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- Herausgeber: Timberdoodle Press
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
The fourth and final set in the Junkyard Dog Collection series. This collection contains the last four novellas in the Junkyard Dog series, including the answer to the question that began it all. Who wanted Margarita King dead?
Ghost Ship:
Bending time and space makes galaxy-wide travel possible. The one rule? Make sure no solid objects occupy the other end of your warp jump.
When Margarita King and the crew of the Junkyard Dog exit a jump they nearly collide with a massive object. An object that shouldn’t exist.
A good commander knows when to retreat. Rita King knows a unique opportunity when she sees one.
Join Rita King and her unusual crew in the tenth book of the Junkyard Dog series as they solve the puzzling riddle of the Ghost Ship.
Bolkarus Station:
Even the best laid plans rarely work out as intended.
Bolkarus Station: the Junkyard Dog’s last chance to make the dangerous rendezvous with Slade and hand over the precious and highly illegal Rose Sunstones.
Bolkarus Station: an ugly refinery and refueling planet, a place no one in their right mind wants to visit. Perfect for a secret rendezvous.
Margarita King plans to land, meet Slade, and leave as quickly as possible. Simple. Straight forward. Stay on task and get out of there.
Join Rita’s crew on another strange adventure in the eleventh book of the Junkyard Dog series as they dig into the hidden world of a galactic refinery and the secrets it holds.
Omega Lab:
Need a replacement body part?
No problem with all the specialized cloning labs in the Milky Way galaxy.
Margarita King, commander of the Junkyard Dog, believes in the practice–except when it comes to her own body.
She reluctantly agrees to visit Omega Lab, knowing she needs to be in top form to face her enemies on Mars Base. Her blind eyes put her at too great a disadvantage. Time for new ones.
No one expects what happens next.
Omega Lab, the twelfth book in the Junkyard Dog series, takes the reader inside the wonders–and darkest perils–of a cloning lab built deep inside a meteorite.
Mars Base:
The day of reckoning has arrived.
Major Margarita King needs answers. Why had her ship been sabotaged? Who wanted her dead and who could she trust for the truth? The only place to find those answers–Mars Base, home of the Red Barons.
Command thought she was dead. A funeral had been held.
Someone was going to be mighty surprised when Rita showed up at headquarters.
Mars Base, the final novella in the Junkyard Dog series, ends where Rita’s strange and unexpected journey began–with one big difference. You’ll have to read Mars Base to find out how it all ends!
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Junkyard Dog Collection 4
Books 10-13
Charley Marsh
Timberdoodle Press
JUNKYARD DOG COLLECTION 4 BOOKS 10-13
Copyright © 2019 by CHARLEY MARSH
The characters, incidents, and places in this collection are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information contact: timberdoodlepress.com
All rights reserved.
Published 2019 in the United States of America by Timberdoodle Press.
https://timberdoodlepress.com/contact-us/
Cover art courtesy Depositphoto
Print ISBN# 978-1-945856-68-6
Contents
Also by Charley Marsh
Ghost Ship
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Bolkarus Station
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Omega Lab
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Mars Base
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Also by Charley Marsh
YA MYSTERY
Gypsy Gold
Dark Horse
Desert Star
STEAMPUNK
Steampunk Heart
JUNKYARD DOG SCI-FI SERIES
Junkyard Dog
Kraken Blues
Deadly Cargo
Ruby City
Double Cross
Spider Silk
Rose Sunstone
New Earth
Red Mist
Ghost Ship
Bolkarus Station
Omega Lab
Junkyard Dog Collection Books 1-3
Junkyard Dog Collection 2 Books 4-6
Junkyard Dog Collection 3 Books 7-9
Junkyard Dog Collection 4 Books 10-13
UPHEAVAL SERIES
Slow Walk
Edge of Reality
Solstice Moon
The Upheaval Trilogy (Volumes 1-3)
ROMANCING THE GODS SERIES
Cassandra
Pandora
Artemis
Andromeda
ROMANCE
Twisted Sister
GHOST SHIP
Copyright © 2018 by CHARLEY MARSH
Ghost Ship is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information contact: timberdoodlepress.com
All rights reserved.
Published 2018 in the United States of America by Timberdoodle Press.
Cover art courtesy Dreamstime and Depositphoto
E Book ISBN# 978-1-945856-36-5
Print ISBN# 978-1-945856-37-2
1
What is that?” Lexa’s hoarse whisper squeaked with excitement tinged with awe.
The four crew members of the Junkyard Dog stood in the clear nosecone of the ship, all focused on the floating object that filled the view outside. There seemed to be no end to the immense object, whatever it was.
Even Darwin, an odd creature who looked like a failed blending of canine and feline species, sat transfixed at their feet. His wiry fur stood on end and the longest of his two tails lashed back and forth, a sure sign of agitation.
Rita King, commander and owner of The Dog, gave a small shake of her head. “I don’t know, Lexa,” she answered with a frown. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Inwardly Rita gave an exasperated sigh. She didn’t want to deal with the strange object. Not now, not when they had barely escaped the red mist at great personal cost—the loss of her eyesight.
Looking back, Rita saw a year fraught with dangerous situations and hungry alien creatures. She had survived by her wits and sheer stubbornness. A loner by choice, somehow along the way she had gathered a small, motley crew of misfits.
While she would trust any of them with her life, as ship’s commander she was acutely aware that she was now responsible for each of their lives. A burden she could do without, except that these same misfits had morphed into friends and friendship carried it’s own set of obligations.
How had her life become so complicated?
And now they faced this—this thing that could turn into yet another challenge to their survival.
