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EVEN IN THE WATERY display, the black of space and the distant twinkle of stars were evident. “Holy fuck.” Tyce whispered the words like a prayer. He had no idea what else to say.
Joahan leaned in until his nose nearly touched the vertical display. “What the hell is that?”
“What are you guys going on about?” Plat abandoned his post at the door to peer over their shoulders at the camera angle. They had used the camera to check the adjoining corridors and no one was near, but Plat had insisted on standing guard. Tyce appreciated his willingness to volunteer, because giving a Command sergeant orders could have ended badly.
“Holy fucking shit! Did your guy do that?” Plat backed away as though suddenly afraid to be in the same room with Ribelians. “What the hell are you carrying in your gear? Fission material?”
The size of the hole made nuclear armaments possible. “Nothing we have would do that kind of damage. Absolutely nothing.”
The alarmed expression on Plat’s face didn’t change, but Tyce didn’t have time to reassure a nervous Command soldier. He slid the controller down and the camera views zipped through several levels until they were looking at complete darkness. Too far. He moved up more slowly this time. Eventually he saw the level with the abandoned water purifiers and protein synthesizers rigged into the wall. A shuttle door was visible in the camera shot, but the leather wall of the ship had half grown over the shuttle door.
“It doesn't look like they've taken any damage on that level.” Joahan said in clear relief.
“Let's hope it stays that way.” Tyce moved the camera view back up into the sections that were exposed to space. Nothing up-ship of their position had cameras, but at least they could survey the damage from the blast. An elevator had overinflated, plugging the hole created by the elevator shaft. Sphincter doors had closed over the hallways. But, weirdly, the doors leading to individual rooms were twisted and warped and sometimes ripped right out of the frame, leaving individual rooms exposed. If anyone had tried to take shelter there, they would've had an ugly surprise.
Tyce prayed Yoss had not been in one. That would have been a horrific minute or two ending in a brutal death.
“Does it occur to anyone else that whoever designed this ship didn't understand space that well?” Plat returned to the door to stand guard.
Joahan spoke softly. “Or the ship is designed to void entire levels at once if there’s some sort of explosion. If this ship belonged to pirates, that level could have been used for contraband and a simple blowout would get rid of all the evidence.”
Tyce had already considered the possibility, but it wasn’t the most likely or the most horrifying option. “Then why would the level have individual rooms?” Tyce hated to even think it, but he suspected the people who had built the ship had kept prisoners on that level. A single breach would get rid of them at once. The Ribelian intelligence network had gotten wind of the few Earth ships doing that with prisoners.
The free alliance could never get evidence, but certain prisoners vanished—no records, no death certificates, no notifications to families. Nothing. And while that wasn't conclusive, the prison transport ships sometimes returned to Landing or Paititi weeks before schedule. They hadn’t bothered flying all the way to their destination before they unloaded the prisoners. The idea made him ill.
Joahan pressed his fingertips together in prayer, so maybe his thoughts had followed a similar path. “Nothing Wirki carried would've caused that kind of damage, so are we assuming the ship had some sort of protocol? Maybe Wirki was unlucky enough to trigger something when he was trying to stop the Imshee from going into the lower levels. Or maybe he was unlucky enough to set a charge near some source of nuclear energy.”
For some reason, Tyce had the feeling that both was and wasn’t true. Maybe the aliens could use the damn probes to communicate with their ship, but the technology didn’t work on human brains because all Tyce got were vague impressions. He didn’t even know how Joahan’s suggestion could be both true and not true.
He settled for saying, “Maybe.” He panned the camera through the level as fast as he could without the image blurring, but he couldn't find any Imshee. If one had been heading for Dragon territory, Tyce couldn't find it now. Hopefully Wirki’s soul knew he had protected the others.
“So where are the Imshee?” Joahan asked.
Tyce didn’t even have a vague feeling. Maybe the ship didn’t know or perhaps the ship was taking pity on him by not shoving half-formed and unhelpful thoughts into his brain.
“Maybe there was only one,” Joahan suggested.
Plat answered from his spot near the door. “I'm not feeling that lucky.”
Joahan guffawed. “And now we found something else we agree on, but I don't see any Imshee.” He tried to move the camera controls, but nothing happened. Joahan frowned and looked at Tyce. This was not a conversation Tyce could have at the moment, so he shrugged and twitched his fingers so the camera rolled through the area. To find the Command crew, Tyce had only thought about them, so he tried that. He focused on the image of the insectoid monster with its ratty green hair. The camera bobbled for a moment before stilling.
“Try moving toward the shuttles,” Plat suggested. Now Joahan was openly studying Tyce, his gaze calculating. On a Ribelian ship, secrets were normal. If someone was captured, they wouldn’t want more information than necessary because no one withstood Command interrogation forever. No doubt that was why none of the crew had radioed Ama or him to let them know they were ignoring the scatter order. But right now Joahan might as well have a bubble over his head with the words floating in it. He assumed Tyce and Ama had figured out how to control the ship and were hiding that from Command.
