Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (17 page)

"What do you mean?" Jem's pulse raced, his head throbbing with every heartbeat. "You didn't do this? Where the hell are we? Oh my God, Barre." He could hear the high-pitched panic coloring his voice.

"Jem!" Ro's shout hit him like a slap across the face. "If you want to help your brother, get me on my feet. We're still moving and I have no idea where the ship is taking us. "

He looked up at the display and swallowed hard. "How is that even possible?" he asked.

"Not sure that matters right now."

Keeping his head as still as possible, he went rummaging through the scrap piles for two slim uprights. "I only want to move you once."

Ro nodded.

"I dropped some blankets in the corridor. I need them for your splint. Okay?"

She nodded again. "Do what you need to."

Jem had to fight the urge to tell her not to go away. He couldn't move too quickly either. The tingling in his right arm remained, but at least he could use that hand. He steadied himself against the wall, leaving the bridge and the impossible star field on the forward display. They were flying. The hair prickled on the back of his neck.

This was crazy. He looked down the corridor toward the main airlock and where the station had been. Where it should be. "Barre?" he called, his voice swallowed up by the empty ship. Part of him wanted to leave Ro and find his brother, but his parents' training in triage took over: Treat the most serious injury in front of you first.

Barre would have to fend for himself, at least a bit longer. Jem snatched up the dropped blanket and limped back to the bridge.

***

The acceleration flattened Barre against the bunk, gasping for air. The padding compressed into a thin sheet of wrinkles that carved deep creases in his back. He struggled to get up, struggled to take more than a shallow sip of breath. The pressure was worse than the weight against his chest. What the hell had Jem done? Was he even aboard the ship?

The thought of being abandoned on a ghost ship sent shivers through him, distracting him from the pain. Someone had to be flying this thing. If not Jem then who? Time seemed to stretch thin as the ship kept hurtling on. What if it just kept accelerating? The human body could only survive a finite number of gravities. He couldn't help imagining himself flattened to the metal bunk to the point of organ collapse.

The terrible weight lifted so abruptly, Barre tumbled to the floor. Cursing, he limped over to the door. Staying hidden now made no sense. The whole station would have felt the impact of the ship taking off. No doubt, Mendez had already sent out chase boats. Who knew this old tub could even fly? This must have been what Jem had been working on with Ro.

At least no one would believe Barre had anything to do with it. Not fuck-up Barre with his just-adequate brain. Maybe Jem had done him a favor after all. Who would worry about some bittergreen when his brother had just stolen a fucking spaceship?

Out in the corridor, Barre squinted against the flashing red emergency lights and paused to orient himself. The bridge should be somewhere to the left, in the fore of the ship. That's where he would probably find Jem.

He struggled to keep his imagination in check as he walked through the too-empty ship. A low groaning echoed against the hard metallic surfaces. Barre froze, his pulse pounding. He peered down the poorly lit corridor but there was nothing to see but the wash of red shadows.

"Jem?"

A weak cough answered him.

"Shit." Barre sprinted down the long, narrow space, nearly stumbling on the body before he could stop. It wasn't Jem. He let his breath out in a long exhale. "Hey, are you all right?" he asked.

"Fuck, no," a hoarse male voice answered.

"Micah?" Barre reached out to his shoulder and looked down into the pain-lined face of Micah Rotherwood. "What are you doing here?"

He tried to laugh, but it turned into another cough. "Parts inventory. What do you think?" Micah wiggled his hands and feet and patted himself down. "Yup, all there. Help me up."

"You sure?" He didn't see any obvious signs of serious injury, but he could have internal bleeding or a concussion.

"No. But I'm not going to lie here all day."

Barre stood and offered Micah a hand up.

Micah glared at him. "What the hell did your brother do?"

He wasn't sure he liked the tone of Micah's accusation, even though it was what he had just been wondering. "That's what I was on my way to find out." His micro buzzed and Barre jumped, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling.

"Going to answer that?" Micah asked, leaning against the corridor, smirking.

Barre tapped the micro through his pocket. Jem's voice poured through.