Rita searched her excellent memory—a memory that had helped her quick rise to the rank of Major in the galaxy’s elite law enforcement squadron dubbed the Red Barons—for reports of a similar craft but drew a blank.
Unfortunately not all of Rita’s co-workers had been pleased by her rapid advancement in the Barons. Her favored ship had been sabotaged and she had been sent on a solo mission to die.
According to a Baron-turned-mercenary (now dead, God rot his greedy soul) the Barons had even held a ceremony for Rita after declaring her killed in action.
The sabotage was the beginning of a new and unexpected trajectory of her life. Here she stood nearly a year later—now a renegade commanding an unusual crew in the very ship she was sent out to die in.
Not where she expected to be after years of hard training and dedication to becoming the best law officer she could be.
Top it off with the fact that she was now blind, able to see only with the aid of an electromagnetic visor, and she could say that her life had not only taken an unexpected turn—it had completely derailed from its intended path.
Twists of fate.
Rita forced her thoughts back to the present. She had found no memories of anyone coming across a ship the size of a small planet. The Dog looked like little more than a flea or a rat turd skimming the surface of the alien object.
It was unfortunate that the warp jump they’d made to escape the red mist had landed them here.
“Do I detect curvature to the surface?” asked the ship’s Healer, newly named John. He stepped closer to the viewing window and pressed his copper-colored face against its smooth surface. “I can’t see any edges,” he said after angling his head this way and that. “It’s too large. But I’m nearly certain I detect a slight curvature to the surface. It’s not a flat wall. And it’s pitted and cratered. Looks like it’s been in space a long time.”
“Does it look organic to you?” Rita asked. She was still learning how to view the world through the EM visor that Lexa, the ship’s engineer, had created for her. She saw objects as shades of red, yellow, and violet-blue depending on their heat signature, but she didn’t have enough experience yet to interpret everything she was seeing.
One thing they could all agree on, the object was massive, far larger than any ship built in the Milky Way galaxy.
Stunned by the sudden thought, Rita felt a small thrill course through her body. Could they be viewing a ship from another galaxy? The idea was both exciting and frightening at the same time. Was it friendly or hostile? What was it doing here?
More important, were they being observed by the beings who manned the ship?
“I think we’d better move a safe distance away until we have more data about the object,” she said aloud. “Everyone to your stations.” She turned on her heel and stepped back toward the command center of the ship, settling into the foremost gel seat. It supported her body like a warm palm, comfortable and familiar.
A prototype ship that never caught on with the Red Barons and therefore never made it into production, the Junkyard Dog was designed after the Old Earth sailing ships, with sleek curves and a non-organic interior that mimicked cherrywood.
The command center sat in the central open space near the nose. Storage compartments, the wash/dry tube, food prep and enclosed bunks all cleverly fitted together, lined the walls. The separate rear compartment acted as the ship’s hold for cargo, supplies, large equipment, the airlock and decontamination chamber—in short, everything necessary to sustain a crew of eight on extended travels throughout the galaxy. All that and the Dog was designed so it could be easily manned by a single person, no crew necessary.
Rita loved the Dog. The other Barons had refused to use the ship because it lacked the tough look of hard angles and metal they were used to, leaving it for Rita alone to use. It was easy to see why it had been a simple task for someone to sabotage her.
Lexa jumped into the seat next to Rita. The gel seat immediately conformed to her small blue body. Standing just over three feet tall, Lexa’s bare feet swung well above the deck but she didn’t seem to mind.
John and Yani, an emerald-eyed, ebony-skinned translator rescued from the now extinct Ruby City, took the pair of seats directly behind Lexa and Rita. Darwin leaped onto Rita’s seat back and draped his long tail over her shoulder.
“Everybody set?” A chorus of “ayes” answered Rita. “Okay then. Pulling away to a safer distance where we can continue to scan the surface of the object.”
“I thought the ship’s warp drive took objects into consideration so we wouldn’t crash into anything. The fact that we landed on top of that—“ Yani fluttered one elegant hand at the nosecone—“makes me a little nervous.”
“Theoretically the ship makes every effort not to land on or in a solid object,” Rita agreed. She glanced back at Yani and smiled. She approved of questions and encouraged her passengers-turned-crew to ask them. Experience had taught her that the more knowledge a person possessed the better choices and decisions they made.
“The warp drive works by bending the fabric of time and space,” Rita continued. “It’s possible that the object wasn’t here when we programmed our jump. It might have arrived too close to our own arrival for the ship to make adjustments.”
“Has that ever happened?” Lexa asked. “Two ships arriving at the same location at the same time?”
“No,” Rita admitted. “The Milky Way galaxy contains over two hundred billion stars spread out over an unbelievable amount of space. The number of ships traveling through the galaxy is miniscule. The odds of two ships choosing the same point in time and space is infinitesimally small.”
“And yet here we are,” John said dryly from behind her. “We either arrived at the same time as that object or . . .”
“The Dog couldn’t detect it,” finished Lexa.
Everyone sat quietly for a few moments thinking about the implications of a cloaked object traveling through the galaxy.
Rita set the Dog to cruise at one hundred kilometers above the object’s surface. It still filled the view through the nosecone and no edges were yet visible. A true unidentified flying object. It was truly immense, whatever it was.
The idea that Rita and her crew might have stumbled across something never seen before crowded out her misgivings and gave her a buzz of excitement.
“Lexa, see what you can learn about the object from here,” Rita ordered.
