Renegade (18 page)

Beyond, the corridor end was approaching. Now
this
looked simple enough, and she unclipped her harness and simply stepped off as the rope passed its end pulley and went around. There. And looked up the vast height above with a real sense of accomplishment. Now, she thought. Engineering.

Engineering HQ was built with its back to the rear cylinder bulkhead. The main entrance door was now a hole in the floor with a rope ladder on one side, and a rope on the other. “Ware!” someone called as she peered in, and she stepped quickly aside for a spacer in a hurry who sat on the doorframe, grabbed the rope, then slid down at speed. The rope ladder was to come up, Lisbeth guessed. Well, she’d done this before in PT classes. She sat, legs over the edge, took the rope and told herself that this was nothing compared to what she’d just done. Then slid off, and let gravity take her down with the rope on her jacket arm to save her the rope burn.

And looked around as her feet hit the bottom. She was to one side of a bridge not unlike the main bridge, with various scan posts before wide screen arrays. People still sat in those chairs, flat on their backs, and talked back and forth or on coms. Here on the ‘floor’, people who wanted to talk to them stopped and looked up. Getting in and out of those chairs would take a boost, Lisbeth thought. She peered up at one, and saw display screens showing engine schematics, jump line routes, and vid feeds from various drones probing the damage. Those drones would now be burning at 1-G just to keep up.

The woman in the chair looked back at her, her head just a little above Lisbeth’s own. “Hey. Lisbeth Debogande, right?”

Lisbeth nodded. “I’ve got a masters in engineering from Getti College, graduated top of my class. Specialised on a starship track, I was wondering if…”

“Hey Rooke?” the woman said into coms. “You wanted another eye on those jumpline schematics? I’ve got you one.” She pointed, for Lisbeth’s benefit. “That way.”

Ducking under chairs and posts, Lisbeth found a young-looking black man sitting crosslegged before a portable display mount, with two others crouched alongside pointing and talking tersely. One glanced up as Lisbeth approached.

“Um, hi… I’m Lisbeth Debogande, I’ve got a masters in engineering from…”

“We know,” said the man who’d looked, and handed her a slate. “This is set for jumpline schematics, the comp will feed you your area, you need to walk through the auxiliary powerloadings, they’re haywire at the moment and we don’t trust auto diagnostic when that happens. Watch for spikes, report anomalies. Got it?”

Lisbeth nodded rapidly, took the slate and looked for somewhere to sit. “Just… anywhere?”

“Anywhere at all,” the man said drily, and returned his attention to the young black man’s screens, and their ongoing conversation. That man’s nametag read Rooke, and his shoulder stripes were a Second Lieutenant’s. He didn’t even glance at her. Lisbeth found a seat against what used to be the floor, and got to work.

E
rik lay
back on the command chair, a boot stuck against a display support to keep the circulation going. Ahead and closing, Scan zoomed on the rock they were chasing. They had visual now — a dark blob against the bright starfield. They were approaching from darkside, so only a faint crescent was visible from Argitori’s three distant suns. It did not tumble, as Geish had said. It was roughly ovoid, and a touch over a kilometre long, plenty big enough to hide Phoenix from half the sky.

“Well this is interesting,” said Geish, cycling through several of his most advanced displays. “Several of the surface features look regular. Same shape and size. Scancomp says an eighty-three percent chance it’s been hollowed.”

Erik frowned. “We’re a long way off the elliptic plane for a settlement.”

“An insystem settlement, sure,” cautioned Kaspowitz.

“But what are the odds?” Geish replied. “An FTL settlement here? Whose? And out of all the rocks in the system, we just happen to find this?”

Erik recalled something the Captain had told him once, in conversation over a drink during second-shift. “Second Lieutenant, did you find that rock off auto-search?”

“Standard auto-search,” Geish confirmed.

“But scancomp memory plays a role in that,” Erik pressed. “I mean there’s millions of rocks out here, maybe thousands with suitable trajectories.”

Geish frowned at him, rolling his head on the headrest to look. “You’re saying scancomp found this rock for us?”

