Escape (65 page)

Jilly guiltily retreated from reading his mind and devoted her attention to the task at hand. They crossed the threshold to the command level of the bridge and spent a moment scanning the unoccupied control stations on the crew deck, trying to guess which might govern ship security.

They spent a moment scanning the available stations from left to right and back again. No visible differences gave away the purpose of the individual stations. They were going to have to check them out one by one.

Jilly shrugged and turned to Kieran, about to tell him as much, when she noticed that his attention was no longer on the control stations. He was staring fixedly out the viewports.

She couldn't see what he was looking at.
What is it?

He shook his head slowly.
Nothing.

Jilly almost sighed.
It's not nothing
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
you're looking at something, Kieran.

No, that's not what I meant. I mean there's
nothing
out there. Look. They not only gave up trying to get in. They left.

Jilly's brow furrowed.
Wasn't that the point of turning on the shields?

Kieran shrugged.
Well. Yes, but
 
.
 
.
 
.

You didn't expect them to give up so soon.

Right.

Maybe they're more rational than we thought.

Maybe.

Well, let's do what we came here to do so we can go back to bed, okay?

Kieran nodded, his gaze still far away, locked on the empty rooftop. He stood their for a long moment, unmoving.

Kieran?

At length, he looked away and flashed her a quick smile that was anything but reassuring.
Yeah. Let's see if we can dredge up those logs.

The third control station they checked turned out to be the one that governed ship security, along with a host of other ship systems. Kieran checked his watch again, found the ship's time to be 24:54, a full six hours ahead of his watch. He did the mental math and quickly brought up the logs for the appropriate time frame. Five minutes later, he found the logs for the appropriate corridor. Then they stood there watching a holo of an empty corridor, seeing nothing for minutes on end. Kieran was about to chalk up the noises to Jilly's overactive imagination when there came a muted
swish
, and they saw Ferrel step out into the corridor. He was fully clothed, but not armed or armored. They watched Ferrel turn and walk down the right side of the corridor, toward the camera. They heard another
swish
as the door to Ferrel's room automatically closed. Kieran nodded smilingly as Ferrel walked past the camera.

He turned to Jilly, eyebrows patiently raised.
See? Just Ferrel.

Yeah. Well, what was he doing up?

Kieran shrugged.
You were up, too. Maybe he just got tired of trying to sleep.

So he decided to wander the halls by himself?

Look, I don't know, okay Jilly? Why don't we ask him in the morning where he went, and what he did, and why he did it? Like I suggested earlier, he was probably just hungry.

Or
 
.
 
.
 
.
Jilly left that thought unfinished, but Kieran could read the rest of it.

Stop jumping at shadows, okay? If Ferrel had wanted to betray us in any way, he could have done it long before now.

But what did he have to gain by betraying us before? Now he has a whole cruiser to gain. He could have it all to himself. Do you really trust him? Do you have good reason to?

Kieran felt a tide of anger swelling in his chest.
He's stuck with me through everything so far. Helped me more often than I can count. And as to your theory
—
how does stealing the ship for himself help him? Who's going to fly it? Him? He's a technophile, not a pilot.

A ship like this will come with a good autopilot.

Sure. Fine. So he gets a ship, and manages to get limited use out of it by himself. What's he gain by having it to himself? This isn't like Brathus trying to steal a ship from us because he could sell it for more by himself. There won't be anyone to sell this cruiser to, and if there is, the tokens he gets for it will be worthless. Ferrel knows that as well as any of us.

Jilly sighed reached up to rub her tired eyes.
Okay. Okay. You're right. I'm sorry. We should just
 
.
 
.
 
.
Jilly looked up at him with a wan smile.
I'll ask him in the morning. Let's go back to bed.

Yeah.
Kieran turned and started walking down the crew deck. Jilly followed at a discreet distance, giving him the distance he needed to cool his temper.

They reached the shield control station, and Jilly turned to study the small, shaded holo of the cruiser floating above the console as they walked past. It glimmered in translucent green, yellow, and black.
Black?

Jilly stopped beside the console and frowned down at the holo display. “Kieran
 
.
 
.
 
.
” She didn't bother to keep quiet, now that they'd discovered the source of the sounds she'd heard.

“What now, Jilly?”

“What does the black signify on the shield display?”

“Black? There shouldn't be any black
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
” She heard his footsteps approaching, then saw him stop beside her.

“There,” she pointed to the aft of the ship. A large section of the ship's blocky hindquarters was shaded in deep obsidian as opposed to the brilliant green and ocassional spot of yellow for the rest of the ship.

“That's strange. I don't recall seeing that when I turned the shields on
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Jilly looked up from the display, worried by Kieran's tone. “What does it mean?”

“It means that part of the ship's shield system isn't working.”

“At all?”

“At all. It must have been damaged somehow.”

“So something could have
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly tried to work some moisture into her suddenly dry mouth. “Something could have gotten in?”

