Farlost: Arrival Read online

  "An alien civilization, obviously." Beacham said, sounding mildly annoyed.

  That wasn't a small bite. Lou didn't know how to respond.

  "Navigation computers logged three planet, eight moons so far," Beacham muttered, then raised his voice over his shoulder. "Stan, start poking your screen, this is the chance of a lifetime! And close your mouth, you're drawing flies!"

  Lou heard Stan mutter something unintelligible. His fingers began padding his screens.

  Lou opened a common channel. "C&C to Villanueva and Taggart." No response. This wasn't the first time they'd lost contact. The two men had traveled through whole tanks without radio communication up and running. They'd be back soon.

  Still, no second opinions for her.

  Time to roll up your sleeves, Commander Montagne!

  She laughed at her brain for pulling out another Ed Dwyer 'ism'.

  Okay. What was likely to kill them first? "We're in a gravity well, with forward momentum up and out," she began, summing up. She stared at the spikes of the planetoid. "Will our momentum pull us clear of whatever 'that' is?"

  Beacham snorted. "Got no idea."

  Lou looked over to Okoro, who was staring at Lou's selected feed of the ships below them in the gravity well, her face a blank. The Nav Officer needed time, it seemed, just like Lou did.

  Beacham started cackling again. "Okay, other than getting pulled down, and that's a pretty big question mark for me, I'm pretty sure nothing else out there is going to kill us. No rads, minimal floating masses..." his voice died away.

  Lou waited, seeing him working on something. She was impressed, and grateful, he'd been able to absorb their present reality so quickly.

  "Huh." He stared at scrolling fields of numbers. "Soup."

  "Come again, Doctor?" Lou asked.

  Beacham waved her off. "Tell you when I know."

  "Computer's got a match!" Stan called out. Lou saw a red rectangle appear on her screen, offered from Renic's terminal. She pulled it open and stared at a registry for a long decommissioned vessel. She pulled up another window, showing the ship off HHL-6's bow, the one endangered by all the flying debris of the nearby hulk.

  Lou's eyes flicked between the two. The Registry was for a corporately held ship: 'The Betty McKenna'.

  The two ships had a similar profile, Lou caught it right away, even with the ship half turned away, despite extensive modifications. She could see the same underlying superstructure, the same two long bays along the bottom, used by mining crews to haul large equipment and ore in and out on a regular rotation.

  She'd been a mining ship, alright.

  It was an ungodly old ship, though. It looked like something from the first wave of asteroid mining. What she could recognize of it. Parts of the hull were now metallic purple and green...and what was covering the bottom of the ship? Something red and black. Many small somethings that looked almost organic.

  Her hindbrain wanted to say...scales?

  "The Betty McKenna," Rose called out, back in the game. "Owned and operated by Corona Mining Corporation. An asteroid mining craft, rated for two year flights, carrying a crew of thirty souls. Reported lost-" Rose gasped.

  Lou looked over, prompting her with her eyes to continue.

  Rose swallowed hard and met her Commander's gaze. "The Betty McKenna was reported lost more than a hundred years ago."

  "I remember that!" Stan shouted. "The Betty McKenna was due to be decommissioned, and Corona Corp used her for experiments with travelling--"

  Lou finished Stan's sentence for him, at the same time as Beacham did. "travelling Faster Than Light."

  THE AFTERMATH

  25

  Captain Sam Travis half ran, half staggered away from the bridge down the narrow corridor that ran along the top of his ship. There were so many alarms he couldn't make out any of them--and besides, the groans The Betty was making scared him even more.

  He told himself these were not The Betty's death throes. He wouldn't let her die. She had a job to do, a crew to protect. She couldn't lay down and die while Doug, Newark, Posk and Salix were still out there, waiting for her to save them!

  Sam replayed the last few minutes. Had it only been minutes? He nodded to himself as he careened down the hall, almost smashing himself in the face as he pulled his helmet into place.

  No more than a dozen minutes had past since the Arrival.

