Adrift

Adrift

By Lyn Lowe

Copyright 2014 Lyn Lowe. All rights reserved.

http://rokvor.squarespace.com

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Cover Illustration by Bobby
Esckelson with an
element of the design based upon a photo provided by Marcus Ranum. For more of Bobby’s work visit his Etsy shop, Apartment22Art.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Apartment22Art

For my Uncle Tom

Who pushed me just enough

And reminded me to pay attention to the little things.

Any time someone reads my stories, it’s because of you.

Alone

The metal beneath Kivi’s fingers was warmer than she expected. There were machines here, instead of people.
She thought she’d come to get away from the press of bodies that filled every bit of the community spaces. But now that she saw them she knew it was for those machines. They were calling to her, singing a song of clunks and whirs. She wanted to go in and run her fingers over all the moving parts, to sort out how they fit together and what made them go. She just couldn’t get her feet to take her any further than the doorway.

She kept hearing the captain’s voice in her head.
Everyone said Captain Jay was a nice man. Maybe he was. Kivi didn’t know him very well; she didn’t know anyone very well. But she did remember the speech he liked to give once a year, all about how they were never, ever to go into the cockpit or the engine room. Those places were only for the trained crew, those special people who had a purpose. The engine was their life. It was delicate and someone who wasn’t trained, someone without purpose like her, could break it without even trying. Then they would all die out in the black. If they found her here, even just in the doorway, they would think she was going to do something that would kill them all. Then they would take her to Captain Jay and he would lock her away.

If Kivi was half as smart as her parents liked to say, she would turn around and walk right out. She could still make it back
to the mess hall or her family’s rooms without anyone noticing. She’d planned to do exactly that, to grab her minute of time alone and then slip back in with the crowd that pulsed through the ship like its blood. She just wanted ten seconds to draw in one deep breath that didn’t taste like everyone she knew. But that was before she heard the engine calling to her. Now she was stuck. She couldn’t go further in, but she couldn’t walk away either.

“Food in ten.” The crackle of the intercom made her jump. It didn’t matter how
many times she heard it, the voice coming out of the metal boxes hung at regular intervals throughout the ship always startled her. She knew it was Father Andrei – he was always the one who announced meals – but it didn’t sound anything like the man who gave sermons every seventh day. She’d tinkered with the speaker in her family’s room so many times that she dreamed about the feel of each part, but there was no way to make it sound like a person.

Ten minutes was all she had. After that, people would notice that she didn’t come through the mess. Her family would notice that she didn’t bring her food back the way she always did. Someone, probably He
ath, would ask where she was and then her parents would decide to look for her. Their neighbors would help, and in just a few minutes everyone would join in. It wouldn’t take long to figure out that she wasn’t in the places she was allowed to be. If she moved now, she would lose her chance. It took her ten years to work up the courage to get this far. In another ten she’d be on the planet, working with plants animals instead of machines.

Kivi took three deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, then crossed the room
. She pressed her hand flat against the warm, shaking metal. Her heart hammered in her ears so loud it was all she could hear. Her whole body shook as she slid her fingers over the casing, only stopping when they reached the seam. She traced it, slid her nails underneath, and slowly pried it up.

The inside was beautiful. The great spinning engine housed a golden glow brighter than anything she’d ever seen. It was a sun.

The floor lurched. Kivi gasped and scrambled for balance. As her hands wrapped around the edges of the hole she’d opened, the engine clanked. She felt the vibration all the way through her teeth. The room moved without her again, tilting until she lost her grip and flew backward. She hit the wall hard and dropped to the floor.

There was a boom from somewhere far above her. Kivi had just enough time to imagine the hull plating
breaking loose and drifting off into the black. Then the alarm started blaring and the room flashed red. She heard screaming. She scrambled behind the engine block and wrapped her arms around the thick steel legs that held it in place. Twice more, the room rocked. She kept her hold on the engine, but didn’t dare try to stand again. There was screaming. A lot of screaming and pounding like everyone on the ship was running past the door.

