Crescent (8 page)

“Thank you,” Ina said and looked up at him, blinking her wide, clear eyes twice. She gave him a tentative smile, closer to the shyness he had witnessed at Heathen’s and again in the hangar.

Gerald didn’t reply, but only returned the grin. Ina had been far more adept between the sheets than he would’ve expected. It’s always the quiet ones.

“Don’t tell my father.”

“Not a word.” Gerald slipped from her slender arms and pulled on his pants. He smiled, trying to make his face appear as safe as possible. He placed a hand on her bare thigh. “Really, I’m not such a bad guy.”
Just weak willed,
he mused and thought of Marisa. He pushed the guilt down before it could sneak up on him.

“I’m counting on it,” she said, strangely.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He removed his hand.

“I don’t know. That’s not what I meant to come out.” She looked away. “I’m not…
 
I never…Sorry.”

“It’s okay.
About that day in the cafeteria…
 
” Gerald said. “I wanted to ask you about it in Heathen’s, but…
 
”

“What day in the cafeteria?” She looked confused.

“You seemed very upset about something?
Gave me a stern talking-to.”

“I don’t ever remember being in the cafeteria,” she said, and sounded perfectly sincere. Gerald nodded and shrugged.

“Maybe I dreamed it. Look, I’ll be on the bridge. Come out when you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

“And that’s enough of that. No more apologizing or thanking—
don’t
make me lock you in here.”

Her lips quirked in a ghost of a grin and he left her there to get dressed.

(•••)

The mystery ships were gone by the time Gerald returned to the bridge. He sat in the control couch and watched the empty camera feed for several seconds, tapping his chin as he contemplated the next move. He waved away the camera overlay, replacing it with the radar. The field was clear, which meant nothing, Gerald knew. It could fill with a dozen red blips at any second. He reinitialized the ship systems one by one and Bean began to hum to life around him.

“Bean,” Gerald said.

“Take us to the coordinates?” the computer replied.

“You got it.”

Ina returned to the bridge as the engines fired. The change in inertia caused her to stumble. Gerald grabbed her by the waist and she placed her hands on his. He settled her into the couch beside him. He didn’t look at her. It was time to focus now. It didn’t matter if Bean was in control of the ship or not.

(•••)

The
comm
crackled.

“Captain,” Bean’s voice sounded tinny in the small helmet speakers. “The lifeboat’s reactor core is still hot.” Gerald stopped his descent and gripped the hauling tether with more force. Starlight glittered on the tiny, interlocking plates of the cable. It looked like the hide of some chrome-scaled, interstellar snake.

“You’re kidding me,” Gerald said.

“Older model ships relied on heavy fusion cores for propulsion. The lifeboat’s core would still be hot three hundred years from now. You are going to have to jettison it.”

“At the risk of sounding repetitive here—you’re kidding me.”

Bean was right, of course. When they dislodged the vessel from the crater wall, the lifeboat would be under more stress than it had been in hundreds of years. The stress just might be enough to agitate the reactor and blow the whole ship into pieces, taking Bean, Gerald, and Ina along with it.

Gerald ran his hand over the edge of one of the lifeboat’s tail fins. Dust came away in a milky cloud that hung suspended in the cold starlight. He looked to the gaping opening in the lifeboat’s side. The metal was twisted and sharp. He hoped that…
 

“You’ll have to go in through the opening in the starboard side of the lifeboat.”

“I can manually pop one of the belly hatches,” Gerald said.

“Captain.
I’m sure the mechanisms that allow for manual hatch release are sealed from exposure to hundreds of years of space dust.”

“I could tear my suit if I go through that hole.” Gerald let go of the tether and fired one of the suit’s small air jets, propelling himself to the lifeboat’s hull. He landed silently and the magnets in his boots automatically adjusted to simulate 9.8 gravities. Measured steps carried him along the curving hull to the underside of the vessel, his booted feet kicking up small, cream-colored clouds of dust with each silent step. The helmet lamp grew brighter as it adapted to the darkness. Gerald crouched and began wiping the hull-plates clean until he found one belly hatch. After several attempts at turning the manual release, Gerald realized that trying to open the thing by hand was futile. For a moment, he considered letting a drone try to open it, but in the end he knew it would only be a waste of time. The hatch was sealed. He grumbled as he returned to the starboard side of the lifeboat, looking up to Bean’s bulbous body when he halted. Ina was watching him through the viewport, and he waved. He felt like an idiot for doing so. She waved back.

“Captain.
Bear in mind, I am not making you go through with this. Neither is our guest.”

The
comm
crackled and it was Ina speaking now.

“Why don’t you send a drone to release the core?” she asked.

“We’re wasting time talking. The drone would be just as likely to blow us all to bits—if not more so. I’m going in.”

Gerald walked to the edge of the wound in the lifeboat’s side. He wiped away some of the dust with the pad of his thumb, exposing more silvery material. There was no sign of charring. An explosion within the shuttle hadn’t made the opening. Gerald could not begin to imagine what had.

“Bean.
What are the
rad
levels like in there? Am I already frying?”

“I would have informed you if radiation levels were not within tolerable limits.”

“All right, then. Here we go.”

Gerald released the magnetic hold of his boots. Firing the suit’s jets for an instant lifted him off of the hull by several meters. He guided the suit above the opening and then began his descent, drifting into the lifeboat at an excruciatingly slow rate. The metal tatters that had once been hull plates were as jagged as they were sharp—they looked serrated. Gerald heaved a dramatic sigh of relief when he cleared the opening.

“I’m in.”

