The Salvagers (15 page)

             
I had known it all along.

             
"I can order my ship to a safe distance by using your communications station," I said. "I'd rather stay here in case you need me again."

             
Dr. Westmoreland paused for a moment and then nodded in agreement. I contacted Stacey and Mary Joanna from the bridge panel on the warship and had them move
to positions about 200 kilometers out. The
Hyperion
was experiencing engine irregularities as a result of rigging power to its engines after Stunt's lasers cut the electrical lines. They wouldn't be able to move for some time, so I instructed them to get out of there as soon as they could manage it.

             
I found myself wishing that I had formulated some kind of a code with Stacey in case I needed to send a message to swoop in and pick me up if it looked as though the bogeyman was going to make us disappear like the crew of that other warship.

             
"Captain Hunter, you've dealt with this before. Would you object to joining our boarding party to the
Victoriou
s?" the
Portsmouth
’s captain asked.

             
I thought about it for a moment. "I'll go, but I'm not military personnel. At the first sign of trouble I want out of there."

             
"Agreed."

             
"How big will the party be? Who's in command?"

             
"You are," he said.

             
"I'm not an officer, but I'll do it if you say so."

             
"Excellent," he responded.

             
"Well, let's assemble the team."

             
"I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Captain, you
are
the boarding party. I've just lost half of the personnel assigned to this mission—152 people. I'll need every man I've got left to complete it, and probably a few of yours as well."

             
They had tricked me into it. I thought about demanding to be returned to my ship, but I realized that it wouldn't do any good. They held too many cards, and agreeing to board the derelict again would give me some badly needed leverage to get more information. Part of me was certain that I'd see the same thing I saw in the
Cape Hatteras
's
engineering room after the first disappearance—nothing.

             
"Alright," I said, "but I want more answers."

             
"Answers about what?"

             
"What's really going on here? What am I dealing with? What's this about dark matter? I'll need to know what I'm up against."

             
The Captain of the
Portsmouth
and Dr. Westmoreland looked at each other. The Captain nodded.

             
Westmoreland sighed and turned to me. "Captain Hunter, you're dealing with a weapon."

             
"Oh, I see, a weapon gone wrong. Sounds like the UNAG of 200 years ago . . . and now. I suppose you want to get it back and threaten the other unions with it. Maybe I shouldn't go over there if it's just more government games. Contact my ship. I'm going home."

             
"No, Captain Hunter, you don't understand. It isn't a weapon we made. It's from somewhere else."

             
"Somewhere else? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

             
"Not human," the Captain said, taking care to articulate very clearly.

             
That was the kind of statement for which there is no possible rebuttal. My response was silence and shock. I dutifully put on a moon suit and went to the airlock to fulfill my mission on the
Victorious
.

Chapter 19     Into the Fire

             
"December 21, 2259. 1600 hours. Log of Captain John Andrew Nelson, Commanding Officer, UNAG Mining Vessel
Cape Hatteras
. The cavern system is significantly deeper and more extensive than anticipated. Marquez is now repositioned at the mouth of the cave and has sent the second sled. Galon continues his exploration deeper into the asteroid alone. The thickness of the rock prevents direct communication with him. His reports are being relayed by Marquez hourly."

              I pushed myself out of the open airlock of the
Portsmouth
and looked down its immense length. Its laser batteries bristled at regular intervals, all of the guns now retrained on the
Cape Hatteras
. I found relief in that. I was never comfortable with a laser cannon pointed at the
Amaranth Sun
—or at my salvor full of gold.

             
Ahead I could see the
Victorious
still listing and slowly pulling away from the derelict. I activated my suit's maneuvering thrusters and crossed the distance, aiming for the same area of the
Victorious
that I had just left on the
Portsmouth
. I assumed the airlock would be located in the same place, but it wasn't.

             
"Could someone tell me where to go?" I asked on open comms.

             
"You're near the correct area. It's located on the top of the ship between ribs 84 and 85," the Captain replied.

             
"Where are ribs 84 and 85?" I asked.

             
"Go up and over; then head toward the stern. You can't miss it."

             
"How am I going to get in?"

             
"We can operate the airlock remotely. We'll need your help in gaining full control of the ship when you get inside."