“Something the Captain told me.” Erik chewed on a nail. “Ghosts in the system, if a ship’s been around long enough. It finds things, long locked into memory, no telling how it got there.”

“Yeah but we wipe excess data from comp every few years,” Jiri added from Scan Two.

“Not on this warship we don’t,” said Kaspowitz. “LC’s right. I’ve seen it. Navcomp finds weird little things like that all the time. Statistical anomalies.
Phoenix
may have latest tech, but her memory’s old as the Ancients.”

And the tech didn’t come from us. No one said it, it was in the back of everyone’s mind. All of Fleet’s fundamental technologies had been given to them by the chah’nas. It wasn’t the first time they’d done that — the first time had been to save humanity’s ass against the krim. But the Triumvirate War had been more of a booster, a high-tech kick in the pants to keep the humans moving along at a suitable rate. And this time, the chah’nas were not humanity’s only friend, as the alo had joined in as well — not so much in fighting, but certainly in weapons and industry. In the latter part of the war, they’d even begun granting humanity limited use of their coveted warship technology. Only a few had been built, hybrids of existing human and new alo technology, but those few had performed spectacularly. Perhaps the most prominent of those, was
Phoenix
.

“Looks dead,” Geish added of the rock. “If it was active I’d be getting some heat signature, some echo off a reflective panel, some external structure. This one, nothing.”

“LC,” said Second Lieutenant Shilu from Coms, “I’m getting transponder traffic on that new arrival, 179-by-7 off trajectory.”

“Yep,” said Jiri after a moment. “Yep, I got that, that’s chah'nas. Warship
Tek-to-thi.”

“She was on Fajar Station with us,” Erik recalled. “Kulik Class vessel, not our size but fast. Someone sent her after us.”

“To watch, or to participate?” Shahaim wondered. “Sure is real noisy of her to show up in human business and broadcast like that.”

“Chah'nas are a noisy people,” Kaspowitz said drily.

Erik recalled the chah'nas ambassador at his mother’s party. Recalled it nodding to him, and raising a glass in one of its four hands. Uncle Thani warning that this whole thing had the smell of aliens about it. Alien allies. This ship was making noise. It made him wonder what else was hiding out there, running faster than them to get ahead of their current position with no announcement at all.

“Scan,” he said. “Keep your eyes peeled. That ship might be trying to get our attention. Let’s make sure she doesn’t have all of it.”

“Aye LC,” said Geish in a tone of agreement.

“Could push harder to make that rock?” Shahaim suggested.

“Any more than one-G and our tail lights up like Festival. This is as hard as we dare push without drawing attention. There’s just too damn many of them out there.”

He just hoped they made that damn rock before someone sprang them. With the jump lines shot, their next jump would be more likely fatal than any incoming ordinance.

N
o sooner had thrust been
cut and G returned to normal than word came from the bridge for a boarding party to suit up. Forty minutes after that, and in the midst of armoured preparations in Assembly, Trace got a call from Erik himself asking to meet her at her quarters.

She jogged back and met him at the door just as he arrived, it being about equal time from Bridge and Assembly. She opened and gestured him in, and saw the bednets holding loose sheets bundled against the G-wall.

Erik turned on her with concern. “Where’s Lisbeth?”

“She’s been down in Engineering the last few hours. Helping Rooke with analysis.”

Erik stared. “She went down during the
push
?” Trace waited calmly for him to realise she’d already answered that question. “And you let her?”

“I was busy. You were busy. She used her judgement. I talked to Warrant Officer Chau, she said Lisbeth’s been sitting quietly, making herself useful.”

Erik put his hands on his head and stared at a wall. “She went down the corridor?” Again Trace waited for him to realise that there was no other way to reach Engineering from here. And she’d already answered that question. “Good god Major…”

“Your sister is a very bright girl. She’s going to be stuck with us for some time. I assure you, she will not like being stuck in a small room for all that time. She’ll need to find her own way, and you’re going to have to let her.”

“Fucking Kulina. You know, not everyone’s as tough as you…”

“Everyone
is
as tough as me,” Trace said with certainty. “It’s just that not everyone knows it. Now, you had something to show me?”

