Moral and Orbital Decay: Mission 14 (Black Ocean) Page 9

  # # #

  Esper lived out her nights in a dream world of her own making, where every meal could taste like chocolate and the weather was always sunny with little puffy clouds dotting the sky. And yet, as she stared through the transparent dome high above, watching a planet drift past every ten seconds or so, alternating with the system’s sun, she could hardly believe it was real.

  Carl snapped his fingers. “Yo, doomed space station to Esper. Come in, Esper.”

  Esper blinked. “Sorry. Just not something I expected to see today. I really ought to have adjusted my expectations by now, but the galaxy continues to find ways to surprise me.”

  From his perch on Esper’s upturned hand, a tiny Rai Kub chimed in. “Agreed. Wholeheartedly.”

  Esper shook her mind from its torpor. “Right. Sorry. First things first, let’s get you back to normal size.”

  “No!” Cedric shouted. He was leaning against the wall beside the door to the holovid theater, struggling to collect himself. “I’ve caused enough havoc with magic already. This steel moon relies on science. It makes the air, the light, the stable orbit. We’ve got gravity and some unknown bit of luck holding the air in. Let us hope that those last until the station recovers from its ordeal.”

  Carl skeptically looked up, watching the planet circle them. “You fucked us good. Is it my imagination, or is that planet getting bigger every time it comes around?”

  “Don’t worry,” Esper told Rai Kub, ignoring Carl’s doomsaying. “We’ll get you back to normal, then worry about getting out of here. I’m far more subtle in my magic than him.”

  The miniature stuunji held up both hands. “Wait! Wizard Cedric has a point but maybe not the one he intended. If this station isn’t making air to breathe, I’ll just be using up a larger share if you restore me. I’m willing to wait out this disaster in my current state.”

  Esper lifted the little stuunji up to her cheek and hugged him. “Aw. That’s so sweet. Don’t worry. As soon as things are back to normal, you will be, too.”

  Cedric pushed himself away from the wall and stood straight. Only his head was bowed. “I cannot apologize enough.”

  “Nope,” Carl agreed. “So, I’d just skip it and help us get the hell out of here.”

  Esper looked into Cedric’s eyes, shadowed in the dim planetlight when it passed briskly overhead. There was a haunted look there that made Esper’s heart ache in sympathy. She knew the pain of accidental misuse of her powers. Even before she’d ever read the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts, she’d killed a man in panic.

  This was just a space station. It might even survive. But if he had killed it, YF-77 was just a thing. The lives he’d taken in the holo theater would weigh more heavily on his conscience one day, when there was time aplenty and no immediate threat. For now, they had to find shelter and wait out the loss of science.

  Donning her sweatshirt, she let Rai Kub ride hammock-style in the front pocket. “Let’s move.”

  “Anyone remember where we parked?” Carl asked. As the rest of them turned to glare at him in the intermittent light, he held up his hands. “Just kidding. Lighten up. It’s this way… right?”

  # # #

  In Roddy’s professional estimation, Archie’s limp robotic form weighed somewhere between one and two fucktons. Without a scanner or a scale, he couldn’t say any more precisely that that. Even with the application of some door-slide lube, dragging Archie across the station was a chore. He trailed a slick smear wherever they went.

  “I get dizzy every time I look up,” Yomin complained, grunting with exertion. “What the hell happened to this place?”

  “Well, either an unprecedented series of coincidental system failures lined up like the tumblers of some cosmic lock, or I’m blaming the wizards,” Roddy replied. This wasn’t the time to get cute and overlook the obvious. Tech died. Wizards are around. Blame the wizards.

  Part of him wanted to just leave the damn robot where he lay. He was heavy, awkward, and probably dead. The rest of Roddy hoped he was OK.

  Booted feet approached. After the initial panic, everyone had gotten out of the main corridors. Whether they had all returned to their homes and ships or there had been some sort of civil emergency procedure he hadn’t been briefed on, Roddy couldn’t say. But now they had company.

  “Ditch him,” Roddy whispered, letting go of one limp leg and beckoning for Yomin to hurry after him.

  “We can’t,” she objected.

