This Starry Deep (14 page)

We broke out of the sky and into the deep, straight and true.

Chapter 23 - Mud

I SLID ALONG the corridor, matching its color and feel as best I could. Locating the section they held Mom in (no sign of, or word from, Dad) proved easy enough once I had the room quiet. I had disabled the room and the door’s ability to open, and had taken all the communication equipment the guards and staff carried, but I still knew it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the ship knew I was there.

And of course, they’d put her pretty far from where I stood. Which meant I had a lot of ground to cover if I intended to help. I considered, briefly, dressing as a security officer, but as the only Hurkz around I’d still stick out pretty bad unless I wore a full helmet.

It wasn’t often security wore a full helmet inside without a problem to respond to, and one officer never responds alone. Even if I could think of a good reason to pull that much off and get away with it, the security armor tended to have locators on it. Which meant the second anyone knew what I had done, they’d have me on a big map. A lone red dot trailing through their ship as obvious as could be.

No, I’d have to be better than that. Air ducts were right out, of course. Too small and rigged with security anyway. Maintenance passageways should do, for a while at least. There would still be security but less of it. Also less people in general. Just some engineering staff and a few drones.

I would’ve focused security on those passageways, personally, seeing as how they’re off the beaten path. They’re not a bad place to hide. Except that if you get caught in them, maintenance halls are far quicker to go into airless lockdown. Since they tend to be where people burn and cut things, you want a faster response time. Also, since people don’t roam them quite as freely, you have to count on the ability to just deadlock a passageway from everything else on the ship and secure it.

So they’d be my best bet, but far from simple should I be noticed. Getting into the passageways wasn’t as simple as a doorknob, either. Normal staff weren’t allowed in them. You didn’t give everyone keys to the backdoor.

A secure ID would’ve been nice, but I didn’t have one. Big shock. I did have full access to my finer tools now that I was in atmo. I fished them out of my thinsuit and got to work on a hatchway. I triggered the auto-release without the door sensor noticing and slipped inside. At least a few things were going my way.

The hallway on the other side felt like it belonged to another ship. Instead of the nicely lit, smooth-paneled passage, the maintenance shafts were dimmer and had exposed pipes. The sort of thing you might expect from an area where people needed to work, and fast, to fix problems. Nice place to sneak around a ship in but I wouldn’t want to live there.

I got through the first corridor fine, only a security drone to avoid. The drone looked one way, I went the other, no problem. Those drones tend to scan in a three-hundred-and-sixty–degree sweep pattern, but they can’t look in every direction at the same time. You just had to not be where it looked when it looked and keep that up until it moved out of range.

My first instinct told me to blast the thing right in the comm relay and take it out, but leaving behind bits of drone would give me away. More work to avoid them in the short term, but worth it. Not hardly as satisfying, though.

But this wasn’t about me. This was about Mom. I took a ladder up an access shaft and got onto the right level for where they were keeping her. I heard shuffling in front of my position and slowed to a creep. Back to the wall, I activated the suit’s camouflage and sucked air in quietly as the needles bit. Crouching, I continued to slink forward, inch by inch.

The lights flickered, casting the passage into darkness. Must be a tech ahead, sent to fix them. I could sneak by him but it might be too risky. Taking him out would be just as risky, of course. No good answer ahead.

I decided to continue to sneak, taking the safe road over the easy again. I got past the tech easy enough; I couldn’t even see him that well. Not clearly, at any rate. Enough to tell he faced away from me. Then I heard a soft “huft!” and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with the tech kneeling on my chest.

I grabbed his shoulders and started to roll on my side in an attempt to get leverage, but as I did I caught a fist to the face, hard.

“Mud?” the tech said, in my mother’s voice.

Wait. I laughed and grabbed Mom close, laughing. “I came to free you,” I told her, letting go and standing up.

“Well, dear, I appreciate it,” she said, standing as well. I noticed bits of cloth tied around her shoulders and left foot. They didn’t look good.