"Barre, Barre, are you all right?" Even through the small speaker, Barre could hear the panic in his brother's voice. He caught Micah's eye and shrugged.

"Where are you? What the fuck just happened?" Barre fired back.

"Thank the cosmos. I don't know what I would have done if. If —" Jem trailed off.

"Jem, pull yourself together. What did you do?"

"Barre, I swear … I didn't … I was just helping … coding an interface. You have to believe me!"

"It's not your brother's fault," a soft voice interrupted. "I don't know exactly what happened, but it'll be better if you see it for yourself. Come to the bridge. Ro out."

"She sounds like crap," Micah said.

Barre thought she sounded more like Mendez or his mother taking charge, throwing orders around. "Let's go see how badly we're screwed."

"I'd say pretty well screwed." Micah took a few steps toward the fore section and stopped, wincing. "Don't walk too fast, okay?"

That suited Barre just fine. The two of them leaned against the bulkhead walls and used the grab rails for support. They paused at the main airlock to peer out the viewport. A remnant of flexible tubing trailed after them like a tentacle. It must have ripped clean away from the station. "What a mess," Barre muttered.

"At least the airlock was closed at both ends."

They would have had a short, messy trip otherwise.

At the bridge door, Micah paused. "After you. I insist."

Barre didn't know Micah all that well and wasn't sure how to take his sarcastic tone. He tapped the door panel, and decided to ignore him. The door opened onto a disaster area. All the control surfaces had been destroyed, turned into puddles of melted polymers and sculptures of twisted metal. Jem crouched on the floor at the far side of the room next to Ro.

"How the hell did you get this scrap heap to fly? And what were you thinking?" Barre winced at hearing the ghost of his parents' voices in his own. Jem frowned and looked away.

"Help me up," Ro said, glancing at Barre.

"Who elected you in charge?"

Jem struggled to stand between Barre and Ro, his hands clutching the twisted console. "Help her up or I will. Her ankle's broken. I just splinted it."

"Shit, Jem, your head." What Barre had thought dirt, was a patch of dried blood that covered most of his forehead and the right side of his face.

"I can't put any weight on my leg. I don't want Jem to hurt himself any further. That leaves you," Ro said, spitting each word out slowly. She pointed to the console opposite her. "I need to get to my micro so I can figure out what happened to the ship."

"What happened to the ship is that it blasted off Daedalus." Micah limped onto the bridge. "Congratulations, Ro, your father will be so proud of you."

Ro's face blanched white and then flushed bright red. Her hands clawed at the base of the console as she dragged herself upright, her jaw muscles bunching with the effort.

Barre looked back and forth between them, their obvious anger the only thing he understood. He glanced over at Jem, but his brother glared at Micah and wouldn't meet his gaze. "Well, now that we're all one big happy family, would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

"Ro?" Nomi whispered even though she knew she was alone in the communications room.
Silence answered her. She bit her lower lip and tried running the program again. Unless Ro were actively ignoring her or her micro was destroyed, she should get some kind of response. The outgoing query just kept returning an out-of-range message. It made no sense.

Nothing made a whole lot of sense. She shifted her display from the ansible network to the external viewer, following a team of repair personnel in EVA suits as they swarmed over the antenna array. Frowning, Nomi studied the topography of the asteroid trying to figure out why it looked wrong to her.

It took her several minutes to process what her eyes were telling her and even then, she wasn't sure. Manipulating the display, she looked past the array and to where the station bit into the rocky surface of the asteroid. Beyond, she could see taller outcrops of rock. Between the station and those rocks, the spot where the clunker ship should have been was scoured clean as if by a burn-blast.

Her throat constricted. "Ro, what have you done?" The message on her micro flashed 'Out of range. Out of range'. That was no seismic event or large asteroid impact. The ship had gone, taking Ro with it. Nomi's hands shook as she flicked her screen back to the ansible network and its twinkling display that reminded her so much of space. Ro was somewhere out there, in the true cosmos, hurtling through a field of stars.

If the bumblebee survived its violent takeoff.

