Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (33 page)

"We listen."

Well, he could do that. Barre threw part of his attention to Halcyone, listening for her music. That, more than anything, told him about the state of the ship. Ro could study her sensors and diagnostics.

A crackle of static burst through Ro's micro as a discordant blare of sound blasted Barre's mind. Clasping his hands over his ears didn't do anything to quiet the internal music. Ro would have to deal with whatever came through the micro. He focused on settling his breath to a hypnotic and regular rhythm, feeding it back to the AI. Ro was right — it was a lullaby of sorts. In a lot of ways, the AI reacted like a frightened child.

He had no idea how long he spent working to soothe Halcyone, but the music finally softened. Barre let out a long, whistling breath.

Crouching in front of him, Ro stared into his eyes, her own narrowed, her eyebrows pulled together. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure. But Halcyone doesn't like it. What have you got?"

Ro leaned over her micro and moved her hands too rapidly over its surface for him to follow. "He is in engineering."

"How do you know?"

"Because he's hacking directly into the antenna array." She swore methodically in the quiet of the bridge.

"But who is he sending a signal to?"

"How the hell should I know?" Twin bright spots of red burned in the middle of her cheeks.

Barre only got the slightest of warnings, a bugling fanfare that repeated in his ears, before the rumble of engines shook the bridge.

***

Micah fumed long after Maldonado strode out of the cargo bay. The damned restraints were effective, he had to give him that. After getting shocked a few times, Micah didn't even breathe too deeply, for fear he would trigger them again. The hard surface of the packing crate pressed into his backside, but trying to shift would only bring new punishment from the cuffs around both his wrists and his ankles.

Whoever invented them should be slowly roasted in a skimmer's afterburners.

If Ro didn't kill her father, Micah would.

He pressed his lips together in a frown. She could be dead, along with Barre. And if Micah couldn't find a way out of here, Maldonado would kill him as soon as he was no longer useful.

A vibration shook the hold. Micah grabbed for the crate beneath him and was rewarded with a lance of fresh pain through his hands. "What the hell?" The rumble of engines shook the crate. "Oh, no. Oh, shit."

The floor lurched beneath him, throwing Micah down, agony curling him into the fetal position.

"No, no, no!" he muttered, struggling to relax his arms and legs.

***

"Shut it down, Barre! You have to shut it down!" Ro's heart beat wildly as she dove for the meager protection of the worn down acceleration mats.

Barre glanced around the bridge with wide eyes before following her example. "I can't. I don't know how!"

"We can't let the damned ship do another burn or they'll never find us."

Barre tilted his head to the side and frowned. "It's not Halcyone this time. It's something your father is doing."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Here, listen." Barre patched the AIs song through Ro's micro. The alien music, high pitched and frantic, pounded through the bridge. "She's terrified."

"Damn it!" He couldn't have her ship. "We have to stop him. Can you get the AI to help us?"

"Right now, I'm doing all I can to keep her from shaking us to pieces."

The ship shuddered beneath them as if the AI and Ro's father were playing a giant game of tug of war. Ro sat up and wedged herself in the corner where the navigation and comms consoles butted up against one another.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't know yet," she said. "Keep singing to the ship. I'll see what I can do from my end." The vibration set up a painful resonance of sound across the bridge. Barre winced and she could only imagine what it must be like hearing it from the inside, too.

Ro cleared all the running programs from her micro and concentrated on finding a way in again. A violent jolt banged the back of her head against the console and she swore. If her father managed to wrest control of the engines, she wouldn't have time to get flat, and the gee forces would twist her into a knot. "Come on, girl, we're a team. You know me. I'm not going to hurt you."

The bridge shook too much for her to use the more efficient 3-d interface and she struggled to input the commands she wanted. A shudder tipped her sideways and nearly set her micro flying from her hands. "Barre, you've got to calm the ship down!"

He lay on his back, hands clawing the thin mat, his lips pressed into a thin line.

The engines whined, a piercing sound that seemed to shiver through her spine and bore into her head. The pitch slowly climbed, drowning out Barre's reply, if he gave her one. "Damn it, Halcyone, I'm trying to help you. Let me in," she whispered, frantically tapping in commands through her micro.

