Chosen (HMCS Borealis Book 2) (33 page)

He didn't know.
 
He was breathing heavily, trying not to panic, and the erratic movement of stars and the station outside the window made his stomach twist.
 
There was no way to process everything that was happening.
 
Days' worth of terror had unfolded in minutes, and he was working through a backlog of events that he couldn't yet remember.
 
"Where do we go?" he repeated, trying to find a solution.
 
"Away?"

"Yeah," said Heather, her back to him, both hands pulling awkwardly at the control stick as the ship's tumbling began to smooth out.
 
"Away."

Elan bent his knees and let himself slump down to the deck behind the pilot's seat, mere steps from the raised ramp and space beyond.
 
He looked at the opened access panels on the hull across from him, bare circuitry visible under blank displays.
 
"This ship was being repaired," he said out loud.
 
"What were they repairing?"

The air in the landing bay was hard to breathe, filled with acrid black smoke.
 
Dillon picked his way across the smashed deck, around bent plates, scattered debris and gaping holes that led to flame-lit wreckage on levels below.
 
There were bodies among the debris; some alive, most not.
 

Those who could leave the landing deck had already done so, either by ship or by crawling through one of the holes in the plating that led to the lower levels.
 
Battered bodies were scattered on the deck, and heaped awkwardly amidst the debris of ships and their cargoes.

The
Borealis's
shuttle was a short distance ahead, shifted a few feet from where they'd parked it.
 
As he approached, there was a loud engine wail overhead as another, smaller ship lifted off from the far end of the docking bay.

Lee was running toward him, giving a quick salute as he approached.
 
Behind Lee, a bandaged Amoroso was mercilessly kicking at the shuttle's side hatch, the clanging echoing above the sounds of bending metal, escaping gasses, and people yelling.

"Lee?" shouted Dillon.
 
"Everyone good?"

"Sir," said the petty officer, loud enough to be heard, falling into step beside Dillon.
 
"We got off light.
 
Amoroso took a ricochet to the head; bled like mad until we found the skin glue.
 
No other injuries.
 
The shuttle took a half dozen whacks from debris:
 
one engine won't start, half the landing gear is busted, and the side doors won't close.
 
It's a damn good thing we weren't in the back.
 
You two good, sir?"

Dillon nodded.
 
He wasn't sure if 'good' was the word he would use.
 
On their way up from the Greenhouse level, the station had given an abrupt lurch, then continued shuddering as more impacts echoed.
 
When the lights went out, there had been pandemonium.
 
The sounds of squealing metal, rupturing plumbing, and countless screams had filled the dark.
 
Even after turning on the lights on his suit — and with Amba producing a small flashlight — it hadn't helped.
 
Just brief glimpses of panicked faces, shoving people and maze-like passageways.
 
A burned victim staggering down from above had told them what happened, and showed them a route up to the landing bay.
 
"Yeah, Lee.
 
We're good.
 
Came up through a hatch over there."
 
He pointed to Lee's wrist-mounted datapad.
 
"Can you get the
Borealis
?
 
My comms aren't working."

"Aye, sir.
 
The XO is up to date.
 
I'll tell her that I've found you and the Tassali."

"Did you see the two kids?"

Lee shook his head.
 
"No, sir.
 
Amoroso and I stood next to the Bezod ship until it left.
 
No sign of 'em."

A loud clanging noise jolted his attention back to the shuttle.
 
Amoroso, stained red bandages wound around his head, was taking wide, powerful swings at the shuttle's hatch with a heavy length of steel beam.
 
Again and again, he brought the beam against the door, while the pilot pulled on the hatch's seam.

"Holy hell," said Dillon.
 
He was pretty sure that wasn't standard maintenance procedure.
 
Or proper damage-control procedure either.

Lee made a face.
 
"Desperation-driven engineering, sir.
 
Amoroso's nervous that the station's magnetic fields will crap out."

Dillon glanced up at the flickering blue light that stretched across the landing bay's border with space.
 
"Will they?"

"Nah," said Lee.
 
"It's got five fields, sir.
 
Four were working when we got here, now there's three, and one of them is failing.
 
So they've still got two.
 
It'll be fine, but the flickering is making Amoroso nervous as hell."

"Very well," sighed Dillon.
 
"Ask
Borealis
to send Shuttle Two down here.
 
And update New Halifax on what's going on.
 
And," he said, pointing one finger toward Lee, "find those damn kids.
 
Every ship in the system is going to screw off now.
 
We need to know if they're on one of them."

"Aye aye, sir," said Lee, stepping away and raising his wrist terminal to his face.

A touch on Dillon's arm turned him around to see Amba standing next to him.
 
She had a slack expression on her face, her eyes dull and heavy.
 
His attention focused on her hands, which she slowly wrung together.
 
"Captain," she said quietly, her voice flat.

"Amba?" said Dillon, leaning toward her downturned face.
 
"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, her shoulders slumping as she sighed.
 
"With the blast doors closed, help is slow in arriving.
 
I went to find survivors, to give aid where I could."

"I saw you," he said.
 
"I should've done the same but there's no time—"

"Captain," she interrupted, her eyes briefly meeting his.
 
"They didn't want my help.
 
They didn't want a Palani touching them."
 
She looked back into his eyes.
 
"A man — I could have stopped his bleeding easily — told me he'd rather die than accept my help.
 
He said he hated me."

Dillon's mouth opened, but he couldn't think of what to say.
 
