Keystones: Tau Prime (12 page)

Jamie bobbed her head back and forth a few times, measuring the statement. “Oh,” she answered flatly.

Deklan knew that he wasn’t overwrought. “I don’t want sedatives,” he proclaimed.

Calm’s words were adamant. “I’m going to have to insist.”

“No! This is not the military. You’re just my employer, nothing more.” Deklan stormed off the bridge.

Jamie found him a few minutes later. “Deklan, what’s wrong? Why does Calm think that you need sedatives?”

“You know perfectly well why,” he said, his voice an angry snarl. “What was that? Who are you? Where did you go?”

Jamie was an outstanding actress, managing to look baffled by his questions and accusations. She stepped back from him and wrapped her arms around herself defensively. She was so convincing that Deklan almost doubted himself. Almost.

“Deklan,” she began, her voice tender. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.” She moved closer to him and brushed him on the shoulder.

He jerked away.

“You just need to sleep,” she continued in the same comforting way.

Deklan opened his mouth to unleash an angry retort, but it was stifled by a yawn. He felt very sleepy.

Jamie held up her hand and showed him the palm. There was a needle protruding from between two fingers. Deklan hadn’t even felt it. He yawned again and staggered against the wall. It was a challenge to keep his eyes focused on her.

As his legs turned rubbery, he slid down the wall to the floor.

He heard an unpleasant screaming noise. Deklan swam into foggy consciousness. It wasn’t screaming but instead an alarm. He tried to reach up and rub his eyes, but metal cuffs around his wrists kept him stuck in place.

At least he thought they were metal. It was hard to be sure because his eyes wouldn’t focus properly. He yawned. “Hello?” he said. “Hello?” There was no answer, only the alarm.

The lights went out, not a good sign on a spaceship. He rattled his restraints, not knowing what he thought he’d accomplish. “Hello?”

Still no one answered him. If the lights were out, the com system might be too. Deklan needed to get out of the bed.

When the lights flickered back on, so did the com system. “Full power restored!” blared Jonny’s voice.

“What happened? Let me out of this bed!” shouted Deklan.

“Deklan?” queried Jonny. “You’re already awake?”

They knew that Jamie had him in restraints, Deklan realized. “What happened?” he asked. “Why did the ship lose power?”

“We don’t know,” replied Jonny evasively.

“Let me out of here. I can at least try to help.”

“Deklan. . . .” Jonny’s voice trailed off.

Deklan tried to be reasonable. “If the ship loses power, we all die.”

“You don’t.” The words were flat and cold.

“Are you sure of that? I’m not.” Deklan hated begging. “Please, Jonny, let me help.”

“Sorry, but I can’t take that chance.”

Deklan lay in the bed for hours. Jamie checked on him twice, but was tight-lipped about what was going on in the ship. At least she didn’t drug him again. When Jamie wasn’t checking on him, he had nothing to do but use voice commands to scroll through documents, reading anything to stay occupied.

The monotony was broken when a failure in gravity occurred. Sirens wailed again: “Decompression Alert,” “Decompression Alert.”

Deklan shook the restraints that held him down. “Let me get to an EVA suit!” he shouted.

The room was blanketed in total darkness. When the power came back a second later, Cheshire was floating in the air at the foot of his bed. His posture was such that he wouldn’t have looked out of place lounging in a beach chair and sipping a margarita. Cheshire looked much the same as when Deklan had last seen him, wearing a smile that indicated he knew more than he was telling. “Well, isn’t this exciting?” Cheshire emphasized the last word.

“Where did you come from? Wait, no, I don’t care.” The first priority was freedom from the metal cuffs around his wrists. “Get me out of these.”

Cheshire stoked his chin and stared off into the distance with a meditative expression. “Get me out of these,
please
?”

“What’s going on here?” asked Deklan.

“I’m trying to teach you some manners. It appears that it will be an uphill battle.”

Deklan took a moment and exhaled, hoping that the throbbing vein in his temple wasn’t visible. “What’s going on with the ship? Why is the power going out? Why isn’t there gravity anymore?”

“Oh, well, there’s a parasite onboard, and
Serenity
has been shot by an alien warship.”

