Wreck of the Nebula Dream (21 page)

The violet beam swept rapidly from right to left across the stars before abruptly winking out. The sound stopped at the same moment, although Nick’s ears were still ringing.

Leaving the bench, Mara dashed forward, Paolo at her side, both eager to help. Lady Damais crumpled in a faint. Mara was barely in time to catch the fragile, elderly woman as she collapsed in a heap, cane clattering on the floor. Unable to stop himself, Nick toppled over in slow motion. Paolo broke his fall, making it a less violent connection with the hard deck, but still bruising. Falling from Nick’s nerveless hand, the fastlink control skittered away, sliding across the deck, fetching up under the bench.

“Gianna, can you retrieve the missing piece of the captain’s device for me, please?” Mara asked over her shoulder, as she half-carried Damais to the nearest bench and helped her sit. Vaguely, Nick heard Mara quizzing the elderly woman. “Are you all right? Your pulse is fast. Can you breathe properly?”

“I’m fine but worn out. This fastlink is an abominably harsh, artificial thing.” The Lady’s disgust rang through her voice, weak as it was. “Captain Jameson was right to be so reluctant to use it, although we had no choice. Go, see to him now. I’ll take care of myself.” Damais put both hands to her forehead, massaging the bones above her eye sockets as if she had a raging migraine. She waved Mara away firmly, giving her a small, impatient push, and reverted to rubbing her head irritably.

Walking to him, Mara sank to her knees on the deck beside Nick, who was trying to hang onto the shreds of consciousness against the pain in his head.

“Is there something you need? Anything we can do?” She helped him sit up, braced him against her shoulder.

“Is he all right?” Khevan called from the stairway, clearly torn between wanting to help and the need to remain on guard duty.

“I don’t know.” Mara rubbed Nick’s arm. “We need a medic, damn it. Or a medkit, at the least. We should have searched for one on the way in. I wish he hadn’t downplayed how hard this would be on him, been more specific about what he needed, stubborn man! If I’d had any idea what this fastlink was like, what it would do to him –”

“Damn fastlink. I’m getting too old for this.” Nick’s thick tongue made his words slur. “An adrenephix inject would help.” He felt disoriented, more than half thinking he was on a mission. “This is a bad one, hard to come down from.”

Mara hugged him. “Rest for a minute. Don’t try to get up yet.” Her voice quavered slightly.

I must look as bad as I feel.
Nick tried to sit up on his own, but his muscles weren’t working yet. He felt weak as a kitten. “Okay, I got it now,” he said to Mara, enunciating clearly. “Not on some alien planet with my team, am I?”

Smiling ruefully, she shook her head once. “No, you’re stranded on a crippled space liner with a bunch of scared civilians.”

More worried about Lady Damais than himself, now he was snapped into the reality of the situation, Nick reached out a hand in her direction. “Madame, are you –?”

“I’m fine, don’t distress yourself,” she said from where she lay on the bench, curling up, careless of the potential damage to her layers of fine silk and lace. As if even the faint light was painful, Damais kept one hand over her eyes. “Such devices are not meant for use by my people.”

“But it definitely helped, having you in the loop,” Nick reassured her gratefully. “I was having trouble making specific contact, until you came online with me. I could capture the beacons, but I couldn’t get into the actual interstellar chatter –”

“Did you talk to a ship, then?” Mara asked.

“Yeah, yeah, two of them,” Nick responded, a bit distractedly. “Odd.”

“What?” Mara was ready for anything.

“Well, one was a destroyer assigned to a carrier group. She’s cruising along a few light years behind where we were, or where we’re supposed to be, if we were still in Sixteen,” Nick estimated. “Her captain’ll be getting the report about now from the com room, which should generate some excitement.” He smiled wryly. “Not your ordinary event, that’s for sure.”

“Yes, I would imagine they’re experiencing the healthy skepticism we were discussing earlier,” Khevan said.

