Across the Great Rift Read online

  “Stop that. This is your job. Do it,” she said aloud. She was talking to herself a lot now. “This is the last one. The last one! Finish this and you’ll never have to do it again. Never, ever.”

  Killing her remaining ‘comrades’ on Exeter had been hard. Not difficult, they had suspected nothing and even without regular weapons it had not been difficult—just hard. Somehow this was even worse.

  She finished her sabotage on this bank of capsules and awkwardly pushed herself on to the next. The artificial gravity was switched off to save power and she did not like free fall. Fortunately, there weren’t too many more. This was a destroyer and there weren’t many capsules here. She’d started with the battleships and worked her way down. She’d needed an entire day for each of the capital ships, but the destroyers only took a few hours.

  Two weeks. Two weeks working twenty-hour days and she was nearly done. Of course, then she would have to start on the cargo ships and the transports, but that would be so much easier. She had the computer codes for them and she could do a whole ship in just a few minutes. It would be so much easier—in so many ways. She sincerely wished she’d had the codes for the warships, too, but she was just a communications tech and had no access to them.

  She reached the next row of capsules, got out a power wrench, and took off the cover to the feeds. She used her cutter to slice through cables and tubing. Sparks flew and vapor gushed out. This was the brute force approach and she ruthlessly sliced through things until a new bank of red lights were flashing and another alarm added to the noise trying to claw its way inside her skull.

  “Nearly done, nearly done.”

  * * * * *

  It was a faint thump that alerted him. It took a few moments for the tiny sound to register, but when it did, he froze in place and listened intently. Another small noise came, partly as sound, partly as a vibration through the ship. Charles Crawford was alone. There was no one else awake; none of the major machinery was running. There was absolutely nothing which should have made a noise like that. It had been four days since he awakened from cold-sleep and he had become acutely aware of the utter silence in the huge ship. But now there was a noise.

  In space, that generally meant trouble.

  The problem was to find out what sort of trouble. They were coasting in hyperspace; there was no acceleration to throw off any bit of debris from another ship, which might have banged against Neshaminy, and the strange realm of hyperspace was utterly devoid of matter so nothing could have come from there. A few ship systems were in operation, but which ones? What might have made that thump and was it something serious? The engineer in him would not allow it to be ignored. He unstrapped from his seat and pushed himself out of his office. The best place to find answers would be the bridge.

  Neshaminy was a big ship, but the bulk of her inhabited spaces were forward so it did not take long for him to reach the bridge. He had looked things over there for several hours two days ago, partly out of real interest, but mostly because the captain had been such a jerk about letting ‘unauthorized personnel’ aboard the bridge of his ship. Hah, Crawford probably knew the layout of the control panels better than the old bastard did now. He immediately went to the engineering station to see if there were any alarms showing. Nothing looked out of order. He moved to the other consoles. Communications, nothing, navigation, nothing, he checked each in turn but everything appeared to be working perfectly.

  Puzzled, he floated back and looked at the large, master status board. It was a diagrammatic layout of the ship. It showed the status of each hatch and airlock and would display any unusual loss of pressure, which a hull breach would cause. It did not show a lot of detail, but it might give him a clue. When it came to diagrams and plans, Crawford had a near-photographic memory. Any change from the last time he had looked at this would jump right out at him. He quickly found four hatches which he remembered that he had opened in the last two days…wait a minute, what was that? Another hatch had been open and he was quite sure he had not done it. It was right next to the access port for the intra-ship shuttle cars. Prior to setting out on this journey, all the ships of the fleet had been locked into a huge framework of girders. They would ensure that the ships did not wander out of formation, and they would provide the main structural members for the gate itself when they arrived. A system of small personnel pods ran along the girders and allowed people to move from ship to ship without resorting to shuttles or space suits. He looked closer and saw that there was one more pod stopped at Neshaminy than there had been before.

  Someone was on the ship.

