Wreck of the Nebula Dream (32 page)

Mara shuddered but didn’t say anything further. After a minute, Nick continued on, outlining his plan. “So, we get the pod on its way, the
Dragon
’s tugs take it over, and you and I go to Level Ten. Where I take the Yeatters out of sync, give ourselves about a half hour’s head start before the engines blow, and then we’re on
The
Sigrid
and heading home, to Sector Sixteen. Admiral Reston’s group’ll pick us up most likely. Easy.”
 

Mara wasn’t having any. “Did any of your missions behind the lines ever go easy? Ever go exactly as planned?” Her voice held skepticism. “I wish we could have dealt with the cryo pod while we were aboard the first time. I have a bad feeling about tempting the favor of the Lords of Space a second time. It scares the hell out of me,” Mara said frankly, turning to him at last.

“Yeah, I know. Me too,” he answered softly. “But we never had a spare moment to go off to Level Six and do anything about it. Maybe if we hadn’t been captured by the pirates –”

After a minute she nodded, once. “Do you think any pirates are left aboard?”

“Maybe.” He gave a frank answer. “Their ship disengaged and came after us pretty fast, too fast to have picked up all the crew first. Besides, I’m sure they were spread out on the passenger decks, looting, each pirate out for himself. But we have our blasters. And they won’t know we’re coming.”

“Well, certainly the last thing anybody would expect would be us going back,” Mara said, with a hint of laughter.

“Any sane sentient, anyway,” Nick answered. He reached over and held out his hand to her. After a minute she took it and they sat quietly, waiting as
The
Sigrid
’s autopilot brought them ever closer to the disabled liner. Mara worked the vid screens, bringing the
Dream
into better focus as they flew nearer and nearer.

Nick whistled. “Check out the damage on the starboard side! We were damn lucky the whole ship didn’t go to pieces after an impact like that.” Taking control of the ship from the AI, he began the tricky task of working their way closer in.

“Nick –” Delicately she touched his arm to get his attention.

“Yeah?”

“There are still a few lifeboats attached. See, there’s one on Level Three? And two more on Level Two.” Mara’s face mirrored her dismay, verging on horror. “Do you suppose anyone is aboard?”

He spared a quick glance for the vid screen as he manually piloted the small cutter through a debris field and toward the lifeboat port he had selected on Level Nine. “Tell you what, if I can connect to the AI while we’re up on Level Six, I’ll try ordering a universal jettison, okay?”Mara sighed. “Remember those looters? In the hold? They said they had a lifeboat waiting.”

“Well, if they’re still stuck on the
Dream
, and we do succeed in setting them free, the military will be able to deal with the situation properly at Sector Hub.” Nick adjusted the angle of approach. “Brace yourself. This may be quite a rough dock.” The next few minutes Nick worked in silence, concentrating on aligning
The
Sigrid
with the aperture vacated by – or never filled with – a lifeboat.

Shuddering through her entire length, the ship finally connected with the lifeboat davit. After powering down the engines, Nick got out of the pilot’s seat. Mara followed suit.

“Let’s do it,” she said grimly, before he could utter a syllable. “So we can get the hell out of here again. I liked the accommodations on the
Dragon
a whole lot better.”

“Mara, I –”

She shook her head, forestalling whatever he was going to say. “We’re here, so let’s just get the job done and leave. Before I lose my nerve! Okay?”

He wasn’t satisfied, but he had to leave it at that. Drawing his blaster, watching to make sure Mara followed suit with her weapon borrowed from the
Dragon
’s amazingly well-stocked armory, Nick led the way through
The
Sigrid
’s passenger compartment. Double-checking the readouts to be sure they had made a clean dock with the slightly different configuration of the lifeboat port, he triggered the hatch. Weapons ready, they crouched at either side as the mechanism cycled, both peering anxiously into the short, dark corridor beyond the sanctuary of
The
Sigrid
’s
friendly, brightly lit interior.