“Mom? What happened? You’re—”

“Fine, I’m fine, dear. Now. Where’s your father? Is he with you?” As we talked, we slid against the wall, hiding in the dark and whispering. We both kept an ear and eye out for trouble.

“No, I thought he had been captured along with you,” I told her, “but I couldn’t find him when I checked the comm rooms.”

“I haven’t heard from him, either,” she said, “and if he isn’t with you—”

“He’s probably on the way, separately. Though I tried contacting him on my way over so we could meet up.”

“And you heard nothing back, correct?”

“Right.”

“Which means he’s in something deep and it isn’t this,” she said. I could hear a level of exasperation in her voice.

“How can you be sure he wasn’t captured as well?” I asked her.

“Not enough explosions,” she said with a smirk.

“You’re the one I would have expected explosions from, Mom.”

“You’ve never seen your father get taken prisoner. He doesn’t tend to be sneaky about escaping.” She smiled at me, and I knew there would be a story or three. Later, after we were clear of this.

“So what do we do now, then?”

“Well, I was going to escape, find you, and that’s two down right there, and then find your father and probably blow up a lot of people for something they did that I’m not clear on yet. What were you thinking?”

“Find you both and get clear. Less blowing things up, more getting clear.”

“You’re your father’s son,” she said. I could hear the tiniest edge of disappointment in her voice. It’d always been like this. If I went his way she sounded a bit put out, and if I followed her lead he would grimace. I tried to go my own way, which often ended up a mix of the two, and that made neither of them overtly pleased, but neither of them could pout for long, either.

They’d gotten better about it as I grew up, of course, but hearing that my plan seemed the opposite of hers annoyed Mom to no end, I knew. So I tossed her a small smile and took box out of my thinsuit’s leg pouch.

“Not that I’m not prepared to blow up half the ship if I have to. Always know where your blast cores are, right?” It got the return smile I’d hoped for. “Now let me look at that foot and those…what happened to your shoulders, anyway?”

“Had to dig out my implanted charges,” she said, wincing as she yanked her boot off.

“Implanted…Mother!”

“Shhh! What, without them I wouldn’t be here,” she said indignantly.

“I’m guessing that’s what happened to your foot, too? Did the charges drop?” I grabbed some antiseptic gel and a thin roll of pressure bandages from my belt pouch and cleaned the foot wound as best I could. Yeah, this was an explosive charge mishap.

“Small price to get out of there,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

“Fair. Still, it isn’t as if no one was coming for you.”

“Oh, you’d be content to sit and wait for a rescue? Your mother is so bad at this she needed to just twiddle her thumbs all day? I’m an old woman now?”

I had to laugh. “Mom, you could still kick my ass all around the ship and we both know it. But I don’t like seeing you injured.”

“Fine. So what’s the plan?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Sitting here forever won’t do. You got in this far, what’s your extraction point?”

“My, uhm, well. My ship is just out of scanner range.”

“And how are we getting there?” she asked pointedly.

“We could steal an escape pod,” I suggested.

“Let’s work out where your father is first, and why the Government felt it prudent to capture me. Then we can bail. Up two levels and we’ll be able to start finding answers. Then again, down three and we’ll have access to the battle room. Let’s try answers first.”

“Why did you ask me what my plan was if you already had one?”

“It’s good to see what you have worked out, too.”

“Mom, stop treating me like I’m a kid,” I sighed, and I packed away the rest of the pressure bandages, her shoulders cleaned and patched as best as I could manage.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She smiled at me and stood, looking both ways. “You take the lead.”

I stood next to her and considered. If we were headed up, we’d need a different access shaft. I held a hand up and slid away for a second. When I got back, I pointed and started to sneak off. I checked behind me to make sure Mom followed. Damn, she was quiet when she wanted to be.

Chapter 24 - Jonah

I ROLLED THE SHIP hard as we broke atmo, flipping comm dials to get back in touch with the fleet. My hand stopped above the cut-in switch as my display rolled and we hit a heading. I could see the battle from here.

That shouldn’t have been the case. They were still converging on Trasker Four, no way the invasion could have reached Bercuser so soon. Hell, Bercuser wasn’t even in the right direction for where the Gov forces had vectored from.