Joahan even moved so his body blocked Tyce’s gestures if Plat turned toward them. Tyce regretted not telling the crew about the brain probes. At the time he’d wanted to avoid any pity, but given that clue, Joahan would figure out the truth.
Tyce focused on the image of that huge, mangy insect. He could not imagine a universe where that became the dominant species of any planet. The camera angle twisted and tilted before it shot up.
Joahan gave him an odd stare but then he glanced over toward Plat and held his tongue. No doubt, if they were alone he would have more than a few questions, but he wasn't willing to say anything in front of a Command soldier. Thank God for small mercies. The camera stopped and stabilized.
“Where is this?” Joahan asked.
Tyce shrugged because it didn't look familiar. The corridors were long, and straight unlike in any part of the ship he had seen. “Plat, does this look familiar to you?”
Plat asked Joahan. “Watch the door?”
Joahan moved to take his spot. “Yeah, I've got it.”
Only then did Plat check the display. “Those long straight corridors, that's what we saw when we came through the first set of doors off the shuttle bay. The closer the corridor is to the shuttle bay, the bigger it is and it slowly narrows and starts to curve. That looks like it's about halfway between the shuttle and the command deck. Maybe. The different levels might get smaller at a different rate, in that case, I have no fucking idea where that is.”
That was less than helpful, but at least he was honest in his assessment. “But you think it's likely closer to the shuttles?”
“My gut says yes. That’s the only part of the ship we’ve found with straight lines. It has to be a psychological thing because it doesn’t make much sense.”
Tyce suspected human preferences for straight corridors made less sense. When this ship’s gravity had failed, the crew avoided massive casualties by sliding around the curves instead of taking a hard fall onto a solid metal surface. This ship might have less reliable gravity fields. Just because an alien species had highly advanced weaponry didn’t mean it couldn’t be behind Earth in other fields. But that begged the question of why the corridors near the shuttles were straight.
“Are the Imshee there?” Joahan asked.
“No idea,” Tyce admitted. “I can’t figure out most of this equipment, and I can’t get the cameras to show the outside so we can search for the Imshee ship.”
“This technology is pretty damn alien, even for an alien ship.” Plat looked around the room in disgust. “I’ve seen vids of Rownt ships, and they look like ships. They’re too big and whoever decorated them has weird taste, but they’re ships. This place...” He shook his head.
“The engineers say the ship uses fluids for nearly every function. They think some of the curve is to prevent fluids from moving too quickly in any given direction. Fluid lines even have muscles around them so they can change diameters. They’re pretty amazed by the engineering and biology.” Joahan kept his eyes on the corridor while speaking.
Plat grimaced.
“Okay, let’s take what we know and head back up,” Tyce said. If he couldn’t get the cameras to give them any useful information, this was a waste of time.
“We don’t know anything,” Joahan protested.
“We know we can’t find the Imshee. Let’s get back up-ship and start talking strategy.” Tyce wanted to see if any of the Dragon crew had made it up to Ama. If any of them had been in the damaged level, Ama would be arranging more celebrations of life. Tyce had attended too damn many of those. Tyce closed his fists and the display went dark. “Let's move. It makes me nervous that I can't get eyes on the Imshee.”
“You and me both,” Joahan muttered. Without any discussion, Plat took point, and Joahan quickly followed. “So, sergeant, what sort of manpower do you guys have, and are any of your guys any good at shooting a gun?”
Plat paused and snorted before he continued down the hall. “Do you expect me to discuss our tactical position with rebels?”
“Family ship, not rebels,” Tyce corrected him. If they all survived this, Tyce would only be able to talk John around a few corners if there was some plausible deniability. After all, they had possession of the control room, and Tyce had no illusions about what John would do to maintain that. He would have Dragon crew guard the perimeter, not maintain inner security. And that meant Tyce had to consider long-term options.
Maybe he could get John to drop them off at Mars. They were a little friendlier to colonists than Earth, even if they had sided with the home world during the war. Or maybe they could break a few shuttles loose and send their most vulnerable to the Cyrillic Union. After the Anla war, they had refused to get involved in the conflict.
“Right.” Plat’s voice dripped with disbelief. “And a family ship chose to have a fugitive officer from Command as their captain. I would think a family ship who wanted to avoid conflict would've dropped you off at the nearest uninhabited planet.”
“We considered,” Joahan said, “but he kinda grows on you after a while. Sort of like scum on a water tank.”
“Gee, thanks,” Tyce said dryly.
Joahan grinned over his shoulder. “You're welcome.” He turned his attention back to the front and Plat. “Now what about the relative strengths and weaknesses of your people and their ability to fire guns? If we’re fighting together, I would like to know who I have at my back. And, in case it's escaped your notice, our crew is much more prepared to defend itself than yours. We got through the initial contact with the ship with our shuttles intact. You, however, seem fairly screwed. And now your own people have a split. So even if we get rid of the Imshee, you're going to be fighting yourselves.”