Stepping out cautiously, Nick headed toward the sealed access portal to the main body of the
Dream
. Mara came a few paces behind. At the entry to the corridor on Level Nine, Nick stared intently through a fisheye lens out into the main corridor before he hit the controls. They held their breaths as the hatch slowly slid aside.

Nick went first, sweeping the empty corridor in both directions, blaster at the ready. “Clear!” he whispered to Mara.

She had to force herself to take the first step across the threshold but then walked out into the hall and quickened her pace to keep up with Nick, who was already heading rapidly for the grav tube. “The air smells pretty bad, doesn’t it?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Not circulating or scrubbing properly. Too many sections closed off by blast doors, I imagine,” Nick answered without much interest. “Your nose will get used to it soon and you won’t even notice the stench. Ah, good, the grav lift is still working,” he said, as the access door to the tube slid aside at his command. Checking the tube out cautiously, staring upward and then down again before allowing Mara to step inside, he got them floating up to Level Six as rapidly as the automatic settings of the leisurely cruise liner would permit. Nick longed for the crisp, no-nonsense efficiency of the
Dragon
’s grav lift.
Every second of this return trip to the
Dream
is like an hour
.
 

Mara’s stomach rumbled and she rubbed at her abdomen with her free hand. Nick glanced over at her, eyebrows raised. She grimaced. “I’m nauseous, and the foul, stale air doesn’t help.”

Nick motioned curtly for her to stay low. He opened the door to Level Six, rolling into the corridor and off to the side in a blur. There was a long moment of silence.”Nick?” Mara whispered anxiously. “Nick, what’s going on?”

He reappeared in the opening, extending a hand to her. “All clear, but I warn you, it isn’t pretty.”

Apparently, not all the crew of the doomed liner had been as incompetent or as craven as their captain. Several corpses in SMT uniforms lay on the deck beside the nearest of the two jettison control panels. One man’s swollen, hideous hand clung eerily, stubbornly to the lever for activating the final stage of cryo pod unit release. The bodies were beginning to decompose, adding to the overall foulness of the atmosphere.

Mara choked off an exclamation of horror, hand over her mouth, trying not to be sick.”Blasted.” Nick stood close to one body, not touching it. “Shot in the back. I’d say this poor guy and the others were trying to do their duty, trying to save these passengers, and then Bonlors or someone working with him murdered them all.” He holstered his blaster. “I need to move this body so we can finish the job he started.”

“Do you need my help?” Mara asked, averting her eyes from the gruesome murder scene. “I’m willing to do whatever’s called for if it will get this mission over anymore quickly.”

“I’ll manage, no problem. Why don’t you take position at the other control, there by the corridor bend?” Nick pointed to a spot behind her, the other direction from the grav-tube access. “I’ll come show you the sequence in a minute, and then we’ll release the pod on my count.”

“Fine.” She located the controls, which were set chest high into the inner bulkhead. Green and amber lights flickered, interspersed with a few red. “Should we be concerned by red indicators? Are the passengers still alive in there?”

“Let me run a diagnostic,” he said over her shoulder, making her jump and swear. He’d moved so quietly she hadn’t noticed him.

“What’s the matter?” Nick asked.

She stretched, trying to loosen her muscles. Unwillingly, she took a deep breath. “I’m just tired.”

“It’s the bad air,” he told her. “Probably not enough oxygen content. Let me know if you feel faint.”

“Oh, I will,” she retorted. “And you do the same, all right?”

 
He gave her a sardonic smile, acknowledging her point. He was just as vulnerable to the bad air. “I had to reset the panel over there, because when the guy fell, he dragged the lever out of sequence. The whole thing was frame locked. We’re going to have to wait a few minutes while the programmed instructions cycle back to the ready state.”

“We what?” Mara was horrified at spending even extra seconds on the
Dream
. “Define ‘few’ for me?”

“About nine more, now.” Nick was apologetic. “Mara, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being scared, sick to my stomach – I’m sorry I’m not a damn Special Forces operator like you, or like Rafferty and Casey used to be. We’d probably be done and on our way to the
Dragon
by now if I was.”

