Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy (28 page)

“We have two shuttles,” Szakonyi said simply. He rose abruptly. “You may be able to save all of us, and yourself along with us.” With a hiss of the door he was gone, and Fletcher was left with a sudden silence – and a decision – weightier than any she had ever known.

****

In the corridor, Szakonyi allowed himself a brief smile at his own cunning as he walked to Surgery. He had a coded report to compose for Djimonsu. And some excellent
tervis
berries to enjoy.

Seizure

The Quarterdeck was a quiet place during the middle watches, an ancient term that was still sometimes used in the modern Navy for the small hours of the morning. The ship’s boatswain, Thomas Peckover, handled the helm of the
Harvest
under the supervision of the Officer of the Watch, who tonight was Hope Worth. She didn’t mind the silence, or the middle watch; in truth she liked both. She had never been a boisterous person or felt at home in crowds, and the relative solitude was welcome.

A gentle chime sounded, the ship’s bell, announcing the time as two hours past midnight. Glancing at the
Harvest
’s position on the stellar chart monitor, Worth saw no reason to make any adjustments. Her trim was just right and she was sailing fair. With a nod at Peckover, Worth murmured the expected “steady as she goes”, and settled into the command chair for another hour of welcome tedium.

If nothing else, it gave her time to think about Charlie.

While the
Harvest
slept, her belly full of greenery bound for Kew, Worth allowed her mind to linger on her shipmate. Shipmate?
Hardly
, she thought, as a ghost of a smile crossed her face.
Lover
? That seemed a melodramatic descriptor, but when she thought of Cygnus and their time spent together there, she was hard-pressed to think of anything more apt. She was not an experienced romantic – her shy awkwardness had contributed mightily to that – and lacked the worldliness that might have allowed her to grasp a better word. They had been together as much as their duties allowed during the weeks ashore and since, and it had rapidly become very difficult for her to imagine a universe without him in it.

You’re in love with him, Hope Worth. So why not call yourselves lovers
?

What did that mean, anyway? Was there any kind of future for them? They were homeward bound from what was, despite some hiccups, a successful mission. There would be rewards for all involved, including advancement on the promotions list. It wasn’t all that unusual for midshipmen returning from a deep space voyage to sit for their Lieutenant’s exam fairly quickly. If they both were to do so, and passed, the chances of them being posted together on a future assignment were remote. As she thought of that, of working a ship somewhere millions of miles from him, a weight pressed down on her chest. She might very well love him, but she was determined to make a career and a name for herself, to live up to both her father’s expectations, and more importantly, her own.
How, then, to satisfy both demands of her heart
?

This was the conundrum occupying Hope Worth’s mind when the door to the Quarterdeck hissed open and three men, armed with pulse-rifles, burst in. Saul Lamb came first, swarthy and cocksure. With him were the quiet Korean able, Xing Xiang, and Yancy Waugh, the boatswain’s mate. Waugh was utterly unremarkable in every way – average height, average build, forgettable face. In all the weeks on board, Worth couldn’t remember three words the man had strung together.

“What’s this, Mister Lamb?” asked Worth, bewildered. “Are we under some kind of attack? Are…” She never completed her second question. Lamb slammed the butt of his weapon into her stomach, driving the wind from her lungs and doubling her over. Black and yellow starbursts of pain exploded in her eyes, and she fell to her knees. There was a lot of shouting and cursing, and a loud crack. Thick fingers grasped Worth by the hair and forced her to her feet. The Quarterdeck had become a watery blur, but she could make out a still form on the floor near Peckover’s station. Waugh was there, standing over the body.

“He dead?” Lamb jerked his chin in the direction of Peckover as he asked, and Waugh prodded the boatswain, his immediate superior, with the muzzle of his rifle.

“Looks like it.”

“Hell,” spat Lamb. “We wasn’t supposed to kill no one. Why’d you kill him for, Yancy?”

“Because he was a pain in the ass.”

“Well, it’s your ass now. Wasn’t supposed to be no killing.”

Lamb bent Worth’s arm, painfully, and she stumbled forward. Xiang grabbed her other arm, and she was held firm between the two as they frog-marched her toward the door. Turning to look over his shoulder, Lamb shouted to Waugh.

“Unsteady as she goes, Yancy.” He chuckled, and along with Xiang, pushed Worth into the lift. She opened her mouth and began to ask a question, but Lamb seized her by the throat, slammed her into the wall, and leaned in so close that their noses nearly touched. Dark face mottled with red, the crewman squeezed so tight that Worth could scarcely breathe.