There were several more minutes of quiet while Lexa ran her scans. Rita stared out the nosecone, wishing she could see, really see. The EM visor was a life saver in that she could see shapes and heat, but it didn’t allow her to see the surface of the object, to get a feel for it.
She hadn’t realized how much she depended on her eyes to feed her information until she no longer had the use of them.
“Huh.”
Rita swiveled to look at Lexa. “What—huh?”
“It’s definitely some type of ship. It appears to have a maze of hollow spaces inside. The outer shell is made up of aluminum, titanium, and lead.”
“Lead? That’s awfully heavy to use for building a ship,” John said. “An unusual choice. Can you tell anything else about it? Are there life forms inside?”
Lexa shook her head. “The Dog’s scanners aren’t picking up any life forms.”
Rita stared at the object filling the nosecone. “They might have used the lead to block gamma radiation. What color is the object?”
“Uh, sort of a mottled, dull gray,” Lexa answered. “Why?”
“Just wondered. I’m still getting used to my visor. All I see is a blue-violet surface. Can you estimate the size of the—what’s that?”
“What? What do you see? I don’t see anything. WHAT?” Frustration made Lexa short-tempered.
“There.” Rita pointed at the floating screen in front of her. “A red spot. That means heat. The surface is warmer in that area than anywhere else I’ve seen so far.”
“An exhaust vent?” John guessed. “Maybe to bleed heat off the engines?”
“Or an opening.” Rita took her eyes off her screen and examined the long, red streak that now filled the nosecone. “Can you see it now?” she asked.
“No. Wait.” Lexa scrambled out of her seat and ran up to the nosecone. “It looks like a fold in the surface. Like a chain of hills maybe.”
Rita shook her head. “No. It’s definitely more than hills.” She slowed the Dog’s speed. “Scan that area more closely, Lexa.”
“A volcanic area perhaps?” John guessed as Lexa made her way back to her station.
“If we were looking at a planet that would be a good guess. But if the object is partially hollow as Lexa’s scan shows where is the pressure and magma coming from? No, I’m sure it’s an opening in the surface.” Rita turned toward Lexa. “Well,” she demanded. “What else can you tell me?”
“The hills, or whatever they are are seventy point five kilometers long and fifty kilometers wide.”
Rita slowed the Dog’s speed even further and turned the ship so they were aligned with the red slash.
“All I can see is a shadow on the surface,” observed Yani. “The kind of jagged, shaded line a mountain range would cast. There are no lights or anything to indicate it leads inside the object. Are you sure it’s an opening, Rita?”
Rita looked at the heat signature beneath them. “I’m sure. It’s either a crack in the surface, something unintentional like damage from an attack or internal stresses, or it’s a cleverly disguised entry. Either way, it’s an opening.”
For a long moment no one spoke.
“Well,” John said, “in that case, are we going in?”
Rita took a deep breath and let it out. To enter the object would be foolhardy. Hadn’t she dealt with enough trouble this year?
And yet to leave without learning more about the alien ship went against everything she was.
“Yeah, we’re going in,” she answered.
2
Yani sucked in her breath. As a translator she had met a wide variety of species in the galaxy, both friendly and hostile. Her job had been to provide a means of communication between two parties who had no other way to understand one another. She might have helped negotiate a peace settlement, or a trade contract, or set the rules of war.
Once she had helped negotiate a marriage contract between a Golongol female and a Puffskin male, a creature with skin that constantly grew nodules that broke open with a puff of air and then shriveled, only to swell again in a constant display. Yani had felt sorry for the bride until she realized the bride was fascinated by the Puffskin.
The one thing that all of those jobs had in common was that as a translator Yani’s safety was guaranteed no matter the outcome of the meeting. Until Ruby City when a corrupt Snakeman had kidnapped her. When Rita saved her life in Ruby City and took her aboard the Dog Yani lost her official translator designation and any guarantee of safety.
Not that she regretted joining the Dog, not for a single moment.
Yani pulled herself out of her reverie and realized that John and Lexa were staring at her. “What?”
“We heard you gasp. Are you afraid?” Lexa asked, her voice gentle.
Yani looked at her little friend—her closest friend. These three were the only real friends she’d ever had. They hadn’t batted an eye when she recently discovered that she was a clone and insisted on accepting her as an equal even though galaxy law said otherwise.
“I was afraid,” she admitted. She hesitated, then decided she might as well share it all. “I was thinking about how I had immunity when I worked as a translator. I’m sorry. You’re all so much braver than I am.”
Rita shook her head. “You’re as brave as any of us, Yani. Don’t forget that it was you who placed yourself in danger to speak with the giant spiders on Kwaku. You’ve stepped up whenever we needed you to, so don’t run yourself down. I shouldn’t make the decision to enter the object without everyone’s input. Let’s take a vote. Do we enter or continue to our rendezvous with Slade? It’s unanimous or we leave.”
“Go in,” Lexa answered.
“In,” said John.
All three looked at Yani.
“I’m with you,” she said, then smiled. “You might need my talents in there.”
Rita grinned back at her. “Great. In we go.” She turned back to her console. “Lexa, monitor for any life forms please.”
The tension inside the Dog was palpable as they drew nearer to the opening. Rita found herself holding her breath and forced herself to breathe. Finding the alien ship might be the most terrifying—and the most exciting—thing she’d ever experienced. What if it contained a new, unknown species?
“Ooh, I can see it now,” Lexa said in a hushed tone. “You were right, Rita, it looks like a long cut in the surface.”
John left his seat and stood in the nosecone. “Look at how irregular the edges are. It’s either a very clever camouflage or an accidental crack.” He returned to his seat and strapped in.
