Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end. Contains actual action.
- . -
Meryl touched her so gently.
It was nothing more than a brush against her cheek, hardly enough to disturb the soft flesh of the woman's face, tickle the fine hairs. It should have had no result; hadn't Meryl seen the kind of sedatives Sam had administered? She was about to turn on her heels to consult Doc on counter-drugs when Millie Thompson's already troubled expression settled into almost a glower.
Where was she, when she was sleeping? Normally a person's mind was their own, but with that link to Knives . . . did her expression reflect some kind of struggle? Her words, her tone of voice sounded precisely like the Millie she had met before, albeit a bit grumpier. And grumpy was a strange adjective to apply to what was possibly the most chipper, cheerful person on the planet.
Elizabeth paused, watching as Meryl reached out again, gently stroking the other girl's cheek.
"I have to ask you something important."
Millie didn't seem to care terribly, but there was no doubt her sleep state had lightened considerably.
Elizabeth was no doctor, but a sudden resistance to sleep-inducing drugs didn't seem like such a good sign. While she might have access to Knives' skills, the engineer really doubted he'd gifted her with the Plant traits of a high metabolism and quick healing.
Of course, the entire appeal of a Plant was that it could bend the rules of physics as they knew them. The Gate, the source of the energy, the ability to mold it into finished, working, mechanical products . . . maybe Knives could give Millie those traits.
Maybe what Dr. Shrew had mistaken for brain damage was simply Millie's brain in the process of converting into a Plant's.
But that was just wishful thinking. At the time Knives wasn't releasing any of the types of energy needed for synthesis. Humanoid Plants didn't run around with a trail of produced goods laying out behind them. They did, however, seem to leave inordinately wide swaths of destruction.
And now is a pretty inopportune time to contemplate the creative or destructive forces of Plants, she chastised her wandering thoughts. Once Millie was up, they'd need to get her to the nearest console . . . which was out in the main Infirmary hallway. Then they'd need her to hack the system before any of the extremely vigilant techs or programmers noticed.
Time for Sunjy to stop operating under the radar.
Elizabeth released the latch on her belt and the PDA fell into her fingers, a now-familiar weight. She would miss this ease of communication, but she couldn't risk taking this technology back with them. Even without a production Plant they'd still have their backup generators and batteries – actually, it might be good to drain most of those as well. Something that required a lot of power but wouldn't accomplish much. Boosting the internal magnetic fields, perhaps? Looping processor diagnostics?
She quickly typed a message to Sunjy, adding Aaron to the Cc: line. It would be a little suspicious, but there was no way she'd get away with sending two communications. That secretary of the commander's was probably reading every one before allowing the servers to forward it.
Sunjy;
Staying in the main infirmary with Stryfe and Thompson for the rest of the day. Get me numbers on stress tests involving Plant radiation in relation to suit temperature. Thompson woke up, but she's not talking.
- E
She'd like to be able to say that it was a carefully designed code, but the fact was Sunjy was going to have to extrapolate. She hadn't asked him to look up anything useful in a few days, and he knew damn well that Aaron had been successful in getting the lift override configured. He'd easily figure out it was a request to cause havoc.
They'd just have to make sure they could get him out of harm's way before anyone else caught on.
And Aaron would realize it was a summons – that was the only reason he'd be copied.
If they were right, and Millie really could do what Doc clearly thought she could, what would be the best way to handle everything? Ideally, knocking out the crew, but there was no way to do it. Containing them was the next best idea, but any containment would eventually be overridden. For the short term, they could lock down everyone in a chamber easily enough – it was a spaceship, after all. It was designed that way. But that didn't help them with the crew that would be in the halls.
How best to minimize that traffic? Start up a siren for battle stations, or a preemptive warning that prisoners had escaped? Fake the escape of one of the Plants?
Of course, they'd also need to leave the pathways to both the production Plant and the cold generation room open. And they couldn't take care of Knives until they were literally off the ship. Once Millie put the last sequence of commands into motion, no matter how much she protested it they could do with Knives as they liked. However, leaving him on the ship, even dead . . . their medical science was better than anything she'd ever seen. The idea that they could keep Vash alive through all this . . . leaving even an intact corpse was probably not a good idea.
What if they could . . . somehow copy him? Grow another Knives? Hadn't that Plant survived July, when no one else had?
Shit. They'd need to take all the data and the tissue samples Shrew had taken from Vash, too.
Elizabeth straightened her tangential thoughts with practiced ease. Big picture was to lock down the cabined crew, immobilize the crew in the halls, and take down the Plants. They didn't have Vash to carry the production Plant, so whoever uninstalled her would need a suit. There should be two hanging in the staging room. Knives hadn't been given the stimulants yet, and even if he had a single dose was unlikely to have considerably changed him yet. The initial data on Vash indicated even if they'd optimized the drug application it would have still taken over 24 hours. And Knives seemed less willing to capitulate than Vash did, so she could expect him to fight just as hard.
