THEY FOUND THE HULK of the vessel calling itself the Forlorn Hope locked in a high, stranded orbit around the frozen planet that rimmed the edge of Landfall system.
“I get nothing but the same signal, looped,” said Finch. “I don’t think there’s anyone aboard.”
“Bring us alongside, in contiguous orbit,” ordered Lily. “We’ll board. Do you think it’s really the Forlorn Hope?”
The answer came, surprisingly, from Blue. He had keyed frantically onto his screen as they approached, and now, with a crow of triumph, he lifted up his arm to display a fine-detailed line drawing.
“It does!” he cried. “It conforms to the exterior specs for the old highroad fleet. Central impounded the four that reached here, but this one got away. And there’s none left operational that I know of. Central never could build any boat as good. If this is really her—”
“It be ya sore hard luck,” muttered Paisley with determination. “Sore, hard, terrible luck, to tamper with such as were cast adrift from ya pattern so long since. It be wrong o’ them to try to find ya way back to Tirra-li ’afore it were ya fated time to travel. And it be wrong o’ us—”
“That’s complete nonsense,” exclaimed Pinto, forestalling the comment that seemed about to emerge from Finch. “A lot of superstitious nonsense.”
“Sure, and be it your hard luck to say so,” answered Paisley darkly. “I reckon your mater be sleeping ya poor tonight to hear you say so.”
“Well, she can’t hear me, can she?” said Pinto in disgust. “Being as there’s Void knows how many windows between us.”
“It be not fit to scorn ya pattern,” Paisley continued, undeterred. Her confidence was clearly beginning to have an effect on the other three Ridanis, who cast nervous glances by turns at the pale hulk of the ship, at Paisley, and, last, at Lily.
Lily unstrapped herself, keeping one hand gripped to the armrest. “That’s enough, Paisley. I’ll take three to board. Jenny, the Mule, and—” she hesitated. “Yehoshua.”
“No,” said the Mule.
Finch gave a snort of disgust. “What, are you superstitious, too?” he asked, happy to include the Mule in the circle of contempt he otherwise reserved for the Ridanis.
“I suggest we keep this civilized,” interposed Lily quietly, well able to read the Mule’s body language as it reacted to Finch’s comment. “Do you have any objection to the orders, comrade?” she asked.
The Mule’s lank crest lifted slightly, as if a breeze stirred the cabin. The gaze it shot at Lily might have seared cold steel. No reply was forthcoming.
“Then if you have no objection—” began Lily, but even as she said it she saw the curl of the Mule’s hands, the set of the face, as it settled into a stubborn posture. It looked as if it were digging in for a long, determined resistance. She could see that the Mule would not explain itself publicly, and certainly not when all attention was focused on the conflict. “If you’ll come with me,” she finished, “we’ll discuss this privately.”
“But where—” began Finch, knowing full well that this cabin was the only compartment on the ship that held atmosphere.
“In the suit airlock to the cargo hold,” replied Lily, cutting him off. “Just don’t vent us, please.”
The Mule let out a brief hiss that was too sta-ish for Lily to interpret, but rose and followed Lily back to the airlock. Lily keyed it open, waited a few silent minutes, and then stepped inside and shut it behind them.
“Well?”
“You are unfamiliar with sta, are you not?” said the Mule. The tiny chamber and thin dusting of air swallowed the words.
Lily shrugged.
“Have you ever seen any sta doing suited work? In vacuum?” When Lily did not reply, the Mule gave a sibilant sigh and arched its crest again. “I am sta enough, comrade,” the Mule continued, stiffly formal now, not a little offended, “that I too am unable to work suited in a vacuum, despite my human half.” Here the Mule’s voice descended into all-too-human sarcasm.
“All right,” said Lily. “You’ll stay here, for now.” She paused, began to ask why the Mule had forced this private audience, and immediately thought better of it. That pride could stick on even such a seemingly innocuous subject was no surprise to her, and certainly not with the Mule, who would have no desire to express such a—failing?—in front of people who already had cause to be prejudiced against it. She keyed the airlock open instead to reveal the expectant silence of the cabin.
“Lia, take comm,” Lily ordered. “Finch, you’ll board with us.”
The four of them suited up, hooked on lines, and left the ship via the cargo airlock. Yehoshua and Jenny, inured by practice to the experience, fired up immediately to cross the thousand meters between the shuttle and the bulk of the Forlorn Hope.
