Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (30 page)

"Ro?" Barre said, his low voice cutting through the tension. "I don't understand."

"You should have gone with your brother," Maldonado said.

"No. We all leave together or we all stay together."

A lifetime of painful lessons made Ro an expert at reading even the subtlest of her father's signs. His body betrayed his fury in dozens of small ways, from the tight-lipped smile to the ripple of muscle across his shoulders, to the slight cock of his head as he examined Barre as if he were just another engineering problem to solve.

"I think you should wait at the airlock, son. I really do."

Barre's hands clenched and unclenched. "You have no jurisdiction over me. I'm a civilian and I'm sure as hell not your son." He kept his gaze locked on Maldonado's and stepped forward.

"Barre, don't!" Ro warned.

He glowered at her father, unable to see the hard-calloused hand reaching casually towards his holstered weapon. But Ro couldn't look away. A coldness gnawed its way into her gut. He couldn't shoot Barre. He'd never get away with it. Targill wouldn't let him. But Targill wasn't here and if she didn't do something, Barre would be dead and dragging on her conscience like a storm drogue.

Ro stared at her father's arm as if the weight of her fear could stop its relentless movement. Then her feet moved and she steered herself between the gun and Barre, never lifting her gaze from its deadly metallic shine.

"Out of the way." His gun arm lifted. She raised her head to stare him in the eyes. He swept the gun across the small space that separated the two of them. Ro heard the crunch of the metal against her shoulder before she crumpled, flung across the room by the power in his muscular arm. A sharp cry rang out, her own, familiar voice echoing in pain.

Barre screamed out her name.

The smallest sound caught at her fading consciousness — a whisper of air that she knew was important, even if she couldn't think of why. She heard her name again, but this time in Micah's voice. An energy bolt crackled through the bridge. The sizzle of burning hair and flesh assaulted her sinuses. And then she remembered that soft sound and what it signified: the whoosh of the bridge doors opening and closing again.

A giant's hand pressed down on her battered shoulder, wrenching another scream from her sore throat. The floor growled beneath her. Everything went black.

***

In the darkness, the burn seemed to go on and on. Barre's arm lay twisted beneath him at an awkward angle and he wished it would just go ahead and break already. If he still had two functioning arms when the crazy ship stopped again, he was going to strangle Maldonado. If anything had happened to Micah or Ro, he'd kill him, broken arm or no.

He couldn't even draw a full enough breath to shout for either of them. Halcyone was pulling at least three or four gees. It wasn't a huge hardship when you were in an acceleration couch or even lying flat on a beaten down old cushion. But Halcyone hadn't waited for them. She just bolted again and doused every source of light on the bridge in the process.

At least Jem was safe.

Barre could have been safe. But if he'd gone with his brother, he would have been heading back to Daedalus and mandatory rehab.

He triggered his neural and opened up a link to Halcyone. A burst of chaotic, discordant sound reverberated through him. His stomach roiled. Bile flooded his mouth and leaked through his clenched teeth. Pain roared across the connection in raw arpeggios he was powerless to silence.

The pounding in his head and the screaming in his shoulder became part of the song, amplified by the AI's panic until Barre couldn't separate his fear from her fear. He could feel his body's pointless struggle against the gee forces, but it seemed a distant thing.

He breathed out a silent prayer.
Please. Please. Please.
His neural blazed, burning like a distant star in a corner of his mind as the music kept pouring through.
Please. Please. Please.
The rhythm of his cries added a soft counterpoint to Halcyone's furious song. The AI paused to listen, a nanosecond of blessed silence that Barre sank into, his body trembling.
Please. I can't. It's too much.

A single note echoed in the emptiness. Barre took a shaky breath. When the high bell-like sound died away, another overlapped it. Again and again the note pealed through his mind. A cry or warning, he didn't know which. The pressure against his body eased just enough so he could roll away from where his arm had gotten pinned beneath him.

He sent a silent thank you to the AI. Its brooding quiet filled his mind.

The ship continued to accelerate. He lay panting on the floor of the bridge, his cheek pressed against the floor. The sour reek of his own bile nearly made him retch again.