Kivi kept waiting for someone to come in and see what she’d done. She’d broken the engine. It was running so much slower than it h
ad been when she opened the hatch. She could feel difference in the shaking metal beneath her right cheek. She should’ve listened to Captain Jay. Now she’d broken the ship and they would all die. She wouldn’t just be locked away. They’d have to come up with something even worse for her, the girl who killed them all because she was too curious. No one came, though. Not until all the screaming stopped.

As soon as she heard the hiss of the
hydraulics, Kivi let go of the leg and slid around until she was completely hidden. It was stupid. The Lucy was a small ship, and they would find her fast. Everyone knew she liked to tinker. Heath was always getting into her stuff and had surely found the sketches she’d made of every engine she could find information about. The ship was filled with smart people, and there were only two places she could hide. They wouldn’t be fooled by her scrunching herself up in a corner. Still, she couldn’t help trying.

Heavy boots clanked
against the metal floor. Captain Jay was the only one on the ship who wore boots. Everyone else had the soft slippers she had on, so that the ship wouldn’t be constantly ringing with the sound of a little less than a hundred people walking around. Their boots and shoes were being saved for when they touched down at their new home. Kivi had her own pair that her parents had picked out for her in the bottom of their storage trunk. She tried them on every year on her birthday. They were way too big. But the captain wore his all the time, just like he wore his uniform all the time. He was not one of the families, he was their commander and he made sure they all knew it. If he was the one looking for her, then she was in the worst sort of trouble.

Kivi didn’t know what the punishment was for breaking an engine and leaving an entire colony ship stranded and dying slow, but she knew it was bad. Worse than being locked in room by herself until they got to the planet. She hugged her knees tighter against
her chest and bit her bottom lip to keep from crying. The bolts that held the engine to the floor pressed into her skin painfully, but she didn’t dare to move. He was going to find her anyway, but she if she held really still maybe she’d be safe for a few minutes longer.

“Not bad.”

She didn’t know the voice. Kivi’s heart stopped. Everyone aboard the ship had stepped on to the Lucy twelve years ago, when it launched from Earth. There were twenty families and the captain, for a total of eighty-three. After so long a time stuck together in five communal spaces, they were all family. There were no strangers.

She heard a second pair of boots. They were both walking toward the engine. They hovered over it, so close she thought she could hear them breathing. It didn’t sound right
, like she was listening to the intercom instead of two people. She should look, figure out what was going on, but she couldn’t move.

“See this? This is the Isen G-4. They don’t make them like this anymore. With just a little bit of work, this thing will keep going long after the ship falls apart around it.”
The second man’s voice was just as distorted. Kivi could barely make out the words over the alarm that was still blaring. She flinched at the sound of him patting the engine. “Let’s go tell the man. We’ve got a keeper.”

She heard what sounded like a laugh, then both pairs of boots wal
king away from her. The door opened with that familiar hiss of pressurized air, then clunked closed again. Kivi drew in a deep breath in relief and loosened her grip on her legs. She shifted away from the bolts and even dared to brush her blonde hair out of her eyes. The strangers might return at any second, and she’d found a spot that kept her hidden. Kivi wasn’t ready to give that up.

Not until the red light and the alarm
shut off. She stood up slowly, not sure if she should trust the sudden silence. She knew that only Captain Jay had the key to shut off the alarm, so he must have decided the threat was over. But she couldn’t understand how there could be strangers on the Lucy, and couldn’t imagine any scenario where Captain Jay wouldn’t make some kind of announcement about it after turning off the alarm. Kivi shifted on the balls of her feet, trying to decide if she dared to leave the room and find out what was going on.

Then, with a tremendous shudder, the engine stopped making the comforting hum. A small screech burst out of Kivi's lips and she flew back to the panel she'd pried open. Her eyes sting with tears as she stared into the motionless blackness where the Sun was supposed to be. The engine, the magnificent machine that powered absolutely everything in the Lucy, was dead. Her fingers trembled as they hovered over the machinery that held all of their lives.