“Hey,” he said softly, taking her in his arms, alarmed by her self-directed tirade. “It’s all right. You’re doing fine. You’re doing better than fine.” He tilted her chin up so he could see her deep-blue eyes.
 

Mara blinked, meeting his stare calmly. “If anything goes wrong, if anything happens to you because of me, because I screw this up –”

“We’re a team, a damn good team. I’d rather you hadn’t had to return to this nightmare with me, but honestly, there’s no one I’d rather have backing me up right now, okay? I mean it,” he said, giving her a tiny shake.
 

“Oh sure, you’d rather have scared, civilian me, than say Khevan, or Rafferty –”

Nick kissed her firmly. “We’re here, we’re going to get it done, we’re going to get it done together – believe in us. I do.”

“All right.” Finally, she nodded. “What do we have to do?”

Releasing her, he moved to the control panel, saying over his shoulder, “That’s more like it. I’m going to run a diagnostic now. You keep watch down the corridor. Any attack would likely come from the stairs, since we’re the only ones having use of the grav lifts. If there’s any trouble, you get in there and head for Level Nine.”

She glanced at the entrance. “And you?”

“I’ll be right behind, I promise.”

Entering his now-well-used Special Forces access code, Nick embarked on a series of rapid queries, each new answer from the AI leading him to input another question. Mara stood guard as asked, facing the stairs, flinching at the slightest noise. All around them, the
Nebula Dream
strained and groaned, her hull creaking as the unbalanced stresses she had never been designed to endure worked their damage. Nick felt the deck under his feet shifting occasionally, which was an unnerving sensation, to say the least. The adrenaline flow was making him twitchy.

“Well, not great, but not catastrophic,” was Nick’s eventual report. “Some cryo pods are out. Those passengers are dead. But there are over seven hundred sentients alive, which makes this trip worthwhile in my book.”

“Mine, too,” Mara assured him, answering the implicit question. “Are we ready to jettison?”

“Yes. I’ve told the AI to release all remaining lifeboats at the same time.” Nick swallowed hard, jaw clenched.

Mara said softly, “What?”

He shook his head. “The AI –”

“What about it?”

“The AI understands it’s going to die when the ship dies.” He gazed into her eyes. “It’s a registered sentient itself, you know.”

Hand to her mouth, Mara glanced at the blinking readouts and then at him, tears glistening in her eyes. “I never thought about the AI’s fate tonight, but on a ship like this, of course, it would have had to be at full consciousness – how awful.”

“It tried to make a joke, said it wished I’d let it show me the full list of amenities once, before they all got destroyed. But, it said, at least we played chess.” He closed his eyes for a second, leaning his head against the bulkhead, tired anger at all the unnecessary waste of life and sentience sweeping over him. “One more thing to chalk up against Bonlors and Yankuri. I hate their stinking guts. All I want is to be on Sector Hub when those two sail in, smug and full of lies.”
 

“We will be,” Mara assured him, rubbing her hand over the tense muscles of his back.

Shaking his head, Nick straightened up again, pushing off from the bulkhead, ready to get on with the plan.

“Okay, so the AI has the full picture and it will help us as much as possible. Let me show you the sequence for the jettison command.” Nick ran through it three times, before he felt confident Mara was ready. “I’m sorry,” he apologized as she bit back a sharp comment on his request for her to mimic the sequence yet again. “If we aren’t in exact synchronization, then we’ll get frame lock again. I’ll have to reset, we lose ten more minutes –”

“And we can’t afford any delays.” She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. So, it goes like this –”She ran her fingers a bare half inch above the console, “and then this, right?”

“Correct. You’re a quick learner.” Nick walked to the other control unit, about ten yards in the opposite direction.

“On my count, ready,” he said crisply, raising his hand. “Enter the first string of code on three. One, two, three!”

Mara’s fingers danced over the panel, pressing the correct symbols this time. At his console, Nick did the same set of entries. “And enter the second string – now! Pull the release lever NOW!”