"Now we go somewhere unexpected. Uh, your rings still not working?" She nodded. "Right, switch off everything."
"But—"
"Just do it." Martin reached into a pocket and pulled out a battered-looking leather-bound hardback book. "PA, global peripheral shutdown. Go to voice-only." He shook his head, wincing slightly. "I know it feels weird, but—"
Steffi shrugged uncomfortably, then blinked her way through a series of menus until she found the hard power-down option on her personal area network. "Are you sure about it?"
"Sure? Who's sure of anything? But if someone's taking over the ship, they're going to view nailing down line officers—even trainees—as a priority. Way I'd plan it, first your comms would go down, then people would simply vanish one by one." Steffi blinked and nodded, then sent the final command and watched the clock projected in her visual field wink out.
Martin stood up. "Come on." They followed the last diners out into the main radial heading for the central concourse, but before they'd passed the nearest crossway Martin paused at a side door. "Can you open this?"
"Sure." Steffi grasped the handle and twisted. Sensors in the handle recognized her handprint and gave way. "Not much here but some stores and—"
"First thing to do is to cover up that uniform." Martin was already through the door. "Got to get you looking like a steward or a passenger. Don't think they'll be looking for me or Rachel yet." He pushed open the next door, onto a dizzying spiral of steps broken every six meters by another pressure door. "Come on, long climb ahead."
Steffi tensed, wondering if she was going to have to break his neck there and then. "Why do you—"
"Because you're a line officer, why else? If we're being hijacked, you know how to fly this damn thing; at least you're in the chain of command. I know enough about the drive layout on this tub to spin up the kernel, but if we get control back, we're going to need you to authenticate us to the flight systems and log me in as flight engineer. If I'm wrong, we'll hear about it as soon as the PLN comes back up. So start climbing!"
Steffi relaxed. "Okay, I'm climbing, I'm climbing."
TOO MANY CHILDREN
"You—" Rachel swaged on her feet. The girl shook her head violently, looking spooked, and muttered something inaudible. Then she glanced over her shoulder. "Are you Victoria Strowger?"
Wednesday's head whipped round. "Who wants to know?"
Her shoulders set, she was clearly on the defensive. "Calm down," said Rachel. "I'm Martin's partner. Listen, the ReMastered are going to be all over us in a couple of minutes if we don't get the hell out of the public spaces. All I want is to ask you a couple of questions. Can we take this up in my suite?"
Wednesday stared at her, eyes narrowing in calculation. "Okay. What's going on?"
Rachel took a deep breath. "I think the ship's being hijacked. Do you know where Frank is?"
"I—no." Wednesday looked shaken. "He was going to go back to his room to fetch something, he said."
"Oh dear." Rachel tried to keep a straight face; the kid looked really worried at her tone of voice. "Are you coming? We can look him up later."
"But I need to find him!" There was an edgy note of panic in her voice.
"Believe me, right now he's either completely safe, or he's already a prisoner, and they'll be using him as bait for you."
"Fuck!" Wednesday looked alarmed.
"Come on," coaxed Rachel. "Do you want them to find both of you?" A sick sense of dread dogged her: if Martin was right, Wednesday and Frank were romantically entangled. She cringed at the memory of how she'd once felt, knowing Martin had been taken. "Listen, we'll find him later—get to safety first, though, or we won't be able to. Switch your rings off right now, unless you want to be found. I know you're not on the shipboard net, but if they're still emitting, the bad guys may know how to ping them." Rachel turned toward the main stairwell. It was filling up with people, chattering hordes of passengers coming out to see what was going on, or heading back to their rooms; a handful of harried-looking stewards scurried hither and yon, or tried to answer questions for which they didn't have any answers.
"You know what's going on, don't you?"
Rachel concentrated on the stairs, trying to ignore her shaking muscles and the urge to shiver whenever she thought back to what she'd seen in the D-con room. Six flights to go.
"What is going on?"
"Shut up and climb." Five flights to go. "Shit!" They were nearing D deck, and the crowd was thinner—there were fewer staterooms—and there was the first sign of trouble, a man standing in the middle of the landing and blocking the next flight of stairs. His face was half-obscured by a pair of bulky low-tech imaging goggles, like something out of the dawn of the infowar age; but the large-caliber gun he held looked lethally functional.
