A Choice of Treasons (60 page)

“You still don’t sound confident.”

Abraxa suddenly turned on him violently and shouted, “Well I’m as confident as I need to be, churchman.” With a visible effort he forced an outward calm. “In any case we’re not taking any chances. We’re searching the system carefully to be sure, though I doubt we’ll find anything more than we already have.”

Meekl Donohae thought about a lot of things as she crawled slowly back to consciousness. On Dumark she had been a stat clerk in the embassy—no status in that. But here, she was a pod gunner. Maybe she didn’t have much experience but she was nevertheless a good pod gunner, damn good, with a full chevron cut into her arm as proof of her first two confirmed kills.

That made her think of the old man, and the night he’d sat next to her at
gunner’s blood
. He’d had a whole string of chevrons, must have been a gunner for quite some time. It was good to have a captain who knew what it was like to be a gunner. She hoped he was all right. In a way she felt like she owed her newfound status to him.

Then suddenly it occurred to her that at the moment her
newfound status
just might not be so healthy. She turned her head groggily; found that every muscle hurt.

There was no gravity in her pod, no light either. It was pitch dark, not even the flicker of the telltales on her console, and dead silent. She realized she’d never heard such silence before, and it frightened her.
Don’t panic
, she told herself.

She explored the console by touch, tried to reboot the pod system and got no response. Finally she cut the pod’s master switch, manually switched the pod system to her local emergency power reserve and tried again.

The pod’s operating system only made it about half way through the boot sequence before detecting major problems with its hardware, then the system locked up. She tried four times, got the same response each time, finally went back to the main switch box and tried cutting out each major subsystem before attempting a reboot. It worked, though she’d had to cut out fire control, gravity, exterior scan, and her connect to comp central. But she had information now, and from that she finally understood she might not get out of this alive.

No gravity, enough standby power to run the gauges for a few hours. Enough local oxygen reserves for about a day. So, all she had to do was open the hatch on her pod, crawl down the access tube to the inner hull of the ship, open the hatch there, and climb back into the ship. But her gauges showed there was no air in the access tube. This section of the ship had been hulled—certainly the confines between the inner hull and the shield hull were under vacuum, and apparently the access tube had also taken some damage and it too was under vacuum.

She tried pounding on the hatch for a while. Her efforts sent a faint echo through the ship, but she got no reply so she started to think. That’s what Chief Syda always told her, “Think, girl, think. Use your head. That’s what’ll save yer life.”

So Meekl thought long and hard and finally decided to kill the power to the system and get some sleep. Perhaps, in a few hours she might get a response to her pounding.

It was while she was sitting there in the dark, finding it impossible to sleep, that an idea began to grow in her mind. If the access tube was only damaged, not completely blown, it might hold air for a short period of time, enough for her to crawl to the hatch on the inner hull and get back into the ship. She had enough air to fill the tube and her pod several times over. If the tube would hold air at all, she’d only have to deal with a nasty drop in pressure. She knew she could survive just fine at fairly low pressures, and in any case, if the tube wouldn’t hold air at all, the veteran gunners had told her she could survive vacuum for a short period of time, hopefully enough to close the hatch again and repressurize her pod. What she’d do after that—she’d worry about that if and when the time came.

She programmed her computer to let the pod pressure drop, even if it went all the way to vacuum. If it did, she didn’t want the computer trying to protect her, blowing air into the pod and preventing her from closing the hatch.

Luckily the pod hatch opened outward, so she wouldn’t have to fight the pressure in the pod. She made sure her restraint harness was secure—when she blew the hatch it wouldn’t do to have her sucked out through it—then she overrode the safety interlocks on the hatch, paused for a moment of indecision, and blew the hatch.

It made an awful racket, her ears popped painfully, and at the rapid drop in pressure a dense fog suddenly condensed in the air around her. But the pressure stabilized at a tolerable level, and out in the access tube she heard the whining, screaming sound of a high-pressure leak. The pressure started to drop further, quickly, but not instantly. Good!

She tapped the keys on her console, instructing the computer to start feeding air into the pod.
Critical hazard warning,
the computer said.
Terminal decompression in seventeen minutes and counting.

“Good,” she said aloud to no one, popped the buckles on her restraints and pushed out into the access tube.

No lights, except for the telltale on the hatch on the inner hull. That was good too.

Crawling in the dark she discovered by touch that the tube had buckled about halfway to the inner hull, and there she could feel a strong breeze, and the scream of the air leak was deafening. She crawled past it carefully, got to the inner hatch, checked the gauge there and almost cried aloud when she saw there was air pressure on the other side.

In the background she heard her computer issuing another warning, though the scream of the air leak drowned out the message. She overrode the safety interlocks, palmed the hatch release, and pushed. Nothing!

She realized the problem instantly. The hatch opened away from her, but the pressure on this side of the hatch was about half an atmosphere. She was pushing against a couple of tonnes of pressure. Somehow she had to equalize the pressure on both sides of the hatch.

She crawled quickly back into the pod, instructed the computer to run the pod pressure up as high as it could—with the leak it wouldn’t be able to get far, but it would try.
Critical hazard warning,
the computer said.
Terminal decompression in three minutes and counting.
This had better work, she realized.

She crawled back down the tube to the hatch on the inner hull. The pressure differential was less now, but still not enough. She pushed, strained desperately, cursed at the hatch.

She crawled back up the tube into the pod again, started tearing at the cushion on her seat, pulled it loose—it was made to be detached for maintenance.
Critical hazard warning,
the computer said.
Terminal decompression in one minute and counting.

