Adrift, page 16
“Umm…”
The hours went by faster than Tron could’ve expected. He knew the time was passing. Whitman would flick the power on every hour or so, just long enough to get a sensor reading and pump a lot of heat into the hallway, then they’d go back to darkness. He wouldn’t open the doors. He said they couldn’t take enough time to replace the air that would be lost by doing that. Tron didn’t believe it, but he never argued. He was following her rules.
Talking to her filled the time in between. Tron told her things he’d never shared with anyone, some things he’d not even let himself think about. He shared his profound loneliness without flinching or covering it with jokes. She didn’t tease him for it or apologize. Kivi just listened. And when he was done, she shared a story her papa told her about a girl no one wanted who grew up to save the world and have everyone in it love her so much that she was never alone again. It was a silly story, one the man had probably made up on the spot to make his daughter feel better, but it was nice. In an odd way, it made Tron feel like he was part of that moment she’d shared with her father, part of their family.
Mostly it was him answering her questions, but Kivi opened up too. She shared more than stories. She talked about how people treated her differently than everyone else. People who saw her every day, who’d seen her test scores and what she could do, they acted like she was slow. They’d over explain things or talk to her like a baby. They wouldn’t let her read the things she wanted or go where she wanted to go. She told him how most of the time people were nice, but she knew that they didn’t want to talk to her. It was no wonder she was weird. She’d been even more alone than he was, and she hadn’t been stuck in storage. She’d been surrounded by people who didn’t understand her.
She told him about how her brother thought she was a freak. Tron felt a stab of anger when she told him that. Her brother was dead. You weren’t supposed to want to hit dead people. But he did. She didn’t say that it hurt her, but Tron knew it did. He had a deep need to punish the boy who should’ve known better than anyone how amazing his sister was. For the first time, Tron was glad he’d always gone out of his way to torment Heath and the boy’s friends. Then, it had just been because their constant teasing. Now, in his mind, he changed it to the beating that someone cruel had coming.
She loved her brother, despite that. She never said so. Kivi never said how she felt about anyone. The more she talked, the more Tron got the sense she wasn’t really aware of how she felt. Sometimes she’d say things, imply that she was incapable of caring the way other people did, and he was sure she believed it. It was hard not to laugh, when those moments came. Kivi was so used to being right about everything that, even when he tried to explain why he was chuckling, she couldn’t comprehend just how astoundingly wrong she was. She cared. The things she said, the way she chose each word with such care, the fact that she was sitting in a bathroom and talking with him in hushed tones for hour after hour, there was no doubt in Tron’s mind that she was cared.
The way she cared made him feel important. When she talked about him, about the things they’d done together since the attack, it was the same way she talked about her brother or her parents. The realization came to him slowly and shook him so deep that, for a time, he couldn’t say anything; in her mind, he was family. Not family the way everyone on the ship was family. Not even the way he’d started building a shaky idea of one with the two people who talked to him on the coms when he was alone in his room. This was something deeper, some bond that came from years spent sharing the same life, the same problems, from ties of blood and tears and arguments and forgiveness. It was that thing he’d wanted, even before he realized it was missing. Somehow, she’d melded him into that unit that outsiders never really belonged to. He was so overwhelmed by this profound gift, and the knowledge of just how deeply she was going to be hurt when he died, that he couldn’t push his thoughts past it. He wanted to tell her he understood, to explain what it meant to her and tell her that she was the only family he’d ever really had. But he couldn’t do that. Kivi didn’t think she cared, and forcing her to admit it now, when he knew it was only a matter of time before he drew in his last breath, seemed just as cruel as Heath calling her a freak.
She noticed before he did that his breathing was getting shallow. Opening the doors in the corridor, like Whitman had suggested, helped for a while. The old man hadn’t pumped any extra air into them, the way he had in navigation and, to a lesser degree, the corridor. Tron left the door leading to the stairway closed. There was no help there, only a larger space that might have more leaks like food storage. He would last longer with it closed, even if only a few minutes.
With the extra time from the airlock and the med bay, he thought he was ok to sleep. He needed it, even if he wasn’t. Tron could barely keep his eyes open. Kivi was tired too, he could hear it in her voice. He wandered into med bay with some vague notion of seeping on the bed there. It was only when he was looking at the bed that he realized the problem with his plan. It was bolted into the floor, but it was just his boots holding him there. If he didn’t want to sleep standing or floating, he needed to find another solution. He noticed a strap hanging off the bottom of the bed. He felt around the underside numbly, trying not to think of Dr. Geddes floating around where he was touching. There was more than just one strap. Rather than worry about what they might mean, he just belted himself onto the soft mattress and positioned the helmet close enough that he could still hear Kivi breathing. He was asleep in minutes.
“Tron, you have to wake up. Please, please, wake up.”
He groaned. His body didn’t want to move. Not even his eyes. Everything in him just wanted to stay in the warm, comfortable place he’d been.
“Tron! Are you awake?”
No. He didn’t want to be. Awake was cold and made his head hurt. Asleep was better. But Kivi was calling for him. She might need him. “Yeah,” he muttered, realizing with a start that he was gasping.
