Cold Sleep, page 18
“Yeah. One that bit me? It was trying to get some of the things into me to infect any tech already there. Lucky I never went in for any black-market mods when we were in Berlin. Only delayed things, though. See I’m a ’priority node.’ Bet you are too.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Why’d they let Hiroki get you?”
“He had them by the balls. I mean, no air on the ship so only he could move around. Least that’s what he thought. Can’t use the navicomp, so what? He should’ve gone down into the fusion rockets and set them off. Blown us all to hell.”
“Zed, You’re going too fast for me. What do you mean, there was somewhere with air even after we vented the whole ship?”
“Yeah. Here for starters. Some maintenance areas in the cargo holds. Then we found there’s some kind of pod or shuttle hanging onto the back of the ship. No direct access to our systems but it’s docked at the engineering emergency airlock.”
“What?”
“Someone was hitching a ride with us, the whole time.”
“Who?”
“ITF. Must’ve been. Anyway, saw their agents on board before I got taken over. I mean, last thing I saw before I went under was this big colonist jerking and twitching while his face was literally melting into mine.”
“Ghostface,” I whisper.
Zed stops for a moment, gritting his teeth tight. Joud takes him by the shoulder but Zed squeezes the other man’s hand and moves it away. Sarah spends the whole time scowling at me. Zed shakes himself, clears his throat two or three times and breaths himself back under control. “Yeah, didn’t see shit for however long I was taken over. Woke up, dealt with all the fallout from what Hiroki was doing. Didn’t think about it. Then about six months ago, rest of them… ITF bastards, I mean, they started working on the ship. Doing their own thing. Fuck knows what they want and what they’re doing to get it. Only see one at a time, but you go near them, they shoot and move on. No time for questions.”
“Holy shit! How many we talking about?” I ask.
“Seen only one of them, but there must be more,” Joud says. “We didn’t exactly hang around, Riggs—remember him?” I shake my head. “He’d managed to survive in one of the emergency engineering pressure suits. Tough old bastard had seen off all the revenants that came for him but then they…” Joud pulls his hands apart. “…vaporized him.”
“So they’ve got energy weapons?” I ask. “What? Particle lances, pulsed lasers?”
“On this ship?” Zed screws up his face. “No way. Hand maser, that’s it.”
“Yeah, that’s enough though, isn’t it?” I say.
“For sure,” Joud says. I wink at him, enjoying the blush on his cheeks.
Zed looks from one of us to the other. “Right. We stay out of their way; we stay out of the Revs” way and we only fuck with Hiroki when we can get away with it.”
I take a deep breath. “He told me they’ve evolved. Claimed there were two groups. One gone crazy from the ITF infiltrators’ nanites, the other was more… reasonable. Reckoned he’d caused the split.”
“Yeah, well I’d say that’s a bunch of paranoid bullshit,” Zed says. “Maybe he’s been synthing himself some old-style cocaine and fucking his head right up.”
Joud shrugs. “Maybe he was trying to put you off speaking to us, if you ever saw us.”
Zed grunts. “Guess he wasn’t figuring on us hitting him in his hidey hole.”
“Guess not.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “Care to tell me why you did?”
Zed’s gaze shifts away from me. First time he’s broken eye contact. “We came for you.”
“How noble of you.” It comes out far more acidic than I intend but it is, after all, me.
“Yeah. Noble. Like you closing the door on me.”
His words, their truth, hammer into me like a physical blow. “I…”
“Forget it, Kara. You’re a survivor. It’s what I liked about you. I get it. Looked like they were chomping on me and there was nothing you could do. And I figure you’ve had it bad enough since then. But we came for you because you were so important to Hiroki. That’s what he kept telling us. You were why he was doing what he was doing. If he could save you, it would all be alright. Fucking cracked. But then…”
“Then we realized he had a point. You’re navigator. With no sign of any other senior officer, the ship would default to accepting your commands so long as you were alive.” Joud. Unlike him to interrupt.
