Waking up was like breaking the surface of a dark lake. Carriles gasped for air and blinked, trying to get his bearings. His brain was muddy, his head throbbed—a slow, dull ache. The last thing he remembered . . . what did he remember? A pinch on the side of his neck? Had Vicks dosed him with something?
Whatever it was, his brain still felt like a bowling ball, hard and heavy inside his skull. Whatever she had done had been fast and focused.
Vicks. He felt sheepish now, but he’d always admired the lieutenant commander. Hell, he’d even harbored some kind of crush on the distant, almost robotic senior officer. Part of him wanted to get through to her. To crack that veneer and make her laugh.
God, he was such a mess, he thought.
He blinked again and took stock of where he was: the brig. A small holding cell with a bunk and glass door. Across the way was another identical cell, holding Liu, who perked up when she realized he was awake.
“It was a fast-acting anesthetic,” Liu said, her voice muffled after traveling through two sets of glass. “She swiped it from the med bay. You should be fine in a few minutes. Just don’t stand up too quick.”
He tried to talk but found the words were thick and viscous in his mouth. “What . . . the hell . . .”
“At this point, your guess is as good as mine,” Liu said.
The lights were drilling into Carriles’s eyes, so he closed them and rubbed his palms against his face, trying to ground himself. After a moment he felt a little more clear and risked sitting up. A wave of nausea came on quickly, then passed.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” Carriles asked.
Liu shook her head. “You?”
Carriles stood, giving himself a moment to steady himself on his feet. “Still trying to figure that out. Vicks brought us here?”
“She did,” Liu said. “I didn’t see anyone else or hear anything helpful. It happened fast.”
“What about the landing team on Esparar?”
“No idea,” Liu said, motioning toward the glass.
Carriles paced the small room. The brig wasn’t meant for long-term incarceration. There was a small sink and toilet bolted into the wall, but as far as he knew neither of the rooms had been occupied during the course of the Mosaic’s journey. They were a just-in-case thing, like if someone got a little too rowdy, a glorified drunk tank or time-out. The crew had been vetted and was trusted enough that no one expected they would be necessary.
Vetted and trusted.
That’s what Carriles had thought, too.
He banged his fist on the glass and shouted, “Hey,” hoping someone would hear. Liu shook her head. “Tried that. You were really out before. Either they can’t hear us or they don’t want to hear us.”
“Great,” Carriles said, sitting heavily on the bed. “Guess we should just get comfortable.”
“I guess so,” Liu said.
They sat in silence for some time, Carriles trying to get his wits about him as the sedative wore off. Then something occurred to him.
“Hey, while we’re waiting, what were you talking to Delmar about?”
“What do you mean?” Liu asked.
“Earlier, you were in his quarters,” Carriles said. “When you came out, you just seemed a little upset.”
Liu drew her knees up to her chest, like she wanted to make herself smaller. After a long pause, she said, “I asked a question I shouldn’t have asked.”
“And what was that?”
She shook her head. “I learned my lesson.”
Carriles got up and walked to the glass in an attempt to lower his voice but still be heard. “I don’t trust them, either. You can tell me.”
She stared at him for a few moments, as if she was trying to figure out if that was true. Finally, she shrugged and said, “I came across a large stash of stat injectors.”
“What are those?”
“It’s a device that looks like a syringe. It’s packed with an antibacterial expandable cotton. If someone gets hurt, like they get shot, you put it into the wound and depress it. It releases the sponges, which expand and stop the bleeding.”
“Sounds like a fairly standard medical device,” Carriles said.
“It is,” Liu said. “For a military operation. We had tons of them. More than we needed. I thought it was a mistake, but also, it made me nervous. Like someone was expecting something bad to happen on this mission. I brought my concerns to Vicks, who brought me to Delmar, who told me that if I shared that information with anyone it would be considered mutiny. And you know what mutiny gets you out here.”
Carriles didn’t want to say it, but he knew.
Mutiny meant, if you were lucky, you got to test out the brig.
If you weren’t, you’d get marched through an air lock.
“So what you’re saying is . . . someone expects to get in a firefight,” Carriles said, trying to work it out. “Do you think this is hostility between the US and China? Like one side was planning to wipe out the other?”
“I have no idea,” Liu said. “All I know is that I’m the chief medical officer, I was in charge of supplying the ship with med supplies, and I had no record of these things being acquisitioned. I found them completely by accident. Remember that case of strep that went through the ship at the end of the first month? I had to go through most of our antibiotics. I was digging through the medical hold looking for more, and stumbled across them.”
Carriles suddenly wondered if he was safer in the cell.
But something scratching at the back of his brain said: Probably not.
Almost anyone else on the Mosaic would have been stuck in here, forced to sit and wait to be let out. But Carriles knew this ship. Had memorized every corner of it. His strengths were nuts and bolts. Schematics. Flight patterns. Coordinates. If he was into it, he was into all of it.
And Carriles was really into the Mosaic.
He had dreamed of the ship—taking it apart and putting it together. He felt as if the Mosaic’s blueprints were burned into his brain.
He dropped to the floor, feeling under the bunk for the access panel he knew was set somewhere in the wall. He finally found it, his fingers brushing the screws that held it in place. He patted down his uniform and found his pocketknife, which thankfully Vicks hadn’t thought to remove, and set to work on undoing the screws.
“What are you doing?” Liu asked.
“Getting us out of here.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Maybe not,” Carriles said as the first screw gave way. “Let’s find out.”
The second screw was slightly more out of reach and he had to stretch to get it, and he ruined the tip of his knife in the process, but he didn’t care. With the panel off, he leaned down and could just see into the small opening it created, where a series of wires ran. He didn’t recognize them all, but he quickly found the one he needed.
Blue.
Blue was for power.
He yanked it, hard, at the last moment realizing that it could kill the power to the room and leave the doors closed, potentially leaving them trapped, but it was too late. It was already free, and the lights clicked off, followed quickly by red emergency lighting.
The cell doors quietly slid open.
Exactly what he was hoping for. A fail-safe, because when you’re in space it’s not great to leave people trapped when the power goes out.
He hustled into the hallway and went out of Liu’s door. She seemed reluctant to come off her cot.
“You can stay here if you feel safer,” Carriles said. “But I’m headed to the bridge.”
“To do what?”
“To ask Vicks what the hell is going on.”
He reached his hand out to her. She lingered for a moment, before grasping it and allowing him to pull her to her feet. The two of them made it out of the holding room, and the next hallway was perfectly lit: pulling the wire, it seemed, had only killed the power to the brig. Carriles hoped it hadn’t set off any alarms.
The ship was desolate, their footsteps echoing down the winding corridors that mirrored the Mosaic’s sleek design. It felt eerie—the once-bustling vessel now felt lifeless and inert. By the time they reached the bridge, Carriles realized they hadn’t come across anyone on their way.
Carriles steeled himself as he opened the door, expecting to find Vicks sitting at the console, tracking the on-planet team. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he’d figure it out.
Instead, he opened the door to find the bridge in a panic.
It was packed with probably everyone who was still left on the ship. There was a loud screeching sound—a transmission from the Esparar team—and then the sound of gunfire.
Delmar’s voice came through the static.
“The indigenous species is a little tougher than we thought. Send down the weapons resupply.”
Next to him, Liu whispered, “Indigenous?”
Carriles couldn’t respond.
He had no idea what to say.
But a lot of things were starting to make sense.