Tron rolled off the bed, the magnets on his feet hitting the ground hard. He was running out of air. His lungs were straining and his whole body was shaking, and he’d almost slept through his own death. He wasn’t going to sleep now. Adrenaline surged through him, pushing him to a panic he knew he couldn’t afford.
“You’re almost out of air! You have to get in your suit!”
He knew that. Why did she think he wouldn’t know that? Where was his suit? He’d been so tired when he’d come in here. Had he brought it with him? He had the helmet, but that wasn’t enough. The air supply was in the suit itself, held in compressed pockets throughout the material. It was released from one at a time in a controlled stream until the pocket was depleted. Each suit could last for six hours before it was out of oxygen. Tron had learned that somewhere, but he didn’t remember where. Had it been a lesson? Had Sonja told him that?
Not important. Finding the suit was important. He’d kept it close while he was opening all the doors. Tron remembered that. The med bay was the last one he’d opened, so it had to be close. Where? By the door. He’d dropped it by the door. There! Next to the cabinet where he’d put all the supplies he thought they’d need.
It was harder getting it on than it should be. His hands were clumsy and unresponsive. His whole body was. It wanted to go back to sleep. Only his mind was fighting to survive, forcing the rest of it to sluggishly respond to commands. Finally, he had the belts buckled and slammed the helmet in place. Tron heard the snap of the seal closing, then felt the whoosh of air flutter his hair. He sucked in a deep breath and slumped against the wall in relief.
“Tron?”
“I’m here Kivi,” he said softly. His chest ached as it heaved in every beautiful breath. He’d never realized how amazing air was. Even the stale stuff filling his mouth and nose now. If there had ever been proof of the god Father Andrei was always telling them about, it was air. “Still breathing.”
The sound came again, the one that was too much like a sob and a laugh for him to tell the difference. “I almost lost you.”
It wasn’t a question. He answered anyway. “Not yet.”
Kivi let out a slow breath. He forced himself to do the same, though for him it was more an effort to get his breathing under control and less the relieved sigh he heard in the mic.
“There’s a problem.”
Not a relieved sigh than. Tron didn’t yet have the energy to be surprised. He wasn’t sure he would be anyway. There was always some problem waiting for them.
“I told Whitman you were out of air. He tried to turn the ship back on early.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes. I don’t think he’s a bad guy after all.”
“Don’t get your hopes up on that one.” Tron didn’t have any desire to repeat this argument. His victory would come when he was dead and the old man still had the door closed, and Tron wasn’t looking forward to that at all. So he let it go. “What’s the problem?”
“The engine.” There was a quiver to Kivi’s voice. If he hadn’t spent so many hours with nothing but the sound of it to keep him company Tron probably wouldn’t have noticed. It was a slight thing, barely there at all. It scared him.
He climbed back to his feet, struggling with the bulk of the suit, heart hammering in his ears. “What about the engine?”
“It won’t start.”
“Ok.” It wasn’t ok. Not at all. He didn’t have six hours. He could see in the readout at in the lower left corner of his helmet that it wasn’t just the asphyxiation that had made him so cold. The temperature was dropping fast. He didn’t know how long it had been since Whitman had last kicked the engine on for one of their quick looks at their pursuers, but those minutes of power were important. Instead of filling his corridor with air, Whitman had been using the time to heat the ship a few degrees, just enough to maintain livable temps. Without that, all the heat was being drained away by the black outside. It wouldn’t take long to make it completely inhospitable. The suit would protect him to a point, but it was meant to be worn with a very heavy lining that would help insulate it. He’d feel it soon, and the longer he was exposed the worse it would be. He needed air. Air and warmth.
And Kivi. Kivi would know how to fix things. She was amazing at fixing things.
Even if Whitman was really trying to turn things on again, he wouldn’t have any idea what was wrong without power running to the sensors in the engine. Tron had sorted out at least that much from his lessons in navigation. There was a chance it was something simple, something he could do. Unlikely, especially given their luck, but it was better than sitting around and waiting to freeze to death or run out of air again.
“I’m on my way,” he announced. “We’re going to fix this.”
“I know.” She said it with such certainty in her voice that Tron almost found himself believing it. It was a mistake, her having such faith in him. He knew that the temperature in navigation had to be dropping too. Maybe Whitman was hoping to last longer than him. But he thought chances were high that there was a real problem. Which meant that if he failed, she would die. Kivi thought that he’d protect her, the way he’d been trying to do since this had all started, but she didn’t see the problem with that even, after everything they’d gone through. Tron would fail her. He always failed. He couldn’t make friends or control his temper or focus on his studies. He’d done nothing but let people down his whole life, and now he was going to do it to her too.
He could feel the loss of every second it took him to get to the engine room. It was on the opposite end of the deck, past the mess hall. For once, as he passed that horrible room, he was too busy to think about what was on the other side of the doors. He was too worried about how slow his legs were moving and how cold it would be for Kivi inside navigation. She didn’t have the mass for subzero temps. She’d freeze a lot faster than Tron would. If he took too long, she might be too cold to think straight. If that happened, and she couldn’t talk him through what needed to be done, they’d all die. He had no illusions about sorting things out himself.