“Don’t bother, little girl. No one to hear you.”
I don’t care what he said before
, Worth thought.
He’s going to kill me
. To her surprise, she wasn’t afraid. She was angry.
Promotion. Charlie
. To have that future snatched away from her, so pointlessly, was more than she could bear. In a sudden burst, she drew her legs up in front of her, jammed her feet into Lamb’s chest, and pushed as violently as she could. The hands came free from her neck, tearing deep gouges in the soft flesh, as both of them fell heavily to the floor. Worth gratefully sucked in a few ragged breaths. Xiang was laughing nearby.

“Shut up, Xing,” growled Lamb as he pushed himself back up. “Not bad. But that was your last shot.” Raising his pulse rifle over his head, Lamb brought the butt of it down swiftly toward Worth’s face. There was a loud sound, a brief rush of pain, and then oblivion.

When Worth returned to consciousness, the floor she was lying on was cold, and she had the sensation of being in open space.
Where the hell am I
? Struggling to open her eyes, she became aware of a stabbing in her head, like a bolt of lightning every few seconds.
I’m hurt
. As she tried to rub her face with her hands, she discovered that they were bound at the wrists behind her back with some sort of strap. Images, blurry at first, began to penetrate the shroud of pain, well enough that she could perceive her location.

The shuttle dock.

Other than the main cargo bay, it was the largest interior space on the
Harvest
. The launches themselves were nearby, perched serenely in their usual spots, casting multitudes of shadows in the harsh overhead light of the dock. The rest of the huge room was mostly empty and featureless, except for the large reinforced window to the control room. And across from that, there was nothing.
The door is open
, Worth realized. Usually the dock was entirely enclosed by the outer hull, including the massive exterior door, but now the blackness of space was visible. As her vision cleared, she was able to see the vague crackle of static that told her that the thin energy field was in place, keeping the livable atmosphere inside the bay and the vacuum of space outside.

She wasn’t alone. She was able to see Lieutenant Pott, propped against the bulkhead a few meters away, slumped and dazed but alive. Zoltan Szakonyi, the surgeon, was there, too, as were Sir Eustace Green, the gardener, and Heywood Musgrave, the gunner. All looked unharmed, though all were tied in the same way that she was. Watching over them were Lamb, Taryn Hadley, Xing Xiang, and Tom Churchill.

Worth’s mind tried to assess the situation, even as white bursts of agony exploded in her brain from the effort. That had been some crack to her skull earlier. She probably had a concussion, or worse.
What was going on? Where was the captain? Where was Fletcher? What about Crutchfield and the machrines?

The next thing she saw turned her soul to ice.

Charlie.

Two more people had come into the dock through the main access door. One was Peggy Briggs and the other was Charlie Hall. Briggs was pushing him in front of her, twisting his arm at an awkward angle, so that he cried out, which made the ables laugh. Briggs was in her duty uniform, but Hall had clearly been sleeping, and was dressed in no more than a long white shirt and a pair of gray shorts. His feet were bare, and his sandy hair was sticking out in all directions. The barest hint of a beard shaded his lip and jaw.

“Another one rounded up,” Briggs said, a cruel smile on her lips. “More to come.” Seeing Hall manhandled, in obvious pain, was more than Worth could bear.

“Let him go!” she shouted, trying to scramble to her feet, to go to him, but Lamb casually knocked her down again with his rifle. Worth’s head struck the flooring, and her ears began to ring. Even so, she could clearly hear their mocking laughter.

“We’ve got a few minutes,” Lamb was saying above her. “This bitch has been teasing me for weeks. Time to finish what we started back in the galley. Easy, girl,” he rasped, as Worth felt herself hauled roughly up. He easily enfolded both her wrists with one of his thick hands. His other arm he wrapped around her slender waist. To Briggs he said, “I won’t be long.”

“All the same to me,” Briggs replied.

“Hope!” Charlie tried to come to her aid, but Briggs cracked him in the leg with her rifle, and he collapsed heavily to the deck.

“No,” Hall croaked. Pushing to his knees, he tried to crawl. Peggy Briggs put a foot on his back, pushing him back down.

“I’d watch my own ass if I were you,” she said. One more time Hall struggled to rise, until he felt the cold tip of a pulse rifle press behind his left ear.