A tide of fear rose inside Deklan, and his mouth went dry. He didn’t trust Cheshire, but the man hadn’t ever
directly
lied to him before.

Cheshire patted his forehead. “It has something to do with religious differences. I believe they think that sentient beings from other species are abominations who must be exterminated.” He shrugged his shoulders as though this were some sort of minor detail. “Anyway, it’s something like that.”

“An alien warship?”

“The aliens aren’t really the important thing right now,” replied Cheshire. “Well, yes, they are, but it’s the parasites that I wanted to tell you about. They’re a . . . let’s call them a sister species to the parasites that infect you and me, the ones that give us our Keystone abilities. They come from the wormholes. Instead of infecting higher life forms, they damage machinery and circuitry.” He snapped his fingers and grinned. “Very inconvenient for an advanced space-faring civilization like ours. Not even I know how to combat them.” Cheshire snapped his fingers again and feigned an expression as though he’d just remembered something. “Oh, that’s right. You wanted me to let you out of your restraints. Your crewmates are too busy right now, what with trying to survive and all.”

“I’d like to join them,” Deklan said.

“I’d like to join them,
please
.”

“I’d like to join them, please!”

“Excellent, excellent, and you will.” Cheshire reached for the controls to Deklan’s restraints. “One other thing, though. You’re going to have to give up your quest to find Ms. Anthony for now. Otherwise everyone you care about will die.” Cheshire snapped his fingers one last time and winked. “But, hey, other than that, have a great day.” He hit the release controls and vanished.

Deklan’s restraints snapped open. Now that
Serenity
had been attacked, he wondered what he was supposed to do. In any event he knew that he needed an EVA suit. He had seen what happened to
The Burningsworth
, and there was already a decompression alert.

When he opened the door, he felt the immediate breeze of atmospheric movement. Wherever the hull breach was, it wasn’t small. The hallway of the ship no longer looked well provisioned and factory-fresh. Now Deklan saw only an expensive tomb. With firm handholds he pulled himself along to the EVA locker. Jamie was already there with Calm. She looked wild about the eyes; he looked unruffled. Neither had completely donned their EVA suits.

Obviously surprised to see him, Jamie asked, “Deklan, how did you get loose?”

The truth was not a good option. Calm already thought that he was crazy. Saying that another teleporting Keystone had freed him seemed like a terrible idea.
He spoke in a rush. “Can we talk about this another time? I’d rather not suffocate.”

Calm threw him a suit. “Get dressed and be helpful.”

That was a set of orders Deklan was delighted to follow. “Where’s Jonny?” he asked.

“He’s on the bridge buying some time while Jamie and I get dressed.” Calm slipped an arm into a sleeve. “Why?”

As Deklan pulled the EVA leggings on, he replied, “I wanted to be sure he was still alive.”

“Oh.” Somehow that simple comment seemed to relax Calm far more than Deklan could account for.

“I’d like to see an image of who’s attacking us,” added Deklan.

Calm’s only indication of surprise was a subtle lilt to his voice. “How’d you know that we were under attack?”

Deklan improvised a response. “After I saw
The Burningsworth
, did you think I’d assume that this was an accident?”

Jamie put a hand on Calm’s arm. “He’s not telling us something.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” chided Deklan, “but you need to shelve this matter. There isn’t time to argue. In fact, this conversation has taken too long as it is.” Deklan grabbed the rest of his gear without fastening it. “I’d like to see what we’re up against.”

Jamie looked as though she were going to object, but Calm nodded his assent. “Of course, but finish with your suit first. Then meet us on the bridge.”

Deklan rushed through the rest of his preparation and sped to the bridge. Jonny didn’t even look up as he entered. His eyes were glued to the display of the ship that was pursuing them, and sweat poured down his face.
 

Deklan needed only one glance at the screen to be certain that the marauding ship was not of human design or origin.

It didn’t fly through space so much as undulate like an eel. Long and thin, it had wriggling arms that sprouted from its main body. They were in constant motion and hard to count. With magnification Deklan could see that each of the arms was covered in still tinier moving parts.

