Ithaka Rising: Halcyone Space, book 2, page 27
“What kind of debt has you orbiting treason?”
Gutierrez stared until Nomi blinked. “I can’t tell you that.”
They were both on the edge of sedition. How much worse could it get? “Can’t or won’t?”
“Yes. Both.” Gutierrez softened her harsh expression. “I’m sorry. It’s complicated.”
Hearing Ro’s answer come from the LC raised the hair on the back of Nomi’s neck.
“So answer me one last question, Nakamura.” Gutierrez relaxed her arms and paced an exact trajectory between the door and the galley. “If they make it back to Daedalus, are they smart enough to craft a good story and stick to it?”
“If? What would possibly keep them from getting here from Gal-3?”
She traced the wall with her artificial hand. “Accidents happen. Even in stable wormholes. And their ship is old. Unpredictable.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Let’s say Targill considers them a threat. Or a source of information. Where do you think his loyalties lie?”
Not with Mendez or Daedalus. He answered to bigger fish. “What about yours?” Nomi whispered.
“It’s not my loyalties you need to think about. How far will you go to protect what you care about? What are you willing to give up?”
“I don’t understand.”
Gutierrez stepped closer and dropped her voice. “I think you do. Nothing you’ve done up to now has risen to the level of treason.” She glanced at the micro, nodding when she noticed Ro’s message had vanished. “At least nothing documented. But a time is coming where you’re going to have to make a choice. Of all of you, who has the most to lose?”
“Why are you doing this?” Nomi’s stomach cramped and her mouth flooded with sour saliva. She could lose it all—her position, her future, her family. She swallowed over and over to flush the taste from her mouth.
“Because if you’re going to follow the path I’ve traveled, you need to know what’s at stake. You have a chance. Just one chance to walk away and stay out of this.”
Nomi looked down at the folded blanket. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I can’t,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Gutierrez left, her steps measured and precise on the hard floor. When the door closed behind her, Nomi clutched the blanket and huddled on the sofa, rocking back and forth.
Chapter 27
“All clear. Halcyone is in parking orbit around Gal-3.” Ro’s voice sounded a little shaky, and not just because it was passed through the ship’s ancient speakers. “Everyone okay?”
The jumps between Ithaka and Gal-3 were easier and harder than Jem expected. Harder because this time he didn’t have the benefit of whatever drugs Charon used to knock him out. Easier, because the jump cushions May had provided were a lot better than the worn compartment on Charon’s little ship.
“I think I’d rather be a crewsicle next time,” Barre said, groaning from the lower bunk.
He wasn’t sure cryo-sleep was the answer either, but Jem was definitely glad they were going to pause here for a while.
“Meet me on the bridge,” Ro said.
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Jem and Barre said in chorus.
“I hate you both. Ro out.”
The small room smelled dingy gray, the color of long-forgotten laundry, a combination of old vomit and sour sweat. “Just like old times.”
Barre stumbled over to the sink and wiped his face. “Not quite the way I remember it.”
“Help me down?” He didn’t trust the vertigo not to betray him as he climbed from the top bunk.
“You got it.”
Barre’s arms were steady around Jem’s shoulders as he made it to the floor. It wasn’t home, but being surrounded by Barre’s instruments was comforting. He looked up, feeling his brother’s concern. Beneath the wild dreads, his face had the pinched worry of their mother’s expression.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Barre pulled him in an uncomfortably tight hug. “You’re an idiot,” he said. The words were bright yellow, warm against his skin.
“I love you, too, but I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Barre backed away and stumbled into one of his small hand drums. The hollow sound filled the room with pale blue.
It was weird and it wasn’t. Part of him marveled at the way his senses jumbled together, but the sensations were just there. Like they had always been. Jem couldn’t feel any evidence of the nanoemitters buzzing around his brain. The only thing that did bother him was the scar where they had slipped the base station under his right ear. It itched, the sensation a crawling light green.