So no suit needed for Knives. And they'd have to tote him far enough from the ship that his body wouldn't be found. So drugs to keep him under. And any medicines Doc thought they'd need to keep Vash under wraps until –
Until they decided what to do with him. Until Doc figured out whether he could help or not.
Elizabeth glanced up as the bedsheets shifted with a soft hiss. Millie groaned into her closed mouth, but still refused to open her eyes.
"I know you're tired, Millie, but it's important."
They couldn't retreat to Doc's ship. It would be the first place the soldiers would look. And apparently they had a pretty extensive groundforce still out and about, if they had people already stashed in the majority of her plant crews. Hiding in one of the cities with a patient like Vash . . . not only would it be almost impossible to hide him, it wouldn't be safe for the city.
They'd have to go to Eden. It was likely there wasn't much in the way of medical supplies there, but at least it was out in the middle of the desert. If anything did go wrong, the worse Vash could do was blow them all to smithereens and maybe take another piece of moon with him when he went.
Millie Thompson rolled her face slightly away from Meryl's touch, clearly trying to avoid it. Meryl was not so easily offput, and again, Elizabeth regretted her harsh words. She didn't want to see Millie any worse, either, but the last thing they could afford was Meryl coddling the woman. It was pretty clear now that Millie's previous comments hadn't just been her usual, unnatural perceptiveness.
Millie had taken the thoughts right out of her head. Or asked another telepath to.
How else would she have known the exact excuse the engineer had come up with? And how else had Knives still be able to process thoughts for Millie completely inhibited? He had been absolutely still under the effects of the inhibitors the first time she'd woken, even if he wasn't now. If he was incapable of using his own telepathy, the only other option was that the production Plant was somehow facilitating the link.
Maybe it was somehow easier with Millie. The woman had always been uncannily intelligent for someone so simple. Her genius with math, particularly chess, had led Elizabeth to let Millie loose on a Plant configuration board when the two insurance investigators had come to see the first plant to be converted. The results had been a very intuitive understanding of the technology, not unlike Elizabeth herself.
Millie Thompson would make an excellent Plant engineer. At the time, she'd wondered if perhaps the girl was a bit autistic, but now . . . or maybe all humans had the ability, and it only needed to be awakened? If the 'damage' Knives had caused was simply an installation of telepathy, would the fact that they were about to ask Millie to use it actually hurt the other woman?
She didn't want to cause any more damage than Meryl did, but they didn't have time for Meryl to do this her way. They were already out of time as it was. This attempt included a huge learning curve on Millie's part, and there was no telling how much access to his mind Knives was allowing.
That he would trust a human with his knowledge . . . she shivered, and looked at Millie's almost angry expression again.
She couldn't imagine anything making that ice-cold son of a bitch that desperate. He'd been staring at Vash's bionic arm, it had clearly shocked him, but . . . then again, he was so much more intelligent than a human. His immediate and complete grasp of the Lost Technology and their new design was something to be envied. He probably instantly made the leap as to why they had gone to the effort of removing the implants, and deduced that Vash had already been installed, tested, and removed from the bulb. And that the human filth would dare . . .
Well, at least she knew even Knives was afraid of something. Considering what he'd put his brother through, she was amazed anything as tame as a prison that sucked your life away would push him to that extreme.
Maybe they could use it as leverage, make him undo what he'd done to Millie? If it could be undone?
She resisted the urge to shake her head. Yeah, right. Manipulate Knives. She'd spent too much time with Stryfe.
Millie shifted again, shaking her head slightly as a napping person might respond to an annoying insect. Meryl smiled slightly.
"Millie."
The big girl's eyes flickered for a just a second, and then she shot bolt upright with almost inhuman speed. Elizabeth didn't have time to flinch until Millie was already sitting straight as a rod, but somehow Meryl had avoided being headbutted right off the bed. The smaller girl hadn't shifted much; just enough to dodge, and without an expression of surprise.
It was like she'd been expecting it.
Millie's eyes were wide open, but it was very clear they were not focused on anything. The girl's expression was quickly clouding from glowering to hysteria.
"How much longer?" she sang softly to herself. "But time means nothing."
Despite the madness in her eyes Millie didn't move. She sat exactly as she was, barely drawing in breath. Meryl was staring at her warily, but didn't move from the bed.
"Millie. You're dreaming. Can you hear me?"
"Soon," she murmured, as though to herself. "Soon."
Elizabeth shifted her eyes to Meryl without blinking. Obviously Millie had done this before, when waking –
And her angry expression. They were right.
Millie had access to Knives' mind.
Currently she was probably his mouthpiece. Until she regained consciousness, really asserted her personality, she was probably just a slave to him. Once he woke from the coma, he could probably exert a much higher degree of control.
Oh, god. Had he tried to destroy her personality, her awareness?
