Farlost: Arrival Read online

  "Shit, if that's your idea of 'good' news," Beacham choked out, his voice shrill.

  Lou nodded her chin at the nav officer to continue.

  With a swallow, Rose did. “I've tricked the airlocks on each level to ping back and confirm life support is functioning, amazingly. Emergency foam and inflation systems repressurized routes to all sections, but...” A shadow passed over her face. "The storm cellars are running their own electrical. I--I can't tell if they're still..."

  Burkov panted woozily from the door to the duty cabin. "First things first, sweetheart, send the SOS! Let them know I'm still alive!"

  "Take a seat, Mr.Vice President," Villanueva growled. "For your own safety."

  Burkov looked at him funny, with a flash of anger Lou suspected came from Arnel's tone-more suited to a civilian or underling than a company Veep- but he shakily coasted to the closest empty chair and strapped himself in.

  Arnel was looking over at Taggart again. The big man's head was cocked, as if straining to hear something. "Taggart, what is it?" He asked.

  Taggart flinched, then looked back. "Nothing sir." he hesitated, then barked a laugh. "Well, I had a dream. Something about keeping the lights on. It seemed important." His back straightened, and his eyes grew serious. "Life and death important," he finished.

  Lou had just reached the workstation where Beacham's assistant floated, still unconscious, when she heard Taggart's words and almost fumbled her grab for the kid's chair.

  "I dreamed it too!" Rose blurted. "That we need to keep Beacham's force field working!"

  Lou pressed two fingers to the inside of Stan's wrist. Steady pulse. The kid was okay, just a heavy sleeper, she decided.

  "Keeping anything up on this limp dick ship will be a trick," Beacham called out as he tapped on his screens, staring down through exhausted eyes. "We've almost burned through the charges I loaded on the pods."

  "I can task life support to share the load on his shields," Arnel called out.

  Beacham gazed at Lou, then Arnel. "You will?" Then he looked back at Lou. "Wait, what?"

  Lou also gazed at her very by-the-book first officer. Her face must have shown her surprise.

  His knuckles whitened as they squeezed the top corners of the monitor in front of him. "Same dream. Something in the oh-two maybe?" he joked, but his face was drawn.

  Lou's mind buzzed as it tried to stack all her memories back into order. She shook her hands, still feeling the strangest tingling sensation in her extremities.

  Her mouth, however was on automatic. "Beacham," she called out, impressed that her voice hadn't shaken once. "Babysit your force field. Shout out when it's down to thirty minutes of operation."

  "Commander," Rose reported. Lou waved her on. "The few exterior sensors still working report zero kinetic energy transfer...we're not being hit by anything."

  Beacham giggled. "You're kidding right? External sensors aren't external anymore, remember? My force field is blocking anything that's still out there."

  FLoating back to her command station, Lou resisted the urge to bite her lip. She hated when she did that. She pressed them tight instead, thinking fast.

  No reactor power. Emergency reserves dropping like a stone. No word from the crew in their survival cellars, worst of all!

  Her eye caught on a window across the CnC. It was black. She grasped the corner of her display and tapped open an external camera feed. That was black, too. "Beacham, can you answer why the system's not feeling anything, and I'm not seeing anything?"

  "Think I was gonna risk my ass going FTL without every kind of padding I could get?" Beacham snapped. He tapped the screen again. "I'm blocking absolutely everything from getting through that field, including visible light."

  He ran a finger down his large, angular nose as his eyes tracked columns of data on his monitors. "Hm. Drain is awful low, considering, but something's rubbing up against it. Something out there is tickling the field. Could be friction from regular levels of space debris, or background radiation, maybe. Or a dozen other maybes, but it dosn't look like enough to hurt us."

  "Keep the lights on!" Taggart said. "Chief--uh, Commander--give him what he needs to power his shield. We have to."

  Lou raised her eyebrows, surprised by the security officer's words.

  "Commander," Rose called. Lou waved her on. "At the rate his pods are consuming energy, taking from life support battery reserves probably won't even buy us an hour before they're drained, too."