And then there was the way he and Barre were able to hear each other’s thoughts. On a theoretical basis, it made sense. Each neural could directly connect with either a simple processor or an AI. And an AI had the computing power to amplify and relay those commands to another neural. But as far as Jem knew, no one had done it before. And ever since the docs had awakened him from his coma, it hadn’t happened again. It was something they definitely needed to talk about. But now wasn’t the time. Maybe if his control over the neural got better. Maybe. It was hard to hold on to that hope, but it was all he had. “Okay. Shall we move on to step two of the grand plan?”
“After you.”
They walked through Halcyone’s quiet corridors, and for a moment, it was like stepping back in time. But the last time he’d been here with Barre, the AI had been trying to kill them, and Jem’s head had been leaking blood into his brain. Yeah. Even with the weird color/smell/feel thing going on, this was a lot better. And it could have been the anti-nausea meds on board, but he thought the vertigo wasn’t as bad. Or maybe he was just accommodating to it.
Ro was waiting for them on the bridge. Jem caught a whiff of burned plastic. Swirls of red and green danced in his vision for an instant as he glanced at the ruined door. He had already been taken to Hephaestus when Micah had been shot, captured, and then had nearly burned his own feet off to get free from Ro’s dad. They had not been able to replace the door that he’d blasted through to save Ro and Barre.
Maybe they should leave it like that. A monument or something. Though it did make it impossible to seal off the bridge.
“Is everybody ready?” Ro asked. Her words also felt yellow, like Barre’s. Full of concern, but warmth, too. “I sent a message to Nomi. I have to transmit our official coms traffic to Daedalus. I’m hoping Hephaestus isn’t far from here. If they act as our escort, then they can’t be looking for Ithaka, right?”
It seemed like a lot to pin their hopes on. “If they think we know something, they’re going to keep us under a lot of pressure.”
“We haven’t done anything illegal. Ithaka doesn’t actually exist as far as the Commonwealth is concerned,” Ro said. She sounded confident, but Jem felt the red of fear permeating her words.
“But the black market does,” Barre said.
“Remember, we didn’t contact The Underworld.”
“No. I did,” Jem said.
“And you’re a minor,” Ro said. “We just came to find you. And Mendez officially sanctioned our search. Besides, it’s all true.” She used her fingers to count off each item. “You were drugged. Someone took you to an undisclosed lab. You received the neural in return for payment. You were given money by Micah. And you have no idea what route you took on your trip back to Gal-3.”
That was the outline of their story. It was simple. He could even use Dr. Land’s name—Barre assured him he didn’t exist based on extensive searches. So it was either an assumed name, or he’d been expunged from Commonwealth records by Dr. May. Ada. Jem smiled. He was on a first-name basis with one of the smartest minds the universe had ever produced.
Jem glanced up to find Ro watching him.
“We can’t ever tell anyone about her, can we.”
“What do you think?”
“But it was real. We got to meet Ada May. That’s pretty seismic.”
A slow smile brightened Ro’s face. “Yes. Yes it is.” She glanced down at her micro before checking in with Jem and Barre. “So we’re ready? No questions?”
“Ready,” Jem said.
“Five by five,” Barre said.
“All right. Here we go.” Ro triggered the comms transmitter and sent their message to Daedalus through the ansible network.
Gal-3 was a major hub, at least in this sector of space. Their message should short-hop it to Mendez. After that? Jem wasn’t sure what would happen. He dreaded facing his parents, but they, at least, were a known quantity. Though he wondered what colors their words would be.
Mendez and Targill were the bigger problem. They represented the unknown of a Commonwealth that had changed its shape before his eyes. There was a silent war happening that almost no one else knew about, and the ones who did know were dangerous. Who could they trust? How would they know?
Jem looked at his brother and Ro. Even after he’d lied to them, manipulated them, they still came for him. They had his back. And so did Micah and Nomi.
For their sake, and for Ada May’s, Jem was going to have to keep trying to get better.