  “No time,” Roddy said. “If it’s looters, we’re boned.”

  “The station’s been dark for ten minutes, tops. There hasn’t been time for roving bands of looters to get organized.”

  “You’d be surprised how little organization a roving mob takes to get up a head of steam,” Roddy countered. He could only hope that his extensive experience on the wrong side of the law carried enough weight to buy Yomin letting go of Archie’s other leg.

  Yomin looked down. The muscles in her neck tensed. “Fine,” she snapped. “We’re coming back for him, though.”

  They dragged Archie behind a waste bin and skedaddled away from the looters.

  A voice boomed from down the corridor. It wasn’t technologically amplified; they’d just found someone with a leather bellows for lungs.

  “Per station Chief Fujita Hiroko, anyone on board this station with experience or expertise in engineering, computers, or system maintenance is hereby ordered to report for emergency repair crews.”

  “Shit,” Yomin muttered as they ducked for cover behind a station map kiosk. “Press gangs.”

  Roddy, however, brightened. As he stood to show himself, Yomin yanked him back by the collar. He made a quick mental note to purchase some shirts with closer-fitting necklines.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Yomin snapped in a whisper.

  “Whaddaya mean, ‘what’? They’re looking for help fixing the station. I’ve got more experience coaxing wizard-muddled tech back into working order than anyone in the galaxy, I’m guessing. I might not be able to do much on my own, but I sure as hell bet I can with half the station’s mechanics on my side.”

  “You’re crazy,” Yomin insisted. “Stick to the plan. Let’s lay low, get Archie back to the ship, get the Mobius up and running, and get out of here before anyone’s the wiser. If we split up, we won’t be able to leave.”

  Roddy supposed she was right about that. All of that, in fact. Carl wouldn’t ditch anyone. But there was a lot of supposes between Roddy’s plan and Yomin’s. The main point that stuck in Roddy’s craw was that this mess was a coin flip as to whose fault it was. More than likely, it was one of their wizards who’d done this to the station in the first place. That meant that by cutting and running, anything that happened on the station was their fault. Medical shortcomings, unsent distress calls, faulty safety measures, insufficient life support. Lives were on the line, and it wasn’t like they could play dumb about where to lay the blame.

  “Right,” Roddy said, pretending to agree with Yomin until he felt safe from another collar-grab. As soon as he judged a window, he burst into the middle of the walkway, arms waving overhead. “Hey! Over here. I’m a starship mechanic. Twenty years experience on all sorts of obsolete and run-down systems.”

  One of the gaggle of humans separated himself from the group. “Laaku, huh? ‘Bout time we caught a lucky break.”

  “Luckier than lucky,” Roddy said. “This smells like a magic accident. I’m guessing you’ve got some wizards on board who couldn’t keep their hands in their sleeves.”

  It was hard to tell when the light shifted by the second as sun and planet switched positions overhead in a constant rotation, but it looked to Roddy as if the human scowled at him. “What do you know about that?”

  Suddenly on the accusing end of knowing what might have happened to the station, Roddy kept his hands in clear view and ducked just a little lower. “Hey, I spent years as a wizard’s personal ferryman. Wasn’t my ship or nothing, but I was the one who had to put it back
together after a tantrum. He passed away not long back, so I know it can’t be him. Ornery old coot that he was, he can’t work magic from beyond the grave. Lucky for you boys, I happen to know a thing or three about how to caress a complex system back into working order. Just give me as many men as you can spare, and I’ll get this straightened out.”

  “Hah! That’s the spirit,” the leader said. “Pinchot, escort our fine, four-handed friend to the engine core and give him to Mr. Kane.”

  “Yes, sir,” a gangly human barked, snapping a military salute that looked like it came from watching too many marine holos. He turned to Roddy and beckoned with a wave of his hand. “Follow me.”

  Pinchot headed off at a brisk pace.

  Roddy cleared his throat before departing. “My shy friend over there is ex-navy. Former data pusher. Great with computers. Don’t know how much help she’ll be, but you’re welcome to her.”