Without warning, the ship canted, rolling Barre off the cushion and pressing Ro into the nav console. Then Halcyone lurched back to level. Silence rang through the bridge.

"What in the cosmos just happened?"

Barre sat up, dazed, blood trickling down his lower lip. His dark skin shined with sweat. "I don't think we'll hold together if she does that again."

Ro rubbed her sore shoulder and blinked up at the forward view screen. "Look, we're still here."

Barre pressed his thumb to his lip to stop the bleeding. "She stood her ground."

And her father lost this time.

"Now what?"

"Our turn," she said. "Can you get Halcyone to let us access the rad sensors in engineering?"

"Isn't that your department?"

"I'm not asking you to run a hack. Just do your AI charmer routine and ask for manual override. For calibration or maintenance — I don't care how you manage it. Besides, the AI likes you better than me." Another time or place it would have hurt to admit that.

"What are you going to do?"

She stared out across the bridge as if she could see through the doors to the damage her father had caused. "If you can get control over the sensors, I'm going to figure out how to initiate a radiation lock-down and trap the bastard in engineering."

"Turnabout."

"Yup," she said. "Give him enough problems to deal with that he won't have the time to try that again."

"Can you? I mean, won't he just be able to break your hack?"

Ro stared Barre right in the eyes and lifted her chin. "I'm better than he is." And for the first time in her life, she knew it was true.

***

Micah groaned, his head slamming against a crate, igniting a fresh burst of pain, a throbbing counterpoint to the lightning bolts thrumming at his wrists and ankles. He blinked, panting as the ship stilled, and risked a glance at his hands. The restraints held him snugly and his skin was unmarked.

"Son of a bitch," he said, growling. He had to get the damned things off. Moving as slowly as he could, Micah wriggled himself back into sitting, gritting his teeth against a new barrage of shocks. Something this brutal should at least leave marks.

The edge of the crate pressed into his spine, its top littered somewhere through the cargo bay. He twisted his head to look inside. Stacks of energy rifles lay in their protective cushioning, their brushed metallic sheen gleaming dangerously in the dim light. He glanced at the door and back at the weapons, his hands twitching weakly in his lap.

It was only pain, right?

All he had to do was reach up and he could grab the rifle. Easy. He stared at his hands.
Move, damn you.
His fingers trembled and invisible fire ringed his wrist again.

No wonder Maldonado left him in a damned arsenal. Sadistic bastard. Micah swallowed the howl of fury in his chest and sat shaking, blinking back tears. It was only fucking pain. Just pain.

His mother had lived with it and more for months, never crying out even during those final, terrible days when he had to turn her every hour, the agony of moving replacing the agony of staying still.

He panted, drawing as much air into his lungs as he could. Sitting here trussed like a turkey and waiting to die wasn't on his bucket list. Getting his hands around Maldonado's throat was.

"Any time now, Micah," he muttered. Sweat beaded across his forehead and his upper lip. "Count of three." He took another gulp of air. "One, two, three." Clenching his jaw, Micah twisted and reached up into the crate, howling as his arms exploded in agony. He stared at his hands, making sure he kept his grip on the rifle, since all feedback from his nerves had been replaced by wave after wave of fire.

The weapon slid from his fingers and tumbled into his lap. Micah sat panting, his mind refusing to believe he still had hands.

He didn't know how long it took before the nerves stopped firing their brutal message. The rifle lay beneath his touch, smooth and cold. If Maldonado stepped through that door right now, Micah wasn't sure he could even pick it up and shoot. He couldn't stop the laugh that shook through him, moving his hands and sending small jolts through the cuff. It was only pain.

Pure reflex made him grip the barrel. He flicked the safety off. His finger tightened over the firing mechanism. Before he could change his mind, he pressed the trigger and sent a bolt of blue sizzling against the ankle restraints, melting them to useless slag. The rifle rolled out of shaking fingers that refused to listen to him. The heat that melted part of his shoes to his feet barely registered on his abused nerves. His whole body trembled. If the gun had been pointed at his brain, Micah would have gladly fired the weapon, just to make the punishment finally stop.

