Greenshift (20 page)

She accessed the sensors for the air
filtration system, which was hooked directly into the condensers.

All she had to do was crank up
the oxygen, then override the vacuum sensor, allowing the vents to unseal. They
were made for keeping the CO2 levels balanced. She calculated in her head what
percentage would make this system go critical. It wasn’t a uniform amount. It
all depended upon the size of the space, what kind and how many plants and
trees were contained within the bay, and how strong the CO2 scrubbers were.

The easiest and fastest way to emergency
ventilate
on-planet
was by opening the vents to the outside. It was
never supposed to happen in space due to the catastrophic consequences, but the
sensors were ridiculously easy to override.

With the vacuum of empty, endless
space on the other side of that wall, one little broken seal was all she needed—that
would be enough to start the venting process and draw all attention to the
hydroponics bay. Of course, she needed to get out of the bay first before the
compartment barricade came crashing down to keep the rest of the ship safe from
this damaged section. She also needed to do all of this without running into anyone.

She worked frantically on the
vent override, opting to do it manually by disrupting the vacuum signal instead
of wasting time with codes. Sean was the code master—Mari only knew the physical
components from the design. The previous botanist cheated Dale by skipping
redundancy measures and using cheap parts.

Though the vent controls were one
of the most important features of any hydroponics bay, it was the one which
failed most often, due to lack of attention to detail. Designers, techs, and
laborers who worked cheap and fast were usually to blame for greenshift
failures.

When she finally wiggled the
vacuum sensor out of its nest of wires, she expected to be compensated with
alarms and flashing emergency lights, but nothing changed. The oxygen hadn’t
reached critical levels yet. Good. She needed the extra time to get out.

A metal panel slid up on the
entry door back to her left, revealing a window looking out into the commonway.
Mari scampered behind a series of staked cacao plants.

She could make out Carlos’
blood-streaked scalp just outside. His head was bent down as he, no doubt,
worked to rewire her lockout. He must have triggered the window shade by
accident. She needed to figure out how to evade Carlos once he made it through
that door. Hopefully he hadn’t seen her yet.

She watched an O2 meter. By her
calculations, once it hit 30%, it would open and begin to vent. Right now it
lingered at 25.5%. She adjusted one of the CO2 scrubbers.

25.75%. 26%. It climbed faster
now. 26.5%. Maybe too fast.

She crawled back into the rows of
herbs so she could have a clear shot for the door as soon as Carlos popped
inside. If he couldn’t get the door open, she’d have to open it from this side
and try to charge past him, otherwise she’d start to feel the effects of
hypoxia and hyperventilate. Then she’d die. Right before she got sucked out
into space. Or at least she hoped it would be in that order.

She she felt a little
light-headed. A bleating alarm made her whole body jump. The oxygen had just
gone critical. She had to get out…now.

They were so close, and that’s
what made waiting unbearable.

David stared into space,
following the faint light of a craft passing tens of thousands of miles away
from them and heading into the atmosphere of Tampa Deux. He was even further
away from Mari at this point and the thought burned into his brain. David felt powerless.

He had never been good at relinquishing
power without a fight, and that wasn’t always a good thing. They’d tried to
beat it out of him in the fleet with the lash, but that only worked to make him
shrewder in the way he vied to keep control, not just of his emotions, but of
the state of affairs. With forty-five years of experience as a soldier and most
of those as an officer, he had learned how to finesse control, giving a little
when he could, taking it forcefully when necessary, like when Lyra had mutinied
on the
Argo Protector
.

“This isn’t personal,
Captain Anlow.”

That was the comment which had
made him snap. It summed up how Lyra viewed their entire relationship—cold, impersonal,
lost among titles and positions. It had also been the fuel he needed to
physically wrestle control away from her, ending her mutiny with a swift
reversal of a cender. Then he left her and her cohorts on a salt plain in an
underpopulated area of Tampa One to wait for the prison ship.

