Prodigal (21 page)

“Looking good,” Farina said, turning to the communications officer. “Make sure the hard telemetry feed gets piped down to sickbay in real time. Masir might need the information if he has to fine-tune the quarantine.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

“Engineering, what’s the story on C-Deck?”

The engineering watch officer checked his own panel, punching up a deck schematic and overlaying the status of all environmental controls. “Positive seal on sections two through eleven,” he reported, augmenting the corridor that led through there. “Section chiefs confirm evacuation of that area, and all hands are accounted for. We’re go on zero-pressure drop as soon as you give the order, Captain.”

“Very well. Stand by.”

Nathan Straka slipped next to Farina, intently listening in on the banter that echoed across the bridge. He fixed his gaze on the viewer, a wicked stab of familiarity stirring his gut. On the large screen, he watched as three more figures emerged from the Mons cavern, their blurred forms matted against the craggy, triangular opening. It appeared even more foreboding than Nathan remembered it.

Kellean’s voice piped in again. “You getting this, base?”

“Roger that,” Farina replied. “Careful down there.”

The recovery team carted out one metal coffin after another, advancing like a funeral procession, the reduced gravity rendering their march in slow motion. Like everyone else on the bridge, Nathan couldn’t help his morbid fascination. Contained in those cryotubes were the remains of another time—relics of a monstrous past. Something like that could never be buried, even in the depths of Olympus Mons.

Something like that always finds a way out.

The recovery team carefully loaded each cryotube into the cargo bay of a Protus HX-1100C “Guppy,” a medium-class lift vehicle parked on the ledge outside the cavern. Over the landing zone, a bank of landing lights cast a harsh glare that glinted off the brushed-transluminum coffins. More disturbing, however, was the pallid glow that emanated from the head of each tube—a tiny window that looked in on the occupant. Kellean zoomed in on one of them, wanting to get a clear shot of the face within, but she was the only one who tried.

Kellean hopped over toward the landing ramp, focusing on the last tube as the team slipped it through the Guppy’s cargo hatch. The other five were already secured, lashed down to the deck and arranged neatly side by side. One of the crewmen inspected the tubes with a portable scanner, checking for leaks or any other damage that might have occurred during extraction. He finished quickly, and flashed Kellean a thumbs-up.

“That’s six by my count, base,” she signaled. “Locked, stocked, and ready for transport.”

“Acknowledged,” Farina replied. “Nice work down there, all of you. Time to close up shop and get yourselves back home. I’m sure you’ve had enough EVA for one day.”

“Will do, Skipper. See you back on top.”

“We’ll be ready,” the captain said, and closed the channel.

The main viewer disengaged the surface transmission and dissolved to forward visual, the bright red crescent of Mars carving an arc along the side of the screen. Soon after, the bridge crew resumed their stations. They traded a few anxious glances, but none talked openly about what they had just seen—not in front of the captain. Neither did Nathan, who maintained his pensive watch at Farina’s side.

The captain, meanwhile, stood up from her chair, exuding the same confidence that she always did. She studied the starfield on the viewer with a spacer’s practiced eye, retreating into her own thoughts for a moment before returning her attention to Nathan.

“Walk with me, Commander,” she said.

Farina turned command over to the senior watch officer, then headed for the exit with Nathan in tow. He closed the hatch behind them as they left, maintaining a discreet distance while they walked the long, narrow corridor into the heart of the ship. Their steps clinked loudly against the grated deck, augmenting the silence between them.

“I’ve never known us to be at a loss for words, Nathan,” Farina said. “If anything, we’ve had just the opposite problem.”

“That usually gets us in trouble.”

“Since when were you afraid of a little trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan admitted, releasing a sigh. This was really the first time they had spoken since the incident in the wardroom, and he was surprised that Farina made such an easy overture. “Maybe I’ve been off the juice too long. When you’re jacking, you get used to taking chances. Out here, things are a little different. You worry a lot more.”

She smiled and shook her head knowingly.

“What?” Nathan asked.

“Nothing.” Farina chuckled. “You just sound like I did after I got my first command.” She lowered her voice, as if to intimate some terrible secret. “You might not believe this, but there was a time when I was one cocky bitch. Broke a lot of rules, just to see how much I could get away with. Then they promoted me, and suddenly I understood—there was a
reason
every pencil-neck officer I ever pissed off was such a pain in the ass.”

“Part of the job?”

“It
is
the job. It’s how things get done—and it’s the only way you can get your crew home in one piece.” The two of them stopped outside a stairwell that led down to C-Deck, and Farina looked up at him in earnest. “Congratulations, Nathan. You’re starting to think like a captain.”

Nathan could see that she meant it—not as a superior officer, but as a friend.

“I had a good teacher,” he said.

She frowned. “You’re not getting all sentimental on me, are you?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

“Good. Then you’ll tell me what I need to hear, not what you think I
want
to hear.”

Farina grabbed the handrails and lowered herself into the stairwell, sliding down the entire way until she connected with the deck below. Nathan followed as quickly as he could, catching up with her as she reached the access hatch for section three, just outside sickbay. A few tool pushers from engineering inspected the seals, making sure that the bulkheads wouldn’t rupture when that section went to vacuum. They saluted the captain, who motioned for them to remain at ease.

“Don’t mind me, fellas,” Farina told them, going over the preparations for herself. “Skipper’s gotta look like she’s useful.” She grabbed a wrench from one of the crewmen and banged against a polyalloy weld put in place to fortify one of the older seams. It sounded off with a loud, solid clang. “The old girl still has a few milliparsecs left in her, doesn’t she?”