*
They didn’t have to wait very long. And when the response came, it was not from Mendez, but from Targill. Ro wasn’t at all surprised.
“Chief Engineer Maldonado, this is the Commonwealth vessel Hephaestus. Given the difficulties you have had with your ship, your CO has requested we place a navigator aboard and assist you in your return.”
That was a surprise. Ro made sure there was no live channel to Hephaestus and turned to Jem and Barre. “Anything we need to handle first?” Ro didn’t need to worry about the logs—May had taken care of them. Even if their ‘helpers’ somehow managed the authority to search their micros, the messages Ro sent to Nomi and Nomi’s responses were gone. And she’d like to see them try to break May’s newly installed encryption.
Both Jem and Barre shook their heads.
“Remember, don’t offer any information. Only answer the exact questions they ask.” Years of dealing with her volatile father had their advantage. She opened the channel. “Hephaestus, you are cleared to board. Thank you for your offer.”
Barre raised an eyebrow.
“It never hurts to be polite,” she said. “Jem, lie down. You look like hell. Barre, stay here. I’ll greet our visitor. You can monitor over your micro—I’ll set mine to live-stream.”
“Paranoid much?” Jem asked, but he didn’t argue with her as he curled up on the old acceleration foam on the floor of the bridge.
“Actually, yes. You? I trust. Targill and his crew? Not so much.”
The flitter was already docked when Ro got to the airlock. She waited as the pressurization routine finished. The last time she had received a visitor from Hephaestus, it had been her father. At least he was so far out of the picture he might as well be dead. The light above the door shifted from red to green, and Halcyone unlocked it. A tall, trim, uniformed man opened the air lock and stepped through.
Ro let out the breath she had been holding. It definitely wasn’t her father.
He held out his hand. “Niles Galen, navigation specialist, Hephaestus.”
She shook it on autopilot. “Ro Maldonado. Captain, Halcyone.” It was still strange to call herself that, but this was her ship and she wasn’t going to let anyone bully her out of it. Especially not anyone wearing a military uniform.
“What seems to be the problem?”
He was typical new-recruit-eager, head freshly shaved, uniform creases sharp. Galen was likely the same age as she and Barre. Which felt odd. Maybe it was odd for him, too, to have someone his peer have her own ship, even one as old and broken as Halcyone. “Other than forty-plus-year-old systems that have a propensity toward crankiness? Not really any problems, per se. There seems to be an issue with the nav logs, but the ship’s jump drive is functioning.”
Halcyone’s placid voice broke in. “Flitter zero three is requesting permission to undock.”
“Proceed,” Ro said. The flitter headed back to Hephaestus which meant Galen was stuck with them for the duration. She wondered how he felt about that. At least he had no sidearms, which could have meant he was there simply to collect information. Ro thought she preferred the overt threat.
“Follow me. I’ll take you to engineering.” As they headed down the corridor, Ro wondered if keeping him there was the right choice. It was either engineering or the bridge and she didn’t want him there in case Barre needed to access his musical interface. Her paranoia might be getting the best of her, but Ro also didn’t want him unsupervised in engineering. That meant dragging two jump snugs in there. So much for the lovely cushioning in her bunk. If there was anything more uncomfortable than a jump snug on a thin pad, it was one crammed into the emergency niches.
The more she considered it, the more she couldn’t see any other alternative. When they reached engineering, she triggered the internal comms channel. “Barre? Can you bring us two jump snugs?”
Galen didn’t react. Either he was stoic, or had expected the bonus discomfort, given the age of the ship.
“My ship may not be as fancy as Hephaestus, but all the critical subsystems check out.”
“With your permission, I’d like to do my own scans.” Galen pulled out his micro. It was one of the rugged military ones. According to the specs, the housing could deflect hand-held energy weapons fire. And Ro was certain any of the information on one could be indexed by Commonwealth servers. She had no choice but to give him command line access. Ada May had better be as good as she was supposed to be, or both Halcyone and Ithaka were going to be in the line of plasma fire. Both figuratively, and quite likely, literally.
