Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (5 page)

Ro walked down the central corridor that linked the ship's nose to its tail. Once she got past Micah's lab, the lights dimmed. Halting her cart, she dug out a work-light and clipped it to the pocket of her coverall, leaving her hands free. It swept the area in front of her, illuminating a surprising lack of dust and debris.

The crew quarters had been transformed into large barracks, one on each side of the ship, temporary billets for soldiers on their way to deployments. The captain's quarters would probably be a better base of operations. She triggered the sensor. The door opened and she peered inside. A bare bunk frame with a desk beneath was anchored to the wall next to a chair bolted to the floor. That would do nicely. She would likely be able to scrounge all the spare computer parts she needed from the aft storage bays that had been used as Daedalus's scrap midden for years.

At the starboard bay, Ro waved her hand under the door sensor, but nothing happened. Frowning, she pulled out her micro. According to her read-out, there was power in all the basic sub-systems. Maybe the sensor had fried.

The port side bay door opened at her request and Ro slipped inside, playing her light against mounds of construction detritus, broken furniture, abandoned computers, and spare tools. There was more than enough to scavenge from. She piled what she thought she'd need on her cart before sealing the compartment again and heading aft.

The closed door nagged at her. All the other rooms on the ship had opened easily. Why not that one?

Leaving her utility cart in the corridor, Ro turned back to the starboard bay. She pulled out her micro and in an attempt to bypass the sensor, triggered an external override. The door still didn't open. "Hmmm," she mumbled, shining her light all around the door and looking for some sign of damage. There was no evidence of tampering, only normal wear that matched all the other surfaces on the ship.

Ro had never met a lock she couldn't coax, and she wasn't going to walk away from this one now. Studying the stolen schematic, she traced the door circuits, looking for the fail-safe. An electromagnetic kill switch ran in the ceiling conduits. She set her micro to flip its polarity.

With an audible click, the bay door opened. "Ha!" she cried and peered into the room. Her work-light splashed a cone of brightness a few meters in. Instead of the scrap she'd expected, the dim space was filled with row after row of boxes, piled at least a meter and a half high. She stiffened, rocking back on her heels. What was a hold full of sealed cargo doing behind a locked door? She turned the light off and stood in darkness, her heart pounding.

Frowning, she ran a security sweep. Silence pressed down on her. The back of her neck tingled with the sense of being watched. Ro stood her ground at the room's threshold.

Come on, come on
, she thought, urging the micro to finish. If security had tagged her, she would have company soon. Having the full station access codes would at least give her plausible deniability as far as her presence here was concerned. She wasn't doing anything wrong, at least not yet. Micah would just have to fend for himself.

Time seemed to stretch out as she waited. Her own breathing echoed in the metallic space. Finally her micro gave a soft beep that also seemed loud in the silent storage bay. The sweep found no security threats. She exhaled, furrowed her brow, and turned her light back on.

Something was definitely out of true here: a sealed door, cargo where there should have been nothing but scrap, and no electronic security or tie in to Daedalus. Ro tapped her finger on the schematic's representation of the storage bay, thinking of her father. Her mind raced as the image enlarged and shrunk. If he needed to hide something, this would be the perfect place.

She stepped fully into the storage bay and the door slid shut behind her, silently. The vaulted ceiling swallowed her little light. As she moved, the shadows danced around her like living things. Unclipping the light, she gripped it in her hand, directing it into the room's corners. All she saw were rows of boxes. "Sorry, not leaving until I figure this out," she said aloud, as much to break the stillness as to convince herself. Even the cartons huddled close to each other, as if the darkness pressed in on them, too.

"All right, let's see what goodies we have here." Ro left the security of the solid door behind her, her light bouncing round the bay as she walked. There had to be hundreds of crates piled up. "A cargo manifest would be helpful," she muttered. Focusing the light on one of the boxes, she looked in vain for a label. "Yeah, why am I not surprised?"

Holding the light between her teeth, she grabbed the box on the top of the stack and carefully lowered it to the ground. When she saw the lid, Ro swore and the light tumbled from her mouth. She scrambled to pick it up and stared in horrified fascination.