“Lexa, what’s the radiation level at the opening?” If the crack was the result of an explosion the residual radiation could be more than the enviro-suits could handle. It could be lethal.
“Looks normal, Rita, certainly no more than we usually see.”
Rita relaxed a little. “Tell me what you see, everyone. All I get is an orange-red slash.” Damn, she wanted her sight back. It annoyed her to have to depend on other’s observations.
“What we initially thought looked like a mountain chain is actually the curled and bent edges of the crack,” John told her. “Given the irregularity of the edges I’m guessing that the crack is not part of the ship’s design. They either had an accident or were attacked. It looks a little like something cut into the object and pried it open.”
“Any life forms yet, Lexa?”
“Nothing yet, but I do detect an energy source deep inside. Maybe that’s where the heat is coming from.”
“Okay. Last chance to change your minds about going in. Anyone?”
“This could be a monumental discovery,” John answered. “Especially if the ship is from another galaxy. We have to go in, Rita.”
Rita breathed a sigh of relief. Her crew—her friends—were solid.
“Agreed. John, take over the scan for signs of life. Lexa, concentrate on the energy source and radiation levels. Yani, you watch the nosecone. If you see anything—anything at all that catches your eye—call out. All right, folks. Here we go.”
The Dog hovered at the outer edge of the crack for a moment, then slowly descended into the object.
For several minutes Yani could only see convoluted and pitted metal streaked and stained with black smudges. “The object’s skin looks scorched in places, Rita. Lexa, how thick is the object’s skin?”
“Between ten and fifteen kilometers.”
“We’re getting past it now. I think I see—” Yani gasped.
“What? What do you see?” demanded Rita. She slowed the Dog’s descent so that they hovered. Pinpoints of yellow danced around the Dog.
“It’s beautiful,” Yani whispered. “It’s like being inside a gigantic crystal. The inside surface looks like smooth gray stone, but something is sparkling all around us.”
“Smooth gray stone?” Rita felt a burst of excited anticipation. Could it be? She turned to look at Lexa. “Does that remind you of anything, Lexa?”
“Gray stone? I don’t—oh! Yes! The old landing place in the jungle by my home village. The surface is paved with a smooth gray stone.”
“That’s exactly right.” Butterflies fluttered in Rita’s chest. Could they really have found the civilization responsible for the gray stone structures scattered across the Milky Way galaxy? The structures, thought to be outposts, had been an unsolved puzzle ever since the discovery of the first one.
“What are you two talking about?” John asked. “What landing place?”
“There’s an ancient, and I do mean ancient, landing station near Lexa’s home on Weegan, and hundreds more scattered around our galaxy. The buildings are made of the gray stone as well. The strange thing is that the Weegan jungle covers everything in its path, but it never grows over that landing place. The surfaces are pristine. Not a speck of dirt anywhere.”
Excitement bubbled in Rita’s voice. “Based on the use of the gray stone inside this ship—” She stopped a moment to collect her thoughts. “I’m going to hazard a guess that the species that built this ship also built the landing place on Weegan.”
Rita’s heart pounded in her chest. This was a monumental discovery. The gray stone landing pads were scattered throughout their galaxy, yet no civilization had any information on them. The pads had been there since before the beginning of any culture’s recorded history, their origins lost in the mists of time.
Which made them very, very old. Unbelievably old.
And that meant that the object they were about to enter was also very, very old. Not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of years old. Possibly even older. Maybe millions of years old. Her mind boggled at the realization.
“Rita.”
Yani’s tone put an end to Rita’s musings. “What? Do you see something?”
“Yes. There were lights flashing everywhere when we first entered. Now there’s only a double row straight ahead.”
“Lexa, can you tell me anything about the space we’re in?”
Lexa’s extraordinarily long fingers moved swiftly over her console. “It’s humungous. Wait.” She did something, then dropped her hands into her lap.
“Sonar indicates the wall straight ahead is around fifty kilometers away. The space stretches more than one hundred twenty five kilometers to either side. That includes behind and below us.”
“Those lights look like the universal sign for a landing strip,” John observed. “It’s almost as though our hosts decided where they wanted us and turned off all the other options, leaving us only the one straight ahead.”
“That’s a remarkably astute observation, John,” Rita said. “All right then, I suppose we shouldn’t disappoint them. I’m taking the Dog down.”
Through her visor, Rita saw the heat from the lights shining yellow against the blue-violet background that was the way the visor interpreted the gray stone. She guided the ship between the lights, noticing that they adjusted to accommodate the Dog’s size, and brought the ship to rest on a platform. She waited in silence.
“Aren’t you going to turn off the engines?” Lexa asked. Rita smiled at the eagerness in Lexa’s voice. Very little intimidated the pint-sized Weegan.
“In a minute. Let’s see if anything happens first. If we find ourselves under attack I don’t want to be a sitting duck.”
“Sitting duck?” Yani echoed. “What’s that?”
“It’s an Old Earth expression. Humans used to hunt a species of flying birds called ducks. A duck sitting on the water was extremely vulnerable because they were slow to take flight and therefore were easy to kill. Very similar to the position we are now in.”
The landing lights winked out, leaving the Dog sitting in a velvety blackness. Yani felt a cold drop of fear sweat run down her back. She suppressed a shiver. “What do you think is happening?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Rita answered. “I’ve armed the Dog’s external surface. Anyone who tries to touch our ship will get a severe shock.”
“We’re moving,” Lexa said, running her hands over the controls in front of her. “I can’t feel it, but according to this whatever we landed on is taking us someplace.”
“That’s convenient.” John stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Saves us having to search this whole colossal ship.”
