The Proteus Bridge Read online

  Shara asked.

 

  Shara paused again. Whatever she was trying to say seemed difficult for her. she said.

  The memory of Testa babbling in pain from the voices in her mind made Crash go still. Shara must have felt his worry.

 

  Crash said.

 

 

  She drew another long breath.

  he said.

  she said.

 

  “Stars!” a muffled voice cursed from the doorway. “This place is covered in birdshit.”

  Crash jerked his head around to find two humans standing in the command deck’s entry portal. Both were dressed in bio-suits and carrying pistols. He squawked in surprise and leapt off the back of the chair. In the air, however, he realized he didn’t have many options for landing. They were blocking the only exit.

  The first human, wearing a faded green suit, stepped into the room with his weapon held across his chest. His head tracked Crash’s frantic movements.

  “It’s a parrot, for star’s sakes,” he said.

  The other man, wearing an orange suit with ‘TSS Hard Fall’ running vertically down one side of his chest, raised his rifle to his shoulder. “After those damn crows, I’m just shooting this one.”

  “Wait,” Green said. “If it is carrying a virus, I don’t want you splattering bits of it all over the place. The salvage is going to be hard enough as it is. Nobody just abandons a ship unless there’s something nasty aboard.”

  “I’m not showing anything. No radiation. No bio-markers. It’s a ghost ship.”

  “Go check the pilot’s console.”

  “I’m not getting near that damn bird,” Orange complained. “Let me shoot it.”

  Crash touched down on the far side of the holodisplay, watching the two men through the glowing lines of the ship’s schematic.

  he told Shara.

  Shara said abruptly.

  he asked, hating the fear in her voice.

 

  He realized the quarantine notice about an engineered plague wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for Shara. In fact, it was probably something she had been made to do.

  he said, readying himself for the gauntlet between himself and the door.

  she said.

  Pressure built up in the back of Crash’s mind. He thought it was a physical sensation at first, like forced air against the back of his head. Then a wave of vertigo forced him to close his eyes as he adjusted on his perch.

  he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  Crash couldn’t wait any longer. He opened his eyes, lowered his head, spread his wings, and launched out of the holotank, flying directly through the glowing image of the Hesperia Nevada.

  The men shouted in surprise. They raised their weapons and nearly fired at each other as Crash darted between them. He reached the entryway and adjusted course, flapping his wings furiously, red tail feathers spread.

  He navigated the main passageway, remembering the steps from the schematic. He shot around corners, perching high in the corridor for seconds at a time before flying again. He was made for short bursts between tree branches; the sustained flight made his wings heavy.

  He was nearly at the secondary escape pod when he rounded a corner and ran directly into a blue shipsuit.

  “Whoa there!” the pirate shouted. Crash felt two oversized hands grab at his body, then slide over his wings, pinning him in place. He tried to bite and claw at the blue mass in front of him, but the pirate held him away from his body.

  Crash turned his head, blinking angrily, to find a man with bright pink hair studying him, grinning like he’d won the lottery. He wasn’t wearing a bio-mask.

  “Well, look at you, pretty,” the man said. “Looks like today’s my lucky day.”

  Crash quailed inside, too aware of the silent Shara in the back of his mind.

  He was caught.

  FIRST INTERLUDE

  THE HANGOVER

  STELLAR DATE: 06.01.2945 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Lowspin TSF Port Authority Liaison Office

  REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol

  The TSF liaison office to Cruithne’s Lowspin docks was an overworked cell, staffed by two lieutenants and a burned out major named Peck. Lieutenant Jerry Tarsis sat with his head in his hands, nursing a hangover as he watched inbound traffic in the primary cargo lanes. NSAIs managed the actual traffic patterns and alerted the liaison staff to any anomalies, but Peck insisted her lieutenants maintain eyeballs on the holodisplays to do the pattern crunching that only humans could perform…according to her, anyway.

  Jerry glanced at his fellow space-lane manager, Darla Harmon, who was leaning back in her seat, pressing fingers to her temple to assuage a similar headache. They had been out late the night before, having closed down two different clubs. Together, they had tried briki flower for the first time and spent at least three hours lost in ‘crazytown’, as Darla called it.

  He pulled one hand away from his head to stare at his fingers, which still seemed rubbery and twisty, swimming in front of his eyes the longer he looked. He’d been shifting his focus between the holodisplay and his hands whenever one became too unbearable to watch anymore.

  “Hey,” Darla groaned. “You hear that?”

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “That quarantine alert just dropped.”

  Jerry shifted his gaze to his console, squinting. He found the TMS Hesperia Nevada on the check release list, knowing for a fact that it had just been at the top of the inbound quarantine queue.

  “Did you get a release order?” he croaked through his headache.

