Wreck of the Nebula Dream (16 page)

He folded his fingers around hers and squeezed gently. “Right. It’s actually pure luck I even have the booster with me at all. They’re only issued on certain missions. No one asked me to return it after the last trip I made into Seventeen. I was rushed off Glideon so fast on my last day, I didn’t have a chance to check it in. Those of us who have the implant are always more comfortable keeping a booster on hand at all times, but the technology is strictly controlled. So, one good omen. Things will be okay.”

“Oh yeah, things will be like happy comets in orbit.” Twilka rolled her eyes, her tone sarcastic. “So, shall we go wake the girl and her teddy bear thing and get going? The sooner those rescue ships arrive, the happier I’ll be.”

“Your happiness is, of course, a major concern for us.” Khevan frowned at her.

“No bickering, you two.” Mara sighed impatiently. “Twilka’s right – the sooner a rescue vessel gets here, the better. I don’t even care what colors it’s cruising under – Loxton, Frayser...”

“I’d have to think twice about getting on another SMT vessel, I have to tell you.” Nick smiled, as he walked beside Mara to retrieve the children from the wardroom. “SMT’s customer service record sucks, in my opinion.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The next hurdle was persuading Twilka to step into the grav lift. She was willing to take the short trip from the bridge to the Casino Level but had reached her limit. Taking one horrified glance into the main grav lift running through the core of the entire ship, ten levels to the hold, she stepped resolutely away, shaking her head.

“No way, not even are you getting me in there! The tube thing goes straight to the bottom of the damn ship, for Space sake. What if the power fails? Can’t we take the stairs from level to level? Or the ramps, like normal people?”

Nick had a hard time being patient with her, considering how easily and confidently Mara, and even the children, stepped into the grav lift. “Twilka, I already told you, I instructed the AI to keep power to these lifts at all costs, no matter what else it had to let go, aside from the cryo sleep pods on Level Six. The AI will warn me if it comes to either choice. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

She was adamant. “I’m not going.” Sliding down the wall in slow motion, Twilka sat cross-legged on the blue gray carpet, midnight-blue dress hiking up on her thighs. She shook her head in fierce denial. “I guess this is where we part ways, soldier. You don’t need me to work your fancy communications gizmo. I’ll stay here and wait for the rescue ship. Don’t forget to tell them I’m here, okay?”

“Suit yourself.”
I’ve no time for coaxing anyone to do anything. My priority is getting to my com unit, setting it up, and calling in a rescue, before the Mawreg notice us. Nothing else matters, not today
. Nick stepped out of the corridor into the grav lift, hovering for a second to say one final thing to Twilka. “But what if you run into more gangs of drunks with ideas about pretty young Socialites out by themselves?”

“Come with us, Twilka,” Mara pleaded from where she and Gianna floated in the shaft, left hand preventing them from beginning their descent in Nick’s wake. “You know you aren’t safe on your own. None of us are.”

“I’m scared of heights. I’m scared of grav lifts. I’m scared to stay here. Staying here by myself scares me less than going into the grav lift,” Twilka said to Khevan, the only other person remaining in the corridor. He was watching her gravely.

“Do you trust me?” he asked in his deep, calm voice.

“Well, of course,” she answered. “You’re a D’nvannae. Why do you think I wanted to contract so badly? Change your mind? The offer still stands, you know.”

He shook his head but extended one hand to her. “Come with us. Your destiny lies with us on this ship.”

“Truly? Did your Red Lady say so?” Twilka acted enchanted by the idea. Stiff and bruised from the earlier rape attempt, she worked her way to her feet awkwardly.

He didn’t answer but drew her close, staring into her eyes. “We’ll take the descent together, and I won’t let you go until we’re safely standing on the hold deck. Agreed?”

It was as if he hypnotized her.
A minute later the couple, entwined so closely they could have been enjoying a romantic encounter, floated past Nick. Reflexively, he checked to be sure the children weren’t watching this too closely. Of course they were. Khevan shot Nick a knowing glance, eyebrow raised, as he descended.
 

