Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (10 page)

"What am I doing here?"

Jem slid the stool back over to Barre's bedside and handed his brother a water bulb. "Really? You don't know?"

Barre sucked down the liquid and handed Jem back the empty container. "I was making music." He frowned, looked up, squinted at Jem. "My stash —"

"Don't," Jem warned, softly.

"You?"

"I have it."

Barre closed his eyes and exhaled heavily.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"I wouldn't do that to you," Barre said.

"Do what?"

"Leave you alone with them."

Jem nodded, not sure what else he could say. The silence stretched out. The normal buzz of conversations rose around them as the staff waited for the next emergency, or even the next routine call. A tech glanced at the monitor above Barre's bedside and walked away. Their parents didn't even look up from their desks.

"I guess I owe you one," Barre said.

"Well, you can bail me out the next time I'm an idiot."

"That's not fair."

"No?" Jem said, and struggled to lower his voice. "I can't believe you started using again. Especially after what they said they'd do after the last time." He jutted his chin toward his parents. "And you shouldn't trust Rotherwood."

Barre frowned. "The senator?"

"Don't play cute. Micah Rotherwood. Your source." Ro better be watching him prepare that assay. If he did anything wrong in the process, Jem would make sure Micah would suffer.

"Keep your voice down!" Barre said in a fierce whisper. "And I don't know where you get your information, but for one thing, I didn't know Micah had access. So thank you."

Jem shot him a furious look.

"For another, I brought it from Hadria. Maybe it got contaminated or something." His gaze darted all around the room, but no one paid either of them the slightest attention now that it was clear Barre would live. "I know you won't believe me, but I tried to give it up. But Mom and Dad … you have no idea what it's like not to be you."

"Don't you dare throw this on me!" Jem didn't realize he'd stood until he was leaning over Barre's bed, shouting. The monitors red-lined as Barre struggled to sit up, his face red, his eyebrows drawn over angry eyes. A technician tugged at Jem's arm. He struggled in the man's grasp. "You have choices, Barre, no matter what you tell yourself."

"I'm sorry, visiting hours are over," the tech said, his voice firm, his grip firmer.

"And they have nothing to do with me," Jem shouted. So much for his brother's gratitude. The hell with it. He didn't even care about Micah's assay anymore. What did it matter where Barre got the bittergreen? If he wanted to throw his life and his talent away, well, that was a choice too.

***

As far as Micah could tell, Ro hadn't moved from her spot standing in the middle of a personal 3-d show. He strode into his lab, unable to ignore her presence there, even when she stayed silent and focused on her own work. As much as sharing his space irritated him, Ro wasn't the cause of his anger, only the trigger.

Two weeks and another forced move to another posting that would start out full of promise and end horribly as either his father's enemies would find them, or his father would run afoul of some ethics rule. He glanced through the flexible wall to his plant nursery and cloned the assay data over to his micro.

Scanning through the comparison showed what Micah knew it would: Barre's bittergreen and his were separate cultivars. He superimposed the graphs of the two samples and highlighted the differences. It also showed him something he didn't expect. "Ro? I have Jem's proof."

She looked through her display at him with unseeing eyes. Soft brown in this light, they blinked, seeming to sharpen and turn more green as she focused on Micah. Stepping through the images, she held her hand out for his micro.

"Show me."

"You're welcome," Micah said. "See this?" He pointed out a spike in one of the graphs. "That's Barre's sample. It wasn't even the bittergreen that made him sick. It was mold. Mycotoxins. He must have had an allergic reaction."

She scanned up and down the micro's small screen. "You do good work."

"You sound surprised."

She shrugged.

"You left out the 'for a drug dealer' part," he said.

"No, I mean …," she started, but closed her mouth with an audible click before handing him back his micro and stepping back into her display. "Never mind."

That was it? She wasn't going to call Jem and show him his results? "You have no right to judge me. You look at me and see my father. Should I look at you and see yours?"

"That's not fair," she said, turning on him, red blotching her cheeks, eyes bright and glittering with anger.