  “No.” Darla sat up, her voice growing sharper. She was the type to thrive under pressure. She could push away a killer hangover with proper self-motivation. “I think we’ve got a hacker in the manifest system.”

  Jerry shook his head, taking a deep breath. He forced himself into a more upright position. If the major came in and found him slouching while Darla was working, there’d be hell to pay. The major only cut them slack when everybody was slacking equally.

  “There it is,” Darla said, pointing at her console. “It had a bio-lock, crew abandoned. I had it on the salvage list, but the EV crews are behind like always.”

  “Better them than me,” Jerry replied.

  “Well, they’re so slow that pirates are tracking the list and jumping ahead of them. Only these dummies probably didn’t realize the ship had a quarantine lock.”

  “It was squealing quarantine to the whole sector,” Jerry said. “Pirates aren’t that dumb.”

  “Pirates don’t think like we do. Don’t waste time trying to figure them out.”

  “Wait,” Jerry said, squinting again. He couldn’t tell if his vision was blurring again, or if something had broken free from Hesperia Nevada. It looked like an escape pod, but the ship was empty. At least the crew had marked it that way. He pulled up Hesperia Nevada’s registry
and studied its manifest. The ship had been on a long-term cargo and personnel transport trip before signaling the distress code and heading back for Cruithne, its point of origin. It was entirely possible the whole mess was a smuggling operation. Technically, it was their job to stop smugglers. However, trying to stop smuggling on Cruithne was like chasing kittens—sadistic kittens with exotic weapons.

  The object that had separated from the quarantined ship was now showing all the attributes of something under its own power. Jerry sent a ping, and the response came back on the emergency band.

  “They just launched an escape pod,” he said. Adrenaline tempered a bit of his hangover. He sat up straighter in his chair, wondering if he should notify the major. An escape pod launch inside local space wasn’t strange, per se, but combined with the quarantine notice and apparent hacking, the Hesperia Nevada was turning into the shift’s prime irritation.

  “I’m calling the major,” Darla said.

  “He’s just going to ask what we know about it.”

  “So I’ll tell him what we know. We need to get the Quick Reaction Force tracking that ship. It’s under illegal salvage notice at the very least.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jerry said. He waited. “I thought you said you were going to call him,” he said.

  “I’m thinking,” Darla answered. “Is the pod showing a destination yet?”

  Jerry read his console. “Lowspin, of course. I can pull it in with a drone before it alerts anybody else.”

  “Do it. That looks better. Like we’re doing something about it. I’ll notify the QRF Watch Commander. Once you notify the major, grab a rifle.”

  “What?” Jerry demanded, incredulous. “I’m not going down there.”

  Darla stood and stretched, looking sleek in her duty uniform. Jerry’s mind flashed a reminder of the several ways she’d indicated she wasn’t interested in him the night before.

  “If we go down there and figure out what’s going on, the major won’t kick our asses for the quarantine override.”

  Jerry could see the logic but still didn’t like the idea of poking his head into a mystery pod from a quarantined ship that had probably been smuggling biohazards.

  “It’ll get scanned at the dock, dummy,” Darla said, seeing his expression. “I swear, you’re the most timid soldier in the TSF.”

  “I’m an officer, not a soldier,” Jerry said petulantly.

  “Exactly.”

  He grabbed the rifle Darla tossed his way and automatically performed a functions check on the battery and trigger mechanism, then followed her out of the cramped office into the busy corridor outside. They were immediately surrounded by the rough workers of the Lowspin docks: mechanics with grease-stained faces, porters leading cargo mules, skinny spacers in faded shipsuits, sharp-eyed station dwellers looking for a score, and any number of other thousands of travelers stopping between Mars and Earth. Some people respected the pair in their TSF uniforms and got out of the way, others immediately saw the rifles and moved, while still more simply watched them warily.

  Jerry did his best to stare straight ahead, eyes on Darla’s shoulders.

  They reached the main lifts and dropped four levels to the outermost section of the ring, where airlocks opened onto vacuum. Most ships never actually docked on the station—not wanting to waste the fuel required to match spin—and sent drones or shuttles instead. A few were docked for repairs, and even fewer were actually berthed in the enormous bays for hull repair and upgrades.

  The people were even rougher this close to the skin. Jerry couldn’t help thinking they all looked grey-faced from vacuum exposure—or it might have been the poor lighting.

  “It’s just up ahead,” he said, reading the Link update.

  “Did you notify the major?” Darla asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’d better hurry up. Telling him were working to solve a problem is better than letting him know we just found a bio-weapon.”

  How does she understand people so much better than me?

  Rather than contacting Major Peck directly, Jerry composed a quick message informing him of their task and assuring him they would update soon, once they’d assessed the situation. He read over his word choice again to make sure he sounded assertive enough—like a self-confident captain rather than a lieutenant on desk duty—and sent the update.