Cold washed through her body and she shut her eyes, muttering a prayer she hadn't said since childhood, in a language she didn't understand, to a deity no one in her family had worshiped for several generations. The alert tone nearly knocked Nomi from her seat.

"Attention, Daedalus Station." Commander Mendez's voice blared through the communications room. She could hear the echo of the station-wide announcement from the corridor. "Alert is canceled. Lock-down is lifted. We are secured." She paused while the echoes died away. "I repeat we are secured. Intra-station communications are on priority override, urgent only. Updates will be broadcast every quarter hour. Senior staff to conference room one. "

Ro was on that ship. Nomi knew it. Her hand hovered over the comm channel to command. How could she tell Mendez what she knew and how she knew it? She balled her hand into a fist. But if she kept her silence, precious time would be lost trying to account for all the station's personnel. What if Ro were hurt or in danger?

She opened her hand and punched the emergency channel.

"Mendez here."

"Commander Mendez, this is Konomi Nakamura, communications. I have some information that may be critical to the situation." At least her voice stayed steady and professional, even if her stomach did back-flips.

A moment of silence seemed to stretch an eternity.

"I'm sending your relief. As soon as he arrives, join the senior staff briefing in Conference One."

"Yes, Commander," Nomi said, swallowing the lump in her throat. She didn't wait long.

The laconic man who had tried to flirt with her the other day took over the balance of her shift with barely a word beyond what was needed for turn-over. Emergencies had a way of doing that, even here, in the back end of nowhere. She signed out her terminal, leaving him to silent duty monitoring an ansible network they couldn't currently reach.

Even in the middle of third shift, she had never seen the station so deserted. Two armed security personnel stood at attention monitoring access to command. She recognized both of them, but couldn't recall their names.

The woman on the right blocked Nomi's way. "Ident chip."

She frowned as she handed the guard her ID for more than the cursory scan she expected.

"Konomi Nakamura, you may proceed."

"Thank you." Nomi shivered at the strange formality. Would the guard have taken out her weapon if Nomi hadn't stopped?

"Come with me."

The guard escorted her into the conference room, gave a crisp salute to Mendez, and spun on her heel to return to her post. When had Daedalus become an active military base?

"Ensign Nakamura, report."

Nomi shivered at the unexpected harshness and at the use of her rank. Nominally, anyone placed through the Commonwealth of Planets belonged to the reserve force, but there hadn't been any active fighting since the war forty years ago and the commissions were just a formality.

She stood at attention about halfway down the long side of the large rectangular conference table, studying the assembly of senior staff, gathering her thoughts. Most of the hyper-alert station personnel sat upright around the table, most probably woken from their rest cycles and looking bleary-eyed and a little shell-shocked. Nomi's gaze was drawn to a formally dressed, distinguished looking blond man leaning back a little too casually in his chair.

What was Senator Rotherwood doing here?

"Ensign?"

Nomi cleared her throat. "Commander, I believe Rosalen Maldonado was aboard that ship when it broke free of Daedalus Station."

Rotherwood stirred, his bloodshot eyes suddenly laser focused on her. Mendez leaned forward, but otherwise gave no sign that this was or wasn't news. Nomi swallowed, deciding to ignore the senator for now.

"She informed me that she was tracking down some unusual power fluctuations coming from the derelict. I have been unable to raise her on comms, sir."

Mendez raised an eyebrow. "Was this before or after I ordered emergency communications only?"

Nomi forced herself to stand still. "Before, sir. We were speaking during my break." It wasn't exactly the full truth, but close enough for Mendez, she hoped.

"Daedalus — priority override. Locate Maldonado, Rosalen."

"Habitation Ring 21/Beta." Nomi jerked toward the speaker at the sound of Ro's impossible voice.

"Open a channel to the Maldonado residence."

The bland mechanized voice of the AI answered crisply. "Channel open."

"Maldonado, report!"

Silence rang in the room.

"Contact Maldonado, Alain."

A loud clang followed by a string of curses filled the room. "Whoever the hell you are, your problem isn't any more important than anyone else's. Get in line."