Lightless (3 page)

“Go,” Ivanov said, and Althea watched Gale hesitate, looking up the hall to where he must have known pursuit would come. “Go,” Ivanov urged when Gale still knelt there and looked in at him, and Althea felt a curious uncomfortable churning in her gut.

Domitian and Gagnon would catch Gale soon, she told herself, but somehow that did not help the churning, which felt almost like the beginnings of guilt.

Finally Gale seemed to decide.

“This is for Europa, Scheherazade,” he said, and let the food slot cover fall, clanging shut. Then he rose to his feet and started to run just as Gagnon and Domitian came into sight, still far distant.

In his cell, Ivanov leaned his head against the door across from where Gale had been, and Althea closed that window and instead focused on following Gale as he ran down, down, down to the very base of the ship's spine. She watched him pull up short at the downward curve of the ceiling that terminated the hall, looking around as if for some way out. Farther up the hall, still quite distant, Domitian and Gagnon still pursued. Gale had nowhere to go.

All throughout the
Ananke
there were computer interfaces in the hallway, separated by about thirty feet. Such frequent access to the computer was necessary in a ship so large with a crew so small, but it meant that there was a way to access the computer at any point on the ship, including at its very base.

Matthew Gale bent over the computer terminal nearest to him and began to type.

“What?” Althea said aloud, and rose to her feet without anywhere to go. “No, no, no,” she muttered, and looked to see where Domitian and Gagnon were—they were there, they were running, they were getting closer but weren't close enough yet—and then back at Gale, who was frowning with concentration and still typing. If Althea could connect to the specific interface he was working from, she could try to stop whatever he was doing, but first she would have to find out which one it was. The interfaces weren't numbered in order, and she'd have to force access; he'd probably stop her, but if she could just delay him from doing anything, Domitian and Gagnon could catch up to him and stop him—

Before she could do anything, every screen in front of her—the hundred video feeds, her connection to
Ananke
's bowels, the still-open files on Gale and Ivanov—went black and still, dead with the lights, leaving Althea blind in the dark.

When the
Ananke
came back online a few minutes later, the lights flaring on with a suddenness that nearly blinded Althea again, she knew that something was wrong in the computer.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she muttered as the screen brightened slowly and the videos from the cameras blinked on and off, black spaces in the grid of video. “Come on, Ananke.”

The screen glowed featureless, white.

There was a screen in the corner of the room that played System official news at all hours of the day. It could not be turned off, but Althea had long since muted it, finding that it interfered with her concentration. Even when it was muted, subtitles streamed across the bottom of the screen endlessly.

Now, jolted by the sudden shutdown and restart of the ship's systems, the screen blared to life.

“Twelve insurgents were caught this morning in a residential home on Triton,” said a beautiful woman with emotionless eyes and a crisp Terran accent; the volume was too high, and her voice slammed into Althea's head like a physical blow.

“God
damn
it,” said Althea, and briefly abandoned her post to dash the few steps across the room and lunge for the mute button.

“Surveillance in their residence recorded discussion of treasonous sympathies,” said the screen.

“Althea!” It was Domitian's voice on the intercom.

“I'm
coming,
” said Althea, though she knew he could not hear her, and punched the mute on the news just as the newscaster said, “Interrogation commences in—”

Althea spun back around to the interface by the camera screens and hit the intercom. “Did you get him? What did he do?”

“He's not here,” Domitian said, and Althea looked up at the grid of videos, which was studded with empty places where the
Ananke
should have been receiving signals from cameras and wasn't. One of the few visible displays showed the base of the ship's spine, where Althea had seen Gale last, bent over her machine; now Domitian and Gagnon stood a few paces apart in an empty hallway.

“That isn't possible,” said Althea. There were no rooms that far down in the ship, no doors for him to hide behind. The hallway did not continue on or loop around itself; it simply ended.

In the video, Althea watched Gagnon spread his arms out and look up at the camera, demonstrating the emptiness of the hallway for her benefit.

The computer screens sizzled with static again, went black, then sharply turned back on.

“Gagnon, what does the screen on the terminal down there say?” Althea demanded. The interface Gale had used had to show some sign of what he'd done.

“Gale is our priority right now,” said Domitian. “Althea, are there any other ways to leave the base of the ship or places to hide?”

She hardly listened to him. The screen before her kept flickering like murmurs in a heart. “He's done something to the computer,” she said. “It's bad; I need to fix it.”

“He didn't have enough time to do anything,” Gagnon said.

“I'm coming down there,” Althea said, and ignored Domitian's immediate “Althea, stay there!” as she left the control room, locked the door behind herself, and started running down the
Ananke
's hallway.

She passed Gagnon halfway down.

“Domitian's pissed,” he warned as he passed her. It was all he had time to say; Althea did not slow down. Doubtless Gagnon had been sent to take the position she'd abandoned.

If something happened to the ship because Althea had not been fast enough to care for the computer, they would all be in trouble. She did not slow down.

Domitian was waiting for her when she arrived, his gun out, his expression black. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded as she ran past him to kneel in front of the machine. “Disobeying a direct order?”

“There's something wrong with the ship!”

“I don't care; you obey!” Domitian roared, and Althea flinched. The screen before her showed nothing but the smooth blankness of an empty workspace; Gale had covered his tracks.

“What if Gale had gotten to the control room and found it empty?” Domitian demanded.

“He couldn't have,” said Althea. “There's no way…”

“He's not here right now,” said Domitian. “Until we know how he could have escaped, we have to assume he could be anywhere on board this ship. Leave the computer and think. Are there any other ways out of here?”

“There's the hallway,” Althea said, still kneeling in front of the machine but leaving it alone for the moment.