             
I followed his instructions and spotted the airlock. I peered in and could see a small part of the ship's interior bathed in red light. The door slid open without warning, startling me as it began to move. I felt a slight brush of residual air push me gently backwards into space. I thought it would not have been unreasonable to expect some kind of warning. I concluded that communication with me must have been secondary to monitoring the telemetry data from my suit. I wished that I had suggested that we use the drones from the
Neptune's Revenge
, but I doubt they'd have trusted them.

              The airlock immediately began closing, again with no warning. I noticed a camera in the lock. I realized that if they could see me, they'd probably be able to watch my every move anywhere I went on the ship. My gut feeling that I was an expendable guinea pig grew stronger. I was there to figure out how to safely enter a ship in which everyone had just vanished. It might even have been to their benefit if I disappeared.

             
It didn't seem as though there had been enough time for the cycle to complete itself before the interior door opened. I checked my suit's display on my right forearm. It was reading a normal atmosphere, but I felt it best to keep my helmet on. I didn't want to add the extra step of putting it back on if I had to escape quickly.

             
Boarding that ship was different from what I had faced when I entered the
Cape Hatteras
for the first time. The
Victorious
wasn't dead in space. It was lit up and operational, red and yellow alert lights flashing away as buttons that needed to be pushed went neglected.

             
"Where should I go now?" I asked.

             
"The bridge should be first. We will need you to assist us from there in gaining full control of the ship. You should see a corridor immediately on your left. Take it."

             
I followed it, moving toward the bow and passing through a rotating artificial gravity ring. When I stepped onto its floor, I immediately detected the ship’s list. I pushed myself upward and back into the zero-G air to avoid disorientation. I felt a new uneasiness as I sensed that my escape route was getting progressively more complicated as I moved through the ship.

             
I was passing through a hatch into the zero-G environment of the bridge when my peripheral vision caught a slight movement. It was a sleeve moving through the air. I briefly thought that I was seeing the crew, alive and well, still working on the bridge and that the ship had merely lost contact with the
Portsmouth
.

             
I was fear-stricken when I realized what I was actually seeing. While the people had disappeared, their uniforms were floating around the room, still filled out as if there were living persons in them. They were moving on the last momentum of non-existent bodies, looping and turning in mid-air like slow dancers in a ballroom.

             
I blinked, or I think I did, and they were gone. I was seeing ghosts again.

             
"I'm on the bridge, and there's no one here. They've disappeared," I said chokingly. I looked out the bridge windows to see the
Cape Hatteras
and the
Hyperion
still near each other. They were still having engine problems on the salvor, I thought.

             
"You'll need to go to the captain's station at the center rear of the room. You will see a screen that is the commanders operations panel. You will need to access it," relayed Westmoreland.

             
"I'm here. It's giving a long list of warnings."

             
"You'll need to touch the screen and back out of there to the main interface menu. Access the global operations interface at the top of the list."

             
"I'm there. It's asking for the commanding officer's access code," I said after following his instructions.

             
"The code is 41-54672-4783-BH."

             
I never thought I'd ever have a captain's access code for a UNAG battlecruiser. The screen that came up wasn't anything like my display on the
Amaranth Sun
. The ship had a full complement of weapons, all of them fireable from that station.

             
Westmoreland and the captain of the
Portsmouth
gave me a series of technical instructions. I saw their remote presence building in the system bit by bit as I put in the data.

             
"You're clear to leave the bridge and move on now," said Westmoreland. "You'll need to go back the way you came."

             
I stepped back into the the gravity ring and felt the ship righting itself as the
Portsmouth
's
crew gained attitude control of the
Victorious
. I then jumped back into zero-G and passed into the main corridor with its red lighting and flashing yellow lights, just as they went green.

             
"What's next?" I asked, hoping they'd say the mission was over.

             
"We need you to enter engineering at the stern and give us a visual on what its condition is. The engine status indicates operational, but that doesn't mean there isn't a chair floating about ready to destroy an instrument panel if we reposition the ship."