  Thankfully, the major didn’t respond right away.

  He must be busy. That was fine by Jerry.

  Darla turned left off the corridor and led the way into a series of catwalks as the bulkheads closed in, surrounding them in the guts of the ring wall. The air grew humid, reeking of burned oil and overheated silicon fiber.

  “Here it is,” she said, stopping in front of a circular hatch in the corridor wall. A blinking blue light on the locking mechanism was the only indication that an escape pod sat on the other side of the airlock.

  Without waiting, Darla tapped the lock, and Jerry felt the query on his Link, verifying his status as a TSF Customs Official. The station-side lock door cycled and slowly swung open.

  Darla put a hand on her hip, rifle leaned on her shoulder. “After you,” she said.

  Jerry quailed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re leading the way, right? Since you’re always reminding me that you outrank me, I figured you would want the glory of the kill.”

  Jerry glanced at the open port. The narrow space within the airlock was lit only by another flashing blue light.

  “Shouldn’t we get haz suits?” he asked, trying to make his voice not sound like he was whining.

  Darla shook her head. “The scan’s clean. It’s not a bio threat. That means it’s most likely a hacked manifest, which means smuggling. And what’s our mission?”

  “Anti-piracy and smuggling interdiction,” Jerry grumbled.

  He held his rifle at port arms and hunched over to climb into the cramped airlock. He shuffled forward, leading with his left ear as if he could hear anything from inside the pod. He moved like a nervous crab.

  “Seriously?” Darla asked.

  He didn’t look back at her. He checked the scan again, just to make sure – totally not looking for an excuse to get away. The pod’s check-scan returned clean, showing its point of origin and the presence of an IR signature inside. The data was all over the place, though, making him wonder if the pod was damaged. The escape craft held three people maximum, but was showing a return of at least fifty heart rates.

  “Something isn’t right, Darla. We should put it on security lock-down.” He looked back to see her frowning at him.

  “Get out of there, Tarsis,” she said, sighing. “I’ll open the damn pod. Why did you join the Space Force, again?”

  Jerry swallowed, ready to leave and let her take over, when the blue light on the locking mechanism switched to green.

  “What?” he called out in surprise.

  The lock had self-initiated. It was opening.

  Jumping to his Link, Jerry quickly checked the security level on the escape pod’s software. It was on quarantine lock and shouldn’t have been able to do anything without his authority code. Yet there it was, opening.

  “Get back,” he told Darla, voice squeaking at the end.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Jerry slid away, raising his rifle, as the pod’s hatch hissed and swung open. Red light leaked from the widening gap, and then a rush of black bodies filled the airlock. Was he imagining the hundred shiny black eyes staring at him?

  Squealing, Jerry fell backward as claws, beaks and feathers beat against his face. He heard Darla shouting behind him. The rush seemed to take forever, and then Darla was shouting his name.

  “Dammit, Jerry! Get out here.”

  Jerry rolled to his knees, grabbing at his rifle. His uniform was peppered with hundreds of small punctures, and his cheeks were bleeding. He scrambled to his feet and ran out of the airlock. Darla was already halfway down the corridor, looking like she was chasing whatever h
ad left the escape pod. When he finally caught up with her, he could only stop and join her mute upward stare.

  Out in the main corridor, where the space opened to accommodate a massive repair bay, at least fifty ravens were circling over their heads. He had no idea how they had fit in the tiny escape pod, but now they were cawing angrily and beating their wings as they swarmed.

  Jerry swore he heard something like static on his Link, like an electric charge, buzzing deep in the back of his mind. Was it the hangover? For an instant, it almost sounded like the angry ravens were broadcasting.

  He squinted at the mass, trying to see a pattern in their movements, and then could only watch as they left the bay in a single serpentine line to fly down the corridor. In a minute, they were gone.

  Darla looked at him, her hair tangled in her eyes. She pushed it aside.

  “I guess we should follow them,” she said.

  “I didn’t let them out,” Jerry said quickly. “They did it on their own. I don’t know how, but they overrode the quarantine.”

  “Does it matter?” Darla asked.

  “You’d better tell the major,” Jerry said. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t let those crows out.”

  “They were bigger than crows. They were ravens.”

  Jerry’s Link sparked with reports of the wild birds wreaking havoc all throughout the Lowspin docs.

  Major Peck barked in his mind.

  Jerry looked at Darla, then down at the dull silver lieutenant’s bar on the front of his uniform. Sighing, he pulled the rank off his chest and handed it to Darla.

  “Nice working with you,” he said.

  * * * * *

  After a few hours spent terrorizing the workers of Lowspin, the ravens disappeared into a series of maintenance tunnels, bursting out near the old warehouse-turned-bazaar called Night Park, where a dry plascrete fountain provided ample territory to perch, along with easy access to food and water in the surrounding vendor booths.