Had he been trying to render her nothing more than an empty vessel, that he could remotely control from the bulb?
"Knives," she called, on a hunch. Millie's head turned slightly, and the hysteria died instantly into an aloof, pleasant expression. Her eyes were still wide open, still unseeing.
Elizabeth didn't say anything else, but Millie suddenly smiled. It was that same smile, the one that didn't belong to her face. Her pupils contracted shockingly quickly, focusing on her.
And suddenly the smile didn't seem so foreign, after all.
Then Millie blinked.
It was a little slower, a little sluggish, and her eyes tracked awkwardly as she turned, confused, to her left. Meryl put a light hand on her gowned shoulder, waiting until she was certain she had the other woman's attention.
"How do you feel?"
Millie frowned, a much more Millie Thompson-like frown than the ones she'd shown in her sleep. She glanced around the room again, her displeasure evident. Then she reached down, fumbling with the bunched sheets before yanking them up. She peered beneath them, apparently checking to make sure she still had legs, and when she was satisfied, she dropped both the sheets and her hands listlessly. She had slowly been sagging from her absolutely straight-backed position, and by the time the sheets coiled into her lap again she was slouched in exhaustion.
"I didn't have enough time," she muttered. "The locked doors - some of them are just closed." She lifted her head with effort and focused on Stryfe. "I feel sick," she added matter-of-factly.
The bizarre statements didn't seem to faze Meryl in the least. "Millie, I'm sorry to wake you up. It's just . . ."
Millie focused, her eyes becoming a little more alert, before she nodded slowly. "Yes."
Finally the smaller woman seemed a little nonplussed. Elizabeth was beginning to wonder how many times the two had had conversations like this.
Of course. Meryl and Doc had previously had a conversation about Millie's condition. Meryl had known the moment she'd walked in the door that Millie Thompson was, for all intents and purposes, psychic.
"Would-would you just let me say something without – answering! I didn't even ask the question!" the black-haired woman exploded, and Millie ducked her head in such a familiar gesture it caught in Elizabeth's throat.
Whatever he'd intended, she was still in there.
"Sorry, Meryl," she whispered contritely. "It's just that I agree with Miss Elizabeth."
Elizabeth blinked, fighting to keep her expression mild. "Agree with what?" she finally asked. That she was psychic?
Millie pressed her bottom lip into her upper one, a gesture that wasn't really a smile. "We don't have much time," she said simply. "And I don't know anything about the computers. I don't even know how to ask." Her expression sobered. "The wind is really, really angry with me," she confided in an even lower voice. "I don't think it likes me very much."
"Does it need to?" Elizabeth had always prided herself on being able to keep her eye on the ball. The esotericism of the conversation could be analyzed later.
Millie shrugged, the movement clumsy. "I don't know. The little boy still thinks I'm Rem."
Meryl winced. "Millie, when you dream, and you see that little boy, you know-"
She nodded. "I know." Her expression was soft, but resolute. "He's scared, Meryl. He doesn't feel very good either."
Rem . . . why did that name sound familiar?
"Millie, do you think you can get up? If you think it's going to hurt you, we'll find another way."
She shook her head. "I want to." She picked up her right hand and placed it over Meryl's, still on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, sempai," she added, her voice quiet but strong. "But it's my decision."
Meryl let whatever protest she had remain mental, and just clenched her jaw briefly before nodding to herself. She took a preparatory breath, then looked straight at the engineer. "What first?"
What first indeed. "We need to get her to a console. I expect the nurse is already on his way." She cast a look around the room, noting only the equipment attached to Millie. The IV. The bags of liquid were on a wheeled pole, so that could be hauled with her. Beside the chair that Meryl was not utilizing, which was quite stationary, there was a short, mobile examination stool in the corner. Sam the nurse had not left a syringe, not even so much as a pen to use as a weapon.
She briefly considered hitting him with the stool when he walked in, but it was unwieldy and he looked pretty fit.
"I have an idea. Meryl, get her on the stool. It'll keep her from having to move as much."
The shorter woman looked as though she were about to say something, but she bit her tongue. It was quite tactless, whatever it was, because Millie stared at her partner as though the woman had started squawking like a toma. Meryl gave her a silencing look, and Elizabeth did her best to ignore them both, taking a position by the door.
She'd had bodyguards pretty much as long as she could remember. Vash had deposited her with relatives, and her uncle had been well off and nothing but relieved that his niece had survived the devastation of July. His house was staffed not only with butlers and a frightening house caretaker, but a security detail that kept the riff-raff at bay. He was a gentleman, much as her father had been, and he raised her properly, taught her how to be a lady. She grew into a willowy, elegant beauty, and she could have married almost any man on the planet and lived a life few on Gunsmoke could comprehend.
The problem was that the concept of getting married and sitting around like a piece of furniture had bored her out of her skull. She was the smartest thing her tutors had ever seen, and it wasn't long before she had taken – and passed – entrance exams to the Union training academy despite the fact that she hadn't had access to the training materials.
