Nada.
He’d been on the comm to El. She’d said they were fine, and when he’d asked what that meant, she said it meant that they were alive but Grace had dislocated her shoulder. And then she’d asked him to stop bugging her and do something useful like making sure the Gladiator won’t blow us out of the sky.
Like he could. The ship was on auto, a series of commands embedded before they’d arrived doing whatever they were told to.
Yellow warning lights strobed. The dropship was docking at an external airlock, puffs of the thrusters visible through the viewports as El guided it in. Automated clamps reached out, gripped the craft, and held it close … held it safe. The airlock sealed against the hard black, the interior pressurizing. He waited on the gangway, hand on the railing.
The dropship opened, El walking out with a pissed-off expression and anger in her stride. Nate was about to say something, but she spoke first. “What the fuck was that about, Cap?” She jerked her arm back at the dropship. “We almost died, for Christ’s sake.”
“I—”
“We need to get this ship under control,” she said. “We need to be in control of all the guns that can kill us.”
“I—”
“Hell,” she said, sighing. “I’m not angry at you. I’m just angry.”
“Good,” said Nate. “I’m pretty angry too.”
“You’re frightened,” said Grace, from behind El. She was cradling her arm, face pale. “We’re all frightened.”
“I’m—”
“Because,” said Grace, “nothing here is as it should be. We’re on a ghost ship. The planet is silent. The Bridge has been destroyed by plans laid in place before we arrived. My usual gigs aren’t this … exciting. Hell,” she said, looking at her boots, “our reactor blew. What are the odds of that?”
What are the odds of that. “That’s … an interesting question,” said Nate.
“It feels to me like someone doesn’t want us here,” said Grace. “If not someone, then something.”
“Something?” said Nate. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Grace, pushing past him. “Everything hurts. I’ll be in the sickbay.” She paused, then looked at El. “Not bad, Stick, not bad. For a rookie, I mean.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said El. “You’re delirious. You’ve never seen flying that good.”
“Maybe,” said Grace with a tired smile. “You’ll get out of flight school one day.” And then she was gone in a clang of boots on the walkway.
Nate looked after her, then back at El. “You seem to be bonding well.”
“We almost died,” said El. “It’ll do that to you.”
Nate winced. “You up to a bit of investigation?”
“Maybe,” she said. “What kind?”
“The kind where we try and get this ship to stop shooting at us at random, inopportune times. The kind where we feel like we can fly the Tyche out of here without her being turned into a ball of expanding dust.” Nate shrugged. “You used to fly these things, El. You’ve got to know a few secrets.”
“I know a few secrets, sure,” she said. “We need something. Anything. If we don’t have someone’s sub-dermal implant, we need an ID. Hell, even their underwear with the right bar code.”
“Underwear we can do,” said Nate. “We’ve got all the underwear we’ll ever need.”
• • •
Kohl was standing outside the commander’s cabin, the plasma cutter resting on the deck beside him. He looked bored as Nate approach through the haze of smoke. “Hey,” said Kohl.
“Hey,” said Nate. He looked at the hole Kohl had cut in the wall of the ship, conduit and pipework and insulation all sliced through. Inside, the commander’s private space. A table, made of wood, dark and polished like a mirror. A cabinet that looked like it held liquor, which would be against regs, but what could you do to the commander? Ports showing a view of space. The commander’s room was under the bridge on the Gladiator just like Nate’s cabin was under the flight deck on the Tyche. “Nice cabin.”
“I haven’t been inside,” said Kohl. “Don’t even know why we’re here.”
“Underwear,” said Nate.
“The fuck?” said Kohl.
El sauntered up, clapped the big man on the arm. “Don’t sweat it,” she said. “It’ll all become clear soon.”
Nate pushed himself through the hole in the wall. The door wouldn’t open to him because he wasn’t the commander. He didn’t even know who the commander was. What kind of face they wore, what kind of career they’d had. How their crew had viewed them. They had an empty room with a few nice things to gauge the kind of person the commander of the Gladiator had been. In here, hopefully, was underwear.
Strictly speaking it wasn’t underwear they were after, but underclothes. Flight suits were worn over the top of an insulating layer. They’d keep you cool in the heat, or warm enough in the cold. The latter was very important if you were found floating without a suit in the hard black. They were supposed to stop your blood boiling out of your eye sockets, staying off the flash-freezing of your body a few more precious seconds. Underclothes had other benefits like being flame retardant, and could duct electricity around the fabric rather than through the wearer — the biggest threats aboard a ship were fire and electrocution, next to dying while trying to scream in vacuum. Trying to scream was good though, because holding your breath wasn’t great. Nate’s training back when he wore the Emperor’s Black was to hyperventilate. Something about aspiration slowing the blood boiling in your veins.
So, these suits were supposed to slow all that down. The Republic thought of everything.
They even thought of what would happen if you died, your last moments of terror, in a vacuum. On fire, after being shocked to death. If you were turned into some kind of burned-to-carbon flash-frozen horror, the suits carried implanted IDs, tech that would mark your name, rank, and serial number. El wanted to use one of those IDs to get a foothold into the ship’s systems. It was a long shot, but maybe the commander’s backup password really was ’password.’
There was always a way in. Voice recognition couldn’t be relied on, because your throat might have been burned in a fire. Fingerprints might be gone in a machinery accident. But an ID? Given some time it might get them in. All they needed was a little luck.
• • •
He’d given the suit to El to wear. Turns out the commander had been smaller and female. El had put the suit on, led the way to the bridge, and got to work.
Two hours had passed, and she was slumped over a console, head resting in her hand. They’d tried passwords, like cucumber and albatross and xylophone. They’d tried variations of the commander’s date of birth. They’d tried popular holo stars born around that time, and then ones who performed when she would have been a teenager. They’d tried the name of the ship. Then they’d started on passphrases, and then El had said she wanted a break.
“Try one more,” said Nate.
“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains,” said El, not looking up.
Nate typed it out. The console gave a flat blare. INCORRECT. He looked at the word — the same word he’d seen what felt like ten thousand times over the last couple hours — and felt a flare of anger. “Goddamn it!” He slammed his fist on the console. “We just want a break. Is it too much to ask? One tiny, small, sliver of—”
“Gladiator, this is Absalom Delta. Come in Gladiator. Do you copy?” It was the console, the comm light flashing. An incoming transmission. From the planet.