These boxes had Hub Diplomatic Service seals. The most complex security in the Commonwealth, it came complete with a "phone home" feature and an anti-tamper subroutine. What the hell were diplomatic crates doing here? This couldn't be her father's doing — he'd never get access to this kind of cargo. And Daedalus wasn't a way-station from anywhere to anywhere.

Keeping her hands steady, she put the box back where she'd found it and backed out of the storage bay slowly. Somebody was hiding something. Whoever that somebody was would probably be coming through the ship to check on their stuff.

"Well, Micah, you're about to have company," she muttered. The cart followed her as she headed back to the ship's nose. Sharing his space wasn't ideal, but it also wouldn't advertise her presence. He'd be pissed, but by the time he returned, she'd have already set up her workstation.

A door whooshed open somewhere behind her. She froze, listening for footsteps. The seconds ticked by without a sound. It wasn't Micah. He had no reason to hide.

Ro crept along the corridor. The soft pad of footsteps moved away from her. She followed. For a supposedly abandoned place, the ship seemed to have a whole lot of traffic. Another door hissed open. The only hatch in this section led to the bridge. She reminded herself that she had the authorization to be here. Or at least access, which was almost the same thing.

Straightening to her full hundred and sixty two centimeter height, she triggered the door controls. It opened smoothly. The blood pounded in her ears. Ro's mouth fell open. Where the rest of the ship was mostly clean and well organized, the bridge looked like someone had dismantled it with lasers, crowbars, and hammers. The pilot and bridge crew consoles had been crumpled.

The large forward display had a jagged crack diagonally across the entire screen. She stepped carefully across the threshold, avoiding the sharp metal twisted and tortured all along the floor. What the hell happened here?

A blur of motion in the corner of her eye made Ro turn, her hands up and ready to defend herself.

"Ro! Isn't it amazing?"

Jem came up beside her, vibrating with excitement.

Tension spilled out of her body. She clenched her fists at her sides. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I knew it. You really want to do this. I mean, it's not theoretical, right? The code you gave me matched the AIs used in the Bumblebee-class ships. And this is a Bumblebee." He stepped in front of her, his smile wide, his shining brown eyes large and bright.

"Why can't you just do what you're supposed to?" Now she was going to have to mask his tracks as well as her own, and she needed to figure out a way to keep him and Micah apart.

"Why? Do you?" He laughed and twirled around the bridge. "This! This is amazing. Do you really think you can wake the AI? I've been working with the interface for hours. Oh, wow, Ro, do you think can we make it fly again?"

Ro laughed, helpless to stay angry at his ridiculous enthusiasm. "I don't know, Jem. Someone did this place in pretty good." It didn't make a whole lot of sense, given the condition of the rest of the ship.

"But we're going to try, aren't we?"

She trailed a finger along the silent control panels and walked in a circle around the command chair. "Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah."

Jem ran back toward the habitation ring, images of the ship bursting through his mind
. The ship he saw gleamed under starlight, its engine roaring, its wings trembling with an eagerness to fly again. If he could help Ro do this, his parents would have to understand. They'd have to.

But between now and his dream, more work waited than he could barely believe. A fierce grin stretched across his face. He could do this. He knew he could. Ro needed his help. Jem wove his way through the crowded corridors of the station, but no one really noticed him. At least there was some advantage to being small for his age. People who didn't know better always underestimated him.

He waited until Daedalus recognized him and opened the door to their quarters. Pounding music reverberated off the walls and vibrated through his chest. Well, that answered the question of whether his parents had gotten home. It also meant Barre was still pissed. Jem winced at the sound roaring through the place. This was his home, too, and he had to be able to work.

Smirking, he ran an environmental control subroutine he'd been wanting to try out for a long time. It wouldn't make Barre any happier with him, but then again, he wasn't all that happy with Barre right now. The cacophony damped down in tiny steps until Jem could hear himself think. He started a silent countdown, figuring Barre would storm out of his room in ten seconds or less.