I watched my readings long enough to see the other Bercuser ships hit a different path than ours - headed right for Trasker Four, as planned. At least that looked right. I keyed the mic with a thumb.

“Deep Water, this is Jonah, come back.” The silence lasted a bit too long for my tastes and I almost sent out another call for Frogger.

“Jonah, you’re back,” she said, just before I keyed out again.

“I told you I would be. What’s going on, Bushfield? Is it me or have you guys multiplied like rabbits?”

“The
Washburne
, Jonah—”

“They sent in the
Washburne
? Great news,” I told her. “That old warhorse can shrug off most anything.”

“The
Washburne
went down, Jonah. It caught a bad hop into the system, fighters dispatched and they didn’t realize they’d been swarmed before it was too late.”

“What!”

“You heard me. Now why do I have unregistered ships heading for Trasker Four? They match your ship in spec, what’s going on?”

I explained the evacuation plan to Bushfield, who sighed. I knew why before she told me. If the battle was going as badly as it seemed—Lord, the
Washburne
—then she couldn’t spare fighters for escort. And yet, saving those people would be her number-one concern. Which meant sparing the fighters.

There was a small part of me truly glad I wasn’t in charge. Bushfield was good, though, and did her job. She split off a few fighters and restructured the rest with minimal grumbling.

“So the
Washburne
, it’s truly down?” I asked her, once we’d decided what everyone else was doing.

“On the way to it. It’s between us and you,” she told me. I checked my scanners and, sure enough, there sat a ship big enough to be the
Washburne
. It wasn’t the biggest ship in the fleet, far from it, but even so. It commanded respect, having made it through the Sharp Wars and then some. If its full compliment of fighters had gotten clear, that would minimize casualties. Enough life pods added to that number and hopefully not many lives had been lost, all told.

“So the invaders split off a prong of their attack to loop out this way? Can you get a sense of why?” I asked, checking my own scanners and plotting a course to take us past the
Washburne
.

“No idea, they may just be scouting the way for the invasion’s next move.”

“We’re headed that way. I’ll let you know.”

I sighed and flexed my shoulder. Stiff. I asked Steelbox to find me a med kit and grab me some kind of painkiller. No point in mentioning why. These kids looked at me as if I was indestructible, dropping some meds alone would bring me back down to human. Admitting the pain was fairly constant would make me old. They needed that confidence in me. Hell, to be honest, I needed them to have that confidence in me. Not something to be proud of, but once you hit a certain age, that’s all right too.

At a full burn, we wouldn’t intersect the
Washburne
for a while yet. Nothing to do but double-check everything and get a plan ready. I set the scanners to max and told them to scream like banshees if they caught anything that might even possibly be a problem. Then I slapped the autopilot on and turned around, tapping Bee on the shoulder as I did.

“All right, gang, let’s talk shop,” I said.

“Yes, for actions will be required,” Olivet said. He leaned forward in his seat, eyes bright with attention.

“Good plan, vapor head,” Steelbox shot back at him. He handed me my pills and sat back down.

“Let’s all play nice,” I said softly, “the five of us are all we have out here. We can fight amongst ourselves and die or work together and, hopefully, not.”

“That’s it?” Kem asked, “The best you have is that we might not die?”

“Kid,” I laughed, “anyone who promises you that you’ll make it out of a war alive is setting you up as fodder. Now, any other comments?” Silence answered me. “Good. Here’s what we know. Bercuser is being invaded and the invaders are already sending what seems to be a scouting party this way. They were intercepted, accidently it looks like, by the
Washburne
.”

“It seems? “ Steelbox asked. “Accidently?”

“You know what I know. Firm data in the middle of this will be hard to piece together.”

“You wanna get out and ask the invasion force how it went?” Bee asked him.

I nodded. “She has a point. We go on what we got and adjust as we need to. The
Washburne
is not a small ship, guys. Heavy cruiser-class vessel. If the invaders took her down, they did it with surprise on their side. No other way. That much I can say with certainty.”

“How do you know?” Olivet asked.