“Gagnon and I were in the hallway. What else?”

She tried to think past her immediate knee-jerk reaction that there was no way out. “There's the hatch to the core.”

She turned to look at it, a heavy hatch near the extreme end of the hallway, set into the floor. Althea could see that it was still locked from the outside.

“What else?” Domitian asked.

“I don't know—”

Domitian walked past her to the hatch and, still with his gun in his hand, undid the latches sealing the hatch shut and gripped the handle. With a grunt of exertion—the gravity this far down made the hatch very heavy—he lifted the hatch and looked down. Althea walked over to stand behind him and look over his shoulder.

Right below them both, trying to pull them down, was the
Ananke
's beating heart, the electromagnets that caged it humming with electricity, arcs of plasma and reddened photons following the swoops and curves of magnetic field lines and fighting the impossible pull of the mass cradled in the center of the ten-story-radius hollow sphere that was the rib cage of the ship.

If Gale had fallen in or jumped, he would still be visible, his body shredded and stretched and dead, frozen in time just above an event horizon so small that Althea wouldn't be able to see it from this distance even if it could be seen—because the heart of the
Ananke
was a black hole.

If Gale had thought to hide in this enclosure, clinging to the highest part of it, he would not have been able to resist the pull of the
Ananke
's heart, and Althea now would see him dead down there as well. There would be nothing to hold on to, anyway; the only protrusion inside the hatch was the dead man's switch inside its clear plastic cage, which would shut down the computer if it was flipped and leave the computer solely under manual control.

But there was no one there. Gale had not gone into the
Ananke
's core.

Domitian closed the door and sat back on his heels.

“What else?” he asked again, and Althea knelt once more before the computer screen.

“I don't know,” she said, and urged the computer to open whatever had been closed last. She would see what Gale had done.

“He didn't vanish, Althea,” Domitian said.

A window opened on the screen. It took Althea only a moment to recognize it.

“The maintenance shafts,” she said.

“What?”

“I don't know how he even knew…” She had no idea how he'd known about them; they were vestiges of the ship's construction, made, sealed, and forgotten except for emergencies Althea never expected to happen. They had not even occurred to her as a method for Gale's escape, and she couldn't imagine how he'd persuaded the program to run. The shafts were airless and frigid, uninhabitable unless the program was running; the program itself was well concealed and responsive only to Althea's clearance level. He must have hacked into the program quickly: the maintenance shaft doors could not be opened unless a certain bare minimum of habitability had been achieved, and although the process was very swift, it still took a certain amount of time, time that would have been valuable when he had Domitian and Gagnon running down the hall toward him—

“Althea!” Domitian barked.

Althea collected herself and tried, for Domitian, to speak quickly.

“There are maintenance shafts throughout the ship,” she said. “They were shut down after the ship was constructed, but they still exist in case I need to use them for a big repair. He shouldn't have known about them, but somehow he did. He ran the program to make them habitable again.”

“He's in the maintenance shafts?”

“Yes.” Althea left the computer to run to the back of the ship, to the metal-paneled wall. “There should be an opening—”

It fell open at her touch.

“—here,” she finished, and turned to see Domitian checking his gun once, efficiently, then heading for her with a grim expression.

“Where do those shafts go?” he asked, kneeling down beside her to look up into the narrow space.

Althea took a breath. “Everywhere,” she admitted.

“I'm following him in,” said Domitian, and leaned forward to crawl into the tunnel just as the
Ananke
's alarm began to wail.

Domitian was on his feet and going for the intercom before Althea could even process the sound. “Gagnon!” he barked.

“An escape pod has been launched,” Gagnon said, sounding tense. “Gale?”

“Do the maintenance shafts go to the escape pod bay?” Domitian asked Althea.

The maintenance shafts went everywhere. They were lucky, Althea thought, that Gale had gone for the escape pods and not for some sensitive part of the ship. “Yes,” she said.

“Scan the pod,” Domitian said into the intercom. “Confirm Gale's inside.”

“The ship's been affected; the sensor readings might not be accurate,” Althea started to protest, but the two men ignored her.

“The
Ananke
recognizes one life-sign,” Gagnon reported. “Gale's on board.”

“Can you fire on him?” Domitian asked.

“I've been trying to start up the
Ananke
's weaponry system, but it's not responding.” Gagnon sounded frustrated. He was never patient enough with the
Ananke;
Althea itched to go up there and coax the shell-shocked ship into obedience. She might be able to do it fast enough to hit the escape pod before Gale was out of safe firing range.

“Keep trying, but even if you can't, we're between planets and outside the usual trade routes,” said Domitian. “The escape pods have no mode of propulsion, and if he turns on the distress signal, the System will pick him up. Either he'll starve to death or he'll be captured again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gagnon cut the connection. Domitian turned to Althea. “How did Gale get out of his cell?” he asked.

“He picked the lock,” Althea said, remembering the video. “He had picks hidden in his boot.”

“With a broken arm he picked the lock,” Domitian muttered, and then seemed to snap out of his distraction. “Confiscate Ivanov's boots. We don't know what he might have hidden in there.”

“Ivanov's in the cell,” Althea protested. “There isn't a lock to pick from the inside.”

“He could have something else hidden. Confiscate Ivanov's boots. Then you can continue to work on the computer, but I want you to stay by his cell. There's a computer interface near it; work on that.”

“But—”

“I have to finish sweeping the ship,” Domitian said. “There still could be a third intruder. With the way these people have been manipulating the computer, we need to check manually. Gagnon needs to monitor the control room. Are you going to disobey me again?”

Althea went. Domitian jogged past her up the hall after relaying the same information to Gagnon, and so she was alone when she reached the blank steel expanse of Ivanov's cell door.