             
Great, I thought. Now I had to go to the exact opposite end. I wanted out of there badly, back to whatever inhabited ship I could reach first. The
Hyperion
and even the
Cape Hatteras
were both closer and safer than that place. At any moment I might lose consciousness or hallucinate again, as I had on the
Cape Hatteras
. There was no way I could escape in that state. I didn't want to tell Westmoreland about the uniforms, not thinking it mattered. Whatever had made the crew of the
Victorious
disappear could make any of us vanish whenever it wanted, so I moved on as bravely as I could force myself to be.

             
I floated down the corridor past the airlock entrance, more than a little tempted to jump in and escape, but I mustered up enough courage to move onward. At the end of the corridor I found the airlock again, or one like it. I turned around, and there was another airlock. My heart raced as I turned again, and there was another. In every direction was an airlock. They opened all at the same time, and I saw stars and deep space. I sensed that there was no ship at all and that I somehow had fallen overboard and was floating freely. I closed my eyes tightly.

             
When I looked again, I found myself back in the corridor and staring into a common room just forward of engineering.

             
"I think I'm hallucinating, Doctor."

             
"Try to make it, Cam. You're fine. We're not seeing anything unusual."

             
I was badly disoriented. Whatever had happened left me confounded and with a headache forming. I felt slowed down, my thoughts governed by something that wasn't me. Half awake and half asleep, I tried to use the comm again, speaking but not receiving an answer. Before I could check my display to see whether the radio was working, everything went dead.

             
The whole ship and my suit lost power. Instead of panicking and heading for the airlock, I inexplicably tried very calmly to figure out how that could happen. It wasn't a time for problem analysis, but I was doing it nonetheless. Thoughts formed and aborted as my mind wandered to places far away. In the end I found myself thinking about a trip to an accountant I had made a decade ago.

             
I'd lost my senses, though it wasn't apparent to me. I wasn't even awake; I was something else. I thought it was perfectly normal to think about that accountant. I didn't think it was important that ten feet away the blue glow had appeared and was rising in intensity.

             
"We warned you to leave," said a very calm voice.

             
I discovered exactly what Sanjay had meant by a voice inside his helmet. It was right next to my ear, or in my mind's dialogue with itself like thoughts in bold typeface. My senses returned with a vengeance, and fear paralyzed my body.

             
"You didn't listen," it said in its detached, almost mechanical tone.

             
"What did you do with our people?" I asked aloud, absolutely terrified.

             
"They came here in a way that they could not exist."

             
"Can you send them back?" I asked.

             
"They do not exist."

             
"Am I about not to exist?"

             
"Yes. Run."

             
Wide awake again, I turned as fast as I could and dropped to the floor, running with my hands grabbing anything I could. I had no idea whether I was making any progress. I was no longer even certain that it was all real. Either I was moving entirely on reflex, or whatever it was that had been talking to me was helping me to escape.

             
I saw the airlock. Again it was not where it should have been, by my reckoning, but I threw myself into it nonetheless. I hand-cranked the door shut as fast as I could, then started cranking the outer door without bothering with the manual decompress. I looked briefly at the interior window to see the blue light glowing very brightly, flickering and getting more intense, as though it were moving down the corridor. It was following me.

             
As soon as the seal broke, I felt myself drawn along with the blast of air. I held onto the hand crank and kept at it as the lock went to vacuum. As soon as it was wide enough for me to slip through, I pushed against the wall with my feet and shot like a torpedo from the ship. My suit regained power without warning. Just as I stabilized my attitude, the
Victorious
came back into view, and I turned toward it. It was glowing intensely before vanishing in a brief and blinding flash. I was left floating freely in space, desperate to make sense of what had just happened.

             
And then, for only a moment, I saw something suspended in space a few hundred feet away. It was a blue ring of light, shrinking and growing dimmer. Inside it was a void that looked almost like normal space but with a faint gray cast and indistinct stars. It gave me the sense that wherever it led was abnormal, somehow very different. It was moving slightly at the last velocity and direction of the former
Victorious
. It continued until it eclipsed the sun relative to me. As it did so, inside the ring I could see a stark white sun, not yellow as it should have been. It was ill-defined, dimmer, and much larger. And then the ring closed. The vision seemed to melt away into normal sunlight, ending the eclipse.