Gerald continued to settle toward the port wall of the compartment he had entered. All he could see was the lifeboat’s deck in front of him and darkness to either side. The deck was riddled with debris. Everything was covered in a creamy concoction of frost and dust. He startled when his feet contacted with solid paneling and bit his bottom lip to keep from yelping. Re-activating the magnets in his boots, he walked down the port wall to the floor. His helmet lamp cut a shaft through the consummate darkness—he had entered at the hibernation chamber. The floor was lined with rows of long, slender sarcophagi. He couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not. Their interiors were dark; ice crystals obscured the glass surfaces of the tubes.

The way he had entered was a path of destruction. A single row hibernation tubes had been busted apart. The damage seemed to culminate with the gaping hole. Gerald began to feel a rising tingle of fear, starting first at his balls and then clawing for his chest. His breath came hard and his head darted from side to side.

“Captain, your respiration rate is increasing rapidly. You will hyperventilate if you don’t control your breathing.”

He heard Bean’s voice but he didn’t comprehend it. He took several staggering steps backwards and got tripped up—it almost felt like something had grabbed his ankle. His boots detached from the deck and he drifted to the port wall. His heart pounded in his ears. He couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t breathe.

“Gerald. Calm down. You’re okay in there,” Ina’s voice came across the
comm
channel.

I’m freaking the fuck out
, Gerald thought.
Far from goddamned okay.
He forced himself to take a deep breath.

“Gerald?” Ina’s voice came again.

Another deep breath.
Gerald looked for what had tripped him. There was nothing but empty floor.
I tripped on my own foot,
he thought.

“I’m okay,” he said at last. He could hear Ina exhaling on the other end of the comm. She didn’t say anything. “Where do I have to go, Bean?”

“There is a bulkhead at the aft of the hibernation cabin. Go through it and you’ll be in a corridor. Follow that corridor one hundred meters. There is a portal in the floor with a ladder that will lead to the engineering
deck. Descend that ladder. I’ll instruct you from there.”

The corridor seemed to go on for a featureless eternity. The narrow, arched passage had not seen light since the shuttle had crashed, Gerald was sure of it. He half expected to see albino, cave dwelling spiders skitter from his path. He was glad that he did not. He desperately missed the patch of stars that had been visible in the hibernation chamber. With each step into the dead interior of the lifeboat, he felt the panic try to resurface. He bit it back as best he could and focused on moving one foot in front of the other. Just ahead, he could see the portal to the next deck; a ladder emerged from a black hole in the floor and disappeared into an opening in the ceiling panels.
A few more meters
, he thought. A few more meters and he’d have to go into that hole. Further away from the starlight. Further away from Bean. If the lifeboat harbored any more mysteries, they’d been down there, in the dark. They’d be the kind of mysteries with glowing eyes, dripping fangs, and an appetite for salvage boat pilots.

Gerald expected to hear his boots clank on the rungs of the ladder as he made his descent. All he could hear was the air handler within his suit. Beyond the helmet’s thin face plate was the silence of vacuum. The lack of sound was more unnerving than ever.

“Where to now, Bean?”
Gerald fought to keep his voice even. He had been on too many derelicts to count, some even older than the lifeboat, but this ship felt different. There was a sense of being in the wrong place that nagged at him with every soundless step.

“There is a panel in the lower aft wall. Remove it by depressing a small release in each of the four corners. Crawl an additional fifty meters and you will come to a small ovoid chamber. This sits directly above the reactor core. You’ll find the release in this chamber.”

Gerald removed the panel and it floated over his shoulder to bounce silently against the ceiling panels. He got onto his knees and peered into the service tunnel. It was far from spacious. Wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-ceiling, it was no bigger than a coffin.

“Ina, your father’s rates have just gone up.
A lot.”

Gerald got onto his belly and used his elbows to drag himself forward. The going was slow. He kept his eyes down, only glancing up occasionally. There were dark smudges on the flooring and on the walls, the color of engine oil. He came to an oculus hatch that was frozen three-quarters open. It was just wide enough that Gerald thought he’d be able to get through, but when he tried, his shoulders got stuck. He started to jerk frantically, filling his lungs in preparation to scream bloody murder, but he managed to wriggle free. He exhaled and continued on.

His head lamp beat back the darkness as he finally floated into the ovoid chamber. Walls curved into ceiling which curved into wall and back into ceiling again in an unending geometry. Gerald bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut.

No. No. No. I’m not seeing this
, he thought, not just in denial, but in blatant refusal of the signals his optic nerve transmitted to his brain.
No.

“Gerald?” It was Ina’s voice. “Your respiration is spiking again.”

“I’ve found the passengers,” he whispered.

Bodies filled the center of the room, piled in a tangled heap. Thin, sinewy arms and legs were twisted together in inhuman contortions. Mouths gaped; peeled-back lips exposed teeth that returned the light of Gerald’s head lamp in gleaming death-smiles. What the hell were the crew and passengers doing in here? He looked to the ceiling. There were more bodies up there, spread-eagled and just as black and as space-mummified as the others.
What the hell happened on this ship?
Gerald engaged the boots’ magnets and came in contact with the curved deck. A few hesitant steps brought him to the cadavers. Some of the passengers had been naked when they died. Their members were shriveled like the curl of a spent match. The passengers’ ragged flesh told of old wounds. Most, if not all, of the bodies had severe lacerations covering their torsos. In some instances, their bellies were torn wide open revealing dark, empty cavities.

“Bean.
Where is this goddamn release? I need to get out of here now.” He wasn’t even sure why he was bothering. The lifeboat should be left where they found it.

“It is in the center of the room. There will be a protruding handle. Pull and turn it one-hundred and eighty degrees.”