About the time he learned she'd be staying on campus for the training, as they had their own Plant, her uncle assigned their house caretaker to her. She'd known him only as that quiet, olive-skinned man with sharp eyes, and as a child she'd thought he was slightly creepy. His name was Sunjy.
And he'd personally murder her if she couldn't do something as simple as take down an unsuspecting nurse.
She had no doubt Sam was supposed to be watching them, waiting for them to re-enter the room, and he'd heard a little if not all of their conversation. Of course, if he'd heard the whole thing, there would have been several armed guards at the door by now. He might have been paying more attention to what was going on with Vash, but serious movement would catch his eye just as it had before. Obviously he had to have some kind of surveillance on her. And when they disconnected her from the machine that was recording her vitals, it would probably look to the computer as though she'd died. If nothing else had gotten his attention, that certainly would.
Hopefully he'd look at the monitor before he brought half the medical staff with him.
Meryl had pulled back the blankets, and hooked the stool with a sure, tiny foot, dragging it close. Obviously she'd come to the same conclusion, and with expert fingers she plucked off the small, white disc that seemed to be the one sensor still on Millie.
Unsurprisingly, the computer buzzed in alarm. Both girls ignored it. Millie swung her long legs to the side of the bed, wriggling her ankles.
"I think I can walk."
Meryl paid her no attention, and separated the light blue blanket from the sheet. "I'm not picking you up off the floor again, Millie."
The big girl visibly swallowed a protest, and transferred herself to the stool a little shakily, but successfully. She reached out, grabbing the wheeled stand and hooking it into her elbow. Her depth perception seemed a little off, and Elizabeth took the time to wonder how her coordination problems would hinder the process. They couldn't afford much delay, and she'd need to be quick enough to write her code around the programmers already logged into the system. They'd lock her out otherwise, and no matter how skilled Knives was with the technology, once a console had been deactivated or removed from the ship computer's domain, no amount of punching keys would allow it access. They'd have to move her to the next nearest console, which would probably be disabled by the time they got to it.
If Millie got locked out before she was fully in control of the system, they were in deep, deep trouble. Hopefully whatever mayhem Sunjy was causing was huge.
It didn't take long, and despite the fact she was balanced on the balls of her feet, the time between the door hissing open and Sam rushing inside was very little. The rooms were nearly soundproof – there'd been no warning before the doors pulled apart.
Of course, she didn't need much. She'd trained to handle situations far faster than this one.
Her left arm swung out, stiff at the elbow, relaxed at the shoulder, and the flat fat of the outside edge of her palm slammed into the man's nose. She used the momentum of the swing to bring herself around, aiming and landing a perfect axe kick directly onto the top of the stunned man's skull. He collapsed instantly, landing in a heap of white coat and blood.
She shook her left hand out, surprised to see it was relatively clean. She'd hit the middle of the bridge of his nose, exactly what she'd been aiming for, and her kick wouldn't have been high enough save the fact he'd already been ducking his head in reaction to the first blow.
She glanced up at the camera, hoping his body had fallen out of its line of sight, and caught a glimpse of Meryl and Millie gaping at her.
"Wow," Millie volunteered, in a chipper voice. "You really cleaned his clock."
Elizabeth shrugged. All that training she'd put herself through wasn't wasted after all. Just not used on the target she'd imagined. Though he was about Vash's height . . . "We don't have much time."
She ducked her head into the hall – no sign of anyone else. The sound of rubber wheels on tile urged her out of the doorframe, and a moment later Millie, hugging her knees and still dragging the IV stand, was pushed out into the hall by Meryl. They followed the engineer about ten yarz, almost back to the main entrance. A stripe of paneled, dark . . . glass, it looked like, ran the length of the hallway. Elizabeth stopped and waved her hand in front of an unmarked panel, and it suddenly lit up.
The white, opaque wall beneath it sighed opened, revealing a rectangle that held a keyboard.
The engineer looked at Millie expectantly, and the still somehow smaller-looking woman looked back at her questioningly before focusing again on the keyboard.
A moment of silence passed that way, with the two standing women staring at the seated one.
Millie put her hands on the keyboard, studying at it thoughtfully a moment. She hit a key and smiled slightly.
"I wish your typewriter were like this, sempai! You'd love it!"
Elizabeth watched Meryl grimace a smile. "Not now, Millie. Concentrate."
"Or, don't," the engineer added. "Just . . . wait for your hands to want to do something." Surely muscle memory would kick in? Or . . . then again, what did they expect? Knives to possess her like demons of ancient lore?
"Wiggle your fingers, maybe?"
That might actually not be a bad idea. "Or close your eyes and think about locking everyone else out of the other consoles."
Meryl didn't take her eyes off the relatively still Millie, but her next comment was very obviously not meant for her long-time friend. "What about locking the doors around us?"