  That was odd. It could only be one of the navy-types from the ship which was on watch. The briefings they had gotten before departure had not indicated there would be any in-person inspections made during the trip. Could they have detected that something was wrong over here? A wave of pre-embarrassment coursed through him like a mild electric shock. What if they had detected him? Maybe the increase in power or oxygen consumption, minute though it was, had shown up on their boards and they had sent someone over to check it out. Great, he could browbeat the skipper of this ship, but those Navy bastards were a whole different story. Especially since the Protector had nationalized all the provincial fleets. Shit. They’d probably blow a gasket and it would take a week to straighten things out.

  Oh well, there was nothing for it. Crawford was not one to try and evade blame. He went over to the monitor displaying the order status and scrolled back until he found the name of the ship which currently had the watch. With each ship having a three-month tour it was a pretty long list after ten years. Here it was: Exeter, heavy cruiser, scheduled watch officer, Lieutenant Hadley. He sighed; better contact them and have them warn their boarding party that he was here—wouldn’t want to give the poor swabs a heart attack.

  “Caught playing hooky, Chuck, old boy, time to face the music.”

  He went over to the communications console and punched in the code to contact Exeter. No answer. He tried it again. Nothing. Strange, there should be someone on the bridge over there—that was the whole point. No answer. He checked the code, rechecked the ship and tried again. Still nothing. Now that was odd—unless there was something wrong with the com circuits on Neshaminy. Maybe that’s what caught their attention: a loss of signal.

  He better go talk to them. Clearly they weren’t coming to the bridge or they would have been here by now. Probably down in engineering somewhere. He went back to the status board to see if any new hatches were open. He could track them that way. He stared for a minute and then spotted a hatch which was newly opened.

  It was to the control room for the cold-sleep capsules.

  He grimaced. He should have guessed there would be some remote monitoring on the capsules. They had probably noticed that there was one less occupant than there was supposed to be and sent someone over to check it out. Or at least he hoped so. The only other reason would be if there was something else wrong down there. A new bit of panic hit him. Hell, those were mostly his people. He twisted around and flew off the bridge.

  It only took about two minutes to get there, but that was all it took to create a dozen nightmare scenarios in his head about how he could have inadvertently screwed up the cold-sleep system with his unscheduled wake-up and killed all his people. He slowed as he reached the control room. He didn’t want to come barging in on them unannounced—after all, they might be armed and twitchy.

  Yes, the hatch to the control room was open. He moved forward slowly and caught sight of someone at one of the consoles: a young woman in utility coveralls, the insignia of a middle-grade enlisted person on her shoulder. She was rather cute from what he could see of her. A pleasantly shaped face with an interesting nose—he liked interesting noses on women—and a nice figure under the coveralls.

  But she seemed to be alone. And she was filthy. Dirt on her clothes, face, and hands. Her short blonde hair did not drift around in the zero-G like it normally would. It was so matted with dirt and sweat it ju
st stayed in one lump. Crawford was an engineer and in his orderly mind there had to be a reason for everything—and he could think of no reason which would explain what he was seeing. The Navy was not obsessively spit and polish but there was no way this woman’s superior was going to let her wander around looking like this unless there was something seriously wrong.

  The woman was working on the controls for the cold-sleep capsules, typing in commands. Why? Was something wrong with them? Hell, speculation was getting him nowhere. There was one easy way to find out. He pushed himself a little further until he had a clear line of sight with the woman, but he stayed a good five meters away in hopes of not scaring her completely to death.

  “Uh, miss…?” he said.

  He’d expected to startle her, but her reaction exceeded anything he was prepared for. She screamed like she’d seen—what? A ghost? No, more like a hundred ghosts. She gave off a piercing shriek and flung herself away from him toward the opposite end of the compartment. She bounced off the bulkhead and grabbed a handhold to keep from rebounding back at him. Her pale blue eyes were nearly swallowed by the exposed whites. A look of sheer terror was on her face and she gasped for breath.