Hmm, I seem to remember the Red Brotherhood of D’nvannae aren’t sworn to celibacy, like their fellow Brothers serving the Lady in White.

“I think Khevan and Twilka like each other,” Paolo said, giving Nick a confiding smile.

“Maybe.” He grinned, too. “You holding up okay, trooper?”

“Yeah.” The boy was matter of fact as he continued the easy descent. “I try not to think about anything right now except what you want us to do next. Like being in a dream, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”
Familiar with the concept, kid.
He checked their progress in the shaft. “It’s a good plan, Paolo. Keep it up till we get out of here.”

“Do you think my dad got off the ship, Captain?”

“Hard one to answer, kid,” Nick said. “But if he wasn’t in the cabin when the ship hit the asteroids, maybe he did get swept up in the crowd and taken off in an LB. Things were pretty chaotic in the Lower Level corridors. So, I think we can hope.”

“He and my mom had an argument, because he wanted to go to the casino again.” Paolo kept his eyes locked on the featureless grav-lift walls as the levels passed.

“And she didn’t?” Nick could imagine how the unpleasant marital spat had probably played out, the children taking it all in, even if they were in their own part of the suite at the time.

“Right. She said he was paying too much attention to the green-haired lady running the anti-grav roulette wheel, and she didn’t want to watch him watching some other lady.”

 
Paolo’s father could even have been one of the men we pulled off Twilka.
He tried to remember faces and didn’t think any of them had been familiar, other than Easton. And Nick
had
spoken to the children’s father, on the shuttle; he vaguely remembered the guy. “Well, I haven’t seen him anywhere,” he was able to say truthfully, after this rapid memory search. “Let’s say a prayer to the Lords of Space and go on from there, trooper, like Special Forces operators on a mission do when there’s a problem.”

Paolo thought the idea over for a long minute. Then it was on to the next question. “Why do you call me trooper?”

“Well, because the rest of us are taller than you and we outrank you, but you’re definitely one of the team, which makes you a trooper.” Nick reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “First class.”

“I like it.” Paolo glanced shyly at Nick as they continued to descend. “Gianna doesn’t outrank me, does she? She’s just a baby.”

Nick laughed. “No, no, you rank her by age, relax. Here we come to the Hold Level, so watch your feet. Don’t want to land wrong and twist an ankle.”

Mara had made the descent the fastest, with Gianna, and she was already out the door, which – Nick discovered a minute later – opened directly into the vast hold of the
Nebula Dream
.

He could hear Khevan and Twilka landing softly behind him on the small ledge projecting out on each level. He crossed over into the hold, Paolo walking in front of him.

“Wow, this place sure is a mess,” the boy said, giving a shrill whistle. “How are you going to find your stuff?”

“Good question,” Nick answered, meeting Mara’s glance.
 

“Did the AI tell you how carelessly SMT was treating our belongings?” Her smile was a bit forced and grim. “Nick, how are you planning to locate one bag in all this?” She gestured across the vast expanse of the hold, where the violent maneuvering of the ship during the asteroid encounter had destroyed the stasis shelves designed to contain the luggage until arrival at Sector Hub. Elegant, expensive designer bags were mixed with commercial cargo containers of all sizes, as well as more plebeian luggage. Fluids oozed from broken or cracked containers. There was an acrid odor, as if something had burned briefly and then gone out. Smoke and hazy purple fumes drifted in the air here and there down the length of the hold, which ran the entire level. In the distance, Nick could see where one giant blast door had closed off the furthest reaches of the area, precisely as the AI had told him. About the only positive thing was the emergency lights were on full power here, unlike in other areas of the
Dream
he’d been through tonight.

“Well, at least certain safety features worked as advertised on this ship,” he said. “Good thing, too, or we’d be running out of air to breathe faster than the AI could replenish the supply.”

“Still, there’s a limit to what the AI can do, right?” Mara responded warily.

“Well, yes, of course, but we should be long gone.” Nick walked a few steps further into the hold and slowly scanned the place.