I have no idea where he’s got the idea from. Obvious bullshit but there’s no point in correcting him and revealing I’d locked the navicomp. “So you’re saying the nanites can’t hack all Charon’s systems?”
Joud shakes his head. “Not all of them—we think they can’t get into the navicomp and probably not interstellar comms either. Not without you.”
“By taking you and keeping you on ice, Hiroki got himself a bargaining chip,” Zed says. “But if you were conscious and free…”
Something about their reasoning doesn’t add up but it’s all coming in a blur. I’ve been awake for only a few hours but I’m as exhausted as if I’d worked a triple watch.
“Ok. We’re not finished but I need to rest. Process all of this. Got somewhere I can bunk?”
The silent woman gestures for me to follow her. “Thanks. What’s your name by the way?”
She turns and looks at me with a sadness in her eyes.
“Akima lost her voice thanks to Hiroki’s experiments,” Sarah says.
“Oh. I’m sorry, I hope you get it back.”
“Ain’t gonna happen. Part of her brain that does speech got burned out. She’ll be mute forever.”
That can’t be right. She clearly understands me when I speak… but then, what do I know? It’s the kind of question I’d normally leave to Hiroki.
Akima shows me to a small berth with a hammock. Clambering in, I zip it up. Stomach doing somersaults from the zero-g or the comedown or all this mad shit. Headache reminding me I’m alive. And a pang, deep down in my chest whenever I try to think about Zed or Hiroki or any of the things that have happened. None of it matters as fatigue sweeps over me like a flood, drowning my thoughts.
CHAPTER 18
* * *
I wake to find Zed floating near me. He’s not touched me or spoken but it’s as if the pressure of his thoughts has intruded on my dreams.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Shh. Don’t wake the others. They deserve what rest they can get. Come with me.”
I unlash myself from the hammock and stretch as best I can. Being without gravity has given me a stuffy nose and made my face puffy. At least, the nausea has slackened off a little—and all without the help of a promethazine patch to help me keep my dignity.
“Where are we going?” I whisper. A thrill’s running through me—does he want to “fraternize” as we used to or is this something more sinister? He doesn’t answer but holds up a finger to his lips before pulling himself along a crawl way. We drift down a long, narrow tube with fresh tasting air blowing gently in our faces. At the end, a machine room—atmo processor, power gen, and a computer terminal.
I point at the terminal. “That linked into the mains?”
“Yeah. Engineering bolt hole, remember? Get a coolant leak or atmo loss, you’d need to be able to keep in contact with the rest of the ship and maybe remotely deactivate the engines to avoid a meltdown.”
“Makes sense,” I say.
“Engineering, all ’bout the logic.”
Now or never. “I’m sorry, Zed. Sorry I left you.”
“Don’t be. Had a lot of time to think about it. You know, I’d probably’ve done the same. You couldn’t save me so, I get it. No point in sacrificing yourself.”
The tone sounds sincere and nothing in his expression gives it away but deep in my gut, I don’t believe him. Maybe Zed’s the forgiving sort. Sure as shit doesn’t sound like someone who’d dragged themselves out from the bottom of the well. A slum rat who made it out, must have done so over more than one body trampled down in his rush to get away from a meaningless life. I wonder, for the first time, how many people Zed has killed.
“Well, I want you to know I feel guilty about it. I… shouldn’t have left you.” I allow tears to form in my eyes—not sure whether they’re genuine or not. Doesn’t really matter. The effect is what I’d hoped for. Zed pushes off from his handhold, catches me in his arms and holds me. Rumbles something deep in his chest but I can’t hear it, he’s pressed so tight against me. I wrap my arms around him and allow sobs to come. Pour everything I feel about what has happened to me into those sobs. Pour my frustration and fear and worst of all, the realization this debacle has cost me any chance of a captaincy.
Zed spreads one of his meaty hands across my upper back and pats me. I think he even says, “There, there.”
