice Admiral Gāo hadn’t believed in the mission at all.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Dauber said. “You’ll need to tell me what the mission was, exactly.”
Serpell shook her head. The entire group had decided not to talk about the mission, not that they understood all of it. She did now, after seeing Preemas’s records, but still, she wanted to hold fast, just like everyone else would.
“It’s not for me to say.” Serpell swallowed hard. “I’m sure that the Fleet knows. You can contact someone there. But it’s my understanding that this is too high up to talk about.”
Dauber’s expression didn’t change, yet Serpell could feel a change in the room. Frustration, maybe? Anger?
“What happened to the captain?” Dauber asked.
There it was. The question that Serpell had been waiting for.
She tugged on her lower lip with her teeth, even though she had promised herself she wouldn’t fidget or have nervous gestures at all.
“Captain Preemas was…unorthodox,” she said. “And a whole lot of the senior crew didn’t like him. They fought against him, and then they literally fought against him, shutting down engineering and taking over the ship. There was a big battle just outside of engineering. Captain Preemas died. So did a lot of others.”
Dauber’s face remained impassive. Serpell realized, in that moment, that Dauber already had an idea about how Preemas had died. Or else Dauber had an incredible ability to control her expressions.
“Where were you during all of this?” Dauber asked.
“Below decks where a bunch of us were researching at the beginning of it,” Serpell said. “And then I went to look for my wife.”
Those last two words came out soft, because as she spoke them, she remembered she hadn’t wanted to say anything about India.
“Where was your wife?” Dauber asked.
“Fighting with Captain Preemas,” Serpell said. “At his side.”
Her heart was pounding so hard that she was convinced its drumbeat was visible through her shirt.
“But you weren’t there,” Dauber said.
“She was on his security team,” Serpell said a little too quickly. “I was still just a linguist, although all I was doing at that point was researching.”
“So you weren’t in the fighting,” Dauber said. It didn’t sound like a question.
“No,” Serpell said.
“What happened to the rebels?” Dauber asked.
Serpell had half a dozen answers to that question. That was the one everyone had discussed, worrying it. Trying to figure out how to answer it properly.
She finally defaulted to the answer that the group had decided on. They figured it would work because it was the truth.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Dauber nodded, then sighed. She looked away, and seemed about to say something, but then appeared to think the better of it.
She turned her head back toward Serpell, but it took another minute for Dauber to meet her gaze.
“How did the Renegat get so badly damaged?” Dauber asked.
“We tried to get more supplies on our way back, but the planet we approached attacked us from the moment we got into its space. We barely got out of there.”
That was all true. She was shaking.
“The records cut off just before that battle,” Dauber said, her voice even. “Why?”
The question sent a bolt of adrenalin through her. Dauber had checked the Renegat’s records? How? How had she gotten those? The Renegat was gone, along with all of its information.
Or so Serpell had thought.
If the Fleet had all the records, then everything changed.
She thought the survivors of the Renegat were completely in the clear.
She was wrong.
The Aizsargs
Dauber made herself sit rigidly in her seat, working as hard as she knew how to make certain she revealed nothing as she spoke to Serpell. The small room helped. It had very few distractions. Just the table, four chairs (two of which were against the wall), and a door that she had changed from clear to solid from the bridge before the meeting.
Dauber could concentrate on Serpell, and, quite frankly, she didn’t like what she saw.
Serpell looked terrified. She was an unremarkable looking woman, with big brown eyes on light brown skin that might’ve been lovely once, but was now a wan grayish color.
Dauber had remarkably little sympathy for her, and Dauber should have had a lot. Because, even though Serpell said she hadn’t led the ship, the logs said otherwise. Serpell had taken command when no one else wanted it, and somehow she had gotten the ship across a long distance and 100 years, almost by herself.
The Renegat Page 72