He’d wake then, wishing he could close his hands around that man’s neck.
But he was stuck in a ship one malfunction away from becoming a derelict, and the only thing he could to stop the anger from consuming him was to drown in work. Luckily, there was a lot of work to be done in the dying Beowulf.
They set up base in the med-bay, which had, by some miracle, survived the railgun barrage without losing structural integrity. It had no life-support and no functioning airlock, but that only meant more problems for Clarke to solve. He welcomed the chance.
The first step was to restore the med-bay life-support. That meant getting a portable generator from the ship’s locker to restore the med-bay’s busted power lines. Clarke and Navathe made the trip while Pascari worked on removing the damaged machinery.
After the med-bay was up and running, they raided the kitchens and the storage area for food supplies. There were enough crates to outlast their air supply.
Once they had food and shelter, days passed one after the other as they fell into a sort of routine. They’d relieve themselves twice a day in airlocks and recycle the air. They’d perform maintenance on all the ship’s systems they could work on with their limited tools and knowledge and watch all the others slowly fail. Clarke and Navathe would check on the bridge to make sure the communications was still emitting the Beowulf’s code and EIF password to all local traffic, and Pascari would drift across the dark passages of the ship, taciturn, refusing to speak to anyone.
When their wristbands marked the end of the work cycle, Pascari would stand watch at the bridge while Navathe and Clarke slept, and then the day would start all over again.
They kept careful track of time. A week passed without contact. Their air supply would last for another three.
The air would last longer with less people on board. Clarke, without telling anyone, decided he’d jump out of an airlock after two week’s time. Perhaps Pascari would get the idea and follow him.
The day he made that choice, Captain Navathe found him in the med-bay. He was in the process of injecting a pack of stim juice to reverse the effects of prolonged zero g exposure. He greeted her while clenching his teeth. Stim juice felt like mixing his blood with liquid fire.
Navathe floated to the crate of juice and took a pack for herself. “I wouldn’t overdo it if I were you, this shit is so cheap that starport rats won’t look at it twice. I’m sure the company who made them went bust a while ago.”
“Well, storage’s filled with the stuff,” Clarke pointed out.
“Yeah, we bought them in bulk, so…” Navathe shrugged.
Clarke flashed her a humorless smile. “My kidneys are troopers, Captain, they’ll hold on a bit longer.”
“Long enough for us to run out of air?”
“At the very least.”
There was a pause while Navathe pressed the auto-injector against her neck. There was a pneumatic sound. The woman winced, but didn’t complain.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. About Antonov.”
“Yeah?” Clarke wasn’t in the business of speaking of the death. His opinions of Antonov had died with him.
“Yeah. His certainty always scared me…the way he spoke of ‘having to do what it must be done.’ I knew many sailors in the Defense Fleet, you know?”
“Because of your husband?”
She nodded. “They were good people.”
“I don’t know how many of those are left,” said Clarke. “After Tal-Kader took over, they’ve been steadily replacing the old guard with their cronies.”
Like Admiral Eustace U. Wentraub and Captain Riley Erickson. Yes, Clarke recognized the affectation in their manners and speech. It was corporate lingo, not navy.
Where had all the veterans of Broken Sky ended up? Same as Clarke, drifting from place to place, sometimes stuck in a colony or a startown, with no way of leaving. Used and replaced, like cogs in a machine.
“Some may remain,” Navathe said. “And even if there weren’t, if all the SADF new blood flowed from Tal-Kader…there has to be someone among those sailors that’s just a normal guy, like us. Someone with a family, who is trying to survive the day to day.”
“Yes,” Clarke said.
“We’re bringing war to them.”
Clarke made an effort to follow her train of thought. It was clear her ideas weren’t in order, but in fact, he knew where she was going because he’d thought about it himself, several times.
“Antonov wouldn’t have had any trouble destroying Defense Fleet ships. You aren’t sure if you could do the same.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You know, my plan was the same as yours. I brought the EIF to the Independence, then I returned home and forgot all about it. Now…I’m not so sure. I don’t know if the EIF would have me, but I can’t stop thinking about returning Vortex the favor.”
Strange how fast people could change. When he was younger, Clarke had itched to fight for what he believed in, to protect the Edge and its values. He wasn’t ready to renounce that fight.
“The EIF will have you,” he said. “From what I know of them, they’re in desperate need of experienced officers.”
“What about you? Will you join up?”
“I’ll go to Dione,” Clarke said. “If we survive. Then…I’m still deciding.”
“What will you do when you’ve to decide if you’ll kill an enemy soldier? A fellow SA citizen?”
“That,” said Clarke, “is what I haven’t decided.”
At that point, his wristband buzzed with a message from Pascari. Navathe’s did the same. They exchanged a glance and read the news in silence. Navathe flashed a wolfish grin, just an inch away from madness.
“You better decide soon, Clarke.”
CLARKE ENTERED THE BRIDGE, using the handholds around the walls and ceiling to vault himself from place to place. He and Navathe found Pascari waiting for them with a visible frown behind his visor.
“What took you so long?” he asked them. Since his message and their arrival, less than two minutes had passed.
“You recorded it?” Captain Navathe asked him.
“Yes, Cap. Here, hear for yourself.”
He opened up a display with a series of files and opened up the most recent:
“Free Trader Beowulf, this is scout ship O-223. We’ve heard your emergency transmission. Any survivors still on board? We’d like to confirm your credentials. Acknowledge.”
“I told them to wait until you got here,” Pascari said. “I have no proof of their identity and no way to attain it, though. Our sensors are busted.”
“At this point,” said Clarke, “even if it’s Vagn Mortensen himself, there’s nothing we can do.”
Pascari gave him an acidic look and said nothing. Coming from him, it was as close to an agreement as Clarke was going to get.
“Patch them through,” said Navathe.
When the TRANSMITTING holo was ready, she said:
“O-223, this is Beowulf, Captain Navathe. There’s three of us, and we have an emergency message for EIF command. Our credentials…”
She repeated the code the three had memorized from Julia’s wristband. When she was done, the three waited for the answer.