Deviation (6 page)

"Uh-oh," Myron said.

"I gave strict instructions," Celeocia glared out at them from the screen. "And I gave them for a reason."

"The deviation couldn't be helped."

He'd nearly lost the ship and all of his men, her further censure did nothing to improve his mood.

"Never mind that," she waved a dismissive hand. "How much fuel have you got?"

Hedric glanced at the controls, "Seventy-one percent ion, eighty-five percent petrol."

"It might still work," she said, but it looked as though she was speaking to one of her controllers. "I'm sending an updated flight path to you but you're cutting it close. Tell your pilot to quit being fancy and just do as he's told."

Myron grunted, half amused and half offended.

"Adjust your angle by fifty-three degrees," she continued as though she hadn't heard. "And by all that is holy, Hedric, don't deviate again."

The screen went blank and the communication was severed.

"Fifty-three degrees takes us down," Myron frowned at the empty screen.

"Then take us down."

"But we're reaching the threshold. Any further and the pressure could make a nice Lothogy sandwich out of us."

Hedric unbuckled from his seat and shoved himself to his feet. "Keats said the hull was safe under water."

"I said it was
moderately
safe to a depth of two hundred feet," Keats appeared at the top of the ladder. "We aren't equipped for this type of dive, Hedric. Get us to the surface. Now."

"Our orders say down, we go down. The Priestess knows what she's doing." He felt the tilt of the ship and knew Myron had adjusted.

"The priestess has a serious lack of respect for the male gender," Keats glared down from the top of the ladder, his scrawny form half shadowed in the dimness. "And I, for one, am not going to be led to my death by a spiteful woman. Now turn this ship around!"

Hedric leapt up the ladder, forcing Keats to take three steps backward. "I'm still Captain of this vessel and I say we stay the course."

"This is my ship, you arrogant bastard."

"Only in part."

"Then I want my part topside!" Keats shouted around him now, "Myron! You have to stop the ship!"

Hedric glowered at Keats, blocking the man from entering the cockpit with both arms outstretched. "You keep going, Myron," he called over his shoulder.

"You're out of your mind!" Keats focused on him again, his face mottled in anger. "The Lothogy wasn't made for this. We'll be crushed!"

"She'll hold." Hedric said through his teeth.

A hundred and forty-three million pounds of polyethylene-cobalt hull groaned under pressure as though in response to him. The cockpit was silent for a moment. Hedric turned his attention to the ceiling and glared at it, willing it to stay in one piece. He heard Myron mutter something from behind him but he ignored it, bringing his anger back to his mutinous engineer. Keats had been distracted by the sounds of the ship as well, but he seemed to know when Hedric had looked at him. They stood there, unmoving, measuring each other as the ship made its steady descent.

The Lothogy made another growl of disapproval and Keats broke. "Myron! I'm telling you! She won't stand it!"

He'd had enough. Hedric swung hard, his fist connecting with Keats's chin. The man staggered backward, barely catching himself on the metal handrail. Myron needed full concentration to pilot the ship so Hedric followed Keats, bent on subduing the man before the rest of the crew was infected with insubordination. His boots slammed hard onto the meshed walkway connecting the cockpit to the main cargo bay, inches from where Keats was struggling to straighten himself.

"Twelve years," Hedric snarled down at him. "Twelve years I've owned this ship, and she has never once failed me."

Keats got to his feet just in time for the ship to lurch leftward. Hedric caught himself with one arm, straightening to square against Keats again. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had a doubt. It was small but it was there, echoing in Keats's voice. The ship could travel through space. It could negotiate meteor storms with an agility that belied its size. Only once before had they taken her into the ocean and that was barely under the surface.

"Captain," the word was a bite, not a formality. "In the twelve years I've been on this ship I have never seen you so hell-bent to kill us all. You're damned reckless, I know, I've watched you take on the impossible. But you always kept the crew and the ship foremost in your mind."