The blue strips in the engine room were especially concentrated over the engine block. Tron leaned over and sought out the paneling Kivi had told him she’d pulled up. His gloved fingers couldn’t fit in the tiny gap. He looked around the rest of the room with desperate hope for something that could help, and was greatly rewarded for his efforts when he came across a tool kit. Like the first aid kits that were positioned at a couple locations on each deck, this was attached to the wall. It was for power-outages like this, he realized, when seeking out a tool kit could mean the difference between life and death.
Tron used a flat-head screwdriver to pry up the panel. Kivi’d told him that there was supposed to be a yellow glow inside. There was nothing but darkness now. He dug around in the tool kit for a minute and found a light stick. He cracked it and clipped it to a hook on the chest of his suit. The stick took a second to work, but once it started the light grew until half the room was illuminated in its soft yellow glow.
“What do you see?”
He could tell she’d been waiting to ask him that as long as she could stand. Knowing Kivi, she’d probably been counting the seconds and figuring out how long each of his steps would take to get there.
“A lot parts. I don’t know.” He stared at the mystery of mechanics in front of him and tried to imagine what Kivi would see. “Directly in front of me is a big metal box. It’s almost as big as my hand.”
“That’s the catalyzer. Do you see the connections coming out of it?”
“Yeah.” Tron leaned in closer, shifting so that the light stick would drape in the opening. “There are three metal tubes that are about as thick as my thumb. Two on my right side and one leading toward me.”
“Tubes?” She was silent a moment. “Oh. That’s just plating. Those are actually wires. If you follow the ones on the right?”
“Umm…” He reached his hand into the opening and traced them both. “One links up at either end to this weird thing. I’m not really sure how to describe it. There’s these two spring looking things encased in a discolored glass pipe. The pipes kind of recessed into this housing that… well, there are lots of other tubes or wires or whatever coming off it.”
“Compression coil.” Kivi didn’t sound nearly as certain as she had on the other parts. “That’s got to be the compression coil. Two inside the glass? You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Is there supposed to be two?”
“No.” The mic went silent. Not just quiet, when neither one of them was speaking. Tron couldn’t hear her breathing, which meant she’d shut it off completely. Or switched channels. Or something else had gone wrong. But he refused to consider that.
He pursed his lips and shifted, hoping that a different angle would fix whatever was wrong. No matter how he turned, though, it was always two springs inside, with a break between them big enough to put his fist through.
The mic clicked back on with two quick beeps, then the sounds of Kivi’s breath returned.
“The coil’s broken.”
“I’ve figured that much out on my own. Got anything else?”
“Whitman doesn’t know how to fix it.”
Tron grimaced. He wanted to argue that the old man wasn’t likely to tell them if he did, but that wasn’t fair. If Kivi said it was broken, Tron had no doubt it was. And that wasn’t just bad for the two of them. It was death for Whitman too. Unless the ship following them was his Free Ride, waiting for him to finish off Lucy’s two survivors. But Tron couldn’t really make himself believe that. If it was really Whitman’s ship, this whole cat and mouse game in the debris didn’t make sense.
“Whitman doesn’t. Do you?”
She was quiet too long. Tron didn’t need to be a genius to know what that means.
“No.” Kivi paused. “Not yet.”
Quick Fix
The gloves were a problem. They were big and unwieldy. Too big for her hands. She couldn’t get her fingers to work on the pad properly. She needed the pad, to make a model. It wouldn’t be as good as touching. Touching was the best way to sort out how things worked together. But if she couldn’t have that, she could make do with a model. One she’d make from her memories of the glimpse she’d gotten of the engine, and whatever data she could find floating around in the pad’s memory. There wasn’t much. She’d tried to find information on their engine before. But Kivi would make it work. Then she’d have something she could trace with her fingers and sort out how to fit it together. Except she couldn’t do even the first step of that with the big, clunky gloves. They had to go. It took a few minutes to unbuckle all the buckles. Long enough for Whitman to see what she was doing.
Kivi had come out of the bathroom while Tron slept. She had to. It got so cold that her shaking had made her slip from her perch on the toilet lid. There would be a really ugly bruise on her shoulder from it. But it had woken her up and she’d gotten into her suit on before she could freeze to death. Whitman helped her with that. He’d even complimented her on how they’d modified the suit to fit her better. He didn’t compliment her now. From across the room, he tapped the side of his helmet where the mic was.
When he’d first closed the door, she’d been certain that Tron was right about Whitman the whole time. It was a bad thing. The reasons he said he had for it were good. Kivi had to admit that. They even made sense. But it left Tron out there all alone. For her, that was enough proof. Except that he seemed to think so too. He kept looking at the door like he wanted to open it. Every time their paths crossed, after he used the bathroom but before she went back in, he asked how Tron was breathing and if he needed to try to run yet. Kivi had almost said yes each time, but while he was in the bathroom she’d peek at the sensor screen and she always saw a shape moving around in the black and white image that she figured must be the other ship. Since she knew Tron would be really upset if they’d done all this just to get killed by bad guys anyway, she always said no. But it didn’t seem like the sort of question one of the bad guys would ask.