  “What?" VP Burkov asked, incredulous. "Six is rated for weeks of emergency power! We don’t know if we can even get the reactors back and you want to throw it all into his energy shield?” Burkov shook his head. "Just because a couple of you are spooked? By a dream? Screw that, I like breathing! Beacham, I'm ordering you to shut light show down!"

  "No!" cried several voices. Lou realized one of the voices had been her own.

  Beacham looked up, surprised and wary. "Okay, I took a little nap back there. Want to tell me what I missed?"

  "Don't let the lights go out," Arnel said softly. Lou looked over. His face was haunted. "If this isn't all just me in a coma somewhere, and we're all dreaming the same thing, maybe we ought to pay attention."

  “I'm not sure the coma wouldn't be the safer bet," Lou said, her lips raised up in a weak smile. "Rose, help Beacham reroute the power from life support."

  "I know I'm the only genius around here," Beacham said, "but you know, Burkov's right. Right? Oxygen's not optional."

  Lou smiled acidly at the scientist. "Thanks for reminding us, Mister Beacham, but first things first." He wasn't wrong, but there was something just as important on her mind. "Right now, we need to-"

  She heard Villanueva's restraints click as he released them and tugged himself out of his chair. "-get Dina's crew outside to get the power back on, after we get to our people in the cellars. I'm on it, Commander. Taggart, you and I will--what?"

  Lou heard the surprise in Villanueva's voice and looked up from her monitor to see Taggart already at the airlock door. Already tugging free the First Officer's space suit.

  "Get to the cellars and get our people?" Taggart’s eyes were still bugging out of his head and beads of sweat covered his shaven black scalp. "Yes sir," he called. His voice wavered, but he kept it in check.

  Lou wondered just how thin the ice Taggart was skating on had gotten. Then she let it go. She couldn't waste her time and energy babysitting her crew. Taggart still passed her gut check, and if her officers couldn't do their jobs, well... everyone aboard was dead already.

  21

  "Rodriguez! Barrowman! Patel!"

  It took a few minutes for Dina, Murray and Raj to push through the screaming, panicked crowd. A fierce looking man in a security uniform and the duty Officer from the storm cellar airlock barked commands until the terrified masses finally fell back.

  The First Officer stepped through the airlock while the security officer -Taggart, she heard the First say- racked a crate of emergency pressure suits at the door and pulled the duty Officer back to organize their release.

  Dina saw the same something strange in Taggart's eyes that the rest of the crowd did. Everyone was torn between terror and hope when the doors open, but Taggart just stood there, quiet and still, watching the crowd. As if suddenly fn rozen, the crowd watched him back, stayed quiet and waited.

  Murray and Raj appeared silently behind her. That was unnerving, hearing the two of them -or not hearing- their routine bickering. It drove home just how serious things were.

  Dina was sure she'd held her breath from the moment Villanueva and Taggart had first tapped a wrench against the outside of the storm cellar, to the time they plugged in the hard data line they'd brought with them and Nav Officer Okoro began calmly relating what had transpired since the cellar doors had shut.

  Solar storm, rock storm, force field, faster than light travel. The pressure at the door relaxed as some of the more inquisitive of the crew gathered around workstations to chew through information
. Others kept their place, waiting for someone in authority to tell them what they weren't ready to read for themselves.

  Dina snorted. Okay, I can handle this. After the terror of thinking there was nobody left outside their shelter, and believing they were all one rock away from a grisly death, the whole FTL thing didn't scare her too bad. Now people were here, so there was still a chance everyone could make it out of this.

  She heard the Doctor murmur behind her, talking a patient through something painful. Her mind escaped for a moment, thinking about getting Forrest into bahama shorts on their next rotation down to Earth. That put a smile on her face, for just a second. Then she squared her shoulders and waited for orders.

  They'd asked for her, front and center. At least for her, there was work to do. That would put the rest of her terrors on hold, for now.

  She looked over her shoulder for Forrest, but Doctor Sanders was gone again, busy doctoring some other unlucky shipmate who had smashed or cut or choked themselves when everybody had suddenly blacked out, not even an hour ago.