Was this how far they'd fallen?
 
The media's steady diet of suspicion and fear — had it led to this?
 
She wasn't even a Palani, really.
 
She was an exile, her government having once wanted her dead.
 
But people didn't see that.

"Human and Palani," he said quietly, holding eye contact with her.
 
"Both races.
 
Some of them are idiots.
 
I'm sorry—"

"Sir!" said Lee, approaching them.
 
"Message from
Borealis
.
 
Unusual contacts spotted among the departing ships:
 
one ship is chasing another.
 
Chief Black says that based on their flying, the pilot of the ship being chased has no idea what they're doing."

"That must be them," said Dillon.
 
"Have
Borealis
hail them both.
 
Try to get them to stop."
 
He pointed a finger at Lee.
 
"Screw the second shuttle.
 
Is everyone's suit vacuum-safe?
 
We'll ride up in what's left of this one."

"Aye aye, sir.
 
I'll get the duct tape, sir."

Elan was mystified by the English language.
 
It was the dominant language among the humans, and had become the adopted language of trade for the galaxy.
 
But that was only because all the galaxy's major races were physically able to create the sounds.
 
It certainly wasn't because English made any particular sense.
 
Even as Earth languages went, it was strange.
 
But it was universal, and so he had learned to speak it.
 
He prided himself on his proficiency in it.

But he hadn't mastered reading or writing it.
 
That had turned out to be an entirely more daunting challenge.
 
Words never seemed to match their spellings, and there was very little in the way of consistency.
 
He'd counted six different ways to pronounce the word ending '
ough'
in words like
trough
and
through
, which was to say nothing of the human fondness for jargon, and the obsession with abbreviations and initials.

Sitting on his haunches he fidgeted and frowned at the display in front of him.
 
"What does LNDS mean?"

"No idea," came Heather's voice from the pilot's seat.

Elan was sitting immediately behind her seat, in the shadow of the chair.
 
He didn't want to see past her, out the window where the stars would still be spinning madly as Heather tried to steer the ship.
 
It had started to make his stomach churn, and even though she was improving — and the ship's inertial-dampening field was lessening the severity of the spinning — he still felt unwell.
 
His left hand was clinging to the grab bar next to the display, his right hand reaching up to press the button marked LNDS.

"Oh," he said.
 
A small shape appeared in the middle of the display, roughly the shape of their ship.
 
Surrounding it were concentric circles, and to the left of the screen was a torus-shaped representation of the space station, with dozens of small triangles fleeing it in all directions.
 
Each triangle was accompanied on its voyage across the screen by its own clutter of incomprehensible letters and numbers.
 
"I can see the other ships," he said, somewhat pleased with himself.

"Great," said Heather.
 
"I've almost got the hang of this whole 'flying' thing.
 
I mean, we're practically going in a straight line."

Elan leaned forward on his haunches, peering around the edge of the pilot's seat.
 
Past Heather's arm, he could see the pilot's wide console, and the expanse of windows filled with stars.
 
They wavered slightly in response to Heather's arm movements, but the mad gyrations had ceased.
 
Still, his stomach remained unconvinced.

Heather turned her head to the left, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
 
The stars out the window began to slide in the opposite direction.
 
"How are you, Elan?"

He couldn't lie.
 
"I feel like I might be sick," he said.

"I know, right?" she said, looking back out the window.
 
The ship started to straighten out.
 
"I think… I mean, there's just so much…"
 
She went silent as she fought with the ship's controls.

Elan nodded, though she couldn't see it.
 
He knew what she meant, although it wasn't what he had been talking about.
 
"We've been running in a panic for the past hour," he said to the back of her seat.
 
"I need time to sit and think about what to do, but we haven't had any time.
 
I suppose I will have to fall apart later, when we have a few quiet hours."

"Is anyone following us?" asked Heather.

He turned back to the display.
 
More than twenty ships were departing the station; there were a few that were headed roughly in their direction, but it was hard to say for sure.
 
"I don't know," he said.
 
"I don't know how to read this thing."

"Can it tell us who they are?" she asked.
 
"Maybe one of them is friendly?"

"Well…" said Elan, not finishing the thought.
 
One of the small triangles behind them did seem to be steering in their direction.
 
Another, slower one had started to turn, and might be doing the same.
 
He reached up and poked at the small triangle that was slowly approaching.
 
"What's a DBOL?" he asked.

"No idea."

Elan made a face at the screen.
 
The letters DB OL had appeared when he touched the screen.
 
He poked at the new letters.
 
"Oh," he said.
 
"Database offline."
 
So, he thought, no way to tell who was who.
 
"That one is definitely following us," he said, pointing at the triangle on the screen.

"Is it getting closer?"

He watched the screen for a few moments, counting in his head
 
"I think so.
 
About one little circle every few seconds.
 
And there's someone chasing them too, but they're slower.
 
Or maybe they're together.
 
I don't know."

"On the screen, are any of them marked 'good guys'?"

"Sorry, no," said Elan.
 
He stared at the rows of buttons, trying to imagine what the abbreviations meant.
 
Each time he tapped at a button, a newer, more indecipherable screen was displayed, with a different set of abbreviation-bearing buttons.
 
It was like playing a puzzle invented by some sadistic genius, with no right answers and a trail of frustration that deepened with each button pressed.
 
He was glad it was him trying this and not Heather; she would have been furious by now, sputtering in frustration and quite possibly starting to smash things.