Cargo (The Ascendants Book 1) Page 10

  “When he removed their capacity for love, they went haywire. They had nothing left in them but hate and rage and malice, aborted creatures allowed to live for ulterior purposes. All part of his plan.” He clenched his fists and spoke through a rigidly set jaw as he told of how the computer began to open the airlocks built into the base’s entrances and exits, killing anyone who happened to be there.

  Power surges and blown pipes killed many, as well. So did the base’s weapons defense parameters, which activated automated turrets and cannons that fired until the whole system went up in flames, until the flames rose through the air—because there was air on Neptune, then—and the cries of anguish were lost to the caverns beneath the surface. Ajax refused to look at Gustav during the speech, and as he directed his gaze toward the panoramic windows, she imagined tears brimming along his eyelashes, the pain of someone who was there.

  “You?” she asked. “You were there? Then you must be a hundred and sixty, at least!”

  “He is,” Ajax said, turning to Kasey, “and so am I. Together, the two of us, with the Commoner, are the Ascendancy, and we have done horrendous things. The weight of it all is more than you could imagine. It makes me wish the memory loss would set in faster.”

  Gustav interjected. “Don’t say that, brother. If it comes true, we’ll never find Neptune.” His attempt at humor was jarring and out of place after hearing such a tale, but Kasey thought that he needed to try, at least.

  “How could you do that? Why would you do that?” she began asking, forgetting about the sympathy she felt a moment before. “It’s downright barbaric.”

  “Save your moralizing for church, girl. We’re at war. We have been for over a century, and it’s not the kind of war you think it is,” Ajax roared. “Who gives a shit if a computer was manipulated?”

  As if on cue, the skeletal consciousness that was Patsy, until Kasey blew a few holes in the computer’s memory banks and mainframes, resumed speaking. Kasey felt its cold monotone acutely on her spine, its tingle making her want to shake, but fearing the computer would recognize and relish her discomfort. “There are rather large heat signals originating in the quadrant from which the inbound vessel approaches. The heat signals likely come from weaponry, though I cannot determine what model ship it is, nor what weapons it would have. Would you like me to send an SOS?”

  “No, Patsy, do not send an SOS,” Gustav said, looking directly at the speaker from which the computer’s voice originated.

  “Who is Patsy?”

  “Never mind, 9247. It does not concern you.”

  The computerized voice sank quite low as the communication faded, and Kasey had time to wonder whether or not it had said all it needed to say, or if it deliberately powered down before delivering a crucial piece of information. She dismissed the thought.

  They had reached the bridge. The same swooshing noise that brought Kasey into the dream world of the bridge’s high degree of technology sounded again, and for the second time, Kasey entered the bridge of the Age of Discovery. This time, she was not as impressed; the computers sat dusty and unused, and the whole floor plan of the area reminded her of a library, a place to deposit useless items, or the Old American world, where detritus piled in the streets until people couldn’t walk around it, and had to climb over instead.

  After all, Gustav pointed out, without the men or the computer power, these banks were junk, useless, nothing, unless one of them was capable of operating all of them simultaneously.

  “The inbound ship is keeping to its course. I suspect it plans on boarding us, Captain,” the computer said to Ajax, again making Kasey’s spine dance in her skin.

  Chapter 19

  Ajax sat at his console, Gustav at his, while Kasey and Llewellyn together attempted monitoring the deep space sonar readouts that would tell them how much time would expire before they were within targeting range of the other vessel. It all stressed Kasey out greatly, and Mantiss fidgeted with controls that he could scarcely understand.

  “I think this bleeping thing means something,” he said, attempting to convey a level of authority that he could not muster without having any knowledge of what he was actually doing.

  “Obviously it means something; it wouldn’t be there if it didn’t,” Kasey replied, trying to remember everything she failed to learn in navigational school. Remembering instead what Ajax said when he promoted her. Something like: Of course you failed, no one’s scores are good enough the first time.

