Deathstalker Rebellion (52 page)

Until now. Silence couldn’t help wondering if it was just coincidence that had brought the
Champion
back at such a volatile time for the Empire. Like a message from the past, when things were different. Silence put the thought aside. He had sworn to serve the Iron Throne, no matter who sat on it, because the Empire must be preserved. All the other choices were worse. Better a corrupt civilization than an Empire shattered and reduced to barbarism. He pushed that thought aside, too, and concentrated on the starship looming up before him, hanging like a great white whale in a dark sea. It grew slowly larger, filling the space between them, so that he could no longer see the Rim or the Darkvoid beyond it. And finally the pinnace drifted to a halt, only a few feet between its hull and the
Champion
’s.

“Try the hailing frequencies one more time,” Silence said quietly, not taking his eyes off the vast white metal wall before him.

“Still no response, Captain,” said Cross after a long moment. “Pinnace sensors confirm no life forms anywhere on the ship.”

“See if you can open the
Champion
’s air lock with a general override signal,” said Silence.

Cross bent over his panels and then shook his head. “No response. All the systems must be down. We’re going to have to crack it open manually.”

“No surprises there.” Silence closed down his comm link to the sensors, and the pinnace’s bulkhead reappeared before
him. He looked around at his team one at a time, making eye contact so they could see how calm and assured he was. “All right, people, pay attention. We’re going out through the pinnace’s air lock in our hard suits, Investigator Frost leading. We’re right up against the
Champion
’s air lock, so all we have to do is step outside and open it. Cross will operate the manual override on the outside of the air-lock door, and then the Investigator will enter the lock itself. She will go through alone, to check out the situation. Once she gives the all clear, I want you cycling through that air lock as fast as you can go. There’s no telling what shape the mechanism’s in after all this time, and I don’t want anyone left outside.”

“What if something happens to the Investigator?” said Cross.

“Then you back off, and the
Dauntless
blows the
Champion
to shit,” said Frost. “Because if I can’t handle it, you sure as hell can’t.”

“Once we’re inside,” said Silence, pressing calmly on as though the interchange hadn’t happened, “we will make our way to the bridge and activate what systems we can. Everyone stay together, but don’t bunch up. And keep your eyes open. The
Champion
is to be considered hostile territory until proven otherwise. You are authorized to use lethal force on anything that moves, with the exception of your teammates. So don’t get jumpy. Investigator, lead the way.”

Frost nodded and moved over to the inner door of the pinnace’s air lock. There was a pause as everyone put on their helmets and made sure the seals were secure, and then Frost opened the inner door and stepped inside, followed by Silence and Cross. The three hard suits filled the air lock from wall to wall. They waited patiently as the air was flushed out, and then Frost opened the outer door. It opened slowly, silently, revealing the
Champion
’s outer hull, only a few feet away. Silence gestured to Frost, and she stepped forward onto the outer edge of the door. She reached out a gloved hand to the small wheel clearly marked on the outside of the
Champion
’s air lock and took a firm hold. Silence moved in beside her to brace her once she started exerting pressure. The pinnace’s artificially produced gravity didn’t extend beyond the air lock. Her armored glove closed around the wheel and turned it inch by inch. The outer doors of the air lock slowly parted, and a bright light suddenly appeared within the lock. Silence relaxed a little. At least some of the
Champion
’s systems were still working. The doors crept farther apart, until finally Frost was able to step carefully from the
Dauntless
into the
Champion.
The doors closed over her again, and Silence could only wait. He could feel her presence through the link they snared, and her calm composure helped to settle him.

“The air lock is functioning perfectly,” her voice said suddenly through his comm implant. “I have light and gravity, but no air. The pumps are working, but it would appear they have no air to work with. The inner doors are opening. Lights have come on beyond them. I’m now in the corridor outside the lock. No movement anywhere. Still no air, and the temperature’s way below zero. You might as well come on over. There’s no sign of any welcoming party.”

“Stay where you are,” said Silence. “We’ll be right with you.”