The program worked perfectly. Jem's ears rang in the blissful silence, but as ten seconds turned into several minutes, he frowned. Something didn't feel right. He hesitated at the sealed door. He frowned again, raised his fist, and pounded on the door. "I know you're in there. You want to sulk? Fine, but you're the one who owes me an apology."

Nothing.

The quiet unnerved Jem, and he wished Barre's music still blared through their quarters.

"Barre?"

Still nothing.

He signaled Daedalus. It would be just like Barre to set his music to ear-drum burst and then wander out. "Locate Durbin, Barre."

"Habitation ring, 05/Alpha."

That was their address.

"Barre, if you don't open this door right now, I'm hacking my way inside. You have ten seconds, and you know I can do it." Jem counted his own heartbeats, feeling them speed up as the seconds ticked by. The inner door locks lacked even the moderate sophistication of the external airlocks, and Jem had figured out how to hack those months ago. He reached up and tapped the override code and waited as the door slid open.

Barre lay sprawled face-down across his bed, his hair a wild mess spilling over the side. Jem frowned at the chaos of pillows, blankets, clothes, shoes, and permapapers scattered across the floor. How could he have fallen asleep with all that noise? And how did he not wake up when it stopped so suddenly?

Jem picked his way across the mine field of the room to the bed and shoved Barre in the side. "Hey. You're just lucky it was me and not Mom and Dad who came home first."

Barre didn't stir. Something cold coiled in the pit of Jem's stomach. He swallowed against a wave of nausea.

"Cut it out, this isn't funny." He shoved his brother again, harder this time. Barre's body rocked back and forth, his arm flopping off the bed. Jem watched, holding his breath as his brother's fingers brushed the floor like the sweep of a metronome. Leaning in close, Jem set a trembling hand on his brother's back. "Barre?" His voice squeaked in the small room.

He shut his eyes and concentrated on feeling for the rise and fall of Barre's breath, some logical part of his mind already going through the medical triage procedures his parents had drilled both of them in. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. The basics hadn't changed in centuries.

Okay, so Barre was breathing. Jem took a trembling breath of his own and rolled his brother over on his back, checking for his carotid pulse. It was thready but present. A quick sweep of his lanky torso and long arms and legs felt normal — nothing obviously broken, no bleeding. Jem peeled back one of Barre's eyelids and shuddered at the way his brother's eye rolled far in the back of his head.

"Daedalus — medical emergency, Durbin quarters."

"Medical responding," the bland voice responded.

His mother's voice overlapped the AI's, nearly as cold and dispassionate. "This is medical. What is your emergency?"

"Mom — it's Barre. I can't get him to wake up!" Jem shook uncontrollably, his momentary calm evaporated.

"Does the patient have a pulse?"

"Mom, he needs help!"

"A team is on its way. Now, can you tell me if the patient has a pulse?"

"Yes. Barre has a pulse," Jem said, his voice tight.

"Good. Is he breathing?"

"Yes." Jem couldn't keep the fear out of his voice. Where was the response team?

"Can you tell me what happened?"

How could she be so damned calm?

"Jem?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I just got home and found him like this. He's out. Out cold. He won't wake up. I did everything I was supposed to do. Now where are the damned medics?" Where was she?

"We're here, Jem." The front door swept open and his mother pushed inside, the crash team flanking her in well-practiced choreography.

Jem slid to the floor by his brother's side as the team swarmed the limp form on the bed. Their clinical shorthand blurred by him. Portable monitors played a strange medical percussion. Barre could probably write a song around it. Jem started laughing and couldn't catch his breath.

None of the medical team paused to give him a second glance. By the time the laughter finally died in Jem's throat, they had transferred Barre over to the waiting PCU, an oxygen mask covering most of his face, monitors communicating with the field sensors plastered on his forehead, throat, and chest, intravenous lines set.

A small plastic packet lay on the floor beside him and Jem slid it under his palm as they whisked his brother away.

"Jem?"

He jerked his head up. His mother stood, staring down at him. Jem tightened his hand with its secret inside.