The lights clicked off. A second later, a small strip of light blue began to glow. Kivi stared at it without comprehension for several moments before she realized it was meant to help people find their way out of the room if the engine ever went dead. For times like these. They lit up the engine too, even more than they did the door. She wondered what powered the tiny line of color, for everything else in her world drew power from that one source. It didn’t seem possible that something could operate without it.

Kivi picked at her fingernail, not knowing what to do. The engine needed to be working. She knew that. But she couldn’t touch it again. She’d already broken it, she wouldn’t dare make things worse. She wanted to go get her papa. He wasn’t crew, but he was smart and could tell her what to do. Getting papa meant going out of the room, though. That was where the strangers were, and Captain Jay with his key for the alarm and his boots. What if the punishment for what she did was to space her? She’d heard stories. The other kids liked to tell stories. Not to her. No one talked to her much. But that didn’t stop her from hearing the ones they told each other.
Criminals on military ships were put in airlocks, then sucked out into space.

She couldn’t stay here. The engine was dead.
If the engine didn’t run, life support didn’t work. They were drifting in the black, just like any one of those bodies, just waiting for that last gasp of air. She needed to tell her papa and maybe even Captain Jay what she did, so that they could fix it. Kivi couldn’t hide here until the blue strips went dead. They she would never be able to find her way out, and no one else would be able to see enough to repair whatever she’d broken. She didn’t want to die, but if she just stood here that would happen anyway.

With another of her deep breaths, Kivi crossed the room once again. The
hydraulics didn’t kick in as she reached the door. It took her a moment to realize why. All the power came from the engine. If it wasn’t running, it wasn’t just life support that was shut down. Nothing that required power would be operational, except the strange blue light. She fumbled around for the latch that was on all doors and pulled as hard as she could. It was heavier than she expected, and she couldn’t get it open all the way. Luckily, she didn’t need much. Once she had it open a crack, she slipped out.

The corridor was
even darker than the engine room. The blue line continued on in the direction of the mess hall, but only on the right side. Its cool glow wasn’t enough to banish the blackness, but it was something to follow. So that was what she did, pressing her hand against the small indentation in the wall that she’d never noticed before.

“Hello?”

The Lucy was always noisy. Even after lights-out, there was a hum of sounds that was almost like a lullaby. She’d wanted to get away from it for as long as she could remember, but the silence was worse.

“Is someone there?”

For a time she thought that everyone had disappeared. She went to the mess, looking for any sign of life. They hadn’t disappeared at all. The light did as little in this room as it did in the corridor. Even with a second strip on the left wall, the large room was little more than a collection of shadows and distorted shapes. But she saw the piles right away.

She jerked her hand away from the wall, shifting until she was in the center of the room and then folding her arms tightly across her chest. Kivi fought to get her ragged breathing under control as she refused to look at the bodies heaped up near the walls like garbage. She refused to look closely, refused to scan the faces of the people she’d known all her life. She wouldn’t look for her papa or momma or Heath. She wouldn’t notice Father
Andrei by the door to the kitchen. She backed up slowly, bumping up against the door she’d opened to get inside, staring blankly at the floor.

The moment she was out, Kivi started running for the sleeping quarters. She didn’t think about what she’d seen or what it meant, and she didn’t call out anymore. She just ran, knowing that she would get to her family’s room
s and that her little brother would be sitting on his bed and eating his dinner. He’d roll his eyes and call her a freak. Then her momma and papa would tell them to be nice to each other. She could tell her papa about the engine, and he would fix it. Then everything would be okay again, and the mess wouldn’t be filled with piles of death.

She tripped on the circular stairs that would take her down to the habitat deck. She tumbled down, colliding with hard metal edges each time she rolled. Twice, she hit her head before she lost her grip on consciousness.