Now it was Elizabeth's turn to grimace. "It won't do any good if we can't prevent them from accessing the systems." They'd just lock them out of the console, then force open the doors.
"She can't lock everyone else out of the system if we all get shot!"
Well, that was the problem with the plan, wasn't it. "It'll be easier to – just trust me."
Meryl finally spared her a sideways glance, readily expressing her frustration and anxiety. But there was something else there, something that had been missing in the meetings.
A spine? she thought dryly. Of all the times for Meryl Stryfe to -
Or maybe it was the best time of all. They were committed. They were either going to take all the Plants with them, or they were going to be detained. Permanently. Probably in cold-sleep tubes. Or possibly coffins.
Both women glanced away from one another at the same moment, both surprised to see Millie moving. Her hands were slowly but steadily wandering over the keys, and with ever-increasing confidence. From her angle Elizabeth could see that Millie had the tip of her tongue pinned between her teeth. Her expression, however, seemed to be one of delight.
Elizabeth studied the monitor, watching the lines fly by. For some reason, the girl wasn't simply locking down the system. It looked like she was - Elizabeth frowned as a parsing window came up, and Millie bent to filling it with neat, light green type. She was writing a routine?
"Millie, what –"
"I'm sorry, Miss Elizabeth, but you told me to make sure I locked everyone else out of the computer, and so I thought about that, and . . . and my hands just started typing! But I really just have no idea exactly how." She sounded thrilled. "This is really weird!"
"It would be easier if you just –"
Meryl touched her wrist, and Elizabeth flinched at the unfamiliar sensation of pressure on the light brace.
"Millie," the shorter woman said carefully, "what are you so excited about?"
"I . . . I just am!" She didn't slow her work, but she shook her head slowly, her body language still slumped despite her ever-increasing typing. If you didn't look at her hands, you'd have thought she was slouched in a rocking chair on her own porch, sipping a lemonade and watching the sun set. "It just makes me so happy to be helping!"
Elizabeth decided not to get a closer look at the woman's expression. Seeing the faint undercurrents of someone so unlike Millie under the skin of her face had been horrible enough the first time. Whatever she was writing, clearly it tickled Knives to death.
That probably meant trouble.
"I'm going to check on Doc," she said, moderating her voice for a very casual tone. "Meryl, stay with her. Millie, you might want to lock all the doors around the infirmary halls except-"
A series of soft chimes rang out, not quite in unison but close. A quick glance at the hall showed soft crimson lights over all the doors.
All but one.
She locked the room she'd previously been in, Elizabeth noted. Well, it was probably easier to enter a global command with only one exception than two. No reason to leave it unlocked. Unless they suddenly needed some cover. But since Doc had been alone in his room, it was unlikely someone was going to materialize out of the floor shooting.
Meryl barely acknowledged the comment, and Elizabeth took that as a signal, striding purposefully down the corridor. Knives was still doubtlessly in a coma, so Millie should have control of what she was doing, at least her intent if not the actual carrying out. She was writing a routine as it affected the doors so – so she was writing the path they'd take to get to the Plants, so no one had to be sitting at the console opening all the doors manually?
It would certainly make things easier in the long run, but currently –
But currently nothing. If she could effortlessly write something that complicated, she'd probably already started the locking down of the core system. Or maybe –
Maybe she'd asked the ship's Plant to do it.
It had responded so willingly to Knives, after all.
She entered the only room without a light above the doors, not surprised to find Doc turning his head towards her as she stepped through. So much for him wanting to rest. Elizabeth allowed them to close behind her before flashing him a reassuring smile.
"Millie's having a good time with the computers."
He returned her smile as best he could, and began to reach across his body towards his right arm. "Could you be a dear . . ."
He was indicating the still worryingly active metal hands inside the grafting box.
Elizabeth moved to his right side, giving the equipment a once-over. Despite the fact that it was extremely advanced equipment that she would imagine only highly qualified people would ever be around to operate, she'd found that a lot of Lost Technology was despicably easy to use. Sure enough, there were five slightly raised buttons on the side farthest from the patient. On those raised square buttons were images. She chose the one that she'd come to know as the apparently universal sign for power, and it clicked satisfyingly beneath her hand.
The twin metal hands immediately ceased their hovering and folded towards the top of the box like shining bird's feet. There was a hiss as pressurized air somewhere released, and the cuff that had been securely around the joint of Doc's arm and shoulder relaxed slowly.
Of course. To prevent the stench of dying flesh from bothering the patient.
She tried to sniff the air without appearing too obvious about it. She trusted him with his own health, certainly, but why would the equipment still be actively grafting if his arm was as repaired as he claimed? Was it just a supremely mothering kind of robot?