"You. Stop. Who are you and where are you going?"
Rachel stopped. She could feel Wednesday a step behind her, shivering—about to break and run, if she didn't do something fast. "I'm Rachel Mansour, this is my daughter Anita. We were just going back to our suite.
It's on B deck. What's going on?" She stared at the gun apprehensively, trying to look as if she was surprised to see it. Ooh, isn't it big! She steeled herself, prepping her military implants for the inevitable. If he checked the manifest and realized—
"I'm with the shipboard security detail. We've got reason to believe there's a dangerous criminal loose aboard ship." He stared at them as if memorizing their faces. "When you get to your rooms, stay there until you hear an announcement that it's safe to leave." He stepped to one side and waved them on. Rachel took a deep breath and sidled past him, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Wednesday was still there.
After a moment's hesitation the young woman followed her. She had the wit to keep quiet until they were round the next spiral in the staircase.
"Shipboard security my ass. What the fuck was that about?"
"Network's down," murmured Rachel. "They've probably got a list of names, but they don't know who I am, and I lied about who you are. It'll last about five milliseconds once they get the ship's systems working for them, but we're in the clear for now."
"Yeah, but who's Anita?"
Rachel paused between steps to catch her breath for a moment. Three flights to go. "Anita's been dead for thirty years," she said shortly.
"Oh—I didn't know."
"Leave it." Rachel resumed climbing. She could feel it in her calves, and she could hear Wednesday breathing hard. "You get used to letting go and moving on. After a while. Not all of them die."
"She was, your daughter?"
"Ask me some other time." Two flights to go. Save your breath. She slowed as they came up to the next landing, emergency pressure doors poised like guillotine blades overhead, waiting to cut the spiraling diamond-walled staircase into segments. But there was no checkpoint. They don't have enough people, she thought hopefully. We might get away with this.
"My suite. Can't go. Back?"
"No." One more flight. "Not far now." They paused at the top of the next flight. Wednesday was panting hard. Rachel leaned against the wall, feeling the hot iron ache in her calves and a burning in her lungs. Even militarized muscles didn't enjoy climbing fifty vertical meters of stairs without a break. "Okay, this way."
Rachel palmed the door open and waved Wednesday inside. The kid glanced at her for a moment, her expression troubled. "Is this—"
"Talk inside." She nodded, and Rachel followed her in. "Sit down. Got some stuff to do."
"Stuff?"
Rachel was already leaning over her trunk. "I want—hmm." She raised the lid and stuck her finger in the authentication slot, then rapidly scrolled through items on the built-in hard screen. She glanced at Wednesday.
"Come over here. I need to know what size clothing you take."
"Clothing? Earth measurements? Or Sept—"
"Just stand up. Your name's Anita and you don't exist, but you're down on the passenger list. So we'll just have to make sure you don't look like Victoria Strowger when they get the passenger liaison net back up again, all right?"
"What's going on?"
Rachel straightened up as the trunk began to whine, holding a small scanner. "I was hoping you could tell me. That jacket's programmable, isn't it? You've made them panic, and they're springing a trap. Can it do any colors other than black? Prematurely, I hope. Quick, they could be calling any minute. Why don't you tell me how you got in this mess—"
There was no knock on the door. It swung open, and two figures leapt inside. But then one of them kicked it shut—and by the time Rachel finished turning around Martin was leaning against the door, his eyes half-shut, breathing deeply.
"Martin—" She glanced sideways as she stood up, knees wobbly with relief.
"I was beginning to think they'd grabbed you." They met in the vestibule and she hugged him, then looked past his shoulder at the other arrival.
"Aha! Glad you could make it. Martin, which plan were you thinking of using?"
"Plan B," said Martin. "We've got that spare ID you put on the manifest."
"Uh-oh." Rachel let go of him, turned, and stared at the bathroom door.
"We may have a problem."
