Chapter 51
He lies in a hospital bed in an unfamiliar room. The walls flex and bulge, but it’s just in his head.
“Keep still,” Lana says. “You’ve had a hell of a trip.” She stands at the end of a dim corridor with a forced smile, holding a plastic drinking bulb. “This will help.” She comes to his side, presses him back into the foam headrest, tips the straw to his lips.
He gulps cold water down a raw and swollen throat. “Thank you.”
“How ya feeling?”
“Like a horse that should be put down. Are we on the other side?”
She rolls the empty bulb between her hands. “Other side of what?”
“Of the jump. What system are we at?”
She looks down. “We’re still here. We haven’t jumped. We can’t.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
She inhales long and deep. “Jack, Dandy is dead.”
He almost laughs. He tells her about the bluff. “Ani and Kip are safe.”
She wipes a swollen tear from one eye.
“Why haven’t we jumped, Lana?” His palms feel hot and swollen.
Another tear runs to the corner of her mouth.
“Hey.” He reaches for her.
She takes his hand.
“What happened?”
“It’s Stetson. Jack, he’s dead. The hydra…”
Suddenly Jack feels very heavy. Swollen. His ribs ache, a throbbing in rhythm with his pulse. “Dino?”
“Asleep. He’s in bad shape. But he’ll make it.”
More senseless tragedies. He can’t dwell on it. Not now. “Why haven’t we jumped?”
Her breath rattles. She doesn’t want to put it into words. It can only be one thing.
He says, “The hydra.”
“It followed you. It almost got into our airlock. If Hunter didn’t close the door when she did—” She swallows, looks down and then back up, her complexion turned steely. Playing strong. They’re all at their wits’ end. This fucking thing has killed two of their crew, almost all of Dandy’s. And it won’t let up. It never will. “It’s on the hull, Jack.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“Before Bel dives. How long do we have?”
“A little over three hours.”
“Damn it.” He sits up. Pain shoots through his side. “Damn it.”
“You’re in no condition.”
“Help me. Please.”
Despite herself, she lends a pair of steadying hands. His feet are bare. They swing out from under a blanket and over the end of the bed. Both sets of toes are black except for the big ones. He grits his teeth to fight the building scream. It’s like standing on daggers.
“You weren’t wearing boots,” Lana says. What she doesn’t say is if they don’t get him into a grav tank before long, he might lose them.
“Help me to the bridge. I need to talk to Hunter.”
Chapter 52
“The bad news is our sensors are shot. The really bad news is that without the sensors, we can’t aim, so the plasma cannon’s useless.” Hunter sits in the pilot’s chair, straddling the back, chin resting on her arms.
The bridge is smaller than Bel’s. Military grade. Jack takes up the gunner’s seat. He wouldn’t know where to begin with the controls. “We’ve got to have options,” he says. “Think.”
Hunter says, “I’m sorry, Jack, but it would take at least six hours to replace and calibrate the necessary parts. We just don’t have the time. And this close to the sun, even in Bel’s shadow, the hardware can’t handle the exposure. The software either. It’s not happening.”
“I’m not talking about hardware and software and timelines. Could we shake it off? Roll so hard we dislodge it?” He winces nearly every other word, ribs throbbing with pain, jolting his lungs. Lana said nothing is broken, but his muscles and tendons took a beating, and the vacuum sucked out an uncertain amount of blood through the hole Dandy put in his side. It’s nothing a few days in a grav tank couldn’t heal, but in the meantime he’ll have to deal with the shooting pains and the liquid stitches tearing every time he moves.
Lana lingers by the door, arms crossed. “It held to the pod when we ejected. I don’t think we can shake it off.”
Hunter adds, “And we’d have no way to tell if it worked unless someone goes out there.”
Gregorian looks up. He hasn’t said much. Probably just trying to keep up with the language. He locks eyes with Jack. “Hunter idea is best. Someones go out there.”
Hunter balks. “That’s not what I said.”
“It is only option. Someone give lines of sight. Manually.”
“How?”
“Comms. Outside persons call out trajectory. Like, uh, ancient artery.”
“Artillery.”
“Yes.”
“Will comms be functional?”
“Almost definitely.”
“Hunter? You know the technology. Does this sound doable?”
She rubs the back of her neck. “It’ll be dicey. Worst case scenario, we only get a few minutes of functional comms.”
“Okay, then. Unless there’s a better approach.”
“I will do this,” Gregorian says. “It is my ships.”
Jack says, “You’re the only one who’s ever worked a plasma cannon. You stay here. And before anyone else says a word, I’m still captain of my crew, and I am going out there. That’s final. Hunter, Lana, is that understood?”
Lana throws her head back and stares at the ceiling.
Hunter makes a face.
“Well?”
Lana says, “Jack, you can barely stand.”
“Exactly. I’m better off in zero G.” It’s meant to be a joke, but no one laughs.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“We’re not safe. If we do nothing—”
“I should go,” Lana says.
“You’re not practiced out there.”
“I saved Dino, didn’t I?”
“You did. But I’m the one who got us into this. Dandy chose me. Not you, not Hunter. If it weren’t for me, none of you would be here.”
She glares, then storms into the next room where she slides down the ladder into the main chamber.
Jack sighs. He knows how she feels, but she doesn’t understand. “Gregorian.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me everything there is to know about the plasma cannon.”
Chapter 53
Encased in clear gel, Dino’s leg looks unreal. Rubbery, almost. The bone protrudes through a flap of flesh that could be pale lips. It will heal that way, and whenever they arrive at the nearest medical center, the flesh will have to be cut again, the bones rebroken and properly set.
But that is assuming they make it out of this. And it seems with each assumption like that, something goes terribly wrong. What’s that old saying? Expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Maybe it’s best not to prepare at all. To just sit and wait to be acted upon.
Killing time, she checks the grav tanks. They’re newer than Bel’s, the hardware sleeker, polished, all smooth edges. She can’t find the slightest indication of neglect. No corrosion. No useless wires hanging from disabled ports. One of Gregorian’s guys must have spent a lot of time down here, caring for these. The way Stetson used to care for his electronics. She keeps seeing his helmet popping off. First, a slithering wetness over the headset. Then silence.
And that thing wagging at her, reaching for her.
She leaves the room.
The ship is small, a conservative setup. Cubbies cover every free surface, filled with who-knows-what. She cannot find a kitchen. Just a single storage unit brimming with dehydrated food. The cramped corridors feel more like the passages on a submarine than an aircraft. Most of the ship consists of a single corridor, the bridge positioned above it. The setup reminds her of early spacecraft designs. Those antiques she’s only read about. Like the ISS before they let it burn up. So delicate and piecemeal, a series of crates wired together. The first generation of ships was like that, for the same reasons the first sailboats wouldn’t have had reinforced hulls or torpedoes ready to launch. There was nothing to fight at first but the elements.