Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (20 page)

“As you wish.”

Two small lights glowed white: one at each of the front
window’s two lower corners. They illuminated the pod’s interior, but poorly.

“Is that all the light we get in here?” Mike asked.

“I have six internal lights,” the pod said, “but four
are buried under supplies.”

“Oh.”

A hissing sound grew and filled the cramped little
cabin.

Wriggling past Kim—also laying on top of supplies—Mike
crawled toward the pilot’s seat. The supplies were piled so high they touched
the backs of the upside-down pilot and co-pilot seats. Mike had to dig food
envelopes and water bladders out of his way to get into the front. There he
found Tina, curled into fetal position below the co-pilot seat—or as much of
fetal position as one can manage in a full vacuum suit.

The hissing stopped, and she began unfastening her
helmet.

He shook his head. “Keep it on. Launch is gonna be
rough. Your helmet will help protect your skull.” He shoved a few more food
envelopes out of his way. “You’re going to have to pull yourself upside-down
and get strapped into the co-pilot seat.”

She looked up at it, dubiously. “I’ll try.”

Crawling under the pilot seat, Mike rolled onto his
back and tried to pull himself up into it enough to strap himself in, but the
gee force was too strong. He tried sliding a few dozen food envelopes under his
back to elevate his body. This helped, but not enough. Raking more food
envelopes together, he rocked back and forth as he worked them into position.
When he finally managed to get strapped in, he started shoving the food
envelopes into the pod’s rear area to clear them out of his way. Then he
noticed Tina was gathering food envelopes to elevate herself too, so he pushed
some of his in her direction.

“Pod,” he said, “in a few minutes, I’ll instruct you to
disengage your docking grapples.”

“On who’s authority?”

“Mine, of course.”

“Please state your name.”

“Michael Tobias McCormack.”

“Mister McCormack, what is the access code for this pod
during this month?”

Mike looked at Tina, hoping that by some miracle she
knew the access code.

She stared right back at him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

The pod asked, “What is the serial number on your
pilot’s license?”

Tina laughed so hard her body convulsed. This caused several
food envelopes to wiggle out from under her. One slid far enough to bump into
Mike’s arm.

Mike’s head drooped. “I don’t have one.”

“I’m sorry, Mister McCormack, but since you possess
neither a license nor the proper access code I am unable to comply with your
instructions.”

“But this is an emergency!”

“I have received no word from the captain indicating
that we are in a state of emergency or that I am to obey anyone named Michael
Tobias McCormack.”

“That’s because the captain is dead.”

“I will have to confirm that,” it said, clearly
unimpressed. Three seconds later its tone was slightly different. “That’s odd.
The ship’s computer does not respond.”

“It was destroyed.”

“The crew then.”

“All dead. Except for Kim Kirkland and she’s
unconscious.”

“Why are all these people dead?” The pod sounded
annoyed.

“Haven’t you been told about the sabotage?”

“Sabotage?”

Mike’s patience was almost gone. Hanging upside-down in
two gees, he could feel the blood pooling inside his skull and bloating the
skin of his face. “Look: the three people aboard you right now are the only
survivors. Everyone else was either murdered or died as a direct result of
Corvus’s sabotage. First, the engines were blown with plastic explosive which
produced a fuel leak that caused the ship’s tumbling. Later, the fuel cells
were blown to create a power outage; and then later still the ship’s computer
was destroyed to stop it from telling me what it had learned about the
murderer/saboteur.”

“Is the saboteur aboard me too?”

“No. I’ve got her locked out of the control booth and
hangars.”

“You want to fly me out of the ship so she can’t harm
you?”

“No; more than that. Corvus’s engines were sabotaged in
the middle of a J-maneuver during its docking approach to Von Braun. The ship
will make a near pass of the sun tomorrow—so near that it will melt from the
heat and be destroyed. We have to leave the ship or die with it. Now, will you
follow my commands?”