He worked the lock’s outer doors again, and he and Cross passed through into the
Champion
, followed quickly by the security men. The corridor beyond the lock was brightly lit but uncomfortably narrow, and the low ceiling seemed to press down above their helmets. The walls were covered with cables and conduits and tightly packed instrumentation. The Empire’s designers had been cramming in every extra improvement they could think of, right up to the last minute. None of it looked particularly dated. The
Dauntless
might be more efficiently arranged, but the systems were still pretty much the same. If a thing worked, the Empire tended to stick with it.

“Interesting,” said Frost, and Silence turned automatically to look at her, though all he could see was her featureless helmet. “According to my suit’s sensors, the light and gravity are only a local phenomenon. The rest of the ship is still powered down. Which would seem to suggest someone knows we’re here.”

“Could be the ship’s computers,” said Cross.

“No,” said Frost. “I don’t think so. They would have turned all the life-support systems on.”

“Try general address on your comm,” said Silence. “See if anyone answers.”

“This is Investigator Frost of the
Dauntless
, representing the Empire. Respond, please.”

They waited a long time, but there was no reply. The comm channel was empty of everything, even static. Si
lence’s back crawled, feeling the pressure of unseen watching eyes. The words ghost ship came back to him, along with the half-serious stories that were always circulating during his cadet days. Tales of dead ships populated by dead crews, sailing silently through the long night on journeys that would never end. Skeletons on the bridge, or dead men rotting at their stations, heading for some far off destination the living could never understand. Silence had to smile. He hadn’t realized those stupid stories had made such an impression on him.

“Let’s make for the bridge, people,” he said briskly. “Maybe we’ll find some answers there. Investigator, lead the way.”

Frost patched into a map of the
Champion
’s structure, provided by the
Dauntless
’s computer records, and set off down the corridor. Lights turned themselves on ahead of them and turned off behind them, so that they moved always in a pool of light surrounded by darkness. Weight remained constant at one gravity, but there was still no air or heat. Silence had the security men check out each room and compartment they passed, but though there were frequent signs of people’s lives, there was no trace anywhere of the
Champions
crew.

There were unmade beds and abandoned meals, cards discarded in mid game and doors left ajar, as though the people involved had just stood up a hundred or so years ago, and walked away from their lives, never to return.

Silence kept thinking he could see things moving on the edge of his vision, but every time he looked there was nothing there. Shadows moved disturbingly around the small party as they moved deeper into the ship, their hard suits eerily out of place in the crew’s quarters. They all had the feeling they were being watched, even though the ship’s security cameras clearly weren’t working, and the security men spent as much time checking behind them as they did the way ahead. Frost, of course, just strode on through the empty corridors, calm and unmoved as always. Silence stuck close to her.

They finally came to the main elevator. Silence plugged in a portable energy pack; they came back on line. There were walkways, but it would have meant a long climb to the bridge. Silence split the party into two groups, just in case, and they made their way up to the bridge in separate elevators. The cramped metal cages took an uncomfortably long
time getting there, not least because they insisted on stopping at every floor in between, but eventually the elevator doors opened onto the bridge, and Silence led the way forward with something very like relief. If there were answers to be found anywhere on this ghost ship, he should be able to find them here.

There was no one sitting in the command chair, skeleton or corpse, and the workstations were unmanned. No sign of any crew. No sign to show they’d ever been here. It was just as Silence had expected, but he still felt obscurely disappointed. Something really cataclysmic must have happened on board the
Champion
, to mean abandoning the bridge like this. And yet there’d been no signs of attack or mutiny, no damage or signs of haste. Cross leaned over the comm station and tried a few warm-up routines, and then turned away.

“Everything’s shut down, Captain. Give me an hour or so and I should be able to bring something on-line. Half these systems will have to be reprogrammed from the bottom up, but everything seems functional.”

“The autopilot’s still working,” said Frost. “Someone must have fed in the coordinates that brought the ship here.”

“Hold everything,” said Cross. “I’ve got the security cameras up and working. Which shouldn’t be possible, but … watch the monitors.”

They all crowded around Cross and stared at the bank of three monitor screens attached to his station. They lit up in swift succession, as though they’d only recently been turned off. Cross switched rapidly from one camera to another the length of the ship, scenes appearing on the viewscreens one after the other, pausing just long enough to give a continuing feeling of emptiness everywhere on board. From corridors to engineering, sick bay to crew’s quarters, everywhere was still and silent. It chilled Silence to his bones to see a ship so abandoned, so deserted.