"And what, exactly, are you doing here?" Micah gestured at the bright display. "I don't see this on any work order from Mendez."

"This has nothing to do with you."

He ignored her and walked into the center of her display. "That is
this
ship. Don't try to deny it."

She raised her arms. He stepped closer, getting up into her face.

"And this is the most convoluted programming I've ever seen. Do you want me to hazard a guess?"

Ro took a step back and lowered her arms, looking like she'd wanted to stare a hole through his forehead.

"That's the SIREN source code."

"So what if it is?" she said, the flush spreading down to her neck. "I'm not doing anything illegal."

If she thought a subtle threat would make him back down, then she didn't know him very well. "What's illegal about selective plant breeding and exo-botany?"

"You're growing bittergreen."

"It grows fast and hybridizes easily. Unless I plan to dry it and sell it, I haven't committed a crime." It wasn't the authorities he needed to worry about anyway. If they discovered a farm even as small as this one, they would just dust it with defoliant and move on. If the cartels found him, or even caught a rumor of what he was trying, Micah wouldn't have to worry about his plants anymore. They'd execute him.
Like father, like son
, he thought, flashing Ro a grim smile.

"Get the hell out of here before I call Mendez."

He couldn't even muster the anger to snap back at her. What did it matter anymore? "Fine," he said, turning his back on her and walking out of the display. "I don't care what you're doing. It doesn't involve me. Besides, I'm getting off this rock in two weeks. You can have the space all to yourself."

Ro didn't respond, but he could feel her staring at him.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to watch someone die in pain?" The words slipped out before Micah realized he'd said them, but once he started, he couldn't stop. Memories blasted through him like an ion storm.

"No," Ro whispered.

"What would you do if you knew there was one thing that could make it better? But that thing is illegal and when you buy it, the men you buy it from happily take your money. Then they discover who you are. Who your father is. And they threaten to cut off your supply unless he works for them." He squeezed his eyes shut, but the images of his father's face when the cartel chief hand-delivered his son along with a fresh week's dose of bittergreen for his dying wife would haunt him for a lifetime.

"I'm sorry."

Micah refused to turn around even when he felt Ro standing close behind him.

"Call Mendez or don't. I don't care." He gestured to the doomed plants, still happily growing under the more intense light. "This was my last shot to get back at the people who ruined my life."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you care?" he shot back. She didn't answer and after a long moment of uncomfortable silence, he turned to face her. "Go back to your work," he said. "I have to salvage what I can in the next two weeks."

"And then what?" This time he didn't hear any challenge in her voice.

"My father gets another chance to fuck up." And Micah would be right there with him.

Ro met his gaze with her own and he struggled not to flinch or look away.

"My father's been restoring this ship. I don't know for how long. Or why. Or even how far he's gotten, but he couldn't get the AI to work. I stole his plans. I'm going to wake it up." She continued to stare at him for several more minutes of silence before turning back to her work without another word.

"Wait," he called out, his heart beating with a possibility he was afraid to look at too closely. "This thing can fly?"

Ro paused, her arms upraised. "Not yet. But it will."

"And then what?" he asked, too softly for her to hear.

With the station so far from most of the major jump paths and most of the messages routed automatically by the AI, Nomi didn't have all that much to do
. Alone in the communications relay, she stared up at the large heads-up display of all the sector's ansible nodes and listened to her recording of the conversation between Ro and Micah.

Could Ro really get the ship's AI back on line? Nomi whistled, the sharp sound piercing in the empty room. She still couldn't figure out what, if anything, she should tell Mendez. The ship was technically salvage. It didn't belong to Daedalus and if the Space Force hadn't claimed it by now, she was pretty sure they figured it a lost cause. Unless Ro had been given a direct order to stay off the ship, she wasn't breaking any station protocols.

The ghosting program was a problem and although simply growing bittergreen wasn't illegal, she was certain Mendez would shut Micah down.

Nomi bit her lower lip. Really, she should tell someone.

