The Owling, page 29
“It can’t be just gone.” Wist pressed her nose against the view port as the grav field kicked in again, only several degrees crooked this time.
“Like I said,” Margus replied. “That was weird. Very weird.”
Weird, yes. But that still didn’t explain what had just happened to them, or why.
“Maybe it was some kind of black hole,” suggested Wist.
“Only it wasn’t dark,” added Oriannon. “It was light.”
None of this made any sense.
With the shaking seemingly over, Oriannon hurried back to check on her father, finding him still unconscious and tied into his bunk. He’d missed all the excitement, which was probably a good thing. She returned to the control room.
Meanwhile, Margus rested his cheek in his hand as if trying to figure it all out. “The thing is,” he said, “if that . . . that light — whatever it was — did something to the Asylum station, it took four big Coristan Security ships with it.”
“Only not us,” added Wist.
“That’s what I don’t get.” Margus scratched his head, and green light from the primary nav screen made his face glow as he leaned closer. “They had ten or fifteen grappling hooks into us, and we’re the ones who got left behind. We should have been dragged away with everything else.”
Maybe so. But when Oriannon looked at the Pilot Stone, still glowing in its place near the main control panel, she thought she had a clue.
“We’re moving again,” she said, “aren’t we?”
Margus raised his eyebrows when he noticed numbers changing by the second on the velocity gauges.
“After all that.” He whistled in disbelief. “I’m amazed we’re moving at all.”
“And let me guess.” Oriannon didn’t even need to look at the nav screens — just the Pilot Stone. “We’re headed to the next Asylum way station instead?”
It took Margus a moment to confirm his numbers, and he checked several screens to be sure, but finally he squinted at Oriannon.
“Asylum 2. Looks like it. I’d ask how you knew, but I have a feeling it has to do with that Stone of yours.”
He didn’t really need an answer.
“Anyway,” Margus continued, “we’re pretty beat up. So if we want to go anywhere else, it’s going to take awhile, and we’ll need to do some patching. Looks like point two five is as fast as we’re going to go — quarter speed.”
Wist pointed to a monitor, cocking her head to the side.
“What’s that?” she asked.
A view cam trained on the outer tail section revealed shredded chunks of titanium outer skin, gaping holes, and miscellaneous pieces of hardware peeling away.
“Oh, no.” Margus groaned, bringing the focus up a little and panning the cam around to show ten sharp grappling hooks still partly embedded in the outer skin. Several hooks still trailed hundreds of meters of braided cable, strangely frayed at the ends. If there had been any wind in space, the cables would have been flapping like flags.
“Just be telling us what to do,” said Wist.
So for the next several hours the three of them shut off systems and made repairs as best they could. While Margus rerouted power and electronics from dead systems to backups, Oriannon checked for hull breaches with a handheld meter and Wist fetched tools and equipment from storage cabinets and downstairs. Through all this, Sola seemed to have fallen asleep again in the corner.
Margus inchwormed out from under a control cabinet with a grunt. “Duct tape.” He held up a roll. “Don’t leave home without it.”
Oriannon couldn’t help smiling, despite the danger that clung to them. No, the situation did not look promising, and she knew very well they might not make it to Asylum 2 in one piece. Margus couldn’t duct tape all the gaping holes in the skin of their craft, and what systems remained online couldn’t be trusted. He tapped at the deep amber warning light of an atmosphere monitor and frowned.
“Not good?” asked Oriannon. He shook his head.
“Looks like we’re leaking life support air faster than onboard generators can produce it.”
“It’s still going to be okay,” Wist said hopefully. “Right? We’ll be fixing it somehow.”
“You go right on believing that, dear.” Sola called over to them, her eyes still closed. “I can hear every word you’re saying, by the way.”
“Then you can hear this.” Oriannon lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “Jesmet cares about what happens to you, no matter what you do. Even if I don’t. Even if you can never see the gardens of Seramine again or the way the Rift Valley sparkles in the sunlight or the red flowers of a flamboyan bush. Even if you can never look up into the sky again and see the Trion with your own eyes. Even then, Sola, he cares.”
Oriannon felt a twinge of guilt for reminding Sola of her blindness in a way she would never have done to a friend. But if it did any good, maybe it was okay to rub that kind of salt in this pitiful woman’s wounds.
Sola grunted and brushed the sleeve of her dirty green tunic to her cheek as she stepped out of the room and felt her way aft to the second of the two small sleeping rooms. She kept her face pointed away from them, perhaps to shield the tears . . . or not.
“I think she’s had enough of our company for now,” said Margus.
“Or maybe she doesn’t like where we’re going.” Oriannon checked the nav screen to make sure they were still headed for Asylum 2, and glanced at the Pilot Stone as it glowed. She wondered if it would really guide them all the way.
Margus tapped the atmosphere monitor again and frowned, but said nothing.
Wist straightened up with a hopeful smile. “Maybe when we make it to Asylum 2,” she told them, “they’ll be explaining to us what just happened.”
When, not if.
She is the optimist, thought Oriannon, ripping off a piece of duct tape to patch a run of wiring back into place. She tried not to keep staring at the rapidly declining numbers on the atmosphere monitor, even as she tried not to wonder what would happen if even more Coristan ships took up the chase.
When, not if.
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Robert Elmer, The Owling