There was a loud clank just above them and they both looked up. It was small at first, a mere pinprick in size. As they watched, a tear-shaped globule elongated and fell between them, spattering against the grated floor. Water exploded from the inner hull with stinging force, slamming them both to the ground. Hedric smacked into the metal walkway so hard that he felt the checkered grating imprint through his uniform.

Hedric found his feet first, water hammering down on him as he muscled his way to the now broken slat in the ceiling. Covering the hole with both hands, he shoved all his weight against it and grit his teeth. Water rolled down his arm, soaking through his suit so that his peachy skin was visible under the sheer white. Keats appeared at his left with Jellison, who carried a curved sheet of metal several times larger than the hole. It was a joint effort to seal the thing, hampered by the jerk and sway of the Lothogy as Myron continued their course.

"Uh, Captain?" Myron called.

Seeing that Jellison and Keats could finish the repair without him, Hedric went back to the cockpit, leaning over the ledge to see what was wrong. The MEDS screen showed that their course had dove straight inside some abysmal hole, which was getting smaller. Thus far Myron was handling the tighter space with ease, but he could see that would change soon. The more alarming issue, however, were the commands flashing in bright yellow just to the left of the screen.

Launch Antimatter Discs Now
.

"She's psychotic," Myron said.

Antimatter Discs were for wormhole travel in space. The so-called brilliant answer scientists had come up with to combat the wormhole's pesky temper. Wormholes would collapse if any sort of matter was put inside, but the Antimatter Discs had a way of tricking a wormhole into thinking nothing was there. The discs were only moderately safe in space, there was no telling what they would do while surrounded by the pressure of several million tons of water.

Or there was a way to tell, his mother just hadn't parted with that knowledge yet.

"Do it," Hedric ordered.

"Captain ... "

"I said do it."

Myron cursed, again, and flipped through the commands. A breathless moment later the ship jolted forward, throwing Hedric off his feet and back into the corridor. His head connected with the walkway hard, pain sparkling into his vision. A strong arm hauled him to his feet and he registered Jellison's boxy face as the man struggled to return him to the navigator's chair. They both fell into the cockpit, Jellison's substantial weight landing half on top of him.

No sooner had they met the cockpit floor than Jellison was up again, gruffly dragging Hedric up and half-tossing him into the chair. He was mildly disconcerted at having been handled like a rag doll, but threw the thought aside for more pressing matters. The Lothogy rattled under sudden speed and pressure, remarkably similar to when it passed through a wormhole, only the MEDS screen showed very little.

Their momentum came to an abrupt halt, the ship going suddenly slack as the visual came clear on the screen. They had either arrived, or were about to explode. For a moment Hedric wondered which option was preferable, and then Myron let go of a tense breath.

"Petrol is nearly depleted," Myron said. "Ionic fuel at forty-three percent."

All the lights and controls went out at once, silencing the pilot. Hedric held his breath, staring into total blackness, and prayed his mother hadn't misled him. The main motor sputtered, struggling to come back to life. Another low groan pulsed around the hull, and then the power flickered back. He breathed again, looking at Myron as he began to push the ship back toward the surface.

There was no command on the screen to do so, but Hedric didn't object. Something felt off about the view in the MEDS screen; an eerie sort of emptiness that crawled up the base of his neck. His mother's words haunted him in the recesses of his mind; "I don't know how it works, son."

He should have asked her for more detail.

"The world mourns today as Jennifer Cloacina, the last surviving unaltered female passed away. Aged 87, Cloacina lived to watch all but one member of her female relatives succumb to the Mavirus. Malory Rodstem, Cloacina's second cousin, was among the first of the G.A. - Genetically Altered - women. While scientists still cannot identify why Cloacina was never infected, there is a hope that further study of the woman's remains can shed some light on the mystery." - Associated Press August 22, 2198

"We've lost contact."

Celeocia took the revelation with grace, staring at the blank screen and trying to remind herself why she had done this. She had a sinking suspicion that this was not a sacrifice she could handle. Was feminine freedom worth the death of her own son?