Rita took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She couldn’t remember ever being this excited about something. Even making the cut into the Red Barons hadn’t inspired this kind of thrill. Maybe she was more her father’s daughter than she had realized. Her deceased father, an archaeologist who had specialized in Old Earth history, would have liked to see this, she was sure.
“What direction are we headed in, Lexa?” she asked.
“Um, down. Down and to the starboard. We’ve stopped. Now what?”
Before Rita could answer, soft blue lights illuminated a tall, rectangular opening in the wall in front of them.
“That looks like an invitation, wouldn’t you say?” Rita answered, unbuckling her safety belt.
3
What’s the atmosphere out there?” asked Rita as she stared at the lit opening.
Lexa checked some readings on her screen. “Not enough oxygen. We’ll need—wait, it’s changing.” She gave Rita a puzzled frown. “The oxygen levels just increased. It’s breathable now.”
“It seems our hosts have anticipated our needs. That’s a positive sign. I do think that it would be wise to don our enviro-suits, however.” Rita moved toward the rear of the ship.
“Why?” Lexa asked, scrambling after her. “If we can breathe—“
Rita looked down at her. “What happens if after meeting us they decide they don’t like us and cut the oxygen levels back? We’ll be dead in minutes. No, we’ll be smart and try to prepare for any unexpected contingency. Which means I need to leave you here to guard the ship and monitor us.”
“What? No. I want to go with you.” Lexa folded her arms over her skinny chest and scowled. “You can’t leave me behind.”
Rita placed a hand on one of Lexa’s sloping shoulders. “You’re the only one besides me who can handle the ship. I need you to stay here in case we need help. You’re our backup. Worst case, if we’re killed I want you to get the Dog out of here and report what we’ve found.”
“It’s not fair, you know.”
“Yes, well, that’s what you get for being indispensable,” Rita replied. She turned back to the others. “Yani and John, you’ll come with me. I might need your help.”
Me too, Ree.
“Yes, Darwin, you too.” The shadow-creature couldn’t speak, but he was intelligent, intuitive, and most important, he could communicate with Rita telepathically from almost anywhere. He had saved her life more than once since joining her after her ship had crash-landed on his home planet.
“You’re taking Darwin too? I’ll be all alone here,” Lexa grumbled. She kicked at the rear compartment door, then rubbed her bare toes.
“Don’t whine, Lexa. I have no choice. You’re staying. We’ll all be in constant communication with you. Yani and I will use our helmet cams as well so you can see what we see. Help us suit up, okay?”
Rita knew exactly how Lexa felt. She wouldn’t want to stay behind either, but somebody had to and Lexa was the best choice. Heck, she was the only choice. Rita needed Yani’s translator skills and it would be foolhardy to venture into a strange ship without a medic. Besides, Lexa was the only one other than herself who could pilot the Dog.
Those were plenty good reasons to leave Lexa behind, but there was one more reason that she’d never admit to Lexa, a far more important reason. That was the fact that during their encounter with the red mist Lexa’s life force had lost its connection with her body. And while it had also happened to Rita and Yani, Lexa’s ordeal had been prolonged for a much longer period of time, for so long that they had begun to doubt her survival.
Rita wasn’t willing to risk Lexa’s life again.
“Look, I promise you’ll get a chance to explore once we get a clearer idea of what this ship is about,” she relented. “Right now I need you here to watch our backs. It’s important. More than important. We couldn’t go out there without you here watching over us.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Lexa brightened. “You promise I’ll get to do a little exploring later?”
“Yes. As long as it’s safe and the crew of this ship doesn’t object.”
Lexa wasn’t completely happy with Rita’s terms but she knew that was the best she was going to get. “All right. What do you need from me?”
Twenty minutes later Rita exited the Dog’s airlock with Darwin draped across the shoulders of her enviro-suit and Yani and John close on her heels. Lexa was back at the helm monitoring everything they saw or heard.
“Yani, what do you see?” Rita asked.
“The platform beneath our feet is gray and incredibly smooth. No marks on its surface. No scuffs, no marks of any kind, no holes or cracks. It’s perfect.”
“Lexa, it’s just as we thought—the platform is the same substance as the landing pad near your village,” Rita said into her mic.
They were closing in on the lighted opening. Rita had her laser pistol in her hand and her Bowie knife strapped to her thigh. Her waistpak held her throwing disc, a stunner, and litesticks. In her experience there was no such thing as carrying too many weapons when going into an unknown situation.
“How do you want to do this?”
Rita heard the tight excitement in John’s voice. He also had a laser pistol although he wasn’t as proficient with it as Rita would have liked. Still, he’d been practicing and she felt confident that he would stand up in a fight.
“You and I will go through the door together, John. I’ll go low, you go high. Sweep the area for a welcoming committee. Yani and Darwin will wait for our signal to join us.”
Rita plucked Darwin from her shoulders and set him at Yani’s feet. “Stay with Yani.” She nodded to John. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
They went through the door together. Nothing happened. No one stood there to greet them.
“Well that was anticlimactic,” Rita said after a sweep of the empty space. They were standing in a long, six-sided corridor that disappeared into the dark distance both to the left and to the right. Judging from the unrelieved blue-violet her visor picked up, everything was constructed from the same smooth material as the landing platform—the deck, ceiling, and walls were all constructed from the smooth gray stone.
“I had rather hoped that someone would meet us. Lexa, are you catching this?” Rita made a slow sweep of the corridor in both directions.
“I see it,” Lexa replied. “If the ship rolled on its side you’d never know the difference. It all looks the same. Do you see another door?”