“It’ll take them some time to verify who I am, find me listed as a passenger on the
Nebula Dream
, but I think they’ll change course and head this way while they’re doing the verification. I hope so.” Nick rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He wished the headache would dial down.
Hard to concentrate, burns like someone stuck an electric prod into my skull behind the left ear.
Gingerly, he touched the spot with his fingertips
.
“Last I heard, Admiral Reston was in charge of the battle group. He’s a hard-charging, no-nonsense, tough guy. He’ll come into Seventeen after us and be damned to the consequences.”

Nick shut his eyes and swallowed with difficulty. “Throat’s dry. Like the hide of a Majumdan sandscraper lizard. Don’t suppose there’s a water dispenser on this deck?”

“No water, no medkit, nothing,” Mara said, checking the surroundings hastily. “Shall we go search the casino for some? How badly affected are you by this fastlink communication?”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t sweat it. And don’t leave the observatory,” Nick ordered emphatically. “We have to stay together.” He reached up to gently toy with a strand of her curls. “I’m tough, remember? It’ll be okay.”

“And the other ship you talked to?” Khevan prompted.

Nick frowned. “An odd thing. It was a freighter. Her captain changed course while we were talking. Said he’d park his cargo panniers at the edge of Sixteen and haul ass over here at best speed. Probably get here in twelve hours.” Nick glanced at his wrist chrono, marking the time. Breathing in her perfume, he rested his head against Mara’s shoulder for a long minute. The tangy scent helped clear his mind. “He can take us off this drifting hulk, take the LBs under tow.”

“Terrific,” Mara said. “What’s so odd about him coming to help? Aren’t all ships in the vicinity supposed to respond to a distress call?”

Gathering strength and willpower to stand up, Nick tensed his muscles. “Only military ships have capability to receive fastlink, because the technology is so highly classified. So how was I talking to the guy?”

“Oh,” Mara glanced uncertainly at Lady Damais. “Maybe because she was in the link, too?”

The Lady and Nick shook their heads at the same time. Both appeared to regret the rash gesture, grimacing in unconscious imitation of each other.

“I was only boosting the output of his own nervous system,” the Mellurean said. “I was in no way controlling or directing the device to communicate with anyone specifically. I can’t adapt my organic powers to utilize a machine.”

“So what are you saying, Nick? You don’t trust this freighter captain?” Uncurling like a cat, Mara stood up, lending Nick a hand as he slowly rose to his feet, swaying a bit.

“It is known the Sectors intelligence community operates under many commercial guises,” Khevan said. “Perhaps this ship you spoke with is one of those? It would be our good fortune. We are owed some good fortune on this voyage.”

“Could be. Whatever. Her captain says he’ll be here in –” Nick checked his chrono again. “Eleven hours and fifty minutes, Terra Standard Time, good enough for me.”

“You think the
Nebula Dream
will hold up long enough?” Mara asked.

“Yeah, what if it runs into some other piece of space junk?” Twilka said. “Or something else crashes into us?”

Got no answer for that one, lady
. Nick unholstered his blaster, aiming it at the fastlink transmitter.

Mara recoiled a few steps. “What are you doing?”
 

“I can’t transmit again for forty-eight hours under field conditions. We’ll either have been rescued by then or we’ll be dead, one way or the other – lack of air, the
Dream
’s engines go nova, something. I can’t take a chance on this falling into the wrong hands.” The surprised expressions of his adult companions annoyed him. Why did he have to keep reminding them of the most imposing threat to their continued existence?
Civilians
! “The situation hasn’t changed much, I hate to tell you. We’re still in the middle of Mawreg territory, even if now there are rescuers on the way.” He kept his voice even, gentle.

“I think we all wanted to forget the Mawreg part.” Twilka pouted. It didn’t sound as if she was kidding.

Mara put a restraining hand on Nick’s arm. “Wait, before you blast it, is there any chance the rescue ships – might want to try calling us? Any chance at all?”

He gingerly shook his head. Regret dominated the tone of his answer. “Fastlink doesn’t work that way, I only wish. I can send, I can have limited dialogue with whoever is at the other end while I’m transmitting, but they can’t initiate a call to me. And I’d fry my brain if I tried to call out again too soon, even with Damais’ help.” He paused, took a deep breath, battling dizziness. Weak and nauseated. Impatience edged his voice, even though he was talking to Mara. Until he finished the destruction of the transmitter, he couldn’t give in to the weariness now settling like a physical weight on his entire body.
I have to rest.
Nick took her restraining hand off his arm. “So, if you don’t mind, let me do my sworn duty and blast this piece of top-secret technology into smoldering fragments, okay?”