It would be a good half hour before they had any sort of communication with the Lothogy, if they had made it through. The last report had been the launching of the antimatter discs, but Myron had hesitated for approximately one minute and twenty seconds. They hadn't deviated again but the pause could have cost them fuel and time.

She'd known there would be complications with this mission, those men were headstrong and arrogant, but this was intolerable. Hedric was reckless and charismatic, but he always got the job done. He would manage this time, too, she told herself. In spite of the fact that she'd withheld important information, Hedric and his crew had a way of improvising. Still, she didn't like the fact that she'd essentially lied to him.

Robot and woman warred with each other as Celeocia continued to gaze at the empty screen. The others in the room were quiet, shifting awkwardly in their chairs. She ignored them as she tried to find a balance in herself. There were days when her very existence seemed a cruel mockery of nature. No one should be required to live as only a half human, female or not. The cold, calculating computer taking up half of her brain was callously efficient. It pushed the odds of every confrontation into her view, pointed out the best and only means of survival regardless of the sacrifices needed.

Just as it had when she'd brought this mission to Hedric.

Recognizing that her emotions were getting the better of her, Celeocia turned and left the control room. She needed to be focused when and if Hedric made it through.

***

"I have orders to shut you down, sir." The soldier's voice came out hollow through his Fomorri suit helmet, but David recognized the rank on the shoulder. This was Finnegan, one of Matthew's elite soldiers.

For a moment David wasn't certain he'd heard the man right. Glancing past the Fomorri soldier, he counted five more Fomorri making a strategic, staggered pattern in his laboratory. Each was in the highly mechanized Fomorri armor, a mesh of polarized Kevlar and metal, jointed and geared to allow the soldiers free movement. The suits were dark green and gray, weapons out to display the gravity of the situation, and David knew by instinct that they would not hesitate to cause violence if he defied them.

"Whose orders?" David stood up from his work bench and struggled between panic and anger.

Had that stupid little imposter managed to leak his experimentation files? He thought they'd caught Mesa in time. Finnegan had even been the one to shoot her down, he knew, but that didn't mean she hadn't found some other way to expose him. If the Community knew what he'd been doing, he'd be banned from the inner council and his credentials would be stripped away.

God, his life would be over.

"Executive orders," Finnegan said. "We're to shut the lab down and escort you back to Earth."

Scowling, David looked down at his work bench. Those were not the orders of the Community and he nearly breathed in relief. He should have known immediately when he'd seen the Fomorri armor. They only "executive" who could command the Fomorri was Matthew Borden himself, David's upstart of a younger brother. Matt had leant the Fomorri to him to subdue the situation with Mesa, but it was quite clear that they were now completely out of David's control.

"Earth," he said and cursed. "And what about my research?"

"Copies have already been transferred. This lab and everything in it will be erased."

"Erased!" David spun to face him. "You can't erase three years of my work!"

His mind reeled to a halt as the first part of Finnegan's statement caught up with him. His brother had copies of his work. And Matt had undoubtedly read it all.

David felt heat seep into his cheeks and for a moment stood dumbfounded in the middle of his own lab. Finnegan leveled the weapon at him, telling him without words that he could and would erase everything in the room, and that included David if he pushed matters. Fear shot through his spine and David swallowed.

"Alright," he said hoarsely.

Finnegan jerked the gun to the left, commanding David to move. He did so, his knees weak and wobbly, and tried to think of some way to convince his brother of the rightness of his cause. But it wasn't really his cause, either, and David couldn't find the passion to lure his little brother into the Makeem. The only reason David had joined the religion was the promise of a future in the Scientific Community. And then, when they'd approached him about this assignment, David had been too curious as to whether or not he could do what they were asking, that it hardly mattered to him where the bulk of his funding came from.

He was led out of the bright, open lab and into the tighter corridors of the Outboard Jupiter station. Everything was clean and white, which made Finnegan's armor stand out all the more. David ignored the horrified glances his staff sent his way. They, too, were in white, blending in with the walls as they passed.