“Your story explains several phenomena which I am able
to confirm; such as the high inverted gee force I am experiencing and my
inability to contact the ship’s computer or any crewmember through the intercom
system. However, I have severe reservations based upon your story’s inherent
unlikelihood. I find it difficult to believe that one saboteur could—” The
pod’s voice fell silent.

Mike’s body tensed and he felt a wave of sweat spread
over his back. “Pod! Pod, are you there? Don’t die on me now!”

“Please stop yelling,” it said. “I have made radio
contact with a type of personal computer commonly called a pocketsize. It
states that its owner, Akio Yamaguchi, slipped in a vertical hallway and fell
to his death. It has also confirmed many of your story’s other major points.”

“Have you got room to download its complete memory?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it. We may need that data as evidence if we
survive this. I mean,
when
we survive this. Also, I want you to
broadcast a request-for-contact signal on all cellular and com channels. There
may be other personal computers that remain functional. I’m especially thinking
of Zahid’s, but I’ll take any you can contact. Let me know what you find.”

I probably should have grabbed Zahid’s computer
myself when I had the chance,
he thought,
but it felt too much like
robbing the dead. Still, there’s nothing wrong with downloading its information
as long as it’s used to solve these murders.

“As you wish.”

“Does this mean you’ll follow my orders?”

“Yes. While I am unable to confirm everything you
claim, I am convinced that this is indeed a life threatening emergency.”

“Good. Prepare to disengage docking grapples.”

He helped Tina strap herself in, which mostly took the
form of advice. Being strapped in already, Mike was in no position to lift her
into her seat. After she was strapped in, she asked, “What about Kim?”

Avoiding Tina’s eyes, he pretended he was familiarizing
himself with the pod’s control panel—a hard white plastic surface trimmed with
thin strips of chrome and even thinner decorative red stripes. “We’ve only got
two seats,” he said. “I’ve got to be in one in case the pod’s computer goes
down and I have to fly it manually, and I didn’t feel I could ask you to give
up your seat.” He ran his index finger along a bank of switches as though
memorizing their location. “I think she’ll be OK back there. There should only
be one big bump, then a rolling motion, and then we’ll be outside in zero-g.”

He was relieved when Tina didn’t argue the point. He
hadn’t expected her to, but he’d still worried about it.

Maybe I should strap Kim into my seat,
he
thought.
Maybe I should be the one riding in the back. The odds that the
pod’s computer will fail are probably small; unless, of course, the saboteur
has planted a bomb in here too. It’s possible; but it’s probably not likely. At
least, I think it’s not likely. Or maybe I just hope so.

He glanced at Tina.
There’s no use second-guessing
myself. I’m doing what I think is safest; planning for everything that could
possibly go wrong; worst-case scenarios every step of the way. I’ve got to. I
can’t risk doing anything less. Can’t risk it for Kim’s sake. After all, if I’m
incapacitated, who’s going to keep her alive? Tina?

He checked his straps, then looked at Tina. “Ready?”

She gave him a nervously brave look. “Yes.”

“Good. Brace yourself. Pod, release the grapples.”

“Aye aye.”

Mike felt his stomach lurch as the pod dropped and
zero-g engulfed him. A quarter of a second later, as the pod impacted the
hangar ceiling, straps dug into the flesh of Mike’s shoulders, hips and thighs
and even more blood tried to squeeze into his brain. Tina squealed, and the pod’s
hull rang like a huge, dull bell.

Food envelopes and water bladders bounced all the way
up into Mike’s lap. They slapped him on the shoulders and chest, and made an
awful racket banging against his helmet on their way up, and again on their way
back down. The four missing interior lights appeared as randomized flashes that
cast strange and fleeting shadows.

In the middle of all this flying confusion, the pod
announced, “I have contacted a pocketsize belonging to one Nikita Petrov. I am
downloading its contents now.”

“You’re kidding!” Mike yelled. “That thing’s bound to
contain all sorts of incriminating stuff. This is too good to be true!”

The pod’s almost spherical hull began rolling unevenly
across the hangar ceiling toward the big open door. At one point Mike and Tina
were right-side-up, but this did not last. The pod rolled on; tipping forward
until—

The gee force vanished again and they were falling.

