“We have to do it soon, because those damn pods don’t carry much air. If she’s conscious, she’ll put herself in coldsleep - and amateurs trying to put themselves in are all too likely to make a fatal mistake.”
“Worse than that,” said Makin, “we can’t track her if she’s in coldsleep - it’ll be like death. We’ve got to get her before she does that, or before she dies.”
“Which is how long, Erling?” Everyone craned to see the engineer’s face. It offered no great amount of hope. He spread his hands.
“Depends on her. If she takes the risk of holding out on the existing air supply as long as she can, or if she opts to go into coldsleep while she’s alert. And we don’t even know if the person who ejected the pod sabotaged the airtanks or the coldsleep module, as well as the beacon. At an outside, maximum, - if she pushes it,
hundred-ten to hundred-twenty hours from ejection.” Before anyone could ask, he glanced at a clock readout on the wall and went on. “And it’s been eight point two. And the captain’s determined to make the rendezvous with the EEC ship tomorrow, which eats up another twenty-four to thirty.” His glare was a challenge. The Weft ensign Jrain took it up.
“Suppose we can’t convince the captain to break the rendezvous - what about going back afterwards? He might be in a more reasonable frame of mind then.”
Erling snorted. “He might - and then again he might be hot to go straight to sector command. To go back - hell, how would I know? You tell me you can find her, you and the Ssli, but I sure couldn’t calculate a course or transit time. Even if we hit the same drop-point as the ejection - if that’s not a ridiculous statement in talking of paralight space - we’d have no guarantee we’d come out with the same vector. They found that out when they tried dropping combat modules out of FTL in the Gerimi System. Scattered to hell all over the place, and it took months to clean up the mess. But again, assume we can use you as guides, we still have to maneuver the ship. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t.”
“We have to try.” Mira rumpled her blonde hair as if she wanted to unroot it. “Sassinak isn’t guilty, and I’m not going to have her take the blame. She helped others at the Academy - “
“Not your bunch,” Jrain pointed out.
“So I grew up,” Mira retorted. “My mother pushed me into that friendship; I didn’t know better until later. Sassinak is my friend, and she’s not going to be left drifting around in a dinky little pod for god knows how long…”
“Well, but what are we going to do about it?”
“I think Jrain had a good idea. Let Fargeon get this rendezvous out of his head, and then try him again. And if he doesn’t agree…” Cavery scowled. No one wanted to say mutiny out loud.
Chapter Seven
When Sassinak woke up, to the dim gray light of the evacuation pod, she had a lump on her forehead, another on the back of her head, and the vague feeling that too much time had passed. She couldn’t see much, and finally realized that something covered her head. When she reached for it, her arm twinged, and she rubbed a sore place. It felt like an injection site, but… Slowly, clumsily, she pawed the foil hood from her head and looked around. She lay crumpled against the acceleration couch of a standard evac pod; without the hood’s interference, she could see everything in the pod. Beneath the cushions of the couch was the tank for coldsleep, if things went wrong. She had the feeling that perhaps things had gone wrong, but she couldn’t quite remember.
Slowly, trying to keep her churning stomach from outwitting her, she pushed herself up. It would do no good to panic. Either she was in a functioning pod inside a ship, or she was in a functioning pod in flight: either way, the pod had taken care of her so far, or she wouldn’t have wakened. The air smelled normal… but if she’d been there long enough, her nose would have adapted. She tried to look around, to the control console, and her stomach rebelled. She grabbed at the nearest protruding knob, and a steel basin slid from its recess at one end of the couch. Just in time.
She retched until nothing came but clear green bile, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. What a stink! Her mouth quirked. What a thing to think about at a time like this. She felt cold and shaky, but a little more solid. Aches and twinges began to assert themselves. She pushed the basin back into its recess, looked for and found the button that should empty and sterilise it (she didn’t really want to think about the pod’s recycling system, but her mind produced the specs anyway), and turned over, leaning against the couch.
Over the hatch, a digital readout informed her that the pod had been launched eight hours and forty-two minutes before. Launched! She forced herself to look at the rest of the information. Air supply on full; estimated time of exhaustion ninety-two hours fourteen minutes. Water and food supplies: maximum load; estimated exhaustion undetermined. Of course, she hadn’t used any yet, and the onboard comp had no data on her consumption. She tried to get onto the couch and almost passed out again. How could she be that weak if she’d only been here eight hours? And besides that, what had happened? Evac pods were intended primarily for the evacuation of injured or otherwise incapable crew. Had there been an emergency; had she been unconscious on a ship or something?
The second try got her onto the bench, with a bank of control switches ready to her hand. She fumbled for the sip-wand, and took two long swallows of water. (The recycling couldn’t be workingyet, she told her stomach.) A touch of the finger, and she cut the airflow down 15%. She might not tolerate that, but if she did it would give her more time. Another swallow of water. The taste in her mouth had been worse than terrible. She felt in her uniform pocket for the mints she liked to carry, and at that moment the memory came back.
The drill… E-bay… ducking to enter her assigned pod… andsomething, had jabbed her arm, and landed on her head. She rolled up her sleeve, frowning. Sure enough, a little red weal, slightly itchy and sore. She’d been drugged, and slugged, and dumped in a pod and sent off - As suddenly as that first memory, the situation on the cruiser came to her. Mysterious messages, someone usingher comm code, and her belief that Achael had had something to do with Abe’s murder. If she’d had any doubts, they vanished.
With the wave of anger, her mind seemed to clear. Perhaps Achael or his accomplice had thought she’d die of the drug - or maybe they meant to force her into taking coldsleep, and intended the pod to be picked up by confederates.
You have such cheerful thoughts, she told herself, and looked around for distraction.
There, on the control console an arm’s length away, a large gray envelope with bright orange stripes across it. Fleet Security, Classified. Do Not Open Without Proper Authorization. The pressure seal hadn’t quite taken; the opening gaped. Sassinak started to reach for it, then stopped her hand in midair. Whoever had dumped her in here must have left that little gift… which meant she wanted no part of it.
It might even become evidence. She grinned to herself. A proper Carin Coldae setup this was, and no mistake. Now what would Carin do? Figure out a way to catch the villain, without ruffling one hair of her head. Sassinak rumpled her own hair and remembered that she’d been planning to cut it.
Moment by moment she felt better. She’d suspected that something was going on, and she’d been right. She’d felt in danger, and she’d been right. And now she was helplessly locked into an evac pod, which was headed who knows where, and even with the beacon on no one was likely to find her until she’d run out of air… and she was happy. Ridiculous, but she was. A little voice of caution murmured that it might be the drug, and she shouldn’t be overconfident. She told the little voice to shut up. But just in case… she found the med kit, and figured out how to lay her arm in the cradle for a venous tap. Take a blood sample, that should do it. If she had been drugged, and the drug proved traceable… the sting of the needle interrupted that thought for a moment. Beacon. She needed to check the beacon.