Plat hunched his shoulders. “This is an issue for the commander, not me.”
“Joahan, drop it,” Tyce ordered.
Unsurprisingly, Joahan ignored him. “Just like Command. You people are so fond of your rules and regulations that you don't stop to consider appropriateness of time or place. If we don't work together, your people won’t survive.”
“He can’t talk to you about this, so drop it.” Tyce snapped.
Joahan turned his attention to Tyce. “You've been up there. What's your general assessment?”
“Their medical staff appears competent, but the soldiers who were most willing to take risks seem to be the ones who consider Ribelians a bigger threat than the Imshee.”
“So, the morons,” Joahan summarized.
Tyce shrugged. He doubted any lack of intelligence motivated them. Soldiers on the front had to stop seeing the enemy as people in order to avoid the psychological pain of killing. “Unless John had all the weapons locked down securely, my guess is his crew doesn’t have much left.”
Plat didn't answer, but his silence and his hunched shoulders revealed more truth than he probably knew.
“Shit. So we have Imshee and two different variations on Earth stupid wandering around the ship. And here I thought the war was over.”
“Do humans ever stop fighting?” Plat asked. He pressed his back to the wall before checking the cross corridors. Once he’d determined it was clear, he darted across and waited for Tyce and Joahan to cross.
“That’s a fairly depressing outlook on the world,” Joahan said once they’d cleared the intersection.
“I went from the Anla war to the war with the colonies. I think I have a right to a little pessimism, especially since the Imshee have declared war on us.”
Tyce wasn't as convinced of that. Aliens were always so damn alien. Maybe this was their version of testing the waters. If, as John had said, they were afraid of humans, they might have wanted to test out human resolve or battle tactics in an isolated situation. The more Tyce thought about it, the more that made sense. Imshee could test humans, and when it was over, they could blow up the ship and no one on Earth would be any wiser.
A wave of anguish mixed with anger and frustration nearly took Tyce to his knees. His chest hurt the way it had when his father had died and grief had pinned him so hard that he couldn't breathe. Then the sorrow rolled in. Tyce gripped the edge of a door and struggled to stay upright.
Joahan wrapped one arm around Tyce's waist to brace him. “What's wrong?”
“Fuck. Is it the probes?” Plat asked.
“Probes? What probes?”
Tyce panted and tried to sort through feelings that weren’t his. There was so much anger, so much fear and loss and outright refusal to allow more bad things to happen. He was drowning in determination before the first vanguards of homicidal fury appeared. Tyce pressed his eyes shut and tried to find the calm, quiet center that Ama always talked about.
“One of the guys who mutinied tried shoving your captain into an alcove in the control center,” Plat explained. “The ship implanted some probes in his brain before the commander pulled Lieutenant Robinson out and saved him.
“Captain Tyce,” Joahan corrected him in a low, angry voice. “And why didn’t your doctors remove the probes?”
“Because when they tried to take them out of our engineer, the operation killed him.”
Tyce reached out blindly, grabbing Joahan’s arm. He hoped that would calm him, but his hopes were in vain.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” Joahan demanded. “Do you not have any sense of decency or morality? Is everyone on Earth born this corrupt and manipulative?”
“Enough,” Tyce whispered. With his head pounding like this, he didn’t trust an early warning signal to get through to him. They had to treat this like hostile territory, and fighting did not make good tactical sense.
“It's not even close to enough. They had no right to do this to you.” Joahan shifted, jostling Tyce and getting a hold lower down on Tyce’s waist so he could hold him upright. That was when Tyce realized Joahan was supporting most of his weight. Tyce made a concerted effort to get his knees to straighten.
“I agree with you on that and so does the commander,” Plat snapped. “That’s why he pulled your guy out of the alcove. So don't get all sanctimonious with me. After all, if we’re going to insult each other's cultures, I certainly have a thing or two to say about terrorism. I'm just a good enough human being not to say it.”
Joahan muttered something so softly that not even Tyce could hear it. Tyce forced his eyes open and took an unsteady step forward. “No one here is to blame for what happened. However, I have blinding headache and I would appreciate it if you would stop shouting.”
“We should get you down to our doctors. There has to be another way around that destroyed level,” Joahan said. He pulled to get Tyce to turn around, but he resisted.
“Not that we can find quickly enough. The headache is already passing. So we need to finish the mission and get back up to the control room. That's where the Imshee were concentrating their attack, so that's the ground we have to defend.” Tyce didn't add that he carried a small seed of hope that if they could kick the Imshee's collective ass here, the aliens might decide to avoid humans in general. Unlike many of the Dragon crew, he knew the Earth was full of good people. Ethical people. Civilians. Children. He would do whatever was necessary to defend his home world.
Tyce took two steps, and did fall to his knees as panic slammed into his ribs. “It’s coming,” Tyce said. “The Imshee are coming.”
“What? How do you know?” Plat asked. Joahan brought his weapon up and asked a far more important question.
“Which direction?”