Mike’s view was completely obscured as supplies of
every imaginable size and shape bounced around the cabin like salmon in a
commercial fishing net. He couldn’t see the front window or any of the pod’s
control panel.

Waving his arms in a swimming motion, he tried shoving
the stuff out of his way—either into the rear or at least over in front of
Tina.

He spotted shifting areas of the control panel, then
caught glimpses of Corvus’s huge exterior through the pod’s front window. All
of Corvus swung up into view and then out of view, reminding Mike of the beams
of sunlight in the cargo decks. Corvus appeared in the front window again; then
again it was gone.

But it wasn’t Corvus that was moving like this; it was
the pod. The pod was tumbling like Corvus, having picked up its rotation when
it rolled across the hangar ceiling and out the door.

Again, Corvus appeared; but this time one end was
frighteningly large; then Corvus disappeared.

“Brace yourself!” Mike yelled. “It’s going to—”

The engineering decks slammed into the pod’s lower rear
section with ten times the force of the impact felt during launch. Mike feared
the pod’s hull would split open like a piñata; though instead of candy spilling
out it would be three vacuum-suited bodies surrounded by a flurry of food packs
and water bladders.

His helmet struck his headrest so hard it bent the
headrest’s supporting arm to one side; and the crushing pain in his arms, as
they slammed against the armrests, felt as if bones had broken in several
places.

All the loose supplies struck the pod’s back wall in a
brief, high-speed drum roll. The pod’s hull, however, did not split wide open.
Neither did the pod bounce away from the ship and tumble out into zero-g.
Instead, Corvus somehow grabbed the little pod and held on to it. Perhaps it
had become stuck in a brand new pod-sized crater or dent.

Pressed back into his seat as harshly and rudely as if
an elephant were sitting on his chest, Mike discovered that he couldn’t
move—not his arms, his hands or even his fingers. He grimaced each time he
tried.

Six gees! How long can a human survive six gees?
His seat creaked under his twelve hundred pounds. He couldn’t even roll his
head to look at Tina.
What’s this doing to Kim? God, don’t let her be under
stuff, or in a position where blood will flood her brain and burst all the
veins. Got to get loose. Got to…
“Pod!” His voice sounded bizarre. The
weight of his cheeks had stretched his lips wide and thin over his teeth, and
his tongue—now weighing over a pound—insisted upon flattening itself into the
very bottom of his mouth. “I want you to use the attitude jets or the main
thrusters to shake us loose!”

There was no reply.

“Pod?”

Still nothing.

“Pod? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“No! Don’t do this to me!”
Calm down. Calm down.
Calm down.
“Damn, I knew something like this was going to happen!”
We’re
trapped. I can’t even lift my—

Something metallic, even bigger than the pod, creaked.

The pod rolled forward and dropped away from Corvus,
but zero-g did not return. The action of dropping away set the pod spinning
more wildly even than before—three revolutions per second.

Mike felt his blood abandoning his midsection and
collecting in his head and feet.
God, don’t let me black-out!

The resulting centrifugal effect pressed all the loose
supplies against the pod’s floor, ceiling, front and rear walls. Lumpy and
irregular, this layer hid from view everything it covered, including the
control panel and the front window. Only the two side walls remained visible.

Stretching forward, Mike began yanking supplies—along
with one pea-green leather travel case with a long shoulder strap—from the
front window and throwing them toward the rear wall, hoping they would stay.

He was tempted to ignore the front window and use the
pod’s main viewing monitor—a twelve inch video screen mounted on the control
panel directly in front of him. At the moment it had only two food envelopes
lying on it, but because of his inexperience in a pilot seat, he didn’t feel
comfortable relying on it.

Its screen was divided into six smaller images provided
by six tiny cameras on the pod’s exterior—one for each direction: up, down,
left, right, forward and rear. The image for
down
had gone to static.
During the impact with Corvus, most likely, its camera had been crushed.

As soon as he’d cleared enough of the window to see
outside, Mike grabbed the joystick near his right hand and moved it in several
different directions.