Rita scrutinized the blue-violet walls looking for a change in heat. “I don’t see any. How’s the oxygen level in here?”
“Breathable.”
Rita flipped up the face mask on her enviro-suit and took a tentative breath. The air smelled dry and flat with a faint tint of something bitter. It reminded her of a tomb she had visited with her father in an Old Earth desert.
“Raise your face masks. Let’s save our breathers until we need them,” she told the others. She looked to the left and then to the right down the dark corridor. Which way should they go?
The place was beyond huge and could take months to explore and map. They needed to find the command center. If any living beings were here that’s where Rita expected to find them. If she had designed this ship she would have placed the command center in the protected interior. They needed to find a way into the center.
Heading into the ship’s interior could make it difficult to find their way back to the door that led to the Dog. It would be easy to become disoriented and lost in an object this size where everything looked the same. Fortunately she had Lexa tracking them.
“Lexa, do you have us on the tracking screen?”
“Yes, Rita. And I hear you loud and clear.”
“Darwin.”
Yes, Ree.
“Which way? We need to find the ship’s command center.”
Darwin’s amber eyes closed in his tiger-shaped head. His large ears twitched toward the left, then the right. He swiveled his head to the right.
That way, Ree. It seems the most likely.
Rita didn’t question him. Darwin had proven himself to possess a level of preternatural awareness far beyond her own understanding. He leaped back onto her shoulders and she set off down the corridor.
“Wait.” John took a red grease stick from his medico bag and stepped back to the door. He drew a large X on the wall beside the opening. “Just in case we need help finding our way out of here,” he explained.
“Good thinking,” Rita said, pleased by the Healer’s initiative. She had taken only a few more steps when she felt a light breeze on her face. She took a deep breath but smelled nothing more than the same bitter, dry air. What had created the sudden air movement? Had fans been turned on? Another door opened?
Rita stopped to listen but heard only the sounds of her own breathing and the soft shuffle of her companions’ booted feet. The interior of the object was eerily silent. The breeze died and she stepped forward again. As soon as she did the breeze picked back up.
Rita ignored it and walked forward slowly, searching carefully for doors or any changes in the monotonous smooth gray surfaces that might indicate passages.
The breeze grew stronger.
“Have you noticed that the breeze gets stronger the farther we travel away from where we entered?” John asked after several minutes.
“I noticed the same thing.” Yani edged a little closer to John. “What do you think is causing it?”
“For all we know it could be a regular ship function,” Rita answered. Even as she spoke, the breeze blew harder, stinging her eyes. “Lower and secure your face masks,” she instructed. She was struck by a sudden gale-force wind and leaned into it, struggling to move forward.
“Lexa, are you getting this?” Rita waited a moment. “Lexa?” There was no answer from her ship. “Dammit, we’ve lost communication with Lexa. Turn around. We need to get back to the Dog and make sure nothing’s happened to her.”
As soon as they reversed direction the wind lessened to a gentle breeze and then died out all together.
Rita stopped and turned back. As soon as she took a step forward she felt the light breeze pick up. She took two steps and it grew stronger. She stopped.
“It would seem that whoever owns this ship does not want us heading in that direction.” John looked over his shoulder toward the source of the wind. “Curious way to direct visitors, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s definitely an unusual way to direct where we go.” Rita turned back toward the door. “I suggest we check in with Lexa and our ship and then explore in the other direction.”
They lifted their face masks and walked down the silent corridor for several minutes.
“Am I imagining things or does it seem that we’ve walked too far? We should have come to the door by now.” Yani couldn’t keep the worry from her voice. Lexa was alone in the ship. They couldn’t raise her on their mics. What if something had gotten aboard and attacked Lexa? Don’t go there, she scolded herself. She needed to keep a level head if she was going to be of any use to the others.
Yani knew she was the weakest crew member. Specifically raised—cloned, she amended—for one purpose and one purpose only. Until Ruby City she had led a pampered life, the life of a universal translator. She had received the best accommodations and food available wherever she went, but it was the guaranteed safe passage that she now missed.
Part of her duties as translator involved being in tune with what other beings were feeling so she could convey the appropriate emotions in her translations. A useful tool for her work, the ultra-sensitivity often placed her at a disadvantage in her personal life. She felt too much and felt it too deeply and she recognized now that that part of her made her weak.
It was important to Yani to prove to Rita and the others that even though she was a clone, she could contribute more than just translation services. She could be counted on to carry her weight. Right now that meant pushing down her fear for Lexa and concentrating on the problem at hand.
“Yes, I’m sure we’ve passed the door,” she repeated, her voice stronger.
Rita stopped and looked around thoughtfully. “You know, Yani, I do believe you’re right. We should have passed the door and John’s mark by now. You two wait here. I’m going to run ahead a ways further and check. Distances could be disorienting in here surrounded by all this sameness.”
She took off at a slow jog, her eyes sweeping across the lefthand wall for John’s X. She stopped after five minutes and jogged back. The breeze grew stronger the closer she got to John and Yani until it was blowing a gale again.
“Yani’s right,” Rita shouted above the now howling wind. “We missed John’s mark.” She hesitated but then decided that her companions needed to know the truth. “That means that the door we came through is now closed and hidden from us.”
Rita turned her back to the wind and looked down the corridor. The sameness of all that smooth surface made the corridor look as if it disappeared into a blue-violet nothingness. It had to be worse for Yani and John who were only seeing gray.
She took a step down the corridor and the wind stopped. “It looks as if we have no choice but to go in this direction. Even if we fight the wind we don’t know where the door is. We could be standing right next to it.”