Stop. You've got to stop.
He sent a few tentative notes, wincing in anticipation. The same notes whistled back at him, matching his volume and intensity. The pressure against his chest softened. The growling engines slowed to a high pitched whine. Barre groaned as the blood flowed back into his arm, the sting of pins and needles traveling the length from shoulder to hand.

A sharp cry came from the far side of the bridge followed by a dull thump. "Ro? Are you all right?"

The bridge door hissed open and closed. Barre blinked furiously against the darkness. "Damn it, I can't see!"

Red emergency lights cast muddy shadows across the consoles. He pulled himself up to standing and scanned the room. There was no sign of Maldonado or Micah. He swallowed hard against a lump in his throat. "Ro, where are you?"

A groan came from someplace behind him. He scrambled over to the sound, cursing as he banged his shin on the base of the command chair. Ro lay crumpled on the ground, unmoving, her cheek dripping blood. "Shit."

He knelt beside her and checked her pulse — rapid, but steady. A roll of Micah's row cover lay at his feet and he tore off a length, folded it into a thick bandage, and pressed firmly against the cut on Ro's face.

"No!" she cried out, batting wildly at his arm.

"Shh, Ro, it's okay. It's me. Barre." He kept even pressure on her cheekbone as he spoke.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at him, blinking in confusion for several seconds. "Barre." She grabbed his arm in both of her hands. "Where is he?" Her voice shook and he didn't have to ask who she was talking about.

"Gone."

Ro winced. "He shot Micah."

"I know." The smell of burnt hair still hung in the air. "I think he took his body."

"We're going to die here." She turned her head away from him. "And it's all my fault."

Barre let the blood-stained cloth drop from his hand. A chill slithered down his spine. "Are you just going to lie down and die for him?"

"You don't understand." Her voice was flat, dull.

"The hell I don't." Barre wiped his hands against his pants and stood. "You can stay here, but if he wants us dead, I'm damned well going to make him work for it."

"You don't understand," Ro repeated. "He has an army's worth of weapons."

Barre listened to the quiet humming of the AI in his head. "But we have the ship."

***

You weren't supposed to be nauseated when you were dead. Strange logic, but it made sense to Micah. Therefore, he realized, he had to be alive. Something tugged on his ankles and his body lurched forward. His head bounced on the floor and pain arced across his forehead and along the top of his skull. The cooked-meat smell of his own flesh made his stomach heave, but there was nothing left to empty.

He tried to shout, but the sound came out as a low groan. The jerky motion stopped and his legs thudded to the ground. A shadow fell over his body.

"Your father thought he could burn me, but now I have his cargo and his son."

Alain Maldonado stared down at him. Memory flooded through Micah and he flinched. The bastard shot him. He reached his hand towards his forehead. Pain knifed through his arm as Maldonado kicked him.

"I can't risk you getting an infection."

"But you shot me." This conversation made no sense and it wasn't just because Micah happened to be lying on the floor after being dragged halfway across Halcyone's corridors with a burn wound across his skull.

"You surprised me." He reached an arm down toward him. "Get up."

Micah grasped the hand on automatic pilot and gasped as Maldonado jerked him to his feet.

"Move," he said, the ugly weapon sitting too comfortably in his large hand.

The blood drained from Micah's head and the corridor spun around him. He sagged against the wall, fighting the dry heaves, half expecting to hear the whine of Maldonado's gun.

"Get inside," he said.

Micah risked opening his eyes. The corridor wavered, but didn't spin.

"After you." Maldonado gestured toward the open doorway that led into the storage bay. And the weapons.

"Where's Ro?" Micah asked, limping across the threshold.

Maldonado pointed to an unopened crate set against the far wall. "Sit."

He couldn't have shot his own daughter. He couldn't have. Micah struggled to remember what had happened on the bridge. Everything fell apart. Maldonado was here and he had the weapons. And if Ro and Barre were dead, he had the ship, too.

Maldonado rummaged through the opened crates, humming to himself. He walked back to Micah and dumped a bundle of medical supplies at his feet. "Clean yourself up and make sure you do a good job."