  That was another weird thing, that everybody, all at once, went out like a light.

  She decided that it beat exploding, like everyone else who'd ever tried to go FTL had.

  "Cellar One!" With a squelch, the new Commander came on the horn, all at once sounding strong and calm and ready to slay monsters. "We've got work to do, and not much time to do it."

  Dina heard gasps escaping from the crowd around the closest monitor. She shivered, catching a glimpse from a camera feed showing an external airlock, glinting in the light of HHL-6's own floods: there was nothing but empty black beyond.

  Where were the stars?

  Commander Montagne told her.

  "External cameras are displaying zero input at present due to the force field Dr. Beacham successfully used to protect Six during FTL. Seems his 'light show' is also blocking all light. Don't panic, we are perfectly safe for the time being. Please assist your crewmates into the emergency pressure suits provided. If you are assigned to a repair detail, pitch in as much as you can. If you have not been assigned a task please stay right where you are until this emergency has passed. I know each of you will help as needed. CnC out."

  "How long to ready the Toad for vacuum?" Dina stopped staring at the speaker grill above her head and blinked into the assessing eyes of the First Officer. Villanueva looked alert, controlled. Ready. Nothing like the corporate stooge that usually wore his work suit.

  "She was prepped for launch before we evac'd to the cellar, sir," she answered.

  "Good," he murmured, and stepped in close. Dina felt Murray and Raj push in behind her, listening. "Your team are going outside. Power lines to the reactor are shattered, and Beacham's field is sucking life support dry as we speak. You've got forty minutes to lay new lines." The First turned to leave.

  Dina grabbed his bicep at the same moment Raj leaned in, the air from his whisper at the back of her neck. "What happens in forty?"

  Arnel's eyes winced involuntarily, and Dina felt her stomach drop. "Do your job, and we won't have to find out."

  22

  "Cellar One's got a head count," Rose Okoro called out, her voice tense. "Oh! 'Mauya!' Three critical injuries, no deaths!"

  Lou sagged against the command chair's straps, momentarily weak with relief. Over fifty lives confirmed safe. It was more than she'd hoped.

  "Yes! That's amazing!" Lou looked over at Stan Renic, Beacham's kid assistant. His face shone, and she saw genuine relief on his face. Since he'd come out of his heavy slumber, he'd been rushing around the Command and Control module, offering to help however he can.

  Yeah, she thought, watching the kid jump back to Beacham's station with energy and spirit. A good heart.

  Beacham began to yell, and Lou watched the kid. Stan's face didn't fall, he kept on beaming as he coasted closer to his boss.

  He spoke quiet words, asking questions that guided Beacham to refocus his anger and attention back into whatever data on the screen caused the outburst in the first place.

  A good heart, and he knows how to keep their resident genius and asshat on the rails?

  Worth his weight in gold, Lou thought with a smirk, before turning her focus back to her own screens.

  She watched blue dots float through a wire frame version of HHL-6. Dina Rodriguez's team were already through the final airlock back to the maintenance craft hanger. Her chin raised and fell once, a curt nod of appreciation that the pilot was moving fast.

  Both Taggart and Lou's first officer were convinced Beacham's light show had to keep running. So was she, she admitted to herself, but she was glad to have external verification.

  Something bad was still out there. She believed it enough not to lose her nerve when she eyeballed the timer counting down the remaining energy in the emergency life support fuel cells: twenty-seven minutes.

  Twenty-seven minutes before the nearly silent sigh of the scrubber motors disappeared, and the ventilation fans wound down. Twenty-seven minutes until the air stopped circulating.

  Twenty-eight minutes until every breath the crew took sent toxins into the air, and formed pockets of CO2 in every room on Six,

  She called up an external monitor, saw the blackness that was the inside of the force field Beacham had formed around HHL-6, and wondered again what lay beyond it.

  "Commander. Cellar one amends report: three crewmembers unaccounted for."

  Lou closed her eyes. "Acknowledged."