Mara walked away a few steps, giving him a clear shot. “You’re the expert here, do whatever you have to do – blast away,” she invited with a wave.

“Don’t blow any new holes in the ship, okay?” Twilka muttered loudly enough to be heard.

Nick chose to ignore the Socialite’s comment.
Teasing or serious, she could get annoying.

The next second, the fastlink transmitter was no more. The deck glowed cherry red where his blaster beam had struck.
 

Holstering his weapon, Nick staggered to the nearest bench, where he sank down next to Lady Damais, who moved her tiny feet aside obligingly. Putting his head in his hands, he realized his whole body was shaking.
 

Rubbing his back, Mara said, “You have to rest now, right? You warned us before you transmitted, a couple of hours sleep. And I’m guessing there’s some kind of inject you’re probably supposed to have, if we only had a field medkit. You were asking for adrenephix.”

Struggling to stay awake, Nick nodded and answered her through gritted teeth, trying to damp the tremors in his muscles. “Yes to both questions. But I’ll be all right. Let me nap here for a half an hour or so.”

“And then what?” Khevan inquired. “This place is hardly defensible. Where had you anticipated we should wait for our rescuers, Captain?”

“The bridge?” Mara asked, eyebrows raised. Her hand stilled on his shoulder.

Nick shook his head a fraction of an inch, eyes closed. “No, the bridge is as much of a dead end – a trap – as this location. As soon as I can walk a straight line, I intend to head for the shuttle bay. We’ll grab a shuttle and fly out of here, meet the freighter on her way in. I don’t want to sit tamely here and wait, playing cards in the ruins of the casino. We can’t. This wreck is too tempting to too many entities. The looters in the hold are the least of what we could encounter, if we sit and patiently wait.” Raising his head, he locked his gaze on Mara. “I can fly a shuttle.”

“You think the Mawreg will come, then?” Mara said.

Nick nodded. “The Mawreg will be here. Maybe not the first to arrive, but they’ll definitely show up at some point. This is their territory, remember? It’s more likely some of their client race scavengers will be here first, all too soon, sniffing for plunder and slaves. We can’t hope to remain undiscovered for much longer, I don’t think.”

“Yes, we must be showing up on the enemy’s detection devices,” Khevan agreed. “A ship this big, where it should not be, must have triggered some sort of alarm, even in this deserted region of the Sector.”

“Would the two of you stop this?” Twilka half shrieked, jumping up from the step and pacing in a tight circle. “You’re driving me to absolute distraction, talking about it. We need to get away from this cursed ship. Are you positive you can’t walk to the shuttle bay now, soldier? We can carry you, if need be.”

“No, we can’t.” Mara drew herself up to her full height, glaring at the Socialite. She pointed at Nick. “He said he needs two hours of sleep. He’s going to try to manage with a whole lot less. I bet the sooner you stop chattering, the sooner he could rest, and the sooner we could get out of here!” Her voice rose as she berated Twilka on Nick’s behalf.

“Well, pardon a person for asking.” Twilka sulked, sinking deeper into the stairwell.

I like having Mara defend me. She doesn’t take any bullshit, for sure.
Pulling her closer, Nick laughed shakily. “Fierce. Does the browbeating approach work when you’re negotiating deals for Loxton?”

“No,” she answered shortly, “And don’t you talk to me, either. Shut up and take a nap so you’re fit to fly a shuttle. I’m as jumpy as Twilka, if you want to know the truth, but I’m standing closer to you than she is. I can see how you’re shaking. Now, not another syllable!” She raised her hand to forestall his next remark.
 

Nick closed his eyes, trying to get comfortable on the hard, retro-designed wooden bench. SMT’s decorators had obviously not anticipated any passengers wanting to stay too long, gazing up at the marvels of the observatory.
A self-fulfilling prophecy, because the damn benches were totally uncomfortable for prolonged sitting.