  Two of the mechanic press gang recruiters dragged Yomin out from her hiding place, glaring lasers at Roddy. As Roddy headed off to catch up with Pinchot, he was glad that any lasers on YF-77 were out of commission.

  # # #

  Amy sat at the top of the cargo ramp and worried.

  A rescued pile of Snakki Bars sat beside her on one side. Shoni sat quietly on the other. Whether Shoni was worrying or not, Amy couldn’t tell. Neither of them was talking. Every once in a while, they caught each other looking the other’s way.

  Amy stood. “I should go look for them.”

  “Sit,” Shoni ordered. “If this is magic, it’ll come back on its own. If they still have tech, they’ll come back when they notice their comms don’t work. Forcing open doors and wandering around without a working comm is just going to cause trouble and get you lost.”

  With a sigh, Amy sat. Shoni’s logic was sound. But right then Amy didn’t want to be logical. She wanted to know what was going on, that Carl and the others were safe, and that everything was going to be all right.

  The door to their hangar bay shrieked in protest as someone manually forced it open.

  “There. You see? They’re back,” Shoni said with a wave of her hand toward the door. The emergency phosphorescents in the cargo bay weren’t enough to cast light that far. The door was obscured in the gloom of the dead hangar.

  “Hello in there?” an unfamiliar voice called out.

  “Hello yourself,” Amy shouted back. “What’s going on in this crazy place?”

  The door opened and bioluminescent lamps shone inside, illuminating little but at least providing silhouettes of the station personnel who entered. Four of them came into the hangar bay where the quiet Mobius brooded.

  “Stationwide blackout,” the rough-cut guy in the Maho Saigai Mining uniform said brusquely. “We’re rounding up any mechanics, techs, or engineers available for emergency duty. We’ve lost life support, so it’s all hands on deck until we get the air recyclers and main power back on.”

  Amy shrugged. It was magic after all; nothing else would explain the station and the ship losing power. She wasn’t getting dragged into a work detail. “Sorry. Just the captain’s girl. He lets me fly it sometimes, but space me if I know how the innards fit together.”

  “How ‘bout you?” the recruiter asked Shoni. “Laaku are all good with tech.”

  “Too good,” Shoni replied. “I’m an astral cartographer. I don’t deal in physical labors.”

  The station lackeys looked at one another before the lead recruiter fixed Shoni with a hard look. “Listen, lady. I’ve gotten every excuse in the book in the short time I’ve been rounding up mechanics. From spinal injuries to a failure to understand English, I’ve heard some far out lies. So if you’re not an astral cartographer, fess up right now.”

  “Phabian Academy of Physical Sciences, Class of 2545,” Shoni replied, holding her chin high.

  Amy wasn’t sure if the light-furred laaku scientist could read between the lines to figure out that these fine fellows seemed ready to recruit her on the basis of her scientific background. It was possible that she was. If so, it meant that her professional and academic pride was getting in the way of following her own advice to keep the crew together.

  “Come with us,” the recruiter said. “Chief Fujita will want to talk to you.”

  “Who?” Shoni asked.

  “Her name was on the welcome broadcast,” Amy pointed out. “She’s the station manager.”

  “Well,” Shoni said, standing and brushing off her pants. “Let’s go see what this is all about, then.”

  Amy opened her mouth to object but realized that anything she said to dissuade the laaku was more likely to get herself dragged along than Shoni to stay behind. And one of them, at least, needed to stay with the ship. Rescue missions were the crew’s stock in trade. Someone always seemed to need rescuing. But someone needed to keep track of who needed what rescue and where.

  “Good luck,” Amy called after Shoni as she left the hangar with her escorts.

  “I am a scientist,” Shoni retorted. “Luck is the residue of imperfect understanding. I leave as little as I can.”

  # # #

  Carl led the way to the Mobius. At least, he led Cedric and Esper, plus Rai Kub by extension, in the direction that he best remembered the Mobius being.

  In most modern cities, day and night were a matter of lighting changes and aerial scenery. Once you got to some of the rougher colonies toward the edge of ARGO space, night would settle over some like an assassin’s cloak, turning a friendly, backwater civilization into the feral wilds of the criminal underworld.