He glanced down at the sterile gloves, cleanser, and antibiotic-laced bandages and figured Maldonado really did want him alive. "This would go a lot easier if you helped."

The man's steady gaze never left his face.

Micah swallowed hard and bent over to pick up the supplies. Maldonado hadn't given him anything for anesthesia. He snapped the gloves on and leaned over, squirting the cleanser over his head. It stung almost as bad as getting shot had and Micah had to bite down on his lower lip to keep from passing out again. He sat there panting as the liquid blazed a path through his burns and dripped off his face onto the floor. Blood, skin, and bits of hair pooled at his feet.

It was good he had nothing left in his stomach to hurl. Micah probed his forehead, wincing at the tenderness. If he survived this, he'd have one hell of a scar to talk about. The wound stretched from the center of his eyebrow across his forehead and disappeared into his hairline. His hands shook when he thought of how close the burn came to taking his eye.

He snapped off several small segments of bandage and one at a time pressed their adhesive ends to his forehead, moving from his eyebrow up. It wouldn't look pretty, but it would keep the wound clean. "Now what?"

Without any change to his watchful expression, Maldonado stepped close and pressed the barrel of his gun against the fresh bandage and twisted. A bright hot lance of agony tore a scream from him. "Has anyone told you how like your father you are? It's irritating."

The man pulled away and the pain ebbed to a manageable throbbing. Micah trembled on the crate, his breath coming in ragged gasps, staring at Maldonado, his eyes wide.

"And speaking of your father …"

Micah blinked, trying to follow this odd, nearly one-sided conversation and getting mental whiplash.

Maldonado holstered his gun and pulled out a micro. "We're going to send him a little message. It would be in your best interest to cooperate, Micah."

Micah blinked slowly, understanding things about Ro he'd rather not have.

"Hello, Corwin. I've found our missing shipment. As well as some lost lambs. In fact, I have one of them right here with me." He turned the micro to face Micah. "Say hello to your father." The threat in Maldonado's voice was unmistakable.

"Hello, father," Micah said, keeping his tone as flat as possible, never moving his gaze from Maldonado.

He shot him a foul look and turned the micro back to himself. "As you can see, he's a little worse for the wear. A small misunderstanding. I know how unreasonably fond you are of the boy."

The only person Corwin Rotherwood was fond of would be Corwin Rotherwood. By some happy accident, Micah looked enough like him that he was useful to the senator's image.

"I think it would be in your best interest to relinquish any claim to our cargo. Maldonado, out."

"And if he refuses?"

"I think you know the answer to that question, Micah."

So they both understood the situation.

Nomi paused to straighten out where her uniform had creased during her short off-shift rest before knocking on Targill's door.

It slid open noiselessly and he watched her from behind his massive desk. "Sit."

The hard stools bolted into the floor and Targill's large, open desk spoke of a ruthless efficiency, a utilitarian ideal, just like the commander, himself. She sat. "Sir?"

"Our medic transported one of your compatriots on board. Jeremy Durbin."

Disappointment warred with relief inside her. "What's his condition?"

"Preliminary assessment indicates serious head trauma."

Poor Jem.

"How well do you know Micah Rotherwood?"

She blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Micah Rotherwood. The senator's son. You are aware he's on the ship as well."

"Yes, sir." Was this about the bittergreen? "He's a civilian, sir. Other than a brief interaction with him in the mess back on Daedalus, I have had no contact with him." Nomi pressed her feet into the floor to keep from fidgeting.

Targill tapped on his desk with his index finger. The integrated display winked out before she could see what he was looking at. "Well then, what can you tell me about Alain Maldonado?"

"Sir?" Her voice emerged high and squeaky.

"Alain Maldonado. Chief Engineer of Daedalus Station. I assume you know him."

"Yes, sir." She wondered what he already knew. "I haven't had the opportunity to interact with him much on the station, either."

He leaned forward, the silver in his buzz cut hair catching the overhead light. "But?"

"He has a scattered resume. A pattern of short postings, going back nearly twenty years." She tried to stick with what would be publicly available, but it was clear he expected something more. "It's curious that he hasn't moved up in rank."