Rita held out her hand. “John, give me that grease marker, please.” John handed her the marker and Rita drew a rough circle on the wall. She returned the marker, stepped back and waited, watching the circle.
“What are you doing?” Yani came over to stand beside Rita.
“Watch. I’ve been thinking about how pristine the gray stone outpost on Weegan looked. Remember I told you that there was no dirt and the jungle stopped at the edges of it? I’m thinking that this gray stone, or whatever it is—yes. Look at that.”
Rita, Yani, and John watched as the circle faded and then disappeared.
“The walls must have some sort of self-cleaning property.” John looked at Rita. “Bizarre. Now what?”
“What choice do we have? We do what they want.” Rita started off down the corridor with Darwin at her heels.
John and Yani looked at each other, then followed.
4
No. No, no, no.” Lexa watched the opening her companions had disappeared through close. Seconds later the lights outlining the opening’s edges winked out, leaving nothing but smooth gray wall in front of the Dog.
Lexa hit the comm. “Rita, the access door has closed. I repeat, the access door has closed. I can’t see it anymore.” She waited a few moments and repeated her message. When Rita didn’t reply Lexa tried Yani and John with the same result.
She slumped back in her seat. Great. Just great. Something was blocking communication between the ship and her friends. She briefly considered going after them but gave up the idea. This was exactly why Rita had made her stay behind with the ship.
Lexa pulled up the tracking screen that monitored the movements of the enviro-suits. Three blips were standing almost directly on the other side of the wall in front of her. She watched one blip separate from the group and move quickly to the left. Five minutes later it turned back and rejoined the two stationary blips.
“Well, at least they realize the door is gone,” she muttered to herself. Her voice seemed to echo in the empty cabin.
Lexa glanced over her shoulder, her eyes darting around the empty space. She had never liked being alone. Her people lived in close family units often numbering in the hundreds, with related members building onto the main house until the structure spread in many directions like the roots of a tree. There was always someone nearby. Weegans didn’t do solitary.
She forced her attention back to the tracking screen. The three blips were now moving together toward the left. She knew there were four of them, but since Darwin didn’t require an enviro-suit he didn’t carry a signal for her to track.
Lexa frowned at the screen. She should do something about that. She could create an emitter that Darwin could wear with the jungle jewel collar she’d made for him. She slipped out of the chair and made her way back to the cargo bay. Selecting the items and tools she needed for the project, she hurried back to her station in the main cabin.
As she worked she kept a close eye on the moving blips.
The monotony of the unrelieved gray made Yani feel as if she was walking through thick fog. There was nothing to mark off how far they’d walked or even which direction they were going. Were they headed into the interior of the gigantic object or merely skirting its exterior? Or was walking an illusion and they were exactly where they’d started?
She glanced at Rita. Rita’s face was set in grim lines. “I’m worried about Lexa,” Yani blurted out. “She must know about the disappearing door by now.”
Rita gave a curt nod. “She’ll be fine as long as she stays inside the Dog. Don’t forget who you’re worried about. She may be tiny but she’s tough and smart. Lexa will be okay.”
She saw that Yani’s eyes still looked worried and cursed inwardly. Despite their differences Yani and Lexa had become inseparable. Rita softened her tone. “She’ll be fine Yani, I promise. Of the five of us I’m more concerned about our own safety at the moment, to be honest.”
Rita’s visor picked up no variation, no sign of a heat signature through the infrared sensors, nothing to indicate that there was anything more than the same smooth stone around them. Given the size of the ship they would need weeks just to walk the perimeter.
“Where is the crew?” Rita looked over her shoulder at Yani and John. “Could a ship this size be unmanned? Why would any civilization build a gargantuan, unmanned ship? It makes no sense. But we haven’t seen anything yet to indicate that living beings are on board.”
Rita had barely finished voicing her thoughts when she saw a wavering red slash appear in the wall next to her. She stopped abruptly, causing Yani and John to bump into her.
“What is it?” John raised his laser pistol.
Rita pointed at the red slash in the otherwise cool blue-violet wall. “I see a line of heat here on the wall. Do you see anything?”
John and Yani both stepped forward and inspected the wall closely. “I can’t see anything different,” Yani said. “It looks smooth and gray, just like the rest of this place.”
The slash widened.
“There’s definitely something there,” Rita insisted. “Darwin, can you tell me anything about this section of wall?”
The wall is opening.
Darwin was right. The red slash had widened and looked more like a red rectangle now. A doorway.
“I see it now,” John said softly. “It’s as if this section of the wall is melting away.”
“Move to the side, both of you. Quickly!” Rita snatched up Darwin and stepped to the side of the opening, out of sight of whatever waited on the other side.
They waited in silence for several long minutes. Heart pounding, Rita set Darwin on the deck without making a sound and darted her head into the opening.
There was nothing there.
Rita stepped through the door, checking in both directions before she waved the others to follow her. They stood shoulder to shoulder with Darwin at Rita’s feet and looked around the new space. It was large, as everything on this strange ship seemed to be, it’s far walls melting into gloomy shadows.
“It looks like a storeroom of some kind, wouldn’t you agree?” John observed. He waved his free hand at the deck to ceiling shelving, most of which stood empty. A few shelves held cylindrical containers knocked onto their sides, lids pried off and their contents long evaporated to dust.
“Good guess,” Rita answered, panning the space for the heat signature of something living. When she felt certain they were alone she relaxed. “I imagine a ship this size needs an enormous crew to maintain and run it. The crew would need a large quantity of supplies, even if they had a way to raise whatever food they eat.”