She’d accused him of abandoning
them to die, but mutineers were never allowed to stay on-ship just in case they
had allies still willing to take up the cause. David had followed protocol to
the letter because he only wanted to see Lyra suffer. Part of him regretted it
now, but what was done was done.

At least he had been able to act.
This
situation was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sitting in a
nav chair on a defunct pleasure cruiser while the woman he cared about suffered
any number of horrors was almost enough to put him over the edge. That had been
apparent in the incident with Ward.

“We should catch up to them
in about ninety minutes,” Sean said.

“Ninety minutes is a long
time,” David said.

Sean didn’t say anything.

The mood plummeted further into
its own somberness.

Soli spoke up. “Mari’s
tougher than either of you believe. Don’t let the clothes and verbosity fool
you. She’s got a good brain and more determination than anyone I’ve ever met.
So don’t make this sound like it’s the end.” Soli’s voice broke.

“You’re right,” Sean
said. “If this were Kenon we were trying to rescue, they’d have already
given him back because of all the whining.”

David looked at Sean. “Would
we have really tried to rescue Kenon?”

Before Sean could offer a
comment, the transmitter beeped with an incoming message from Ben.

“Go ahead,” David said.

“If they stay on this
same trajectory.”
Ben paused as if to emphasize that was a big if
.”
We have it narrowed down to a dozen or so public docks that handle a ship that
size. Should they use a ship-to-land transport, that dozen multiplies tenfold.”

“Can you intercept them
before they break atmosphere?” David already knew the answer, but needed
to ask.

“Not without due cause.
And, unfortunately—”

“I got it,” David said,
knowing his word or Sean’s or even Soli’s wasn’t enough in the face of evidence
that Dale and Mari had never met this morning.

“Sorry, bro. I’ll be in
touch as they get closer to their destination.”

David wanted to reassure Ben, but
that sounded too much like giving up, and Soli’s little speech from earlier had
managed to inspire a faint amount of hope. David would guard that hope for
Mari.

Carlos rushed into the
hydroponics bay and stood in the entry, disoriented by the deafening alarm. He
scanned the area. Mari kept her head down, but circled around and peeked through
the leaves of a cacao tree. She tensed her muscles, ready to bolt for the open
door. Carlos honed in on his target and charged.

Mari ran for the door as Carlos
headed in the opposite direction for the open panel on the condenser housing.
She hit the emergency lock from the inside on her way out so it would seal behind
her. When she saw the butchered controls on the outside, she realized that
Carlos wouldn’t be able to unseal the door again.

The alarm screamed through the
commonway. Mari chanced a look back through the window. Carlos snapped off a
length of pipe from the nutrient feeder and smashed it against the window
repeatedly, barely scratching its high tension plastic surface.

His face showed signs of bloating
and splotchiness as hypoxia set in, but that would be the least of his worries
soon. A crash wall came snapping down in front of the door just as Carlos’ body
flew back toward the vents. She couldn’t hear him over the alarms, but she
imagined him screaming as the vacuum of space sucked him inside out trying to
void the small vent holes.

She nearly vomited at the thought.

Feet pounding toward her shoved
Carlos’ horrific death to the back of her mind. She could consider what she’d
done later. Right now she needed to get to the bridge.

She followed the pipes from
earlier around the corner opposite the approaching crew and felt the increasing
heat from oven exhaust. Thumbing open the first door she came to, she expected
to enter the kitchen. Only the scant emergency lighting showed her this was the
mess hall. She ignored the piles of dishes and silverware and focused on the
two things she could use, both mounted to the corrugated metal wall. The portable
fire extinguisher came out of its bracket easily enough, but she had to use it
to free the map outlining fire exits and escape pod routes from its plastic
frame.

According to the layout, the
Thrall
‘s
bridge was on this level, and at the very end of this commonway. It was a long
stretch with nowhere to hide, but there was nowhere else to go anyway. She stuffed
the map into her bra, held the extinguisher to her chest, peeked out the door,
and ran.