“Down boy,” Briggs muttered, as Xiang chuckled nearby. “This is just the beginning.”

Worth struggled, but Lamb held her firm with one hand. With the other, he began to grope at her, but paused as another pair arrived. It was Mathias Quintal, and before him, arms held tight in his grip, was a shorter man in a long white nightshirt, missing several of the buttons from the front, barelegged, with what looked like a sack over his head.

Worth knew at once that it was the captain. He wore an officer’s jacket over the nightshirt -- his commander’s jacket, navy blue with the yellow braid of his rank, some absurd joke at his expense. A heartbeat behind them limped the massive Isaac Pratt, half-carrying, half-dragging the huge, still form of Orpheus Crutchfield. Pratt’s nose was clearly broken, the lower half of his face a scarlet mess, and he was panting.

“Fought like a damned demon,” he muttered thickly, spitting a gob of red phlegm mixed with a broken tooth. “Not his first alley scrap.” He dumped the sergeant heavily to the deck.

“Dead?” Lamb asked.

“Naw. Close enough, though. I almost had to kill him so we could get to Pearce. He got wind of this somehow, and went right to the captain’s cabin to protect him. Brave idiot. If he’d activated the machrines first, who the hell knows what would have happened.”

For the first time, a word percolated through Worth’s mind, through the pain and the fear.

Mutiny.

The crewmen were seizing the ship.

Quintal tore the bag off Pearce’s head, and the captain blinked in the sudden brightness. There was, Worth saw, no terror on his face, only a preternatural calm as the man drank in the sight of his captured officers and his rebelling crew. His shoulders were not slumped, his jaw, unshaven, was set and did not quiver. The only kinetic thing about him was a blazing wrath in his eyes, fierce and defiant. Despite having obviously been roused from slumber, standing there shorn of every badge of office except the mocking jacket, he looked like some ancient god out of myth, and while Worth had long admired the captain, she felt something closer to worship now, at the end of all things.

“Gonna be fun to do this in front of the old man,” growled Lamb, panting, and he resumed his pawing at her.

“Lamb, stand down,” Pearce said in the same even and measured voice he might have used to order the helm to change course, and Quintal punched him in the mouth. Somehow, the captain didn’t go down, but just staggered. “Where is Fletcher?” he asked thickly.

“Here,” said a voice from behind him.

It was Christine Fletcher, and she was neither bound nor escorted. She walked forward, in her full duty uniform, a laser pistol pointed at Dr. Adina Reyes. The xenobotanist looked, for the first time Worth could remember, unkempt and scared, her usually pale features even whiter, those shrewd eyes darting about in wide terror, edging closer to panic. Fletcher pushed Reyes toward the other prisoners and marched forward, pointing a laser pistol at the chest of William Pearce.

“Enough,” Fletcher said to Quintal, and then, louder, to Lamb. “Stop! I don’t want them harmed!”

For the first time, Lamb seemed to notice her. He laughed.

“Harm? You’re the one holding the gun. No harm here. Just good times. Ain’t that right, Hope?” Worth struggled harder, though to no better effect.

“No harm? Peckover’s dead. Ask Yancy about harm.”

Fletcher moved away from the captain and toward Lamb and Worth. She was wild-eyed, her hair unbound and spilling crazily about her face and shoulders.

“I said enough!”

Lamb did not listen. There were a couple of shouts of encouragement from Quintal and Churchill, a sob of impotent rage from Hall. Without another word, Fletcher aimed her sidearm and shot Lamb in the head.

The silence that followed was sudden and all-encompassing. The body of able starman Saul Lamb, minus the upper two-thirds of his head, slumped into a heap on the deck. Stunned, Hope Worth scrambled away from the smoking ruin, toward the spot where Hall lay under the boot and rifle of Peggy Briggs. No one made any motion to stop her, and even Briggs took a step backward, as the two young lovers reunited in a battered embrace.

We’re already dead
, she thought.
And this is Hell.

****

Christine Fletcher had been in Hell for weeks.

The deck swam around her, and she fought to keep her balance.
What am I doing
? She couldn’t answer, any more than she could put a stop to the events she had set in motion. She was at war against herself, split in half down the middle, bone and muscle and soul splintering asunder. She wanted to scream, to rage, to give free rein to the agony she felt, but instead she turned away from the ruin that had been Saul Lamb, pointing her weapon back at her captain, her friend, her prisoner. She had already made her choice.