“If there’s a large crew why haven’t we run into any of them yet?” Yani asked. “I would think they’d at least be monitoring the docking bay.”
“That is the big question,” Rita answered as she walked down a row of shelves. Given the blue-violet color her visor was feeding her she guessed that the shelves were made from the same gray stone as the corridor. When she asked John he confirmed it.
Rita wondered how the crew identified what was where. How did they find what they needed if they couldn’t mark the smooth stone? She ran her gloved fingers over the front of a shelf and realized she could feel indentations in its surface.
“John, come look at this. Tell me what you see.” It annoyed her that she had to rely on the Healer’s observations, but one thing Rita had learned as a Red Baron was to use whatever tools were at hand. That meant she would use John’s training in scientific observation to feed her the information she couldn’t get for herself.
When he reached her side she showed John the indentations. “What do you think?”
John let out a low whistle. “It looks like a series of glyphs,” he said after a moment. “I would need to see more samples to be certain. Yani, look at these and tell us what you think.”
Yani joined them and leaned in to peer at the shelf. “I’ve never seen a written language like this but that doesn’t mean anything. There must be hundreds of thousands of languages that haven’t been entered into the Milky Way Language Base yet.”
Rita pounced on the one thing that seemed important to her. “But it looks like a language to you, is that what you’re saying?”
Yani nodded. “Yes. Definitely. One that most likely utilizes a combination of picto-sglyphs and character-glyphs that would be unique to their culture and environment.”
“That tells us that we’re dealing with an intelligent, educated species,” Rita said.
“Other than the fact that they obviously had to be intelligent to build this gigantic ship, why do you say that?” John asked. “There might be two or more species on board, with the so-called “lower” classes denied education.”
“Possible.” Rita gave a quick nod. “Okay, I’ll give you that. But the workers who cared for this storeroom had to be able to read and count and keep records. They’re probably lower on the ship’s social ladder, beneath the engineers and medicos for example, but they are still educated. It gives me hope that we’ll be able to communicate with the inhabitants when we find them. Let’s keep moving.”
They split up to search the storeroom but found no signs of life. After a short debate they returned to the corridor and continued down it, fueled by the excitement of having finally found something.
After another half hour of following the monotonous corridor, Rita held up her hand signaling a stop. “We really need to find a way in to the ship’s interior,” she said. “Walking the perimeter could take weeks at this rate. Any ideas?”
“We could try blasting a hole through the inner corridor wall,” John suggested.
Yani shook her head. “Not a good idea. It could be interpreted as an act of aggression.”
They had no choice but to continue down the seemingly endless corridor. Frustrated, they set off again. Within a few short minutes they came to an intersection. The new corridor cut in at a sharp right.
Rita gazed at it thoughtfully. “If we believe that the corridor we’re in follows the outer contours of the ship, then logic would dictate that this new corridor should lead to the center—or close to the center—of the ship. Would you both agree?”
“Not necessarily,” John pointed out. “The corridor might not pass through the ship’s center, it could run from a point on the outer edge to another point far away from the center. A secant corridor rather than a central corridor.”
Yani rolled her eyes. “What kind of corridor?”
“Secant. Two points on the circumference of a circle joined by a line that does not pass through the circle’s center,” John answered. “If the line bisects the center it’s the diameter.”
“Thank you for the geometry lesson.” Yani smirked at him, her eyes lit with laughter.
“I’m just pointing out that Rita is making an assumption that isn’t necessarily true,” John grumped.
“Thank you, John,” Rita said with a half-smile. Hours of walking the monotonous corridor had turned her companions into bickering children. She couldn’t blame them. She was feeling a little irritated herself.
“You are absolutely right to point that out. Nevertheless, I think we should check this new corridor out. We could spend days walking down this outer corridor and end up where we started and no closer to finding the ship’s inhabitants.”
A light breeze floated down the perimeter corridor into their faces.
“It seems as if we have no choice,” Yani said. “The breeze seems to be directing us to turn down this corridor.”
As soon as they stepped toward the new corridor the breeze stopped. Rita took several steps back in the direction they had been heading just to see what would happen. The breeze kicked up immediately, stronger this time.
“Interesting how closely we’re being monitored,” she said thoughtfully. She turned back toward the new corridor and the breeze died. “I wonder how they’re doing it. I’ve been looking but I haven’t seen anything that looks like cameras or sensors. A mystery that the ship’s builders might clear up for us if we ever find them. Ready?”
Rita set off down the new corridor with John and Yani walking beside her and Darwin back on his favorite perch on her shoulders.
The new corridor was as featureless as the first one they had been following. John’s six-foot four-inch frame nearly grazed the ceiling, leading Rita to hazard a guess that the ship’s builders stood under six feet in height. Nobody would build a home—and a ship qualified as a home of sorts—with ceilings that grazed their heads.
John broke the silence. “The empty storeroom bothers me.”
Yani looked quickly at him, then at Rita. “It bothers me too,” she said. “I thought maybe the ship was just getting to me, but I agree with John.”
“Why? It would make sense that the crew would use up stores, especially given how far this ship has traveled,” Rita observed. “I would expect to find empty store rooms.”
John shook his head. “It doesn’t feel right. Why haven’t they resupplied?”
“Maybe they couldn’t find a place to get supplies,” Rita answered. She warmed to her theory. “If this ship is from another galaxy then they’d have no idea where to put in for supplies. That would explain the empty storeroom.”
John shook his head again. “A ship this size and traveling those distances would be designed to be self-supporting. That storeroom was more than empty, it had an air of abandonment to it.”