  Now, as she sat in a plush chair, much nicer than her old bunk on the custodial residency deck, trying to decipher the arcane symbols flashing before her, she came to the realization that Ajax and Gustav could just as easily be total lunatics, that Mantiss could be dumber than she had ever imagined, and that she had gotten herself into this situation through what her grandfather would have called the “Lee family snooping instinct.”

  “Us Lees—or at least the rest of them besides me—have always been too intent on prying into other people’s business. Working for other people, listening to other people, everyone one of them. That’s why I farm, Kasey. That’s why I farm.”

  And every time he would say that, he would look at the sky as if the stars were his fields and the Milky Way his crop.

  Now, in the plush chair, if Corbin were here, Kasey would tell him that the far off look in his eye and the sense of wonder his fear of space elicited in her was what got her into this mess.

  “We need to work on evading them, Gus.”

  “With what engines? We have only our main thruster. We can barely turn, let alone maneuver.”

  “What else you got?”

  “Depth charges? We can release them laterally from our port aft armory and hope they don’t pay close enough attention.”

  “They’ll be looking. We’re hobbling and they know it.”

  And their banter went back and forth, more static in Kasey’s ears. Llewellyn had given up his authoritative lack of understanding and opted instead for fervent silence, rapidly shifting his eyes from the readouts, to the manual in his uninjured hand, to the expanse of stars on the other side of the paneled glass that made up what people in Bridge Command archaically called “the windshield.” He flipped pages with a speed that belied the calm of his eyes and the stern posture of his shoulders.

  He looks born for this, she thought as she stared at him, not knowing what to do, how to help. He looks like he would’ve made captain one day, like he belongs here. She hung her head and ran her hands through her scraggly, knotted hair.

  “The inbound vessel has crossed the armament threshold; I am unable to power the defense shields. Would you like me to send an SOS?” the computer asked, and Kasey wondered if it had any function at all.

  “Fuck off, Patsy,” Gustav screamed. “Get us out of here!”

  “Patsy, we need you to give more fuel to the peripheral thrusters. Try to lose the inbound vessel, Patsy. I repeat: lose the fucking vessel,” Ajax said, sensing Gustav’s frustration.

  “If I apply any pressure on the fuel rods for those engines, the navigational computing systems will shut down automatically and completely. If they shut down, I cannot guarantee that they will reboot without full power.”

  Through the windshield, Neptune grew, changing from a pin point of light in the myriad expanse to a noticeably larger, and noticeably bluer marble, suspended in a magic bag that went further than a magician’s arms would ever reach.

  “They have sent the bridge command a cease and desist order. Shall I comply? I can also send an SOS if you wish,” the computer said again, sending Gustav into a frenzied fit of screaming and carrying on, making him throw unspeakable insults at the computer. Ajax responded peremptorily, with one word. No.

  She felt useless. Never in her life had she had such a feeling, that of knowing there was nothing she could do to help anyone, that her final predicament was upon her and completely predetermined.

  “The approaching vessel is registered to MarsForm, Inc. as a star runner named
the Leviathan. It is requesting permission to dock. Shall I comply?”

  “Stavi, we need to drop those depth charges. It’s the only way,” Ajax said, and the words fell from his tongue with a growl that indicated to Kasey that her captain feared for his life.

  Gustav did not reply to Ajax, but instead barked at the computer’s ambient presence. “Patsy, we need you to deploy the charges. Stuff the navigation.”

  The screen before Kasey’s face went black, and the hum of the engines that always hung in the background of a space traveler’s life sputtered and hiccuped, coughed like a smoker hacking out phlegm, like Ajax clearing his ancient throat before a thank you speech. A thud sounded in the recesses of the ship. Ajax pumped the air and slammed his fist on the table before him, exultant. Gustav sat in silence, knowing that the depth charges were not a guarantee.

  They waited. Kasey did not know what she waited for, and she guessed that Llewellyn did not either. Most likely, they waited for some reaction or sign from the two centenarians that would let them know whether or not they were about to die. Kasey felt only relief, languishing in the black screen that did not flash indecipherable data at her, demanding understanding and exacting brutal fees for failure.