While she caught definite whiffs of flesh, the overwhelming scents in the room were antiseptics and ozone. Nothing terribly unexpected. And she'd smelled the odor of burnt human flesh more times than she cared to recollect. Doc withdrew the remainder of his arm gingerly from the equipment, and she couldn't help a wince as the new skin on the very edge of his stump clonked strongly against the metal frame of the cuff.
He pursed his lips thoughtfully, waving the arm around a bit. It looked as though they'd removed everything from his elbow joint down, and the skin from that point to the middle of his bicep was pink and waxy, as though it had been slipped off someone else like a coat sleeve and just laid over his own. The line of the synthetic flesh to his would have been unbroken, save his real skin had a different amount of melanin, and it was puffy and angry. A bit of a clear serum had collected below one painful looking lesion.
"It's been a long time," he noted softly, then sat upright slowly, wincing.
"I'm sorry?" she asked politely as she moved to help him. He shook her off with a gentle headshake.
"Since I was on the receiving end of medical care," he explained, then coughed dryly. "The painkillers are pretty good."
She half-smiled and allowed him to slowly tilt himself into a sitting position. He nodded his head towards the base of the bed.
"In one of those drawers you'll find some thicker gauze, it may carry an orthopedics label. If I could trouble you to wrap this nice new skin of mine with it, I would be eternally grateful."
She knelt obediently and began shuffling through the drawers. "Our plan has changed." Now that niceties had been observed, he needed to be brought up to speed. "We're taking the Plants with us."
"Oh?" was all he said.
The drawers were filled with all manner of bandaging, and she tossed what she didn't need onto the floor as she searched. "Depriving them of a main power source became an option. Can you think of a routine we can set after the fact to drain their battery power?"
"Several," the older man muttered, and coughed again. It wasn't wet, didn't sound like pneumonia, and she paused in her search and glanced up at him.
"Do you have broken ribs?"
She already knew the answer – she'd once sat in a sand steamer apartment with Aaron for three days, listening to that curious cough. It indicated swelling on the outside of the lungs, not the inside, and it wasn't life-threatening, but it did mean they'd have to go even easier on him than she'd planned.
Logistically, they were in trouble. They were a party of nine, and only five of them could even walk. The production Plant, Knives, and Vash would have to be carried outright. Meryl could help support Millie, and she'd either be left carrying Knives, Vash, or the Plant. Maybe Meryl could help both Millie and Doc? They only had to get as far as the vehicle depot –
Elizabeth made a mental note to ask Millie to look for it before they left. The earthmovers had been removed from the ship sometime in the last one hundred and thirty years, probably before the ship had become too covered with sand. They were worthless as conveyance, but the smaller stuff had to be kept in an off-ship location somewhere nearby. There were probably several bunkers filled with supplies outside of the main ship.
Hopefully not staffed full-time.
She made another mental note.
"I do. Do you have a broken wrist?"
Elizabeth hid another smile as she found the bandaging Doc had indicated. "Hairline fracture."
He just nodded, and she straightened quickly and ripped the sterilized paper from the rolls. "Millie's locked everyone out of the Infirmary and is probably working on the network."
"I see." He watched her as she worked, starting at the bottom of the new flesh and wrapping quickly upwards. "A little tighter, dear. I won't break."
His eyes were old but clear, the palest of dark greens, and his eyelids carried the years like faux wood. He was on some really good drugs, she noted, watching his slightly dilated pupils watching her.
"Did he speak?" he asked finally.
She shook her head. "She was dreaming, though." There was no doubt what he was asking. And though they no longer had to keep up pretenses, she found she was glad the question was so . . . simple. "I think she has control of what she does, but there's no doubt it's influenced. She's enjoying coding a little too much."
"Well, his hopes are being fulfilled. He's getting his escape," Doc said lightly, and she wondered if it was just a comment or a gentle reminder that she hadn't finished telling him the plan.
Not that there was much more to tell.
"We'll head to Eden." She had finished winding the second bandage up to his shoulder, more gently around the open sores and blisters, and tied it off at the top of his shoulder. "There's too much of a chance of running into them in cities, and it's too much of a risk to bring Vash there."
He didn't protest, instead moving the arm in a circle. It was difficult for him to do, which was apparently the point. "An excellent job," he complimented, then slid ungracefully off the bed. He was dressed only in the gown he'd been given after surgery, and he wriggled his bare toes on the cool floors. Despite his initial shaky descent, he seemed okay on his feet.
"Ask Millie to allow me access to the medical records, please," he started, in a stronger voice. "I'll assume I'm to monitor Vash and Knives during the trip?"
She nodded. He was waiting for her to say something else about Vash, she knew. And there was nothing more to say. "Also, we'll need whatever medicines and equipment that can be easily carried. I don't know what sort of supplies Knives might have."
"Didn't you visit Eden?"
He was remarkably well-informed for an old guy in a SEEDs ship. She hid her surprise by turning back for the door. "I didn't exactly get the grand tour," she replied, casting around for something he could use as a cane.