  Normally, space stations were immune to the cycle of day and night, or kept some artificial means of providing a subdued difference for the sake of the residents’ circadian rhythms.

  With the absence of power, YF-77 had taken on a sinister aspect. Footsteps echoed with no thrum of engines and bustle of humanity to drown them out. The grills and auto-pots of the Noodle-O-Rama lay idle. Moving walkways refused to budge, insisting on making long stretches of corridors even longer.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Esper whispered. It seemed that whispering was the only way for their voices not to echo from the upper reaches of the station.

  “Yeah,” Carl lied. “Sure I am.”

  “OK…” Esper drawled skeptically.

  They kept on following the contours of the station, finding their way under the slow strobe of sun and planetlight.

  “You three. Halt.”

  The voices came just as Carl heard the footsteps approaching from behind them. He gritted his teeth and swore beneath his breath. He’d been hoping to get the wizards back to the Mobius before anyone noticed them.

  “Leave this to me,” he whispered.

  “Hey,” Carl called out, raising a friendly hand in a wave. “We’re lost. Can you lend three idiots a hand finding their ship?”

  “Station facilities are off limits,” one of the station security officers informed them as he drew within less-than-shouting distance. “All non-emergency personnel and all station visitors are confined to quarters or the vessels they arrived on until power is restored. If any of you are mechanics, techs, or engineers, Station Chief Fujita has ordered you to report for emergency repair duty.”

  Carl chuckled. “I tried joining the navy, but failed out of flight school for the mechanics’ test.”

  Esper pulled a necklace from inside her sweatshirt. Carl cringed, expecting it to be the Convocation’s pendant. Instead, it was a silver circle amulet, stylized to look like Earth with arrows pointing out in all directions. “We seek the one true word of God,” she said with a sideways nod to Cedric.

  Cedric caught on quickly, clearing his throat. “I studied ancient history. If you have an aqueduct or a windmill in need of repair, I might lend my expertise. But I’ve only recently purchased a datapad; I only use it to keep in touch with friends in other systems.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” the security officer grumbled with a dismissive wave. “Just clear the corridors for o
fficial use.”

  Carl raised a finger. “Point of order: I prefaced this conversation by mentioning that we were looking for our ship.”

  “Ha!” Esper shouted. “I knew you were lost.”

  Spreading his arms sheepishly, Carl offered a paltry smile. “I had a solid idea before downing a few beers and lights going nutso on us. But these fine gentlemen can no doubt direct us to hangar bay D-12. Am I right, or am I right?”

  The security officers grumbled, but Carl had them backed into a logical corner. If they wanted Carl, Esper, and Cedric off the main travel paths through the station, they had to be ready to tell them how to get where they were going. A minute later, they were under way.

  As soon as the station flunkies were out of earshot, Carl shot Esper a scowl. “Never get caught where you don’t belong unless you’re willing to act lost and really sell it.”

  “You sold me,” Esper said.

  “Me too,” Cedric agreed.

  “Hey, what’s that over in the corner?” Carl asked, pointing to a greasy smear that looked suspicious.

  “A mess. And don’t change the subject,” Esper replied.

  Carl shook his head. Something didn’t look right. The smear had a direction to it. It had been wiped up, but someone had gotten sloppy—or rushed. He followed it behind an overturned table and discovered a hastily disposed body.

  It was wearing his EV helm.

  “What’s Archie—?” Esper asked before clapping a hand over her mouth. “Oh, no!”

  “Tech is tech, even if he’s mostly a person,” Carl said. He turned to Cedric. “Looks like you might have gotten your wish.”

  The lanky, dark-haired younger version of Mort broke the illusion of being his father when he came up short of words. Cedric shook his head in denial. “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “Yeah, nothing around here was your intention,” Carl muttered. “Esper, get him back to the ship. Keep him there. Don’t let him out of your sight or use any more magic than that little trick of yours with the pendant?”

  “This thing?” Esper asked, tugging it free of her sweatshirt once more. “I picked this up on Agos VI. They’re quite pro-Seeker despite having a firm hold of the word of God as they received it. This thing’s perfectly real.”