But Lily and Finch hesitated, side by side, caught in the exhilaration of freedom and the vast emptiness surrounding them. All the soldiers in Jehane’s forces were trained in suits, but for those still new to it, like Lily and Finch, there had not been enough training to dull the sheer wild rush of adrenalin.
Lily clicked on her mike with her tongue. “After all those years on Unruli, this is hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said softly.
She heard Finch sigh. With an old instinct for his thoughts resurrected from their closeness on Unruli by the intimacy of their link within such immensity, she knew that he was thinking of his sister, so newly dead.
“Yehoshua wants to bury his cousin in the Void,” he said at last, his voice quiet. “Just vent him. It seems strange to me.”
Lily stared at the infinite depth of stars, at the grey curve of cold planet beyond the Forlorn Hope, at the slow, bright rise of the distant Landfall sun above the shuttle’s top vane. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It’s not such a bad place to rest.” She moved to catch Yehoshua and Jenny in her line of sight, discovered that they were almost halfway to the derelict. “Come on, Finch. Let’s go.”
“Do you suppose it is a ghost ship?” Finch asked as their packs fired them across the gap.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. That Paisley sure seems certain about her superstitious—” He broke off. “Why are you laughing?”
“Just surprised. I didn’t know you even knew her name. Paisley, that is.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, defensive. “Sure, she’s a tattoo, but you have to admit she’s uncommon pretty no matter what her—” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if he had said something overly revealing.
“I was just surprised, Finch,” Lily replied. “You haven’t been exactly friendly to the Ridanis.”
“I still don’t see why I should be,” he muttered. “Bunch of damn—” The rest of the comment was lost to indiscriminate static across the line.
“Anyway,” said Lily. “If it is the Forlorn Hope, the original, there can’t be anyone left alive. It’s been far too long. I’m amazed we stumbled across it.”
“So am I. That signal is so weak it’s incredible that we caught it.” Finch sounded almost irritated, but it was hard to tell over the mike. “But you’ve always been lucky.”
“I have?” She had no time to debate this point because they reached the ship. Yehoshua had already located an outside seal, halfway around the curve of the ship, and he beckoned to them. By the time they arrived at his position, he had managed to open it, revealing an airlock that led inside.
“Maintenance shaft, I’d wager,” said Yehoshua over the mike. There was easily enough room for all four of them, and once the outer lock shut, Lily felt an immediate shift in her balance, a tug toward one wall.
“This place gives me the spooks,” said Jenny abruptly as the inside lock sighed slowly open onto an empty, silver-walled corridor. “You’d think it was still alive …” She trailed off as Lily took the first, hesitant step into the Forlorn Hope, paused, and read the narrow screen on her lower suit arm.
“We still have atmosphere,” Lily said. “That’s incredible, after all this time.” She glanced at Finch. “Maybe there are ghosts on board.”
But they found no one living, and no bodies, dead, decayed, or otherwise. What signs of human habitation there were had the look of tidy, shipshape readiness, as if a crew was about to board, not as if it had carelessly or hastily abandoned the vessel.
At first they wandered, rather lost, through a seeming maze of silver corridors. The barest gleam of light heralded their path. Eventually Lily relayed on the hand-pack back to Bach, and discovered a fact that somehow did not particularly surprise her: the little robot was completely familiar with the design specifications of the so-called highroad fleet. She used his rather convoluted directions to lead them along more silver corridors to an elevator that, at his directions, carried them to a new deck.
This one was gold, textured, and patterned, glowing with an incandescent gleam, like the ghost of the ship’s past life. The way to the bridge proved almost deceptively simple.
The bridge itself had a refinement, an efficiency of design, that in a subtle way put the ostentatious command centers of La Belle’s and Yi’s ships to shame. Streamlined and sleek, like the Forlorn Hope itself, it was easy to find and bring to life the various consoles, to identify their purpose, even in the gloom of minimum lighting.
Finch discovered the comm and quickly sat down and went to work. In minutes, he had opened a line to the shuttle.
Jenny found and studied weapons. Yehoshua settled in at life support and began to bring up an array of functions on the console. Lily, on her way to the engineering link, paused beside the captain’s chair.
On impulse, she keyed in for the log, tried once, twice, three times. Used the relay to Bach, and tried his new commands.