In frustration Erik pulled a chip reader from his pocket. “I got this back from maintenance just now from the plumbing filter.”

“Your bowels work fast.”

Erik hit a button, and uplinked a connection to the room display. Captain Pantillo’s face appeared. Or rather, a blurry close up of the lower part of his unshaven jaw. But the voice was certainly his, rough, tired and very low. As though worried someone was listening.

“
Okay,
” he said. “
To whoever finds this. I’m pretty sure it might be you, Erik.
” A deep breath. “
And I don’t think you’re going to like how you find it.
”

Trace stared at the screen. And found herself tilting her head, as though somehow that change in perspective might reveal the rest of the Captain’s face. He was talking into some kind of handheld device. Something simple that hadn’t been confiscated from him, or that he’d rigged with a simple memory chip. A watch? Certainly he was in a cell, lying on the bed. Probably the same cell Erik had found him in.

“
I can’t speak long. Just know that this whole thing runs very deep. I can’t tell you what to do, because like what happens when the LC assumes command and I can’t make the chair, you’ll have to make your own decisions based on circumstances as you find them. Don’t ask what I’d do. If you’ve found this, I’m no longer here. Follow your judgement. I’d never have asked for you to be in my crew if I didn’t trust it.
”

Trace glanced at Erik, and saw him struggling with emotion. Moisture in those brown eyes, dark brows knitted.

“
I won’t apologise for what I’ve dumped you in. On a personal level I am profoundly sorry. But as you’ll find the deeper you dig, this is so much bigger than me, or you, or all of us together. We’re all about the bigger picture. That’s why we fought this war. I trust you can handle that bigger picture as you’ve handled it up till now.

“I can’t tell you much specifically because I can’t be sure who’s going to find this chip. Revealing what I know might reveal my sources, who have to be protected. But know that this story begins where the last story ended, and humanity’s fate is not nearly as much in our hands and arms as we’d thought. The more things change in this galaxy, the more they stay the same.

“Tell my family that I love them. My blood family, and my ship family. Trace, please protect them all. I know you will. And keep an eye out for that man we’ve discussed, you’ll find him interesting, I promise. Gotta go.”
The camera view lifted briefly from his jaw to a closeup of his eyes. Familiar, slanted, wrinkled with experience the treatments typically hid. Smiling, she just knew, even though she could not see his whole face. Smiling at her. At them all.

The screen blanked. Trace blinked back tears. She could not trust herself to speak.

“A couple of things,” said Erik, his voice tight. “First, who is ‘that man you’ve discussed?’”

“Don’t know,” Trace lied. Speaking was difficult. “I’ll have to think about it. We discussed a lot of people.”

Erik nodded. “The other bit is after he talks about his sources. Clearly that’s all code, he’s trying to tell us something. Humanity’s fate is not nearly as much in our hands and arms… clearly he’s not just talking about aliens, he’s talking about chah'nas. Hands and arms, it’s unnecessary to say both, the allusion is to many hands and arms.”

Trace nodded, and wiped her eyes, trying to focus.

“The more things change in the galaxy, the more they stay the same… well the chah'nas are trying to restore their empire, we’ve always known that. But most of their fighting has been against sard and kaal — most of their old empire is what the tavalai held, and that’s all with us. So I’m thinking someone’s done a deal about that.”

“There’s been speculation before,” Trace agreed with an effort. “But we’re not just giving them their old territory back, any human leader who gives away what we paid such a price for would find his neck in a vice real quick.”

“Exactly,” said Erik. “So this is something new. As to what he meant by ‘this story begins where the last story ends’, I’ve no idea. I mean which story? There’s so many stories.”

“Yeah,” Trace said slowly, thinking hard. “You’ve got me. That might be the key, though. It sounded almost like he was giving us directions.” She nodded at the chip reader. “You should play that for the whole ship, when we’ve got a moment. Or let copies circulate. They deserve to see it. Learn what they’re up to their necks in.”

Erik’s eyes widened a little, taking in her full meaning. “Let them see I didn’t kill him?” he said drily. “Doesn’t entirely prove that does it? Not for the totally conspiracy-minded.”