  He was past the awe of it, and mired in the 'oh shit!' of it.

  "I've got telemetry Cap," Whish called out over the bridge circuit Daisy kept fed to his ship's suit. "The tram's still airtight!" His voice was helium-fart high with stress.

  Great, Sam thought to himself. The tram containing Newark, Posk, Salix and Doug was still intact. No one was dead.

  Yet.

  He was grateful for the moment of silence sealing his helmet bought him. The air hadn't been sucked out by the twisted metal and shrapnel dust stabbing the ship, but it could go any time. Not buttoning himself in was even more suicidal than, say, dedicating his life to feeding a small cargo and salvage crew on the scraps the Guard let them get away with.

  It had just been another boring day aboard the Betty, sneaking into a Thorn graveyard to crack the bones of long dead ships, hoping and praying for enough marrow to keep his crew going.

  Another boring day of grappling a ship floating on the edge of the shatterzone, atop a Thorn's gravity well.

  Another stupidly common day of harpooning said wreck and sending most of his crew over on the cargo tram to find something they could barter or sell for fuel or food.

  And all the while the Betty chewed into her precious reserves to keep the wreck from falling back to the depths where the Betty could not follow.

  Yup. Just another day. Just another job.

  Until they hit the one in a million, chance of a lifetime ringside seats to an Arrival!

  Of a big black egg.

  A big black egg triggering a shockwave, which broke off some of The Betty's carrion meal and stabbed pieces of the hulk through their ship at high velocity.

  The shockwave also severed the guide wire from the Betty to the hulk that his crew had ridden over to on, bringing the heavy old tram to search in vain for rare composites and alloys.

  Luckily the tram caught the brunt of the wave, while the wreck itself afforded the Betty some protection from it.

  The tram, still in one piece sure, had been thrown over a hundred klicks away and counting. Taking most of his crew with it.

  The walls around him shook, the ground shook. Even the air shook as the Betty was hurled through space, stabbed every few seconds by another piece of dead-ship shrapnel.

  His moment alone with his labored breathing and the creaks in his joints was over. "The shockwave has past, Captain, but emergency measures remain in place. Engines remain offline, as are our generators."

  Sam hated Daisy a little for always having that calm voice. "How bad is it?" He fought to keep moving fast and not fall on his ass with every step.

  "There has been damage to The Betty's neural nodes. I'm working to patch around it but can't yet tally the damage. No crew have been badly injured, although at their current rate of acceleration the tram will carry them beyond the range of the comm systems withing thirty-one minutes.

  Sam ran faster.

  A section of ceiling panel tore loose right above him, raining sparks and wires and metal down. Sam got his hands up in time, but he went down hard. He shook it off and got to his knees, grunting with the effort of folding the long metal panel over on itself. Once he had his knees braced he could let loose with his cybernetic hand without ripping it from his less strong, flesh and bone shoulder.

  He roared. The metal crumpled satisfyingly beneath his hands.

  Then he was on his feet, running again. He was halfway to the back of the ship, to engineering and Ben, whom Daisy hadn't been able to raise on comms since the arrival.

  Thankfully the gravity held.

  The shockwave that followed the blac
k egg's appearance would have pulped the Betty and everything aboard if the gravity hadn't kept the effects outside her hull.

  But as long as the Betty was in one piece, and Ben Gruber was awake and surly, his crew had a chance.

  "Ben!" He panted as he leaped over an open airlock frame. "Get off your ass and come back!"

  There was no answer.

  He could see the corridor halfway point just a few meters ahead now. He'd already made it through the operations sections, crew quarters and up ahead, lay the power center of the ship. Beyond that was the last section: engineering, Ben's domain.

  Ben would have a trick up his sleeve, Sam told himself. The old man always, but always, had a trick up his sleeve.

  His lungs burned, but he didn't dare slow down. Every second counted when a crewman was down. Let alone most of the ship's complement!