  “Hey! Hey, it’s all right! I won’t hurt you. Calm down!” He came a little closer and stared at the woman. What was wrong with her? There were incredibly dark circles under her eyes and her face was gaunt. He recognized the signs of someone who had been running on nothing but stimulants for far too long. What the hell was going on?

  “M-Maker!” she croaked after a moment. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry I startled you. I’m Charles Crawford, the construction manager for the Gate Project. I’m an early riser. Now, maybe I should ask who you are and what you are doing here?” He moved toward the control console she had been working on. “Is there something wrong with the cold-sleep capsules?”

  “Stay away from that!”

  “I’m not going to do anything,” he said soothingly. “Why are you over here? Is there something wrong with the capsules?” he asked again. “Those are my friends in there and I’m a little concerned about what’s happening.”

  The woman, instead of calming down, was looking even more agitated. She crouched back against the bulkhead like she was preparing to…

  She sprang at him.

  He could scarcely believe it, but she gave a shout and flung herself across the compartment, reversed herself in mid-air, and threw a murderous kick right at his head. He flung up his left arm to block it and succeeded, but a searing pain shot up to his shoulder at the blow. The impact sent him tumbling out the hatch into the larger capsule bay.

  “Hey! Stop! What the hell are you doing?” he cried. He couldn’t move his left arm at all, but he grabbed a handhold with his right and steadied himself. The woman had bounced off him and was now tumbling helplessly a few meters away. Despite the effectiveness of her first attack, she didn’t seem very skilled in free fall—for which Crawford was very grateful. All too soon she reached a handhold and oriented herself for another attack. Crawford was ready, but he knew he couldn’t hope to fight this woman. Not with a banged up arm and probably not even with two good ones. He was from a high-gravity world and probably far stronger than his opponent, but he had not been in a real fight in twenty years, while she clearly knew some martial arts. His only hope was to avoid her.

  She lunged and came flying at him. He pushed off at right angles and dodged aside. His arm screamed at him; was it broken? He sailed a dozen meters across the bay and easily slowed himself with his legs and grabbed a stanchion. The woman slammed into the spot he had just been with a satisfying grunt of pain. No, she was not skilled in zero-G combat.

  “Lady, what the hell is your problem? If you do this to people who get up early, what do you do to ones who oversleep?”

  She didn’t answer. She just got ready to come at him again. She sprang and he dodged. She missed him but recovered quicker and lunged again almost immediately. Again he managed to avoid her attack, but it was close—and she kept after him as he bounced from spot to spot in the capsule bay. After a few minutes, the woman paused to catch her breath and Crawford did the same. His arm was in agony and he was covered in sweat. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. He had to either get away—or put this madwoman out of commission. She was between him and the passage that led back to the bridge and the habitable parts of the ship. He couldn’t risk going that way. The only other exit from the cold-sleep chamber led aft to where the construction equipment was stored.

  The construction equipment…yeah…

  Without waiting for the woman to move again, he turned and dove completely across the compartment toward the other hatch. He heard a curse from behind him but did not look back. He twisted around to come in feet first and let his legs absorb his momentum. He slapped the entry button next to the door and while it was sliding open risked taking a look behind. The woman had misjudged her jump and was just thudding to a halt on the bulkhead five or six meters away. She immediately flung herself at him. Crawford moved partway through the hatch but then turned and kicked at the woman as she flew toward him. It wasn’t much of a kick, but it took her by surprise and she was knocked away from the bulkhead and floundered back out into the capsule bay. Crawford pulled himself through the hatch and shut it behind him.

  He looked at the controls and cursed. There was no way to lock it from here. She’d just follow him through in a moment. He turned again and launched himself down the passageway to the next hatch. As he reached it and pushed the entry button, he heard the hatch behind him sliding open.