He saw a pool of congealing blood, surrounding an arm poking out from under one pile of the big, colorful commercial crates, off to the left of the grav-lift entry. Some poor warehouse worker or crew person hadn’t moved fast enough when the ship collided with its destiny. Gently he pushed the children in the other direction. “I think the AI said my stuff is over there, in the bonded stores hold, which, as you will note, remains sealed.”

Mara glanced where Nick had been staring originally and stiffened as her gaze fell upon the crushed body of the crew person. He heard her whisper to herself, “How many other people are dead or dying on this vessel?”

 
Or trapped, as the children were? Not a comforting idea.

Smiling, Khevan pulled something from a pocket, holding it up for them to see. “My things are also in the bonded stores area. I have my cargo ticket. Do you think we should present it at the purser’s office over there?”

Automatically Nick turned in the direction of the small cubicle built into the hull, adjacent to the grav-lift hatch. Khevan’s attempt at a joke fell flat as Nick took in the crushed walls of the one-person office, bent and broken under the weight of two large cargo containers, each roughly one-third the size of the shuttle they’d ridden from Glideon, now piled like matchsticks, thrown to a new location by the force of the
Dream
’s collision with whatever had disabled her.

“No, I think not,” Khevan answered his own question, tossing the small yellow claim disk aside. “Shall I lead on, Captain?”

Nick nodded absently, taking in the extent of the destruction in the main area of the hold.
 

 
Setting out across the cluttered, bare deck floor, holding Twilka’s hand, the Brother moved past an overturned cargo robot. Treads revolving uselessly in the air, the mechanism was grinding away in the inverted position. A thin plume of acrid, oily smoke was rising from the hard-working gearbox. Khevan flipped the switch off. The irritating noise stopped and the silence was deafening. The Brother realized they were all staring at him. “Well, the sound was annoying, and we need to focus without distraction. Coming? We’ll doubtless need your convenient override code, Captain.”

Nick checked on Mara and Gianna, who was yawning and rubbing her eyes with one chubby hand, giant teddy bear clutched in the other. “Hey, you want me to carry her for a while?” He nodded at the child. “She must be getting heavy. Or at least her bear must be?”
 

“Oh yeah, definitely the bear is the problem here. He weighs a lot.” Mara’s laugh was tired but genuine.

Nick shifted Gianna to his shoulder from Mara’s hip, enjoying the way she snuggled trustingly against his chest. Her soft ebony ringlets smelled faintly of some mild, powdery scent. She reminded him of his favorite younger sister, all those years ago. He swallowed hard.
Push the subject away, too hard to handle. Always too painful to deal with.

Carrying the toddler easily, Nick joined Khevan and Twilka at the sealed entryway to the bonded stores.

“Maybe I can get some of my jewelry,” Twilka said, clapping her hands together, as if the idea had just occurred to her.
 

Which,
Nick reflected
, knowing Twilka, it probably had.
 

Eyes open wide, she gazed at them, perplexed no one else was as happy. “I wasn’t going to need it all on the cruise, so I checked some of it.”

“How much more could one person wear?” Mara said it nicely, eyeing Twilka’s complicated set of gold chains, charms, earrings, rings and bracelets.

“I imagine this ship holds more treasure than we can dream.” Khevan gazed across the massive cargo hold. Even with the other end sealed off by blast doors against a major hole in the hull, it was obvious the
Dream
had been pretty much booked to capacity with items of interstellar commerce.

Biting her lip, Mara grimaced. “Well, I can see some of what I was transshipping.” She pointed at a big stack of half-crushed bins, emblazoned with the vivid red and purple “L” of her employer. “And I know the contents weren’t supposed to be flipped upside down and sideways. My cargo would only be salvage value now, let me tell you.”

Cargo being of no interest to him, Nick keyed in his override code while the others talked and speculated. The big door slowly slid straight up, opening the way. Things did appear a bit more orderly in there, at first glance. Nick started across the threshold, Khevan grabbing his elbow and holding him back.