The bathroom door opened. "Is this what you wanted?" Wednesday asked plaintively. Rachel blinked at her. In the space of ten minutes her hair had turned blond and curly, the stark black eyeliner had vanished, and the black leather jacket with the spiky shoulders had been replaced by a pink dress with layered puffball underskirts. "My ass looks huge in this. I feel like a real idiot!" She noticed Steffi. "Oh, hi there. This isn't about the other night, is it?"
Steffi sat down hard on the end of the bed. "Just what are you doing here?"
she demanded, a hard edge in her voice.
"Um." Rachel fixed Martin with a steely gaze. "We seem to have a slight problem. Can't really have two Anitas running around, can we?"
"No—" Martin rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Shit! What a mess. One false set of ident tags, and two people to hide. Looks like we've got a problem, folks."
"Can I just wear a flowerpot on my head and pretend I'm a tree? I know the idea is to look different, but this is just plain embarrassing."
"Somehow I don't think that would fool them for long." Martin scratched his chin. "Steffi?"
"Let me think." She leaned her chin on one fist. "I feel so useless right now.
I should really be trying to link up with the bridge crew or D-com—"
"Your attention, please. This is your acting Captain speaking." Everyone looked up instinctively at the voice emanating from the emergency comm panel beside the door. "There has been an accident on the bridge. Captain Hussein has been incapacitated. In her absence I, Lieutenant Commander Fromm, am in charge of this vessel. For your safety and comfort you should remain in your rooms until further notice. Passenger liaison facilities will be re-enabled shortly, and if you need anything, your needs will be attended to. In view of the crisis, I have asked for volunteer help. We are lucky to be carrying a group from Tonto, and I have enlisted these people to provide assistance in this critical period. Please comply with any instructions they issue. I will make further announcements when the situation is fully under control."
"Uh-oh," said Wednesday.
"He's gone crazy!" Steffi exploded. "The skipper would never do that, she'd—" Her eyes were wide. "It's a hijacking, isn't it? But why is Max cooperating?"
"I hate to break it to you," Martin said gently, "but that wasn't Lieutenant Commander Fromm you were listening to. It was his voicebox, but not him talking."
"What do you mean?" Steffi stared at him, trying to figure out how much he might know.
"The ReMastered have made something of a specialty out of brain mapping and digitization," said Rachel, her tone dispassionate. "They can save minds to off-line storage and reincarnate them later—at great expense—by building a new body. But mostly they use the technique to turn living bodies into puppets. Zombies, zimboes with the illusion of self-awareness, whatever." She clenched her hands together. "That's how they take planets. They acquire some key government officers, destabilize the place by exploiting local political tensions, declare a state of emergency—using their puppets—and move in."
Steffi's face was white. Shit! I have to warn Sven! We've got to get out of here! "Max went to the flight deck to find out what was going on! I let him—"
"Don't blame yourself. They've got the bridge, drive engineering control, damage control, sentries on the main stairs, and passengers under lock and key in their rooms. This was a well-planned operation." Rachel glanced at Wednesday. "Bet you they're turning over your suite right now. And yours," she added, looking back at Steffi. "They made a big mistake, missing you."
"But I, I—" Steffi stopped. She looked horrified.
"It'll take them time to check on us in here," Martin said slowly, thinking aloud. "When they do, we want you well hidden. You're probably the senior line officer on the ship. We'll need you around for your pass codes and retinal print if we're to stand a chance of taking back control." He glanced at the cupboard. "Once we arrive where they're diverting us to. If we get there without them tagging us in a search. Ever heard of a priest's hole?"
"A what?" Steffi looked dazed. "What are you talking about? I'm just a trainee flight officer! I don't have clearance—"
Martin walked over to the trunk containing the military fabricator. "You'll be the ranking line officer on the ship once this is over," he told her. "Rache, can you clear everything out of the walk-in? I'm going to need some basic tools, some supports, and a load of paneling to fit. Plus any special toys you can have the fab turn out in less than half an hour that won't show up as weapons on a teraherz scan. Bet you they're working on a ubiquitous surveillance mesh already. Need clothing for you, me, and the kid; it's in the deception and evasion library. Steffi, have you got a rebreather mask?
We'll need a couple of buckets, some cushions, something to cover one of the buckets with—"