Kieran ran his hand along his stubbled jaw. “Only if it broke in. We would have heard that, considering how noisy they were the last time. No, it's just curious, that's all. We should probably check it out before we go to bed, see if we can repair the damage.”

Jilly felt her heart rate accelerate again. Her eyes grew wide and unfocused as she studied the glowing holo display. “What's back there?”

“Engines. The cargo bay. I think that's it.”

Jilly turned to him with a look of sudden concern. “The cargo bay has an airlock, right? So
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Kieran shook his head. “The airlocks aren't any weaker than the rest of the hull. The only way something could get in there is, like Ferrel said, if we let it in ourselves.”

“Well, I'll still feel better once we've checked it out.”

Kieran nodded. “Me, too.”

Chapter 44

T
hey passed the mess hall on their way to the aft section of the ship, and Jilly couldn't resist the temptation to look in and see if Ferrel was there. The lights were off, but when she ducked her head in, they came on automatically, revealing that the entire mess hall was empty, and the tables were clear. Jilly frowned and pointed that out to Kieran. As usual he was unconcerned.

He probably went back to bed already.

Maybe.

They continued on their way, and the corridor quickly branched to the left and right. A sign indicated that the engine rooms lay down those branches, while the cargo bay was dead ahead. They decided to check out the cargo bay first. They could already see the extra-wide cargo bay doors up ahead, but Kieran stopped long before reaching them. Several wall panels had been removed and set to one side of the corridor. Bare conduits and multicolored wires lay exposed and hanging out of the wall. Kieran frowned at the mess and went down on his haunches to examine it more closely.

Jilly kept her aim and half an eye on the cargo bay doors, half expecting something to come tearing through them as soon as she turned her back. She saw Kieran shaking his head in her peripheral vision, and asked,
What?

I know why the shields in this area aren't working.
He held up two ragged ends of a superconducting power conduit.
It looks like someone cut the power.

What?!

It won't be hard to fix.

Kieran! You mean sabotage?

Not necessarily. It could have been cut before we ever came aboard.

Or it could have been cut after. The point is we don't know. And you said yourself you didn't recall seeing the shields in this area being disabled when you activated them.

So what are you suggesting? That one of those creatures somehow snuck aboard and instead of killing us in our sleep, it decided to disable the aft shields as priority one? The very same shields, by the way, which it would have had to overloa in order to get aboard in the first place?

Jilly frowned.
No. I'm not suggesting that.

Then what?
Kieran tried to read her mind, but her reasoning wasn't there to be read.

We know it wasn't us, and we saw that Gallian is still dead where we left him. So that leaves only one possibility.

You're suggesting Ferrel did this?
Kieran shook his head incredulously.
Why? What possible reason could he have for disabling the aft shields?

Do you have a better explanation?

Yeah. I think this ship was undergoing repairs, and this is one example of repairs which hadn't been completed before the virus hit. It was like this when we came aboard.

Maybe. I say we ask Ferrel.

Fine, you do that; meanwhile I'm going to repair the shields.

Jilly pursed her lips and sent a nervous glance over her shoulder. She wasn't going to confront Ferrel by herself. She didn't even know where he was, if not in the mess hall. Turning back to Kieran, she thought,
I'll wait.

Good.
Kieran stood up and started toward the cargo bay doors.
We should find the tools and parts I'll need in the cargo bay.

Parts?
Jilly echoed, starting after him.

Yeah. The conduit wasn't just cut. There's a missing length from it
—
about half a micró-astrom. Should be some spare conduits lying around somewhere
 
.
 
.
 
.
Kieran mused as he passed his hand in front of the cargo bay door scanner. The double doors issued a low groan, then started grinding open. They finished sliding into the walls with a solid
thunk
, and Kieran made a quick examination of the cavernous space beyond before stepping through.

Jilly stopped beside him and began her own visual inspection of the cargo bay. To her relief, she saw that the cargo bay airlock was sealed tight at the far end. The area was much like any other cargo bay, with high ceilings, recessed storage areas, greasy, well-stained floor panels. It was a little emptier than it probably should have been, but there were still dozens of chest and shoulder-height crates, barrels, and blocky containers stacked against the walls, held in place by chains and crash webbing. A few load lifters stood on the empty floor, and some unsecured crates were stacked in a pyramid in the center of the room. When she looked up to the ceiling, Jilly saw a thick cloud of dust drifting down through the beams of yellow light.

Kieran turned to her and shrugged. “Everything seems normal. I'm going to check the crates for spare parts. Why don't you see if you can find me a laser torch and some safety goggles?”

Jilly nodded. “Okay.”

Half an hour later they'd found the tools and parts they needed. Five minutes after that, Kieran raised the tinted blast shield of the helmet she'd found for him and turned off the laser torch.

Jilly raised her eyebrows at him. “That was fast.”

“Well, there wasn't a lot of damage. If this was sabotage, it was a maledicted awful job of it. The missing piece of conduit was removed very carefully, and no other damage appears to have been done.”