  He reached the airlock separating crew quarters and living space from power gen and reactors, and punched the release. The airlocks between every section of the ship were supposed to be closed against batshit insanity exactly like what The Betty was going through now and-surprisingly, this one was.

  The door opened in the middle, receding into the walls on either side. A banshee wail reached Sam's ears even through his helmet.

  A life in space saved him again. By reflex he'd held on tight to the railing between the door controls and the airlock proper. He tightened the grip with his powerful prosthetic right hand as vacuum sucked at him.

  He grit his teeth and screamed, struggling to clamp his left hand on the rail on the inside of the airlock. His feet pulled him forward, and debris came barreling down the corridor toward him.

  All the little things that were supposed to be secured on a ship in flight slammed into him as they were sucked out of the room along with every trace of atmosphere--and soon enough with Sam, if he didn't hold on tight enough.

  A screw pinged off his faceplate. His scream was choked off, and he squeezed his fingers around the rail for all he was worth. A teacup, a baseball cap, rivulets of something wet all hit him as they raced out into the vacuum of space, courtesy of some hole the Betty's and Daisy's extra efforts hadn't yet been able to patch.

  Then it was the ceiling panel's turn.

  The long metal panel was moving fast when it reached him. A jagged corner slammed into the airlock... right where his right hand was clamped. He knew that metal was being pulled out with more than enough force to sever his artificial right hand clean off.

  Luckily it hit the airlock control panel instead.

  Seconds later Sam was screaming again as his right hand came free-still wrapped around the airlock railing, now ripped free by the ceiling panel. The force of the escaping atmosphere was beginning to lessen, but it still spun him around and slammed him into the wall on the far side of the airlock.

  Air and sense was knocked out of him. His head spun again, and he focused his will not to let go with his left hand.

  He shook his head to clear it and looked down the long hall towards engineering.

  Or at least, he looked where the hall used to be. Now it was only the blackness of space.

  Betty's insides. Opened to space.

  He looked down. Not just the corridor was missing. Entire floors were missing. Far below, sparks lit up the blackness where The Betty's reactors used to be.

  Stars spun crazily through the missing walls of this part of the betty.

  "Jesus!" he whispered. Surprised, and annoyed, and scared, was always was when the carpenter came out of his mouth.

  The pull of wind against him was soon gone, along with every loose thing and molecule of atmosphere inside that section of the Betty.

  He found another handhold for his right, and gathered his feet on the frame of the airlock.

  Sam was having trouble planting his feet. It took him longer than it should to realize that, in this open-air part of the ship, gravity wasn't being imitated anymore.

  "Captain," Whish squealed in his ear. "Watch out when you get to the bulkhead to Power-Gen! There's vacuum on the other side of the lock!"

  Sam laughed. It took the edge off his terror. "I figured that out already, Whish. Listen, keep talking to the crew, get as much data as you can. And track them with redundant sensors, if we lose visual, we can't trust Daisy's systems to find them again in time."

  Whish gasped and popped in the affirmative and the line clicked dead again.

  The quiet was fine with Sam.

  He took stock of what lay ahead. To his right, the exterior skin of his ship was still in piece. To the left, above and below was just gone, as if some giant-sized can opener had come along and hacked the side of The Betty off.

  Peering far ahead, he could see the blue and white lights around the bulkhead airlock into The Betty's last section.

  It was intact. He could work with this.

  "Daisy, the bulkheads did their job. We lost just about the whole damn power section -and now we've lost atmo from the corridor up top of the crew section too- but engineering still looks like it's in one piece. Comms aren't working in that section so..."

  Sam did the calculations for how long it would take to search the six rooms and two levels of engineering.

  "If I'm not back in contact in twenty minutes," he took a deep breath. "Send a mayday. The Guard'll be coming after that egg thing. We might have collected enough information to warrant their saving the crew."

  "I am not pleased at the prospect, Captain, but will comply."

  Sam grinned. "There's not much pleasing me right now either. Don't get your leaves in a bunch, Daisy, I'll be back!"