  The absence of responsibility allowed her to relax, to enjoy her final moments, if that was the way it would happen. She tried to imagine the heat of a laser cannon slicing through her chest, the instant of recognition that must come to all gun shot victims, when they realize that today is like any other day, and every thing is normal, and the only thing that is different is the fact that today is the day you get shot in the chest and bleed to death on a street, in a hallway of the Annex, on the bridge of a stolen freighter with a group of lunatics for company.

  She tried to put herself in the shoes of a soldier, a fighter of civil war, sent to the Jovian front to fight the Ascendency, dying in an explosion on board a personnel freighter before passing Mars.

  What are you supposed to think when you face death, powerless, unconcerned?

  “Yes!” Ajax screamed, breaking Kasey’s reverie. A depth charge found its mark.

  “It won’t be enough, Jax. We need more.”

  “I am truly sorry to interrupt, but I don’t think I can expend the energy that would be required to fulfill your wishes.”

  “God damn, Patsy. Just do it. Shut down whatever you need to, and drop as many depths charges as you can,” Ajax said, trying to remain calm after his exultancy wore off.

  “If I am to comply, I would need to shut down all of the Age of Discovery’s shields, as well as four out of five fuel rods for the main thruster.”

  Gustav and Ajax exchanged a look that Kasey did not like, before Gustav resumed giving the computer orders and derision. “Just drop the charges, computer. And prepare the docking station.”

  “Are you mad?” Ajax screamed. “We can’t let them board. They’ll shoot us before thinking about it.”

  “What else are we going to do? You know the depth charges aren’t going to stop them.”

  “If we slow them down we can outmaneuver them. I can do it.” Ajax’s temples pounded as he screamed, and even from where she stood at her defunct computer station, Kasey could see the veins beginning to stand out firmly against the pale backdrop of his forehead.

  “It’s not about you, Jax. It is about getting Charybdis to Neptune. Getting yourself killed won’t make that any easier. If we let a boarding party on, we can try to detach from their ship and break for it. It’ll work better than shooting firecrackers at them.”

  As Gustav’s logic bored its way into Ajax’s brain, his frame began to tremble and he leaned over, clutching his desk and looking small behind its vast surface. His shoulders rose and fell with the colossal inhalations of his nervous energy. He seemed on the verge of hyperventilation, and Kasey thought the man was suffering from an apoplexy as he stood there with his lip twitching and his breathing proceeding at the same steady march.

  “And if it doesn’t?” Ajax leveled his gaze directly at Gustav, as if accusing him of a heinous crime.

  “If it doesn’t, then we are all cooked. All of us. Not just the four of us.”

  The four of them stood in silence, impotent as the computer told them that the enemy vessel drew closer, closer still, so close that its gravitational field generators began to slow the movement of the Age of Discovery until it drew to a halt, stopped in space and suspended in the pull of a smaller vessel.

  Through the windshield, Neptune hung in the black of space, tantalizing, appearing close to Kasey even though she knew the distance between the ocean planet and her spanned miles, hours of traveling.

  “The Leviathan is engaging our docking portal. Their emissaries should be on board within thirty minutes,” the computer said, its voice hollow and bereft of any hint that it understood the meaning of its words.

  Kasey’s palms sweat, and she rocked back and forth, feeling the heat of pain every time she drifted too far to her right side. She needed the pain, needed it to remind that those who stormed the bridge were going to be armed with weaponry more powerful than a rusty metal panel, or even a local cauterizing pen. She swallowed, though there was nothing in her throat.

  Ajax and Gustav and Llewellyn frantically tried to create a plan, to think of some way that they would be able to leave the bridge of the Age of Discovery alive. “We can use the armory,” Ajax reminded them.

  “But I thought deep space freighters were unarmed by law,” Llewellyn said. “You were running guns, too?”

  “Never, boy. Not running. I just like to have them close by in case anything goes wrong. I’ve never had the occasion to use my armory until now, so, if you don’t mind, I think we should all convene in my cabin.” He pointed with his arm extended perfectly straight at the door that led to his inner sanctum, his dining hall, where Kasey tasted chicken for the first time in her adult life.

