Dark Beneath the Moon (17 page)

I prodded him gently. “Were you able to learn anything yourself?”

“Not really . . . not yet.” He shook his head. “We have so few of the Chron symbols to make comparisons with, and I’m not an expert to start with.”

“Cerevare is,” I said, nodding to the Lobor. “If the two of you work together, you might be able to come up with something interesting.”

Cerevare nodded eagerly. “I would be most interested to see all the data you’ve collected, Lieutenant Soto.”

He paled suddenly. “All of the original scan data would have been . . . lost . . . with the
Domtaw.
”

I nodded. “Understood. Any other input?”

Viss spoke up. “The ship’s in good shape,” he said. “We don’t have any worries in that department, except the burst drive. Even that might not be a problem once I can get down there and open it up.”

“And I stocked up on everything before we left Mars,” Maja added. “Since we weren’t sure how long a mission this would be, I thought I’d better err on the side of caution. We’re good for about two months, more if we ration.” She’d taken on the role of
de facto
provisions officer on our trip from Kiando to Earth. Since she’d opted to stay on board the
Tane Ikai
for a while and find out as an adult what far trading was like, I’d started her out learning the basics of running a ship, along with her navigator’s training. The basics always start with the question of how to survive when supplies are not readily available. She seemed to like her new position, and now I was pleased that she’d taken it seriously.

“
Okej
, I’m glad to hear some good news,” I said. “Now, what does everyone think about the second wormhole?”

“I don’t relish the idea of venturing into possible Chron territory with only a load of torpedoes on board,” Hirin said. I could tell he was seriously berating himself for not arming the
Tane Ikai
to the teeth when he’d had the chance, but who could have foreseen this situation?

“You couldn’t know what we’d be up against,” I said. “We’re lucky to have what we do, and that’s thanks to you.”

Baden leaned back in the comm chair, arms folded. “Well, we don’t know for sure that it
is
Chron territory,” he said. “Two ships came through there, and it was the Chron being chased. Maybe they were interlopers, sticking their noses somewhere they didn’t belong. It might not be a system under Chron control at all.”

“True enough. In that case, I’m not sure I like how the other ship treated interlopers. Since they might view us the same way.”

“Although we don’t know what kind of history the two might have,” Maja said.

“What happened to that other ship?” Cerevare asked suddenly. She’d been sitting like a statue, taking in the discussion.

Nobody answered.

“Did anyone see?” I asked.

“They either went through the Delta Pavonis wormhole after the Chron—” Rei began.

“Or were destroyed by the explosion when they fired on it,” Viss finished for her.

“Or they could have gone back through the other wormhole,” Baden said. “I was out for a few minutes, and I wasn’t watching them when I did wake up.”

“No,” Maja agreed, “you were trying to rouse me. You weren’t paying attention to anything outside the ship then.”

Gerazan asked, “And when did they do—whatever they did—to the
Stillwell
?”

“Good question. I don’t think it exploded in this vicinity, anyway,” Yuskeya said. She keyed something into the nav board. “There isn’t enough debris particulate to account for more than the
Domtaw
.”

“Any drive signature?” Viss asked. It was the first thing I’d heard him ask Yuskeya directly since their falling-out.

She didn’t look at him, but she answered. “No, I didn’t get a signature reading on them while everything was happening. It doesn’t
seem
that anything went back through the wormhole recently, but I can’t say for sure. We don’t know anything about their technology or what might be possible for them.”

“But surely there’d be some trace?” Gerazan protested. His voice had thinned out and gone flat, as if the pressures of this discussion and the realization of the situation were slowly crushing him.

“Not necessarily,” Rei said gently. “What if they, say, powered their ships with some sort of telepathy? That wouldn’t leave any trace that we’d be aware of.”

His eyes went wide. “Is that possible?”

Rei smiled. “Probably not. But that example shows how far apart we could be from the technology of another race we’ve never encountered before. And I think,” she continued, turning to me, “that we need a break. Double caffs and sweet
kuko
all around?”

“What about rationing?” Maja asked seriously.

“I think Rei’s right,” I said. “One round of caff and cake isn’t going to significantly affect our chances of survival. Rei, Cerevare, and Gerazan, would you head down to the galley and fix us a snack? Yuskeya, let’s check on our guest in First Aid.”

Yuskeya followed me into the First Aid station and raised her eyebrows when I slid the door shut behind us.

“How’s he doing?” I asked her, nodding toward Chen. His breathing seemed steady enough, but his skin was pale and glistened with a sheen of sweat.

Yuskeya touched the back of her hand to his cheek and read the monitors mounted above the bed. A frown of concern creased her forehead. “He’s stable, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him—and neither can the med scanners. I can’t give you a prognosis.”

“Okay, let’s keep a close watch on him,” I said. “Now, you have another patient to deal with.”

She glanced at me. “Captain? You okay?”

“Not really.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples, hoping it would relieve some pressure. It didn’t. “I think I have a headache, and I’m wondering if there’s anything you can do about that.”

She smiled a little. “You
think
you have a headache? Don’t you know?”

I half-smiled in return. “In a word, no. Thanks to Mother’s bioscavengers, I’ve never had one before—at least, not one that lasted. And to tell you the truth, I’m more than a little worried about having one now.”

WHEN LANAR AND
I were children, our mother worked as a genetic engineer for PrimeCorp. I didn’t know it at the time, but her work involved development of nanobioscavengers that would extend the human lifespan indefinitely, similar to those that repair internal injuries and cure cancers. When she found out that PrimeCorp intended to use the technology to maintain a stranglehold on Nearspace governments, she took all her research and fled with it. My father, Lanar, and I went with her.