The surface of the craft wasn’t solid like the surface of
Serenity
. Instead, it was a mesh of dark material lit from behind by an eerie dark blue light. Gouts of the light erupted down the body like miniature volcanoes. No eruption came from the same spot twice. Toward the end closest to
Serenity
the eruptions were more frequent, and the lights were a venomous green.

The panic that Deklan half-expected didn’t come. His hands didn’t shake; his stomach didn’t clench; his heart didn’t pound. A cool tranquility washed through Deklan. All of his other concerns vanished as though they had never existed. This was important: they had to survive to warn others.

“Jonny,” asked Deklan in a steady voice, “can you get us away from it?”

Jonny grimaced. “Maybe, with a lot of evasive maneuvers and even more luck.” He nervously wiped a hand across his brow. “I’m not even sure how we’ve made it this far. Right now it seems as though they’re just toying with us.”

“So you’re open to suggestions then?” asked Deklan.

Jonny wiped his face again. “Anything.”

“First off, does anyone think that craft is of human origin?” No one spoke. “I’ve got an idea, but it’s unorthodox. Jonny, just how much beer can you make at one time?” Deklan was aware of Jamie and Calm’s exchanging looks at the question.

“I don’t know. Why?”

Deklan’s plan was like an elaborate stunt, albeit one with high stakes. “I’m going to need all of the probes and a lot of ice. We’re also going to need to sacrifice
Whirlwind
after we do some fast jury-rigging.”

When no one raised immediate objections, Deklan explained his plan, and they set to work.

Ten minutes later Deklan sat alone aboard
Whirlwind
in the shuttle bay. Calm had programmed the autopilot to fly straight at the alien craft. With the preflight checklist completed, Deklan waited on the doors to open. Every second gave him a chance to rethink his decision. There were a lot of variables, each of which needed to pan out.

Whirlwind
hummed to life as its engines warmed up, and Deklan patted the console in front of him. He was asking a lot of the little shuttle. Once he left
Serenity
, there would be no turning back.

The doors opened.

Deklan held his breath. He just needed to resist the urge to escape until the autopilot took them out. His hands formed tight fists, and he bit down on his lip.

The little craft moved up and out. Deklan’s vantage point changed as he passed through the doors and into space. Only once before had he been in a ship as small as
Whirlwind
, and that was with Calm. He also had stood on the surface of a derelict vessel wearing only his EVA suit. This, however, was different. He was flying to face an alien vessel alone.

He prepared for the next step. Still close to
Serenity
, he was held within the local distortion of the Doppler Bubble Drive. It was going to be a bumpy ride. He hit the second of the commands that Calm had programmed into the autopilot.

Whirlwind
’s engines flared to full power now that it was clear of the mother ship. “Good luck, Mr. Tobin,” Calm called over a channel. The voices of Jonny and Jamie echoed the sentiment a heartbeat later.

As
Whirlwind
shot over the spatial interface, it was tossed about like a dinghy in a hurricane. Seat straps pressed against Deklan’s chest with bruising force, and the starry sky spun away in all directions amid the turbulence.

Deklan forced himself to train his gaze on the screens. Onboard sensors registered
Serenity
as a distant pinprick. They also showed the alien ship, which was nearly where they had estimated it would be. Calculations like that were always tricky with faster-than-light travel because you couldn’t trust what you saw.

Up close the ship was even more imposing than from a distance. Aboard
Serenity
Deklan had failed to take in the full scale of the beast. It was massive, several kilometers long and in constant motion.
Serenity
could have fit within it a hundred times over with space to spare. The immense size meant that it took time for the undulations he’d noted earlier to ripple down the full length of its hull.

The ship matched velocities with Deklan. He breathed a sigh of relief. The first gamble had succeeded.

The others had been against his going, but he’d argued that they didn’t know what technology this alien vessel had. If they sent out an empty shuttle, the enemy might somehow know and ignore it. He therefore was sitting in the shuttle as bait. Deklan also hoped that they’d wanted him alive. Otherwise the trip would be short indeed.

Whirlwind
lured the ship away from
Serenity
, Deklan hoping that his craft’s slowness would buy some time. If the ship used faster-than-light technology to pursue, it would in all probability overshoot him.