  What did you think, Lulu, she berated herself. Nobody could go through all this and lose no one.

  It still hurt. It still burned. She was operating blind to the world around her, running on fumes…and terrified she would miss something, and that number would climb.

  What was it Dwyer used to say? It was supposed to hurt.

  She remembered his kind, sad smile. Remembered that he’d lost people, too.

  She was all HHL-6 had. She would have to enough.

  She hit the monitor far harder than necessary to activate a channel to her first officer and Taggart, en route to cellar two. The wire frame had them halfway down the spine of the ship. "How goes it, First?"

  His voice reuturned thin, amidst a cavernous echo. His helmet was off: a good sign. "Taking samples as we go. So far, automated systems hav e done a great job of sealing the tanks and corridors open to vacuum and they've repressurized at least one corridor and airlock assembly into every tank we've been through, but it wasn't exactly stingy with the foam. We'll have to cut our way through a buildup that's sealed the airlock here. How are Rodriguez and her crew making out?"

  Lou's eyes flitted to another cutout diagram showing the dots of color representing the three pilots. As she watched, one blipped out. Then another. She knew what the sensor cut-out meant.

  "They're boarding the EVA craft now." As she spoke, red highlighted text on her screen announced the vehicle bay doors opening.

  The pilot's voice floated from the ceiling on their shared emergency channel. "The Toad is hopping, Commander. We've got several hundred meters of coiled power cabling bolted to her side and have begun visual inspection of the damage. Shit, it's dark out here... Ma'am."

  Lou snorted. "I'm patching you through to the Nav Officer, Rodriguez, work fast and good luck." She slapped icons on the screen to transfer the Toad's signal to a private channel, then 'threw' the line to Rose Okoro's terminal.

  "Commander Montagne!" Vice President Burkov floated toward Lou's station, hands awkwardly splayed to grab hold of something. He got one hand around a handlebar mounted to the back of one of her monitors, and glared at her. "You've ignored my orders. You have no idea where we are. You insist on wasting our air to keep Beacham's machines working, based on what seems to be shared hysteria. You haven't even updated the automated SOS. I demand to know your plans, now, or I'll have you relieved!"

  Burkov's voice was loud. His face stern.

  It was all posturing.

  Lou resisted a laugh. She wasn't about to hand the ship ov
er to him, but assuming they survived whatever the universe had left to throw at them, she'd still like to have a job. Even if the prick had tried to electrocute her.

  "Sir, I understand this has all been overwhelming. What happened between us before, well, I'd like to forget about that. Right now, though, the ship is unable to send any signals until the light show is disabled-"

  "Then drop the goddamn light show!" Burkov roared.

  She saw through the cracking poker face to the terror in his eyes. She tried being calm and reasoned with him one more time.

  "Mister Vice President, my first priority is to find out if the reactors are still online-"

  "They are," Beacham snapped. "I said so didn't I?"

  Lou ignored the interruption. "And 'if' reactors are online, the EVA crew led by pilot Rodriguez will expedite repairs. Until then, we inspect the damage to the ship and, well sir, we wait."

  "Turn off his fucking machines and send the signal, you bitch!" Spittle landed on Lou's face.

  Everyone turned to watch.

  Lou watched him with a steely gaze until he looked away. Then she pulled up Six's access control list and removed every permission attached to Burkov's account, before looking up again.

  "Sir, your behaviour constitutes a clear and present danger to the safety of this vessel and her crew. Until this emergency has passed you may consider yourself a passenger or a prisoner. The choice is up to you."

  She waited a beat. He remained frozen, immobile. She sighed. She didn't have any more time to attend on him.

  "If you choose guest, Mr Vice President, take your seat. And stay in it." She waved a hand back toward the duty officer's cabin. "If you choose prisoner, you can get back in there."

  Burkov's face had gone volcano red." You stupid fuckin--"

  She leaned forward, pressing her face inches away from his. "You can fire me later, you piece of shit, but right now you're going to go take a seat... and if you waste one more second of my time, I'll throw you in there and weld the door shut myself!"