The log had been wiped clean. There was no sign if the damage was deliberate or accidental. Thoughtful, she crossed to the engineer’s link and, with Blue kibitzing through Bach, pulled up the function banks.
Suddenly the lights came on, brilliant, glaring. Softened abruptly to a smoother brightness. She turned to see Yehoshua removing his head gear; gasped—like the lights coming on—and then caught herself as Bach sang a question, and she relaxed.
After a few minutes, when Yehoshua did not die, she took her own head gear off, quickly followed by Finch. Jenny, with a grimace, kept hers on at Lily’s command.
“Well?” Lily asked, gesturing toward the consoles, which had come to life at the hands of these interlopers.
Yehoshua shook his head. For the first time since Alsayid’s death, his face bore a look of animation. “It’s as if,” he began, slowly, careful of his words, “they shut it all down, all but the absolute lowest level maintenance and drive functions, just put it on hold and then left. I can’t imagine what would cause them to do such a thing, or where they might have gone.”
“Or how,” added Finch, his voice an echo of Yehoshua’s astonishment. “If this is the Forlorn Hope.”
“Can you doubt it?” asked Yehoshua.
Finch shook his head in agreement. “How could they just leave—” He set his lips together, thinking. “Unless there are bodies in cryo on one of the lower decks. Or just plain bodies.”
“I hope the channel to the shuttle is closed,” said Lily cautiously. “We’ll never get the Ridanis on the ship if they hear that. Yehoshua, we need a working hold that can bring in the shuttle.”
He made an affirmative noise and began keying through the systems files.
“All right,” said Lily, when he had found what she needed. “You and Finch relay through Pinto and Lia, and bring them in. Jenny, you and I will go down to meet them.”
Lily sealed her head gear back on for the trip down to the holds level. They took their time, wandering as they went, this time armed with a tight relay to Bach, who kept them oriented.
The gold deck had only two other sections besides the bridge: a three-room suite comprised of tac and computer centers and a two-room suite that evidently had belonged to the captain.
“Look at that bed!” Jenny exclaimed as they keyed open the lock into the inner room. “Four people could sleep on that bed, and it’s freestanding! Do you suppose all the quarters are like this?”
Lily stared. The two rooms seemed huge to her, at least five meters square each. She shrugged, tonguing her mike switch. “It was an exploratory vessel, wasn’t it? They might spend years on this ship without ever making landfall.”
Below gold they found the silver deck they had entered onto. Here were far more corridors, but this maze was quickly explained: this deck held the crew’s quarters, the medical, the mess and rec sections, and a few areas Lily thought might be labs.
After silver, the color of the walls changed again, this time to a copper sheen. Labs, a small detention suit of cells, and a second and larger rec suite, filled about half of the deck. The other half they did not explore: a single door labeled Green Room led into it.
A large freight elevator took them to the lowest deck.
“Well,” said Jenny, examining the iron-grey walls of this deck with a practiced eye. “Now I feel more at home.”
Lily suspected that there was some pattern to the decks, as there had been on La Belle’s ship, a pattern that Kyosti would have laughed to see, although she could not possibly guess why. They hurried past cargo holds, the weapons and engineering access, a maintenance lab, a second computer center, before they found the triple airlocks giving onto the great hangar.
The shuttle had arrived before them. After almost half an hour of misunderstanding Bach’s answers to her questions, Lily finally discovered that it was possible to connect a pressurized tube to the shuttle hatchway and funnel the passengers off to an atmosphered overlook without having to put them all in suits.
Blue, of course, emerged first, followed by Bach and Lia and Gregori, in a clump, and then Yehoshua’s crewman wheeling the stasis couch in which Kyosti lay, still unconscious, and last the Mule carrying the injured woman. After a pause Pinto emerged, looking disgusted.
Lily had taken off her head gear. “Where are the others?”
“Where do you think?” Pinto said. The geometric lines on his face emphasized his derision. “Paisley was telling stories about the third cursed merchanter when I left. You know, hailed by the ghost ship and didn’t cut and run fast enough. I think this one ends up trapped in the gasp between windows.”
“Oh.” Lily looked at Kyosti’s still form thoughtfully, wondering what he would think of such a fate. “I’ll deal with them.”