I admit it, part of me wants him to get more physical but it really isn’t the time. Besides the shockwave dazzle of touching him and being touched in return isn’t there. A mild sparkle. Not nearly enough to make me lose track of where we are and what a deep shit-filled pit we’re swimming in.
I let my shoulders stop heaving and pull back. Zed releases me and I spin awkwardly in the air until I catch a handhold. Clumsy asshole may be many things but he’s no more graceful in zero-g than he is when walking around.
“So they read your mind? Sucked out all your knowledge and then let Hiroki get his hands on you?”
Zed looks taken aback by the question. Gives a thin smile and nods. “Yeah, pretty much nailed it there. Least, that’s what I think.”
“Why am I any different?”
“He froze you, right?”
“Yeah, bundled me into cold sleep just as they were taking me over.”
“Figured as much. I don’t think they can read your memories or thoughts when you’re frozen. I mean, maybe they can communicate with each other, but…”
“How do you know?”
“Isolated the frequency they’re using to communicate.”
“You did?”
“Well, not me. Joud. Turns out his specialty before officer training was in data systems. He’s not too shady… for an officer.”
“Nice.” The informality makes sense, not just between him and me, but the way he’s fallen a shade deeper into a street accent. The way he figures he can talk about Joud. Zed has become, in his own mind anyway, the big dog. For now, I’ll play along.
Zed gives a gap-toothed grin. “Figure we’re all in the shit now. Anyway, we can listen to their communications but it’s encrypted.”
“Jamming?”
“Tried. Didn’t work. Thought maybe the Comm Array would let us do it but I guess Hiroki would’ve done it if he could’ve.”
“I thought you said he was working with them.”
“He is. Sort of… Doesn’t mean he started out like that. No, they want something he’s leveraged over them. Like holding out on a street gang, he’s walking a narrow thread. Playing along but also playing his own game. Moment they think he ain’t got what they want…” Zed clicks his fingers and draws one across his throat.
I hook an arm around the nearest handrail. “Don’t you think making them out to be not much more than a street gang is an oversimplification?”
He gives me and odd look and I wonder whether I should have used smaller words.
“What you mean?”
“They want control of the ship, all they have to do is kill me or reactivate the nanites in my head. But…” I wave my hand to encompass my head, “I’m still here. What gives?”
“Yeah. OK. Shit.”
“Shit is right. Whatever game they’re playing is more subtle. Or…”
“Or it’s not you they want.”
His words slap me. I admit I’ve formed the view that naturally I am most important of all the surviving members of the crew. Enough I’ve been willing to believe everything is a charade. Hell, I’d even woken once in the night convinced this is all only a simulation the nanites have created in my mind to make me reveal some hidden secret. But Zed’s right. I’m not that important to the Gestalt and certainly not the psychotic Complex.
Well, they’ll soon regret their error of judgement.
“They control the engines?”
“Yeah. We tried manually overriding them but the closest we can do is either trigger a full burn or a meltdown.”
“Could we blow up the ship?”
“We could. But it ain’t exactly easy to kill yourself and a hundred thousand people.”
“It’s less than a hundred thousand now…” I stop myself. The look on his face warns me I’m being too cold-blooded. “The bastards saw to that. You’re right.”
“They know us. Been inside our heads. They know we’re not going to blow ourselves up.” Something starts an insistent beeping. Zed reaches one hand to the device at the back of his head. Fumbles something out of his wearall pocket and puts it into the device. Catches me staring. “Got to keep it powered. Swapping out the main capacitor.” He places the discharged capacitor down and connects it to a power output from the room’s generator.
“Don’t you just wish we had wireless power on board?” I ask, thinking to myself here’s a weakness I can exploit if necessary.
“Not really. Wireless power would make the drives unstable and—” He spreads his hands, makes a rumbling explosion sound. Idiot. There’d be no sound in vacuum.
“Those things keep the nanites inactive?”
“Yeah. Seem to.”
“What would happen if you ran out of power?”
“You have to ask?”