Footfalls and murmurs reached her
ears from a juncture with another commonway up ahead. She readied the fire extinguisher
to use as a weapon and approached the juncture with cautious steps. The
rattling of silverware slapping onto the mess hall floor behind her stopped her
in her tracks. She jammed her back against the wall. With her attention pulled
in two directions, she suddenly felt paralyzed. Her heart raced and her palms
started to sweat. Realizing she was slipping into a panic, she forced herself off
the wall and sprinted past the juncture.

When no hands reached out to snag
her off her feet, she felt a bit triumphant and kept moving down the long
commonway. The overhead lights strobed with her pace, emphasizing the coldness
of the ship within the constant play of sallow light and its infinite shadows.
By the time she reached the bridge door, she was working on automatic.

“Get this right,” she
whispered to herself.

She slid her thumb over the door
sensor. If the nav leader inside didn’t respond, she’d have to hot-wire this
lock, too. That could eat up time she didn’t have to spare. She was about to
put the fire extinguisher on the floor when the door slid open. Her surprise
matched the nav leader’s as they looked at one another through the entryway.
Then she pounced, beaning the man over the head with the extinguisher.

Mari pulled the unconscious pilot
into the commonway and scampered over him and onto the bridge, locking him out and
destroying the controls to keep anyone who might be following her at bay. Though
the
Thrall 7
was huge compared to the
Bard
, the bridge was
practically the same size. The floor wasn’t the rich black torbernite that
bedecked the pleasure cruiser, however, just more of the same charcoal colored rubber.
And there was no crash couch, only several wall units for about five members of
the crew to use if it came down to it.

Since she planned to take over
this ship, it
would
come down to it, but she’d be the only one in here. Two
nav chairs waited in front of a wrap-around viewscreen that put the
Bard
‘s
small cockpit window to shame. She chose one of the chairs and called up an orb
of holo-controls before she had even finished strapping in. The fraying fabric
of the chair stank of sweat and body odor, not like the clean scent of the
Bard
‘s
plush leather and the leftover hint of David’s green tea smell.

As soon as she put communications
online, she punched in a code to transmit to the
Bard
. A message
scrawled through a section of the holo-controls telling her that video
messaging was unavailable. She didn’t have time to fix that little bug right
now.

“This is
Thrall 7
calling
Bard
.” Though she didn’t feel calm, she forced a slow
clarity into her voice. “David, Sean, please someone tell me you’re
listening.”

Another transmission signal cut
through the silence on the bridge. David opened the comm link, hoping Ben had
narrowed down their variables.

“This is
Thrall 7
calling
Bard
. David, Sean, please—”

David jammed open the comm before
Mari finished her sentence. “Mari, it’s David. Are you okay? I can’t get
any vid—”

She talked over him.
“David.
I’m so happy to hear your voice. Dale is trying to sell me.”
Her voice
sounded like she held back tears.

“Mari, are you okay?” David
tried to interject, but the words rushed out of her mouth so fast he could
barely understand them.

“Some guy on Sinder Isle
wants to cut my eyes out. So I destroyed the camera and got out of that
horrible room. Carlos is dead, but not because of the battery. I couldn’t help it.
He destroyed the lock controls. I didn’t know, David. I swear I didn’t
know.”

Soli gasped, and David’s heart
pounded as he ignored the fear in Mari’s voice so he could piece together her
situation.

“Mari.” He spoke calmly,
as though they were sitting across from one another at dinner, like that night
at the Rose of Sharon.

As she kept talking about
becoming lost in the commonways, he tried again. “Mari.”

She quieted.

“Are you alone on the bridge
right now?” he asked.

“Yes. I knocked out the
nav leader.”

“Did you lock yourself
in?” Sean asked.

“Yes.”

“Good,” David said.
“Now why are there alarms going off in the background?”