The pushers grunted in agreement. One of them gestured toward the access hatch and the thick layer of carbon glass they had just mated to the porthole. “Figured you might want to watch,” he said, his face and coveralls smeared with welding soot. “We reinforced all the windows and got you a clear view of sickbay.”

“Outstanding,” Farina said, handing the wrench back and sending them on their way. As they left they muttered among themselves, mostly trading oaths about the dirty work and last-minute notice—but their expressions, Nathan saw, mimicked those of the bridge crew a few minutes before: expectation coupled with worry, as if everyone knew the same thing but was afraid to talk about it. Not one of them let it slip in the captain’s direction, though. They saved it for Nathan, who could only offer a reassuring nod.

“They respect you,” Farina said, observing the silent exchange. “That’s good.”

Then she turned away, peering through the thick glass at the empty corridor beyond. Soon it would be purged of air, reduced to vacuum to prevent the spread of any unknown organism while the cryotubes were transported to sickbay. Once there, Gregory Masir—who was waiting inside, dressed in an airtight biohazard suit—would lock the tubes up in an isolation chamber, from which he could remotely observe his new “patients.” Nathan had designed all the safety protocols personally, for all the good it did. The crew, by all appearances, didn’t seem to feel any safer.

As if reading his mind, Farina asked the one question he didn’t want to hear.

“How’s morale with all of this?”

Nathan cleared his throat, trying to find a tactful way of saying it.

“They’re nervous, like you’d expect,” he admitted. “But they’re handling it.”

“You think I could have broken the news to them better.”

“It might have been easier if you had made the general announcement before the Guppy launched,” he admitted. “Keeping it a secret until the last second makes them think they’re being kept out of the loop.”

“They would be right.”

“And that’s a problem. Everybody’s already stressed out because we haven’t commenced salvage ops. Now comes this mysterious rescue operation. Put the two together, what you got is a rumor mill—people talking, trying to fill in the gaps.”

“We’re just following procedure,” Farina said, unconcerned. “As long as we do this right, they won’t have any reason to worry.”

“And how long do you think that will last?”

“As long as it takes.”

Nathan fought the temptation to sound off again. His instincts still told him that everything about this was just
wrong,
that they should just bag their salvage and head back home, damning the consequences. But his loyalty to Farina was strong, and shunted his initial urge aside. Instead, he leaned in closer and hoped she would sense his urgency for herself.

“We don’t have to do this, Lauren,” he pleaded quietly. “The recovery team can still dump those bodies overboard. I can alter the ship’s logs. Nobody at the Directorate has to know.”

“We’re past that, Commander.”

Nathan stepped back. “What do you mean?”

“I informed the Directorate of our situation,” Farina explained, her tone flat—and committed. “They agreed it was essential we recover all human specimens, whether or not they are viable, and return them to Earth for processing and further study.”

“When was
this
?”

“Shortly after your discovery on the surface.”

Nathan flashed back on the captain’s briefing, her lecture on security—and how she depended on everyone’s input to determine what she would do next. Based on what she just said, he now knew that none of that had ever mattered.

“You’re saying we’ve been under
orders
this whole time? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“They told me not to,” Farina said. “And just so you understand, I’m probably violating that order right now by telling
you.
”

Nathan glared at her. “I don’t get it,” he breathed. “Why did you even bother to ask? Were you going through the motions, or just giving yourself cover?”

“You know me better than that,” she fired back. “I’ve got one priority, and that’s the safety of this ship and crew. If I thought for one second that this wouldn’t work, I’d relieve myself of command and let you take over. I needed you to tell me what was feasible—and right now, that’s
exactly
what we’re doing.”

Nathan believed in her, but felt uneasy now that the Directorate was involved. There was something about headquarters staff that he had never trusted. Maybe it was because half of them had never even been to space, or knew what it was like to serve aboard a cramped, creaky vessel for months on end. People like that made their decisions based on politics—and
that
meant you could never be sure of their motives.

A shrill alert pierced the confined space, its intensity magnified by the steel walls and low ceiling. Overhead lights dimmed to a swirling yellow, the ship’s automated warning system signaling an imminent section breach.

“All hands, all hands,” a voice cut in from above. “We are now go for atmospheric purge in sections two through eleven. This is not a drill. Duty personnel in affected areas should now be operating in protective suits on internal oxygen. Section chiefs, please acknowledge.”

Farina held Nathan’s stare for an instant longer, then slid over to a nearby intercom panel. She punched the number for the bridge, where the officer of the watch answered.

“Bridge, Captain,” she said. “What’s our status?”

“Everybody’s ready, Skipper.”

“Very well. You may proceed.”

“Aye, sir.”

She clicked the intercom off and returned to the window. From behind her, Nathan could see the few crewmen who remained moving through sickbay, their forms exaggerated by the thickness of the glass and the bulkiness of their orange biohazard suits. Masir caught them watching and threw a mock salute their way. Farina returned the gesture, almost sadly.

“They’re good people,” she said, more softly than before. “They’ll do their jobs.”

There was a sudden pounding on the other side of the bulkhead, which made them both wince. The hiss of escaping oxygen followed, a slow drain that jabbed Nathan with a fleeting panic. It was a spacer’s worst nightmare, the noise of a ship bleeding to death. He had to remind himself that this was nothing more than a controlled vent, confined to a small area.

“I know they will,” Nathan said, “but do any of us know what that job really is?”

Farina didn’t turn around—but he could see her reflection in the window, broadcasting the very doubts he had.