Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (21 page)

"Barre, no. I need to stay awake. What if Ro needs my help?"

"What we need is a real scanner, a full sick bay, and a cold suit. What we have is me and the sedative I'm going to force into you if you don't open your mouth."

"You're just like her, you know. It's why you two always fight."

"Shut up and stick out your tongue." When Jem had swallowed the tablet, Barre dragged over a med kit to Ro. "Your turn. Jem did a decent job with what he had, but this will be better."

"How long will he be out?"

"His brain needs to rest," Barre said, shrugging. "If he's lucky, it's only a concussion."

A chill walked up and down Ro's spine. "And if he's not?"

He held her gaze with his dark, intense eyes. "Can you get us back?"

Ro glanced back at Jem and Micah and then up at the unfamiliar star field. She swallowed the reassuring lie she knew he wanted, the answer even she wanted to believe and found, instead, the uncomfortable truth. "I don't know."

Nodding, he turned his steady hands to her broken ankle. Gone was the kid who would rather disappear in his own head than talk to you. Now, he had his mother's confidence and some of her arrogance, too.

He was gentle, at least, as he unwrapped Jem's temporary splint. Free from its constraint, her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse, each beat bringing a fresh wave of pain. Ro winced. The bottom third of her lower leg was mottled purple and swollen. "Without a scanner, I can't tell you anything specific about the break." He ran his hands up and down her leg. Ro bit her lip to keep from crying out. "I don't think it's displaced, but it's definitely broken."

"I already figured that part out, Doc."

He frowned at her. "Don't call me that."

"Can you stabilize it? Enough so I can walk?"

"It's better if you don't."

"Not one of the choices we have."

"You're risking permanent damage." Barre shrugged. "But it's your choice. The cast tape has time-release anesthetic woven in to the fabric. It's meant to keep soldiers going after battlefield injuries. Should work for your ankle."

"Good." The sooner she could get moving, the sooner she could troubleshoot the AI without the pain distracting her. The sooner she could figure out just what Barre could do that she couldn't.

"You think? Not if you want the bone to knit."

"Not at the top of my priority list. Just wrap me up."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

"Don't call me that," Ro whispered, as he unrolled the bandage and shook it in the air to activate it. If he heard her, he didn't react. The wrap went on her leg cool. She gasped and stiffened as Barre coiled it around her ankle in repeated figures of eight, but within moments, a warm numbness spread upward. Her tense muscles relaxed as the pain retreated.

"You need to give the cast wrap a few minutes to harden completely. Then you should be able to bear weight."

"Excellent."

"Pain is not your enemy, Ro. If you don't feel it, you're likely to add to the damage. And as far as the fracture is concerned, too much stress will just delay true healing."

All true and all irrelevant if she couldn't get them home. "I appreciate your concern."

"But you're going to do what you want anyway."

So they understood one another. "Pretty much."

"Jem's asleep. Now what?" Micah set the water container aside and stood up.

Ro exhaled as her ankle faded from her awareness. "The essentials. Food. Water. Assess the ship's systems so we know what we have to work with."

"And how does finding out where we are and calling for help fit in?" Barre asked.

"This is my version of triage. Can you leave Jem?"

He glanced over at his brother and chewed his lower lip before turning back and nodding.

"Good. I need you to find our other drone. It's somewhere on the ship and having both will make life easier. Micah — go figure out if we have working heads and water reclamation." If not, they would have to set up a field latrine.

"And you?" Micah asked.

"Me?" Ro pulled herself upright and set her foot down carefully before letting her weight settle. As Barre promised, there was no pain, only a distant sense of pressure and a kind of spongy emptiness that just felt wrong. "I'm going to see how much I can link to without waking our homicidal AI." She stared at Barre until he looked away. "And when you get back with that drone, you and I are having a talk, music-boy."