He interpreted at least her excuse properly, because he coughed gently. "No need. I'll manage. Who's going to uninstall the production Plant?"
Sunjy was closest, if he was still safe. "One of my men," she replied. "I'll take care of Knives."
She needed to make sure Millie knew to get Sunjy out. Third mental note.
She was very good at keeping up with them – she'd had more practice than she cared to admit. The trip from Doc's room back to the two insurance investigators was spent wracking her brain for a solution to their most pressing problem – how to confine the crew of the ship without catching Aaron and Sunjy. Hopefully Aaron had already made it into a hallway, and he could do some cleanup for them, but Sunjy had no way of knowing when his distractionary tactics could be considered completed.
A part of her felt badly for leaving the old man alone, but he seemed to be walking okay despite the ribs. And just as they didn't have time to coddle Millie Thompson, they didn't have much time to wait for the elderly, either.
Millie was still hunched over the keyboard, and Meryl was tucking the pale blue blanket more tightly around the taller girl. Maybe the reason she seemed so short on that stool had to do with the fact that Meryl was just the tiniest bit shorter standing beside her, and Meryl never really seemed as tiny as she was –
Meryl glanced up as Elizabeth returned, and she nodded. "Doc's up and he's okay." She had eyes only for the screens, not surprised to see them stacked like tiles. Three parsing windows, one compiler, the network tree being explored by objects, and something that was in text –
"I think . . . I'm done," Millie declared, taking a deep breath. She seemed to be moving her hands over the keyboard in slow, hovering circles, waiting for her fingertips to tell her where they wanted to go.
"How did you confine the crew?"
Millie pursed her lips in her usual confounded fashion. "Well, shucks, Miss Elizabeth, you didn't ask me to do that!" She stared at the keyboard a second, then frowned at her fingers.
"Why can't we just gas them?" Meryl was still playing with the hem of the blanket, staring blankly at the displays before her.
"Because that was specifically set up for Knives, and just one room," Elizabeth explained in what she hoped was a less impatient voice than she felt. "This is a working ship. It isn't like they installed sleeping gas in all the ventilation shafts."
"Well, can we?"
Practical. But impossible. "Unfortunately, no. Too many shafts, no sleeping gas."
Meryl growled to herself. "Well, fine. If we can't put something in, can we take something out?"
Elizabeth opened her mouth to point out the flaw in that idea, too – and stopped. Millie, on the other hand, immediately began to type.
So Knives really wasn't driving her. Until she had a direct idea of a set task to perform, she truly did have control of what she was doing.
"Millie, open up a audio link to Doc. Also, he needs into a console to –"
"I didn't shut off the one in his room," she interrupted apologetically. "Hi, Doc!"
A small window opened in the fore, showing the top of Doc's shiny pate as he worked at the console. He was leaning pretty heavily on a stool, but otherwise appeared fine, and he glanced up with one of his wavy smiles.
"Hello, Miss Millie," he greeted. "How are you feeling, young lady?"
"Sick," she responded immediately. "I think it's because of the sleeping drugs."
He just nodded into the camera. "Headache, dizziness?"
She shook her head. "Nope! Just a little numb."
He nodded, as though this was perfectly expected. "I understand this is all very new and frightening, but please try to stay calm-"
"I will! And I already gave you access to all of the documents and data on Mr. Vash and Mr. Knives," she added.
Meryl was frowning, but she just shook her head slightly when Elizabeth tried to catch her eye.
"Yes, you did! And I see you did a fine job isolating the network. The false timeout errors were quite clever. They might not yet have even noticed."
Millie beamed. "Meryl and Miss Elizabeth wanted to talk to you."
"Doc, by what percent should we lower the air pressure to induce unconsciousness?" There was no point in beating around the bush. "And how quickly after normal air is restored will a person regain consciousness?"
Doc blinked, but his projected image seemed to make the leap pretty quickly. "Lower the pressure in the desired areas to 2.75 PSI. Unconsciousness should occur in 18 to 30 seconds." He paused, his eyes searching nothing as he ran some calculations in his head. "Once you've succeeded in incapacitating the crew, raise the pressure to 6.75. That will keep them unconscious but significantly increase the time you can keep them out without permanent risk. It will also allow you to operate in those areas if you keep activity to a minimum and remain there for under five minutes."
So they could take down the entire ship, then increase the pressure, get Sunjy and Aaron, and so long as they carried oxygen with them or emptied areas of crew members before setting to work, they could conceivably have the run of the ship.
"How long will it be safe to keep the pressure at the higher level?"
Doc frowned up at the camera. "I would expect to see seizures in those suffering hypoxia in about twenty to thirty minutes. Whatever it is we must do, it must be done quickly. I would suggest that the crew you can contain without depriving of air, do so."
Millie was typing up a storm, and the window of Doc disappeared behind the compiler. It didn't close, though, which meant they were keeping open the audio link with Doc. Elizabeth ticked off her mental notes..