She nodded and got her micro paired with the ship. It would have been easier simply to pair his to hers, but that felt even more risky than getting him set up directly with Halcyone. There were too many hacks on her device that had come from less-than-reputable places in the eyes of the Commonwealth. “I need your node ident.”
He passed his device to her. Either he was overly trusting or supremely arrogant. Either choice made Ro uncomfortable. She set up guest access for him and tossed the micro back. His reflexes were as sharp as she’d expected. “You have access to all of navigation, including all the relevant subsystems. Halcyone will recognize you as a temporary crew member for internal comms. You are cleared for engineering, sanitary facilities, and the commissary. The basic schematic should already be on your micro.”
Galen raised an eyebrow before taking a seat by the main nav station. Maybe he was impressed. Maybe just annoyed at her thoroughness.
Barre entered, dragging two jump snugs behind him. Galen didn’t even look up from his work. She and Barre both shrugged.
Ro wrote a quick private note. Keep monitoring, okay?
Roger, Captain. He smirked at her and turned to leave.
Jem okay?
Barre shrugged. Ro wished she could offer something more than her concern. It was good to have Jem back. As irritating as he could be, Ro realized how much she’d been worried about him. And not just for the work he could do for her. Nomi would be proud. But for now, Ro needed to channel her inner misanthrope.
As Galen focused on the nav station readouts and his micro’s heads-up displays, Ro crammed the jump snugs into the wall niches. At least they would prevent jump sickness.
“Let me know if you have any questions,” she asked, coming up behind him. To his credit, Galen didn’t jump or even twitch. Nor did he move to hide any of the displays. Maybe he was simply what he seemed to be.
And maybe Ro could be a concert pianist.
“It looks like the jump drive is working within acceptable parameters.”
Ro had to hold herself from making a snide comment.
“I’ve programmed the jump sequence and done several sims, and all the checksums are valid. You’re right about the nav logs, though. That’s not something I can troubleshoot from here, but I’ve taken the liberty to make copies of the files.”
Of course he had. Ro forced herself not to react when all she wanted to do was throw the nav engineer and his micro out the air lock. Instead she took a breath and asked, “Are we ready to jump?”
He patted the console. “She should hold together.”
“Fine.” The sooner they got to Daedalus, the sooner she could get rid of him and figure out if he mined her ship with spy-ware. “This is the captain,” she said on the ship-wide channel, imagining the eye-rolling and smirking on the bridge. “Secure for jump sequence. T minus—” She turned to Galen.
“Three minutes?”
Ro nodded. “T minus three minutes.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Barre’s voice was almost free of mockery.
“After you,” she said, sweeping her hand in the direction of the jump niches. Ro trusted Halcyone to get them home safely. What they would find there was a different matter.
*
Jem followed Barre back to his quarters and silently swallowed more of the jump-sickness tablets he offered. Only reaching for the next rung when his other hand and both legs were secure, he climbed into the top bunk.
“You okay?” Barre asked.
“I think I’d rather deal with a Commonwealth tribunal than Mom and Dad.”
“Pretty much.”
“Are you sure we can’t tell them I was scammed or stood up or something?” Jem sunk into the dense foam. It fitted and solidified around him. He would be glad when this portion of their trip was done.
“You know they’re going to scan you.”
Jem sighed. “Yeah. I know. Life would be simpler if you would just lie to me.”
“Not the way it works, kiddo.”
“Like mother, like son,” Jem said.
“Funny.”
Halcyone’s countdown interrupted Jem’s response and he closed his eyes, waiting for the world to turn him inside out again.
Three jumps in quick succession made Jem glad his brother had remembered the meds. Barre groaned in the bunk below him and Jem smiled. Misery did enjoy company.
Before he had a chance to peel himself out of the form-fitting foam, Halcyone announced they’d arrived in orbit around Daedalus Station. “Is it too late to head back out there?” Jem asked.