  Sam released his grip and kicked off.

  It was just over sixty meters. He'd walked and counted it off before, to ignore Ben's rants or whatever bill he didn't know how to pay next.

  It felt a damn sight farther as he flew, untethered, through the massive breach in his ship's hull.

  26

  Newark couldn't stop chittering until Doug frosted the windows, using a little of the tram's precious remaining energy to light the crew cabin at the same time as he blocked out the ship's sickening hurtle.

  He walked a few paces, now only slightly seasick from the rolling the artificial gravity didn't overcome, instead of overwhelmed with nausea as he had been looking out the window.

  He looked over to where the two Tumblers were locked down. Posk had woven most of his tentacles through Newark's exoskeleton and sunk them inside the gray ball of string shivering at his center.

  Only the tip of Newark's beak stuck out through the spider-like silk that hid the majority of the Tumbler's body, as deep inside the exoskeleton as he could withdraw to.

  As Posk wrapped tentacles more tightly around his friend, Newark finally stopped the chittering that was his species' equivalent of screaming in terror.

  "Finally, he shuts up," Whish's voice squeaked out of the hear-piece adhering to Doug's head near his right ear-hole. Doug rubbed his mandibles in anger at Whish's lack of sympathy but kept silent about it.

  Whish was scared too.

  They all were.

  Daisy's voice came over the comm link, with a touch more static than before.

  "Salix?"

  The Tree clacked his elbows together, making a loud crack, like tree branches smashing together.

  "As you can hear, he's fine," Doug said, the only member of the crew moving about the cabin. "We're looking for his voicebox. It came loose when the shockwave hit."

  Doug thanked the briny Skanen seas that the Betty had warned them about the shockwave. In those precious seconds the Captain's shouts had spurred everyone to fast action, dropping whatever salvage they had been collecting from the old hulk and hauling ass back inside the tram's crew cabin. Daisy's override of the tram's systems to reinforce the paltry gravity in the old tram had been enough to save the ship from tearing apart in the massive shock wave, Doug was sure.

  Not to mention preventing the living occupants from being turned into stains on the walls.

  F
irst officer's duty -and his harder Skanen exoskeleton and pincer grips- made Doug the one to haul Salix, and then both the Tumblers to their seats, when no one else had the presence of mind or biological wherewithal to do it.

  Doug skittered in a circle, pushing his eyestalks fully out of his skull plating and staring in different directions, until he found the small, square black box wedged into the tracks at the bottom of the airlock.

  He carefully plucked the box free by one of the two short rubberized lengths on either side, and tossed it over to the tree.

  Salix deftly caught and sketched a quick 'thank you' sign to Doug before strapping the box into position around the thicket of branches that would be a neck on a human shape.

  The tree used fine finger-like vines, on the end of what approximated human hands, to power up the device.

  "I'm fine, Daisy," the synthesized human voice Salix chose to represent itself emanated from the box. "For the time being." With that typical understatement, the scarecrow leaned back against his acceleration couch, unflappable as ever.

  For a being hurtling away from the safety, heat and shelter of its ship, and toward a cold, airless death in space, Doug finished silently, sure, he was as good as could be.

  "We are glad," Daisy said, then inquired about Doug and the Tumblers.

  After quick status updates on the crew of the tram, Doug turned the conversation around.

  "How's the ship, Daisy? The Captain? Gruber?"

  "Betty has sustained critical damage and lost power. Many of my neural nodes and relays have been degraded and a full status report is not possible at this time."

  "The shockwave," Salix's machine voice asked. "Will it blow us clear?"

  Pops and whistles on the line betrayed Whish's fear. "You will," the Manta said. "The debris field's banging us around and killing our momentum. You're moving out faster. The Arrival object saved the tram and the ship from the worst of the debris, but now our extra mass is slowing us faster, above and beyond more things hitting us."

  "Captain Sam! Captain Sam!" Newark wailed. Posk nuzzled even tighter and quieted him.