For a while our family lived on the run, but when I was fourteen she decided she couldn’t do that to us any longer. She went underground on her own. Not before she’d injected both me and my brother (unbeknownst to us) with the current version of the bioscavs, however. Naturally, she’d tested them on herself first. And offered them to my father, but he refused—a decision I’ve never really understood, but had to respect.

I searched Nearspace for Mother for more than fifty years before I finally found her, and I still look thirty even though I’m over eighty. My mother was, and is, an excellent researcher.

Throughout all that time the little machines ticked over inside me, ensuring that in addition to not aging, I neither got sick nor suffered any injury for long before it healed within hours. Even childbirth was dulled from the outset, to be more of a discomfort than anything else. So a persistent headache that would not relent was something of a new experience for me, and I can’t say I was enjoying it.

Although they hadn’t known for long, my crew knew all these secrets about me now, so Yuskeya wasn’t terribly surprised at my lack of experience with headaches. She pursed her lips.

“I have an injection that should help,” she said. “As long as your little nano friends don’t take it as an intruder and destroy it.”

“Give it a try,” I told her. “They must be taking the day off, or I wouldn’t be feeling this. And—let’s keep this between us for now, okay?”

“As long as it doesn’t get me into trouble with Hirin,” she said with a wry grin.

“If it does, I’ll take full responsibility.”

She injected the drug directly into my forearm implant, from whence it would be distributed through my body. As she pulled away she took my hand, turning it over to see the blisters where my overheated datapad had scorched the flesh.

“Hmmm.” She frowned. “Shouldn’t this be healing already?”

I inspected the burn myself. The skin remained as red and angry as it had been when it happened. My nanobioscavs seemed to be off the job in more ways than one. “I guess I’ll take that salve after all.”

“The injection should block the pain, and the salve will boost the healing,” she said.

I nodded silently. It felt . . . weird . . . to need medical assistance. I didn’t like it.

“Captain—Luta,” she said as she smoothed on salve and wrapped the burns in healstrips, “I have to try and get word to the Protectorate about what’s happened here.”

I nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Do you think a comm signal will make it through the wormhole? We didn’t have much luck even before the . . . incident.”

She shrugged. “It’s worth a try. But how long can we afford to wait around and see if we get a reply?”

“How long can we wait to see if the wormhole fixes itself?” I asked in return. “We’re groping in the dark here, in more ways than one. I’m trying to get people thinking, making plans, but the situation could change any minute. If another ship comes through that second wormhole—”

“I know.”

“Yuskeya,” I said, “do you feel that you should be in charge here? You probably have the authority to commandeer the
Tane Ikai
as a Protectorate officer in this situation.”

Her eyes went wide, then she chuckled. “I probably do. But it hadn’t occurred to me. You’re the captain of this ship, Luta, not me. If you started doing something that I thought the Protectorate wouldn’t approve of—”

“Which is probably over half the things I’ve done in my lifetime,” I interjected.

She laughed again. “
Okej
, that I thought the Protectorate would disapprove of
in this particular situation,
I might call you on it. Mostly to cover my
azeno
when I have to make a report. But this is your crew, not a Protectorate one. I’d only have a mutiny on my hands if I tried to take over.”

“I’m counting on your help to get us out of this.”

“I thought you were still disgruntled that I was . . . collecting information while posing as your navigation officer.”

I fixed her with a stare. “You
were
my navigation officer. Still are. And I wasn’t mad at you—not really. I was more annoyed with Lanar. But I’ll tell you one thing, Yuskeya. I’m glad you’re here with us.”

Her dark eyes twinkled. “I can’t say I’m glad I’m here,” she said, “since we’re in deep trouble. But you can count on me, you know that.”

“I do,” I said. “Let’s go get some
kuko
and figure a way out of this mess.”

THE OTHERS WERE
all on the bridge when Yuskeya and I emerged. “No change in Lieutenant Chen’s condition,” I told Gerazan Soto. “I’m sorry. But he is holding on.”

The cryptographer nodded. His olive skin was shaded with grey, his eyes dull. The loss of the
Domtaw
was still sinking in, and he was having a hard time with it. I realized with a pang of guilt that I hadn’t thought to ask him if he’d lost anyone very close on the ship.

“Lieutenant—Gerazan,” I said, “would you take a little walk with me?”

He nodded automatically and followed me off the bridge. We walked down the corridor to the galley, footsteps ringing hollowly on the metal decking.

“I know this has been a terrible shock for you,” I said gently.

He straightened his shoulders, and nodded. “It’s a blow to the Protectorate,” he said. “I’m not looking forward to filing this report.”

I glanced at him. He stared straight down the corridor, but his eyes were unfocused. I led him into the galley when we got there and motioned him to a chair at the table. “What can I get you to drink?”

He sat, but said, “I don’t need anything, Captain, thank you.”

I sighed and pulled off a double caff for myself, steaming and creamy, and went to sit across the table from him. I closed my eyes and took a sip before I said anything else, allowing myself a few seconds to savour the smooth, rich bite of the drink on my tongue.

When I opened my eyes, his were downcast, studying the unremarkable surface of the table. I cleared my throat. “Gerazan, you lost people—friends, colleagues, maybe even family, for all I know—on the
Domtaw.
Do you need to talk about it?”

He didn’t raise his head right away, but I noticed his hands, clasped before him on the tabletop, clench tighter. Finally he met my eyes. “I wasn’t part of the regular crew, Captain. I’d only come aboard for this mission.”