“Ship that size, that well armed, well - if they could knock her down easily whenever they wanted, this fight would’ve been over long before now. No, it was horrible luck that did the
Washburne
in. The problem is, they stand between us and the main force.”

“Wait,” Bee asked, putting a hand on my shoulder, “you meant us to fly into the fight? Jonah, we’re not remotely well armed and can’t hope to outfly them. What use would we be in the middle of that fight? Didn’t we flee it once?”

“We did,” I admitted, “but that was because we had no weapons, little air and half a working engine. This is different. Even if we used the ship as a search-and-rescue it’d be worth it. But that’s not the point.”

“Can we search-and-rescue the
Washburne
crew?” Kem asked.

“You know,” I said, a smile growing as I spoke, “maybe we can. They’ll have too many crew for us to take them all, but if enough were in the fighters that launched and most of the rest got into pods…we can help out some. Good idea.”

“What do we do with them once we have them on board?” Bee wanted to know.

“Get orders and follow them. This fight isn’t over, and if the Gov is sending in the
Washburne
, they’ll be sending in other ships as well. There’ll be a drop point and med ships out here soon enough.”

“Why didn’t they send them out in the first wave?” Kem asked.

“No clue,” I told him, and I realized it was true. This whole battle had felt off from the start, back when Hodges first brought me in. As if the invasions were being kept secret from the people fighting.

In my experience, that meant one of two things: Hodges was in on it or had blown something critical in regards to the handling of the matter already and wanted to cover his ass. Either would get people killed – hell, they already were. I tabled that thought in my head for later.

“What you need,” Olivet said, “is a way to talk to the invaders firsthand. Blowing each other out of the sky will never reveal the truth of the matter to us. Until we know that…” he trailed off, and I fought the urge to gloss over his words.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, thinking about it, “so how do we get to them? Let’s think. We know they’ve gone to planets and grabbed people before invading. They send scouts out early for their next planetfall locations. They’re careful. We also haven’t seen any sort of docking ship yet.”

“Would we, if they’re as fast as they look to be?” Bee asked.

“They are that fast,” I told her, “I’ve fought them. So sure, put their docking ship out of range of the fight, so it’s safe. Hide it. Where do you hide something that big?”

“Cloak it?” Kem asked.

“Cloaking is,” I thought about the best way to describe it, “a lot harder than you might think.” Not great, but it’d do. “Cloaking something as big as that ship’d have to be would take a lot more energy than they’d have, unless they’re carrying their own sun with them. And they’re not. We’d notice that.”

“Do they even have to hide?” asked Steelbox.

Damn it, he was right. I nodded at him, “Good call, no, you’re right. Space is big. Really big. Even if their ships were the size of a moon it’d be hard to spot them. Given that their ships have an unknown range and fly faster than almost anything we have…”

“They have gravity drives?” Bee asked.

“Nope, but they also don’t have anything like what we do. Which means we can’t track it, because we don’t even know what it emits. No, I don’t know what it emits. If the Gov does, they haven’t told me, but either way it isn’t something I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen every form of propulsion humanity’s come up with.”

“So they’re just somewhere out there?” Kem didn’t look like he enjoyed the concept.

“Pretty much. So now we…what?” I put the question out there and fell silent, thinking about it myself. Olivet had a great point: I wanted to talk to the folks doing this myself. I wanted to look them in the eye and ask them why. Then I wanted to slam their collective heads into a wall until they told me where they’d kept Shae. But that meant finding a way in. A way into a place we couldn’t find.

Then I remembered something Olivet had said earlier. I had to die. The strange, future-seeing head case was right after all. I had to die. The plan was simple. “Simple plan,” I said out loud. “I do what Olivet said - I die.”

Everyone except Olivet erupted instantly with questions and confusion. I held up a hand for silence. “Not literally. We go in close to the
Washburne
. I get out. You guys continue on, with survivors, and join up with Deep Water. Do what she tells you and you’ll stay alive, she’s a good one.”

“And you?” Bee asked.

“I’ll play dead and hitch a ride.”