The Immortal Remains, Episode 59
You Knew About This, Didn't You?
“Director, we have activity on the ground.”
“What?” Salter looked up at the main display just before the car disappeared around the far side of the base plate. “What is that vehicle doing out there?” She spun toward the safety chief's workstation, stared at it open-mouthed when she saw Abby's deputy.
“Where’s Szarkowski?”
The deputy safety chief looked up at her, wide-eyed. “She's not on duty, Director. She's part of ship’s crew.”
“What do you know about that car?”
“I have no record—-wait. It's telling me there's a worker stranded at the gantry. Should we hold?”
Salter turned back to the display. If this had been an actual launch, whoever was out there could still get to an emergency shelter. “Stay on schedule,” she said.
+++
The gantry had already pulled away from the ship, but Huber had expected that. He led the way across the support lattice while Gorokhina dragged Szarkowski behind her. Lucky he'd downloaded the information he needed to board Autumn Wind the previous night, just to scratch his itch to know everything he could about the security environment.
He glanced up. It wasn’t as large as most buildings in a city that hand’t moved underground, like Chicago, but the spacecraft seemed to loom over him, a sleeping beast, ready to wake up and rampage around the valley. He didn’t look up again, but kept his eyes on the wide beam as he strode toward the spaceship. He wouldn't have minded showing Gorokhina his growing uncertainty of the path he'd committed them to, but he'd be damned if he let Szarkowski see it. He climbed the ladder between laser mounts and crossed the pusher plate with more certainty than he felt.
The panel protecting the terminal stood open; he tapped in the general security override. The terminal flashed and the door opened to reveal a laughably tiny elevator car. He tried to flatten himself against the wall as Gorokhina shoved Szarkowski in. There wasn't enough room for three of them.
“Get her out,” he said. “I'll send it back down for you.”
He noted Gorokhina’s roughness as she pulled Szarkowski out, but said nothing. Irina knew better than to do any real damage. She stared at him as the door slid shut. His AIO showed 09:35.
Huber tapped his foot, and his hand kept retuning to the multigun on his hip. The elevator crawled upward. A full minute passed before the door opened. He stepped into the center of curved rows of acceleration couches and flinched as the outside world disappeared. He still sensed his connection to the ship's internal data feeds, which meant someone had dropped a cone of silence around the ship. It was impervious to his overrides. A cone of silence wasn’t on the launch checklist, so Sam must have done it. It would block radio traffic and telemetry. Whatever she was up to, she didn’t want anyone on board telling launch control, or launch control interfering.
He glanced around the rows of empty acceleration couches, and wondered if he’d be needing one soon.
+++
Five acceleration couches crowded the compartment beneath the flight deck, squeezed around the off-center portal from the level below. Sam shuffled around the edge to take her place opposite Roxanne, out of view from the commander and pilot. A ladder extended from the upper portal.
“What if they resist?” Roxanne's eyes shifted between her and the portal overhead.
“There are only two of them,” Sam said. “You can take them.” She swallowed into a dry throat. They had twenty-five minutes until the simulated launch.
Roxanne raised her eyebrows. “You're right.”
“Did you hear something?” said a female voice from the flight deck.
“No,” came a male voice, annoyed. “I want to know what triggered this damned cone of silence—”
Sam didn't remember if either of them had families. These two would be safe, but who was she forcing them to leave behind? She swallowed, let the multigun waver, glanced at Roxanne, who was watching her, eyebrows raised, waiting.
Sam steadied the gun. Time for shock and awe. “Screw the cone of silence,” Sam yelled up toward the control deck. “Get your asses down here before we fry them.”
She smiled at the silence from above. After a moment the top of a shaven head rose over the edge of the portal, followed by wide eyes. Jorge Tupelov, the commander.
“You first,” Sam said, motioning downward with her multigun.
Tupelov stared.
“Move!” Roxanne's voice was like a slap.
“Samantha, is that you?” asked the pilot, Kristine Magnussen. “What are you doing?”
“Just do what we say, Kris.”
Tupelov came down the ladder slowly.
“Strap into one of these couches.” The muzzle of Roxanne's gun followed him, and his eyes didn't leave it as he stretched out on a couch and buckled his harness. Sam secured his arms and legs with repair tape from the vacuum suit shop.
“Your turn, Kristine,” she called, edging away from Tupelov.
The pilot said nothing as she followed her commander's example, but her head swung from Sam to Roxanne and back. Roxanne motioned her to a couch at the opposite side of the compartment.
“Don't worry,” Sam said as she secured Magnussen. “We're just going for a ride.”
“But that's not how this works-—” Magnussen's brown eyes were wide, searching Sam's.
“I know.” Sam's clock read 09:38. She twisted away and mounted the ladder to the flight deck.
+++
Gorokhina pushed Abby out of the lift, holding her by the back of the neck so she wouldn't fall or break away.
No sign of the major.
“Boss?” she called aloud, stomach sinking at the dead-air feeling of a cone of silence surrounding her. Was her AIO even working? Having him take off without her wasn't what she'd expected. Samantha really had gotten under his skin.
“Two levels above you.” The words fell directly into her brain. So the AIO was working, at least. “Get up here now. I think they're hijacking the ship.”
She repeated the words to herself, unsure she'd heard him right. Szarkowski's head twisted to look back at her, and she must have liked whatever expression Gorokhina wore on her face.
“What are you smiling at, bitch?” She pushed Szarkowski toward the nearest stairway. “They're stealing the ship. You knew about this, didn't you?”
+++
Sam's eyes swept over the console in front of her, two glass displays with touch interfaces, and a few manual controls for maneuvering and emergencies. It hadn't changed from the mockup she'd seen years before.
“One of your guests has reached the third accommodation deck,” Ship said, “and the other two are on the first accommodation deck.”
The control interface on one of her displays split to show Huber emerging from a stairwell, and Abby and Irina two decks below him. Sam bit her lip. Gorokhina still had her hands on Abby. The countdown timer on the display showed twenty minutes to launch. Fuck that.
“No reason to wait,” she said aloud.
Roxanne glanced over from the control station beside her, hands in her lap.
Sam took a deep breath. “Ship, start the launch sequence.”
“Acknowledged. The time is 0940. The ten-minute clock starts now.”
“Any activity outside?”
“No.”
“Good. There's no way in hell they'll stop us now.”
Next Episode: Where’s Abby?