“Fair point. You got a spare?”
He taps the side of his temple. “Worried about the nanites you got in your head?”
“Yes. Sounds like I can’t trust Hiroki or any deal he’s made.”
“Don’t blame you. We’ve only got the ones he screwed in.”
“Could you make me one?”
“It ain’t a good solution. If it were, well, he’d have used it on you.” I scowl at him. “We find the time and the parts, I’ll see what I can do. Can’t promise it’ll cut it though.”
“Thanks. So… what next?”
“Now we know it ain’t you the Revs want, we got to make plans on how to get Hiroki. He’s slipperier than a sewer rat, that one. But we got you now, so who knows? Maybe the sonuvabitch’ll come calling.”
“That it?”
“That, get supplies, strip some more CO2 scrubbers, find food. Avoid getting killed by Revs or the ITF.”
I open my mouth to snap a retort—teach the barely evolved grease monkey a lesson for patronizing me—when I fall, wrenching my arm where it’s looped around the handrail. My stomach leaps up as if trying to escape my mouth and I crash into the deck.
Zed had landed on his feet beside me but wobbles and thumps forward onto his chest. He groans and rolls onto his back. Joud’s shouting in the other room.
“That’s the ion drive.”
“Yeah, braking or accelerating?” I ask before realizing what a stupid question it is. Despite the absence of gravity, we’d oriented ourselves to the deck as if we were still in the acceleration phase—old-hand spacer habit. And we’d fallen to artificial down.
“We’re accelerating again. That’s…”
“That’s not good,” I say. “Yeah, do you know how fast Charon’s going?”
“No idea.”
“So we could be at the ship’s maximum safe speed?”
“Maybe. No way to tell from engine sound.”
“If the Gestalt knows everything I know, it wouldn’t take us up past the redline, would it?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Zed waves his hands about. “They been doing this now and then ever since I woke from their control.”
“This, this is really important.”
“No shit.”
“You don’t understand. If we exceed the ramscoop’s threshold it’ll do one of two things.” I pause, heart thudding in my chest at the thought.
Zed’s eyes are wide. “What? Fucks sake, Kara. Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Either it’ll destabilize the magnetic field that funnels the interstellar medium. Which means leakage. Best case scenario, it’ll burn out the ion drive. If we have enough fuel in the fusion rockets there might be a way to slow down enough so we don’t end up vaporized or irradiated but it’s a long shot. And I’ve no idea how we could stop the ship. Worst case—” I spread my hands apart.
“Huh. Great. You said either. I don’t want to know, do I?”
“It’s possible the ramscoop field would get stronger and larger, drawing in more fuel. A side effect of increasing distance contraction as our gamma increases probably leading to a full-blown Anderson scenario.”
“Pretend like I didn’t understand a word, ma’am.”
“We’d accelerate out of control, get closer and closer to the speed of light, and build up such extreme time dilation we’d end up witnessing the heat death of the universe. Sound good to you?”
“You mean we’d keep going faster forever?”
“Only until we’d run out of space. I’ve seen some theories which suggest the ramscoop field would expand to devour stars, galaxies, and ultimately the whole universe but it’s the overactive imagination of officer cadets. The physics doesn’t support it.”
“Oh, well, I guess that’s something.” He wipes a hand across his face. “You’re telling me, it’s not only our mad, traitor doctor, the Revs, whatever the hell the ITF are doing here, and surviving on whatever air, water, and food we can recycle or scavenge. You’re saying we’ve got to make sure the ship is flying right?”
“We might be too late. All depends on whether the Gestalt managed to assimilate my training, my knowledge.”
“Wouldn’t the navicomp tell them all that shit?”
“It has a hard speed limit set in but navicomps don’t contain the explanation for why. Most crewmembers who had a clue about it would think it had to do with the risk of excessive radiation—more a risk to organic matter than machine. None of those infected by the nanites would have been told that once you go over the limit, you risk exponential ramscoop expansion.”