Blue had gone to the overlook plastine and stood, face pressed against the plastine, staring out across the vast hangar. “Look!” he exclaimed. “Two other landers. But just small ones. You’d think a ship like this would have had some larger shore-boats, or recce yachts, at least.”
Lily lifted her gaze from Kyosti to consider the group assembled before her. A motley collection, without a doubt. Most of them gaped out the overlook glass at the hangar, at the fine, impressive interior of a ship older than their great-grandparents and yet still as advanced—still more advanced—than any that Reft space, Central or Jehane, possessed now.
“First.” She waited until they all looked at her. “Comrade Blumoris.” He turned, reluctantly. “Bach will have to give us a quick guide to the ship, before you head to your posts. Keep in wrist-com, in case you get lost. Blumoris, I want you to engine-access. You’re what we’ve got right now for engine tech.”
Blue’s mouth dropped open, leaving him looking young and foolish. He was clearly too stunned to speak. “I get to—” Almost too stunned. “I get to run these engines?”
“Not yet,” said Lily with patience. “Familiarize yourself for now. I’ll send Paisley along after you—”
“That grimy tattoo—”
“Blumoris.” The sharpness of her tone cut him off. “Who gave you leave to speak?”
Under the censorious gaze of all the rest, Blue looked for the first time a little shamefaced, or at least sullenly acquiescent.
Lily transferred her gaze to the crewman holding onto Kyosti’s stasis couch. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name, comrade.”
He gave her a brief salute, a gesture that surprised her. “Jorge Zia Nguyen, sir.”
She coughed behind her hand to hide her embarrassment at being called sir. “Well, comrade.” Hesitated, having forgotten for an instant what she meant to ask him. “Yes. Do you have a specialty that might help us here?”
“I have some experience in weapons systems, sir.”
“Good. You and Pinto go straight to the bridge. I don’t suppose your comrade …”
“Wei, sir.”
“Thank you—has any experience in navigation?”
Nguyen shook his head. “Soldiering, mostly, with a little training in comp and tac.”
Lily sighed, feeling lost again. Without nav, they could fill every other seat and still remain stranded in Landfall system.
“If I may?” The Mule’s fluid question was surprisingly deferential. Lily nodded, looking at him curiously. “I have some experience in nav.”
“But in Jehane’s fleet—on Franklin’s Cairn—you weren’t ever training in nav, were you? Why wouldn’t Callioux have assigned you there?”
“You forget, comrade,” hissed the Mule with a sardonic edge, “that in Jehane’s fleet there are sta running nav. Sta have not taken sides in this so-human conflict, but they are always willing to accept pay for services. Sta will not work with me.”
Blue stared in repulsed amazement at the Mule, his nose puckered up as if the air had suddenly brought him a bad smell. The others, all but Pinto, looked down, or away. Pinto, however, looked at the Mule with acute interest.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” asked Lily.
“You didn’t ask,” replied the Mule.
“Hoy. And you’re good at bissterlas, too, aren’t you?”
“Damn good at it,” said Pinto so sharply that the Mule shifted its gaze to meet the pilot’s eyes. They seemed to measure each other, two whose work had to mesh perfectly in order to guide a ship safely through the precise limits and angles of the vector drive. After a moment, as if satisfied, they both looked at Lily.
Lily shook her head. “I think we’ve got the absolutes covered,” she said, not quite believing it herself. “If this boat still runs, and we can figure it out. Jenny, you take these two to Medical. Do what you can to make them comfortable until Finch can come down and check them. Then you—and Gregori, I think—just roam the ship until you feel familiar with it. That should cover everyone except the Ridanis.”
“What about me?” Lia’s soft voice barely stirred the air. She had managed to lose herself in one corner of the overlook, hidden in swathes of loose fabric and the dark cloud of her hair.
“Relieve Finch while he’s in Medical.”
“I could,” said Aliasing tentatively, “but there is one thing you’ve forgotten.”
“There is?” Lily asked, surprised not by this revelation but by its source.
“Food.” Aliasing pursed her lips, giving her fragile features a remarkably practical cast. “Maybe I should go find the mess.”
Lily glanced, startled, at Jenny, but the mercenary merely lowered her eyes in a uncharacteristically demure gesture that Lily abruptly suspected hid amusement.
“By all means,” agreed Lily. “You’ve just been appointed Steward.”
For some reason, this made Lia laugh, but she went after the others without further comment.