  * * * * *

  Carlina scrambled through the hatch in time to see the next one, about twenty meters away, slide shut. She swore. Damn the man! Would he never stop running? She still could not believe this was happening. What in all the hells was he doing awake? It was still over a week until the fleet was supposed to start waking up.

  She hauled herself along the passage to the next hatch and waited, gasping, while it opened. She had to catch this guy. There was no telling how much trouble he might make if she just let him go. It had been stupid to attack him right off the way she had, she realized that now. But he had literally scared her out of her wits. She should have talked to him, gotten close—and then killed him. Air out the lock, now. She’d just have to catch him—and kill him.

  She moved through the hatch and then froze.

  “Shit!”

  She was in a huge compartment filled with all manner of construction gear and the man was nowhere in sight. He could be hidden anywhere. She did not have time for this. She had another twenty ships to visit and she simply could not waste a minute searching for one lone insomniac. But she had no choice.

  “Hey! Mister! Come back! I’m sorry about this. You scared me there and I acted stupidly. I don’t mean you any harm. Come out and we’ll talk.” Her voice echoed through the large space, but when the echoes died, there was no answer. Damn. She had hurt him and now he wasn’t going to trust her. So that meant she had to find him. She shut the hatch behind her, but there was no way to lock it. She had to make sure he didn’t get past her again. She moved carefully forward and began her search.

  It was dark, only a few lights shown around the edges of the huge space. It was cold, too. Above freezing, but not by much. As the sweat evaporated on her skin she found herself shivering. The place smelled of lubricants and synthetics. Large dark shapes loomed all around her. Carlina didn’t like this at all. Where was that bastard?

  A sound came to her from off to the left and she spun around. Nothing. She stopped and listened, but all she could hear was her own breathing and the blood pounding in her ears. Calm down. Damn, she wished she was armed, but the weapons locker back on Exeter required codes she didn’t have—and she never imagined she would need a gun anyway.

  She glanced around and saw a locker attached to the side of a large machine. It wasn’t locked and inside she found a long metal object which might have been
some sort of wrench. She hefted it and felt a little better. One good whack from this and her problems would be over. She guided herself deeper into the compartment.

  Was he hiding—or waiting in ambush? It looked as though he was hurt pretty badly from her first attack, so maybe he was just trying to hide. If that was so, then all she had to do was keep looking. Otherwise…

  Another noise. It sounded like a hatch closing. She quickly looked behind her and she could see the hatch she had come though. It was still closed. Another hatch, but where? It sounded like it was from up ahead. She moved carefully, but more quickly. She reached a long row of smaller machines; some sort of EVA pods, she guessed. Where was…there!

  At the far end of the compartment was an elevated room with a large window. The glow from unseen control consoles was reflecting off her quarry’s face. He was looking down, not at her. Very good, she had him. She saw the door to the room and there was no way he was going to evade her again—if she could just get a little closer without being spotted. She hugged up against the pods and started forward.

  She moved ten meters and the man was still looking down. Five more and she was halfway there. Just a little farther…

  He looked out the window, straight at her.

  An instant later something moved on the pod right next to her. She whirled to face it, but it was too late. There was a faint whine of servos and then something big and hard slammed into her head and the lights went out.

  * * * * *

  “Got you!” whooped Charles Crawford. He wanted to clap his hands together, but he still couldn’t move his left arm. He had awkwardly activated one of the remote work-droids, a multi-purpose device with an array of built-in tools and manipulator arms, and when the woman got close enough, he had used it to bash her. She slowly spun across the compartment and disappeared behind some machinery. The wrench she had been carrying drifted off in another direction. She had said she didn’t mean any harm, but that wrench put the lie to that! He was glad he had not listened. He could not see her from the control room, but now he had friends who could go and look for him. He flipped some switches and the droid detached itself from the storage rack and jetted forward, propelled by its small thrusters. He activated its remote cameras and floodlights and tried to spot his opponent.