It took a long time before he realized his legs were free.

The laughter that ripped out of him sounded like something from the throat of an animal.

He moved his feet, welcoming a pain that he'd earned and understood. Its throbbing counterpoint made his wrists easier to bear, somehow. Blinking in surprised relief, he picked up the rifle, lurched to standing, and hobbled across the cargo bay.

The trip to the bridge was a nightmare. Every step jogged the rifle in his grip, causing him to squeeze his hands. Each shock shook through him before the last one had fully faded. Micah gritted his teeth and kept going, imagining all the places he'd clamp the cuffs on Maldonado's body.

He stared at the half melted bridge door for several minutes trying to force his pain-wracked mind to make some sense of it. It had to be Maldonado's handiwork. He'd even torched the emergency manual release. That meant someone had to be alive in there. His heart thumped with wild hope.

Shouting would only waste time. The doors were vacuum rated. Even if he wanted to risk his hands, the butt of the rifle would disintegrate before he made any sort of dent in its surface. He only hoped that whoever was still alive wasn't standing by the door.

"It's only pain," he whispered and lifted the gun to shoulder height, resting the butt against his chest. Flickers of invisible fire circled his wrists and coursed up and down his arms. Ignoring what his mind kept screaming, he dialed the weapon to maximum and its narrowest beam. "Only pain."

Squinting his eyes to focus on the center seam of the door, Micah fired, howling his defiance as the metal glowed red. Using the rifle like a laser scalpel, he cut through Maldonado's improvised weld until he couldn't differentiate between the heat from the gun and the punishment from the restraints.

The door smoked and the stink of burning polymers irritated his nose and mouth. The rifle's pulse stuttered and failed. He let it slip from his abused fingers to clatter on the floor at his feet. A widening crack of light split the doors open. Micah tumbled over the threshold.

Ro stood in front of him, her mouth open, her eyes wide circles of green.

"Permission to enter the bridge, Captain." His voice croaked from his aching throat.

"What took you so long?"

Micah shrugged and immediately regretted it. His vision narrowed to a dim tunnel, with Ro's shining hair the only illumination in it. "Got tied up," he whispered, before even the small slice of brightness vanished to a pinprick.

Voices echoed from far away as he swayed, blinking, trying to figure out why he felt so strange.

"Help me get the cuffs off him."

"Shit! They're live."

"Only pain," he mumbled, or thought he did. But it felt like someone else's pain, or at least pain he didn't have to care about anymore. Micah sank into a welcoming darkness. The burning in his arms didn't follow.

Barre dragged Micah to one of the mats.
His nose wrinkled at the acrid stink of burning plastic and flesh. Ro stood over them as Barre knelt at Micah's side trying to figure out what was more important — the electrified cuffs or the plasma burns on his feet.

He glanced at the ruin of Micah's feet and his stomach lurched. Definitely the burns.

"Is he going to be okay?" Ro asked, her green eyes wide.

Triage now. Answers later. "He's going into shock. I need to set up an IV and give him something for pain. Get the box of medical supplies."

Ro dragged it over.

Good, at least she'd be able to follow simple commands. He rummaged through the supplies and found at least the bare bones of what he needed — a conscious sedation kit, fluids, and a wound care set up. Barre slid on the sterile gloves and picked up the IV injection gun with shaking hands. He had only ever done this in a sim before.

It was supposed to be idiot-proof. Anyone could pull the spring-loaded trigger somewhere near a vein and the tiny needle would seat itself. Easy. He rolled up Micah's sleeve, careful not to touch the restraints. Once had been quite enough. He set the injector against the inside of Micah's elbow and triggered it. The IV gun sprayed a cool mist of topical numbing agent. The needle deployed almost immediately after. Micah didn't even flinch. Barre wondered who had bandaged his head and why.

Ro made a sound between a squeak and a gasp. Barre looked up and smirked. "Smart girl like you afraid of a little needle?"

She gave him the finger before folding her arms across her chest. "What next?"