She crawled back into the tube to the leak, stopped there, and in the dark slid the cushion along the wall of the tube until it suddenly stuck in the hole, and the scream of the leak changed pitch.

Her ears popped, and at the far end of the tube she saw a thin sliver of light as the inner hatch cracked open spontaneously. She moved quickly, knowing once the pod reserves ran out the pressure would drop and the hatch would close again.

The hatch was wide open now, but just as she reached it her ears popped again, and the hatch started to close. She shouted, kicked at it with all her strength, forced it open and spilled out into her station, floating in zero-G toward a console, tumbling wildly head over heals. The hatch on the inner hull slammed shut with a thump as the pressure on the other side dropped. She slammed into the console, caught hold of it and hung onto it for several long seconds to catch her breath.

She spotted a big crease in the plating of the deck; a wrinkle actually. She held onto the console to keep from floating away and traced the crease with her eyes. It ran across the deck, up one bulkhead, back across the deck overhead, then down the other bulkhead. Just before they’d lost power
Cinesstar’s
internal gravity must have given out in that section of the ship. One side of the crease had been subjected to a lot of acceleration, while on the other side
Cinesstar’s
internal fields had compensated the gravity nicely. Even if the effect had lasted for just a moment, she was probably alive only because her pod had compensated the fields around her. She’d heard about unlucky crewmembers who’d—

Her stomach suddenly climbed up into her throat. There was a big mess strapped in a couch at a far console—from where she stood she could make out the chevrons on one sleeve, realized the mess was what remained of Syda. She vomited all over the console in front of her, and in zero-G the contents of her stomach floated about and started sticking to everything.

Poor Syda! She didn’t want to go any closer—but she decided then she was going to make someone pay for this. They’d been double-crossed, betrayed by their own side, and someone was going to pay.

But the first step was to see what was left of
Cinesstar
. There had to be other gunners in her station who were still alive, and maybe she could help rescue them. And then somewhere someone had to be organizing the crew. Somewhere, someone.

York ran down the corridors of the ship, cut through walls and ran out into space. But this time there were no big people running madly about with him, screaming at everyone and everything, tearing at themselves, crying and sobbing, pleading for mercy. He was lost and alone and there was no place to go, and he just knew he was going to spend forever searching for a way home.

“York.”

He jumped at the sound of his name, turned, found one of the big people towering over him. One of her arms was missing at the shoulder, one leg at the hip, a big, ugly gash in the side of her head. She floated in front of him, and he cringed away from her.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s me—Maggie. I won’t hurt you.”

He did recognize her, but he didn’t know from where.

“Come,” she said. “Let’s talk. It’s not as bad as it looks. And I think I can help you. But you can’t be twelve years old anymore.” She held out her hand. “Come with me.”

Alsa Yan snapped awake, peered blindly into the darkness, curled her fingers reassuringly around the grip of the small gun, hugged a girder tightly to keep from floating away in zero gravity. Something had awakened her, probably one of those fucking marines trying to get at him again. She waited, tried not to hold her breath, tried not to make any noise by breathing either. The marines were better at this than her.

There he was—or maybe she—a shadow, moving slowly and carefully across sickbay. Alsa waited in her shadow, waited until the other shadow was within arm’s reach, then reached out carefully with the gun and pressed the muzzle softly against the back of the shadow’s head. “It didn’t work,” she said. “You can’t have him.”

The shadow spoke in a woman’s voice, “We promised him. We gotta keep that promise.”

Alsa didn’t see it coming—a big, meaty hand grabbed her by the back of the neck, and another deflected the gun upward. She squeezed the trigger anyway, the small grav gun kicked and a slug pinged off the deck. She struggled, but there were marines all over her, most of them a lot bigger than her, and a lot better at this kind of thing than her. They didn’t even hurt her.

Someone flicked on the lights—Palevi. “You can’t have him,” she said. “He’s still alive.”

Palevi shook his head. “Is he really alive, or are you just guessing?”

“Statistically the odds are—”

“Fuck statistics,” Palevi growled. “I made him a promise.”

“You bloodthirsty son-of-a-bitch!”

The muscles in Palevi’s jaw tightened. “We ain’t animals, ma’am. We could have taken you a long time ago, but you were a friend of his and we know he wouldn’t want you hurt. So we did it the hard way, without hurting no one.”

“But you’re going to hurt him.”

Palevi flinched, and she realized how hard this was for him. “No, ma’am. I ain’t gonna hurt him. You’ve got him sealed up in one of them tanks, and I promised him I wouldn’t ever let that happen. I’m just going to let him die clean like he wanted.”

“Does he have to die at all?” a new voice interjected. The empress floated into the room and the marines backed away from her, gave her a clear path, probably the only person in the universe to whom they would pay such deference. “If there’s a chance he’s still alive, then he’s the only person who can get us out of this.”

Palevi shook his head. “I ain’t leaving him in the tanks.”

“I’m not suggesting you do.” The empress looked at Alsa. “I’m suggesting the good doctor here bring him out of the tanks, bring him back to us as a healthy and whole leader.”

Alsa shook her head violently. “I can’t. He’s a mess. You don’t realize how bad it is. And with the facilities I have here he might not survive. Regrowth might not take; he’s had so much of it lately. Speed-healing might not work; he’s had a lot of that too.”

The empress nodded calmly. “I understand. But the fact remains that if you don’t, then these marines will most certainly see to it that he dies. And even if they didn’t force your hand, he’s the only man who has any chance of getting us back to a place where you would have the proper facilities.”