He tried to remember more about the history of the
Champion
rather than the legend. The Captain, Tomas Pearce, had been something of a fierce officer by all accounts, a strictly by-the-book man, as hard on himself as anyone else. Everyone agreed he ran a tight ship, right up until the day it disappeared. He would never have walked away from his ship, no matter what his crew did. He’d have hit the auto-destruct first. Silence wondered what Pearce would think now if he could see so many posts abandoned, so many stations un
manned. No, he wouldn’t have walked. Someone or something must have taken him.

“Hello,” said Cross suddenly. “What have we got here?” He fussed at the panels before him, muttering to himself and stabbing awkwardly at the controls with his armored fingers. Hard suits weren’t meant for delicate work. “I think I’ve got something. Captain. The cameras in the main cargo hold are out, but I’m getting some information through the ship’s interior sensors. There’s something down in the cargo bay. A lot of somethings.”

“Hardly unusual for a cargo bay,” said Frost.

“It is when the computer manifests are convinced the ship isn’t carrying any cargo at all this trip. And, even more interestingly, all these somethings are roughly human in shape.”

“Life signs?” said Silence.

“Not so far,” said Cross. “But whatever these things are, there are hundreds of them.”

“Then, for want of anything better to do, let’s go and take a look,” said Silence.

He left four of the security men on the bridge to watch the monitors and run further checks on the instruments, and herded the rest of his team back into the elevator. It was a long way down to the cargo bay, but at least they didn’t stop at every floor this time. Silence chose to see this as a good omen. The doors finally opened on the main cargo bay, and Frost made the others wait in the elevator while she checked out the situation first. She kept them waiting an uncomfortably long time before waving them out. The bay was deserted, but the lights had already been on when the elevator doors opened, almost as though someone was waiting for them.

The bay itself was huge, with intricately marked steel walls surrounding a vast open space. They’d emerged at ground level, like mice creeping out of their hole. Frost signaled for the group to stay together, while she locked the elevator doors open, just in case they had to retreat in a hurry. As far as Silence was concerned, she needn’t have bothered. He’d never felt less like wandering off on his own in his life. Still, as Captain he was expected to provide a good example, so as soon as Frost gave him the all clear, he stepped confidently forward to take a look around.

Away from the elevator, the sheer size of the cargo bay was almost overpowering, but Silence’s attention was drawn immediately to the bay’s sole cargo; hundreds of long mirrored cylinders, each the size and general shape of a coffin. They’d been laid out in neat rows, forming a perfect square. Silence checked them out from a cautious distance with the limited sensors built into his suit, but the coffin shapes gave up no information at all. He couldn’t even tell what they were made of, never mind what might be inside them.

“That’s the crew, isn’t it?” said Cross quietly.

“Could be,” said Silence. “The numbers are about right. Only way to find out is to open a few. Investigator …”

“Way ahead of you, Captain,” said Frost, striding forward pugnaciously.

Silence gestured for Cross and the two security men to stay with him. “Take it slow and easy, Investigator. There’s always the chance those things are booby-trapped.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Frost. “Now, a little quiet, if you please. I have to concentrate.”

She stopped just short of the first outer rank, tried her sensors again, and sniffed disgustedly as they failed to provide any useful information, even at close range. Each cylinder was seven feet long, and the correct proportions for a coffin. Plenty of room for a body inside and any number of unpleasant surprises, too. Frost knelt down by the nearest cylinder and got her first surprise when she realized the mirrored surface wasn’t showing her reflection. She examined the edges of the cylinder carefully and got her second surprise. There was no sign of any seals or openings. The entire cylinder seemed to have been produced in one piece. Perhaps … formed around something. The word cocoon occurred to her, echoing in her mind with a significance she couldn’t pin down. She straightened up and looked at the rows of cylinders stretching away before her. She had been intending to open one by force, with her gun if necessary, and trust to her hard suit to protect her, but she was beginning to think that was what she was supposed to do. More and more, the whole place felt like a trap. The cylinders were too tempting, and there was too much light, as though the cargo bay was a stage, waiting for the action to begin.