Micah and Barre left without another word and Ro wondered how long that would last. She hobbled over to the little utility robot in the far corner of the bridge and put it up on a console. At least this was something she knew she could fix. Its primitive programming capabilities meant it had serious limitations in autonomy, but it also meant very little could go wrong. She paired her micro with it and quickly turned off discoverability. Unfortunately, that meant she couldn't just use it to find its companion, but that was a small price to pay against the possibility of it pinging the ship's AI.

But maybe she could use the drones in another way. Back on Daedalus, they formed a network that functioned as the arms and legs of the station's AI. Each individual drone only had a small broadcasting signal, but linked, they were able to cover the whole station. She only had two. But she also had four micros and maybe, just maybe a way to get them all to play nicely with the ship's communications array. At least long enough to get a fix on the nearest ansible and send out a distress call.

Barre wasn't sure what he expected when he handed Ro the drone, but her disinterested grunt as she set it aside wasn't it
. Her long hair shading her face, she barely looked up from tapping on her micro with one hand and tweaking something on the first drone with her other. He watched her coordinate her two hands in different rhythms for a few minutes. She'd have made a hell of a drummer.

The door slid open and Micah stepped onto the bridge, mimicking his father's confident stride. This was the most time Barre had spent with him since he showed up on Daedalus. He wondered how else Micah was like the infamous senator.

"We have functioning heads. As far as the reclamation, it should work." Micah shrugged. "But these types of systems were notoriously inefficient, and the ship is close to forty years old."

Ro didn't respond, didn't even move when Micah walked up to her.

"So, what other busy work do you have for us?" he asked, his voice light, but his gaze locked on her with a laser's focus.

She glanced up at the two of them as if surprised to see them there. "You." She pointed at Barre. "Don't go anywhere."

He glanced down at his sleeping brother. "Yeah. No problem." Jem's color still wasn't great, but at least there was no fresh blood on the bandages. That had to be a good sign.

Ro reached for the second drone.

"Care to let us mere mortals know what you're doing?" Micah asked.

She blinked up at him, not seeming to register the sarcasm. "I need your micros. All of them. Even Jem's."

All Barre's music lived on the small device. Everything he'd collected across planets and systems and cultures and all the pieces he'd composed. "Why?"

Slapping the cover back on the second drone she sighed. "Setting up an ad hoc."

"Um, what?"

Ro pushed the hair back from her face. At this point, Jem would have been rolling his eyes.

"I'm using all the transmitting power in the drones and the micros to link up directly with the ship's comm array. With a strong enough signal, we can trigger the antenna's repeater function."

"That's assuming someone's listening for us," Barre said. A pang of unfamiliar guilt hit him. Their parents would be insane with worry and they would probably blame him. He curled his hands into fists.

She fixed him with a steely look. "A ship abandoned for forty years breaks free of a space station with four kids on board. You don't think they'll be listening for us?"

"And what if the wrong people hear us?" Micah asked, his gaze fixed on Ro.

"What choice do we have?" she answered.

Barre glanced from Ro to Micah, frowning. What were they talking about?

Micah handed over his micro and Jem's. Barre dragged his out of a deep pocket. Ro had no idea what she was asking. Barre gripped the small machine tightly. She held out her hand.

"Fine," he said. "Do you need me to unlock it?"

She blinked up at him. "Oh, sure, that'd be easier."

Easier than what?
He drew his pass-code across the screen and toggled it open. "Will it work?" he asked, finally passing it to her.

"It should."

"Like the AI was supposed to work?" Micah said.

Ro winced. "Doing my best, here."

"Fine. If we're going to do this thing, is there anything I can do to help?"

"No. But he can." Again Ro pointed at Barre.

"I'm thinking you want the other Durbin kid." Jem still slept, but fitfully, his eyes shifting rapidly beneath his thin lids, as if he knew they were talking about him.

"You're the one who can sing to the ship, right?"

"Not quite," Barre said.

"You accessed the computer and it didn't freak out. Before I send out this pulse, I need you to do it again." Her green eyes didn't blink as she stared up at him. "Whatever I did triggered the ship's defenses. I don't know about you, but I like air and I like breathing it. If your music can keep the AI happy, we might just live through this."