Something Micah said about Ro's father piqued her curiosity. Nomi accessed the station database for the publicly available CV's and contracts and read the scrolling data: Alain Maldonado. Chief Engineer, Daedalus Station. Age 41 standard. Contracted time on Daedalus Station: five years. Time to date: three years. Dependents: one.

She clicked through to see his previous postings and whistled. For the past 22 years, Alain Maldonado hadn't moved up at all in the Engineering Guild ranks. He'd never held a job longer than a single posting, sometimes less. Even with no guild advancement, a string of broken contracts, and not one single commendation in his file, he kept getting jobs.

Poor Ro had been dragged around the galaxy from one colony to another, from station to station, and even to one fleet designation. Nomi had lived her entire life in one place, with her parents and her younger brother. Her own childhood had been considered odd enough by her friends' standards. She couldn't imagine moving every few years for her whole life.

Now that Ro had an employee posting, her information would be searchable as well. Nomi glanced up at the silent communications array and then back to her micro, hesitating. Ro didn't strike her as the kind of person who'd take kindly to being snooped on.

A loud buzz vibrated in the still room. Nomi jerked her head up to the ansible display before she recognized her micro's message alert.

"Nomi. Are you still having trouble with the sound balance?"

Her heart beat faster at the sound of Ro's voice.

"Yeah, it definitely cuts out. But Ro, what are you doing awake at this insane hour?"

"Can I come up now?"

Nomi reached for the controls that would put Daedalus fully in charge of incoming communications for the next fifteen minutes so she could talk with Ro. From her perspective, there was little Daedalus couldn't do that a human in the relay room could, but station protocols stated otherwise. "All set. It's quiet up here. It'll be nice to have the company." Nomi liked it up here at night. The ansible nodes glittered like stars and with the interior lights dialed down, she felt like she hovered in space.

It would be lovely to share it with someone.

"On my way."

Nomi was glad she'd chosen the red tank beneath her uniform. She cleared the search from her micro. This would be much better than trolling through the database.

The relay room's doors slid open and Ro stood for a moment, back-lit in the corridor's brightness. Nomi blinked, her vision used to the dim interior. All she could make out was Ro's blonde hair, free of its usual tie back, a soft corona of light framing her face. "Welcome to my quiet world," Nomi said, smiling.

Ro stepped forward and the doors slid shut behind her. As Nomi's eyes readjusted to darkness, she noticed the frown on Ro's face and her smile faltered. "Is there something wrong?" she asked.

Ro shook her head and scanned the room with her micro.

"What are you doing?"

"Making sure of something." Ro's voice held none of the wry humor it had the other morning.

"I really appreciate you coming up tonight. I've reported the problem pretty much since I started here. But I guess it wasn't in anybody's queue." She glanced up at Ro, hoping this was more than just a conscientious engineering intern trying to impress the commander.

She didn't answer and Nomi cursed herself for being so eager for a friend that she'd totally misread signs that weren't there.

"Here. You can pair your micro to any of the consoles." She pointed to the ring of empty workstations around the raised dais where she sat. If there was ever a need, they could have six comms people fielding signals, but Nomi couldn't imagine Daedalus ever being that overrun by ansible traffic.

Ro took the station at the edge of the ring and sat half-facing Nomi and the door to comms, completely ignoring the twinkling display.

"Don't you ever sleep?" Nomi asked.

"Is it just the high frequencies?"

"Yes." The silence of the relay room usually comforted Nomi, but now she wanted to fill it with chatter. Even an ansible call would help. She sneaked glances at Ro as she worked with a focused intensity, the holographic display brightening the space around her head.

"I need a test signal. Push something from the logs through."

Nomi sat back at her station, slipped on her headset, and took control back from Daedalus. "Here," she said, calling up some of the traffic comms had passed during the last shift. "Try it now." As she waited for the messages to play back through the system, she thought again about what she'd overheard. Should she inform Mendez? Call security? Did Ro know she'd been on the ship?