"Millie, can you find Aaron and Sunjy?"
The other girl nodded after a moment, and after another series of screens flashed by, she brought up the ship by sections. Two green dots appeared – one in the main Archives, the other two levels up in a bay marked Storage B-7.
"Mr. Carter's in the storage warehouse with two other guards," Millie added, making the rest of the crew appear as lighter grey dots.
Two of the lighter grey dots were blinking a dull yellow.
"Oh, no," Millie breathed. Before either Elizabeth or Meryl could ask what it meant, the view had scrolled to a specific section of the ship. Two personnel logs came up, scrolling through data, as the dull yellow dots continued to flash.
Elizabeth glanced at the personnel manifests, then did a double-take. Faber was the captain in charge of the data deletion investigation, with the funny accent. He'd probably been the one to okay or nix Aaron's suggestions, too, and thus the one that had let the lift override slip through –
The other picture was none other than Commander Bryan Gray.
"Millie, what does that mean?" Meryl's voice was tight.
Their photos and summaries vanished, replaced by two very short, memo-formatted messages. Both had timestamps and a series of numbers that Elizabeth assumed were military ID numbers. The messages were auto-generated, and the header indicated they had been sent to the STAT team –
The messages had been sent to the Infirmary.
Elizabeth blinked, momentarily shocked. The contents were a swarm of acronyms and numbers; one held a graph moving in a steady but steep downward pattern, the other was more like plummeting immediately off the edge of a mountain ridge.
"Their badges aren't recording any life signs," Millie whispered.
Meryl tensed behind the other girl. "You mean they took them off? You can't track them through the ship?"
Elizabeth fingered the button on her collar. So was that what those were?
Millie was shaking her head. "They work by proximity." She said it softly but confidently, as though she knew it was fact. "If either of them were within fifty yarz it wouldn't have sent the page." Her voice was growing thicker by the second. "These messages are automatically sent when – when – Oh, Meryl, they died! We locked in all the doctors and they died!"
Meryl had wrapped her arms around Millie from behind, steadying the other woman. Millie had begun to shake, her hands curling into fists on the keyboard.
"It's not your fault, Millie," Meryl was soothing. "Let's just see what happened so we can stop it from happening again, okay?"
"Is anyone else in the room with them?" Elizabeth asked quietly. It was a dream come true, that the most dangerous men on the ship had been so neatly dispatched as soon as they'd gotten control of the . . . computers . . .
Millie was still shaking, but she brought up the schematics of the ship again. In the room – marked 'Commander's quarters' – there were the two yellow dots.
And a lone, stationary gray one.
- . -
He couldn't move.
The room should have been quieter. He'd spent so much effort making it that way. The door, the dampener in the ventilation, even specially engineered light bulbs in the panel overlooking the conference table. He'd busied himself making sure there were enough pieces of fabric in the room to prevent the slapping echo that parallel, metal walls usually produced. He'd tidied the piles of graphing paper to prevent accidental encounters with elbows, he'd hand-adjusted the chime and notification bells.
And despite his master's appreciation of all Earth-created objects, he had eschewed the idea of a traditional pendulum clock. No matter how good the ship's grav field was, he said, they just didn't work properly. They knew.
Still, a rhythmic ticking pounded into the silence, measuring time too quickly. The fingers themselves were unmarred, relaxed and excellent conductors of the mechanism. Eventually it would slow, then stop altogether, but for now it was a freshly turned hourglass, depositing its sands onto the once-clean floor.
Only the sands were too fluid, and they were running everywhere.
And each grain was a drop of blood.
The gun was still on the conference table, having fallen from enough of a height that it had gouged the real wood finish. He would have been more upset about it if he hadn't recognized the remnants of the head that lay fairly near it. The gun arm had been propelled right off the table, however, and so the pooling blood had found its convenient road to the floor.
Freely flowing splashes of it continued to drip from the limp hand to measure the minutes, faster than minutes but agonizingly slow, and all he could do was stand there, and stare at the table.
Somehow, everything had gone awry.
And for the life of him, Terry couldn't think of a way out of this one.
- . -
Author's Notes: I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter – real life is getting awfully pesky these days. But look! I accomplished . . . something. Death! Blood! Violence! Okay, so it's not what I said it would be, but at least you can all take solace in the surety that I really can't stop and introspect any more than I already have. This chapter has been split into two parts due to length, and this was the only good place to stop. The next chapter, which will be the second half of this one, will wrap up the successful or failed escape attempt. I promise.
As always, thank you so much for your comments! And a shout out to the lurking chryssantes, MalignantUser, and WolfDaughter. Thank you for the faves/alerts! And inkydoo for listening to me waffle and giving such good suggestions! Again, if you folks notice any boo-boos or plotholes, please let me know. Constructive criticism is encouraged! I like the wild guesses, too. ;)