"You've got to be kidding," Micah said.

Barre drew his eyebrows together. "No, it makes a kind of strange sense. You said the SIREN code was broken. It's like the AI has brain damage. And neuroscientists have known for a long time that alternative inputs can help organize motor outputs in brain diseases. Before the diaspora, on Earth they used to use music to get patients with Parkinson's moving."

The two of them stared at him and Barre fought the urge to turn away.

"Parents. Doctors. Remember?" After a burst of excitement, anger and resentment burned through him. Why were they so surprised? "I may not be a genius like Jem, but I'm not an idiot."

Ro hobbled over to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. "Hey, I never said that."

He shook her off. "You didn't have to."

She looked away.

"Sorry, I —" Micah started.

"Don't sweat it," Barre said. It wasn't like he didn't get the same shit from everyone, once they met his parents and his brother. He gathered his loose dreads in a tail and tied two of the outer lengths around them. "What do you need me to do?"

"I'm going to trigger a multi-band, multi-directional pulse. Then we're going to listen for an answer. Even with you distracting the computer, it's a risk." She looked back at Jem. "But it's the only option we have. It's not like someone is going to just stumble across us out here."

If they were somewhere off the main jump paths, that would never happen. "I vote yes."

Micah snorted. "Not sure Ro cares what we think, but for what it's worth, I'm with you."

"Just so you know," Barre said. "I'm not even sure how I connected before. All I wanted was to turn down the lights."

"Well, you're going to have to do a little more than that," Ro said. "What other kind of commands can you send through your neural?"

"Pretty much anything you can do with the heads-up, I guess." Her attention and focus made him squirm. "It's just simpler for me to think in music, so I started by programming a bunch of macros using rhythms and notes instead of gestures or words. It scaled up from there."

She was staring at him, open mouthed. "When we get back to Daedalus, I want you to show me, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever." It didn't seem that radical to him and he doubted she would be able to use it, not unless she had perfect pitch and rhythm. "I guess I could just send a ton of commands, all at once."

"Then we risk flooding the AI. No telling what it would do." Ro pursed her lips and dragged her hands through her hair. It fell in smooth waves around her face. "Wait. If I give you a program, can you translate and transmit it?"

Barre scratched at the stubble of his beard. "What kind of program?"

"Something that would occupy the computer without sending it into threat mode." Ro tapped on her micro in a staccato beat. "Let me see what I have already written."

"Sensor calibration," Micah said. "It's routine enough and uses up lots of processor cycles."

"That should work." Ro tapped some more before holding up her micro for Barre to see. "If you can parse these commands in music-speak, or whatever it is you do, the computer should let me sneak out my comm pulse."

Barre scanned the code. He might not be any sort of programming savant like his brother, but he knew the basics. This seemed pretty standard.

"Here." Ro handed him his micro. "I'll just need it back before we execute."

He shook his head. "This is what I do. It's all in here," he said, tapping his forehead.

Ro raised her eyebrows. "Okay."

Unspoken was the skepticism. No surprise there and he didn't bother explaining. It was easier to just show them. Accessing his neural, he set its small internal memory to record and started translating Ro's code into a melody.

It was a strange music, full of wandering notes and short, choppy lines. But it was meant for one listener only and as far as Barre knew, AIs weren't programmed for art appreciation. He captured the "song" and turned off the recording before focusing back on the bridge where Ro and Micah stood watching him. "Ready."

"That's it? Don't you need to error check it or something?" Micah said.

"No."

"Good," Ro said. "I'm ready, too. On my mark." She set her micro down, completing a lopsided circle on the floor with the other three and the two drones. Crouching down, she let her hand just hover over her micro. "Three."

Barre set the music to trigger with a nod.

"Two."

He lifted his chin and held his breath. The timing had to be perfect.

"One."

Ro locked her gaze on his face.

"Go!"

Barre dropped his chin and let the odd song flood through his neural, broadcasting out toward the ship. Ro's hand swiped across her screen and she sat back, waiting.