  “Jax, they’re going to have more guns than we can handle. These two probably couldn’t even work one.”

  “We know she can.”

  Kasey felt the heat of indignation rise to her temples again, boiling under the pressure of Gustav’s derisive stare. “Yes, I can use one, and if I didn’t know how, I’d be dead right now,” she said, knowing that the words were ineffectual, powerless. Knowing that without Patsy to power the ship, she would likely be dead in an hour anyway. She thought of Corbin, wondering about his safety, what he would say to her if he was on the bridge with them.

  Ajax, who dug through piles of boxes and filing cabinets and reams of paper with no useful information printed upon them, found what he was looking for. He pushed a button, pulled a lever, and a hydraulic pump sounded somewhere in the walls. A section of the metal paneling receded, revealing a rack of assault weapons.

  Kasey had never seen such technology in her life. She and Mantiss stared with wide-eyed fascination at the arsenal before them. Sleek metal barrels and scopes and pistol grips, bullet cartridges and canisters that she could even imagine using, various grenades, armor that would stop a laser. The entire cavity revealed by the sliding wall panel in Ajax’s cabin was packed with firepower, and despite the chagrin with which Kasey thought about fighting for him and the German, she looked forward to feeling the heat of a rifle’s discharge, the triumph of watching her target fall in a pile, dead.

  “Ah, she looks excited. What about you, boy?” Ajax asked. “You look a little queasy. Have you never shot a gun before?” He patted Llewellyn on the back, as if to say that it would all be over shortly, like getting a tooth vaporized. “Anyway, it’s simple. You point it, and you shoot it, and you don’t stop until everyone’s dead or the damned thing melts to your hands. Got it?”

  “I—I’m a mechanic. I don’t think—”

  Gustav stepped forward and slapped Mantiss hard in the face, making Kasey wonder how many people have felt those gnarled knuckles on their cheekbones. “You ceased being a mechanic when you decided to go snooping. Now you are part of a pirate crew being boarded by authoriti
es, and I’ll shoot you where you stand if you keep stammering like a child.” His voice remained monotone, comfortable with threats and familiar with the efficacy of violence. He arched his shoulders forward, gaining the appearance of a buzzard hunched and lurching over a carcass before a lonely surface man kills it with a well-thrown spear or rock or arrow. Mantiss cowered before Gustav, inspiring pity in Kasey, rather than disgust.

  She herself had not yet shot a human being. Her stomach turned as the computer’s droning filled the bridge again. “The docking process is complete. Airlock initiation commencing.”

  “Would you give the boy a break, Stavi? You don’t expect him to kill anybody after you’ve ripped his heart out of it.” Ajax turned to Mantiss, standing there in a daze as the imminence of the battle settled on his heart. “The main thing, kid. The main thing is to not look at their faces.”

  As the words came from his lips, he hung his head in affirmation of the weight the action came with, seeming old even to himself.

  “It isn’t easy, and it doesn’t get easier,” he offered Mantiss, and abruptly turned, yelling commands at the three of them.

  Kasey and Gustav followed, leaving the mechanic standing alone with his face bathed in the shining aura of his weapon’s canister. As she passed, Kasey rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “We may as well.” She felt stupid as she walked away from him, not waiting for a response and damning herself for her inability to come up with anything better than We may as well.

  As Ajax’s orders echoed off the walls, the computer—no longer Patsy—informed them in a calm and respectable manner that the airlocks were secure and the boarders had entered the Age of Discovery’s foyer.

  Chapter 20

  They had to order the computer to shut down the lighting along the bridge, and when they further commanded it to kill the red emergencies that automatically powered on as the white floros burnt out, the computer responded that a manual override would be necessary. The desks and useless computer banks were shuffled around rapidly to create a sort of labyrinth—a disorienting set of turns that would hopefully confuse the intruders and funnel them into the killing floor that Ajax had set up on the other side of the computer stations.