Across the Great Rift Read online

  He did not see her immediately, but she had to be somewhere over by the heavy-duty lifters. There! He spotted a lumpy shape which did not belong there, in between two of the huge machines. Piloting the droid with only one hand was difficult, but he maneuvered it in closer. He was hoping to grab the woman with one of the droid’s manipulators and keep her restrained until he could figure out what to do with her. He moved the droid in closer but then cursed. The space between the lifters was too narrow for the droid to fit. He extended a manipulator to its maximum, but the mechanical claw was still a meter short. Maybe he could get at her from the other side. He backed the droid off and flew it around to the other end of the lifters.

  “Shit!” She was gone. She had only been out of his view for a few seconds, but she had taken the opportunity to escape. Now where the hell was she? Crawford hastily looked out the window of the control room to make sure she wasn’t coming after him again. He did not see her but quickly brought the droid back to guard the door to the control room—just in case.

  Fortunately, he was quite capable of handling several droids at once, even with only one hand. He activated another, and leaving the first to block the door, sent it out in search of the woman. A few minutes went by with no luck and his arm was really starting to ache. Then a sound came to him through the droid’s pickup and he spun it around in time to see the door he’d originally come through sliding shut.

  “Hell!” She’d gotten away. He should have sent another droid over there to block that door. Crawford leaned back in his chair, the seat belt keeping him from floating away, and gently rubbed his arm. He couldn’t find any obvious breaks just from touching, but it was still terribly painful and he could hardly move it at all. Now what was he going to do? The work droids would fit down the ship’s corridors if he was careful, so that seemed like his best bet, rather than leave his stronghold and search in person. He flipped switches to activate some more of his mechanical helpers.

  An hour of looking convinced him that she was no longer on the ship.

  He had not searched the entire huge expanse, but the shuttle pod which had brought her to Neshaminy was gone and there was a bloody hand print next to the door of the airlock. He had found a few other blood spatters, too. Okay, she’s hurt and decided to get the hell out. Now what?

  He blocked open the shuttle lock door so she could not get back in the way she had before and positioned a few droids to observe the shuttle bay and the emergency air locks. Then he went back up to the galley and wearily got himself some coffee. A trip to sick bay acquired some mild painkillers, but the stronger stuff was locked away. His arm was killing him.

  He tried to contact Exeter again, but there was still no answer. So now what? He could not just let this be. Something was clearly wrong. Seriously wrong. Action was going to be necessary and as much as he hated to admit it, he was in no shape to do it himself.

  He was going to need help.

  Chapter Two

  “Chuck, I’m gonna rip your arm off and beat you to death with it for talking me into this,” growled Gregory VanVean from his cold-sleep capsule. “Crap, I feel like iced crap.”

  “You look like you feel, Greg,” said Charles Crawford. “And if you want to rip my arm off, go ahead. Someone else did half the job already.” The grizzled foreman cracked open a red-rimmed eye and glared at Crawford, but slowly his expression of irritation became one of curiosity.

  “How come you look so good?”

  “It’s my superb genetics, I suppose. Mom always said I was so handsome.”

  VanVean growled an obscenity and began flexing his muscles. These were rather impressive, despite a substantial belly. The belly was relatively new, but VanVean’s muscles were what had first caught Crawford’s attention years before. Greg wasn’t a heavy-worlder, like himself, and kilo-for-kilo Crawford was actually stronger, but Greg had a lot more kilos and knew how to use them. He’d taken a chance and pulled the man out of the pool of indentured workers and made him a crew chief. He’d never regretted it and now he was his senior foreman. “Looks like you’ve been up a while, you rat. How come? And what’s with your arm?”

  “Yeah, I got up a little early and it was a good thing I did. We got trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind that breaks arms for no apparent reason. I know you could fit into that category, but it wasn’t you. Wake yourself up, Greg, and I’ll tell you about it. There’s coffee in the galley.”

  “Now you’re talking. Anyone else up?”

  “I’ve got most of the other foremen defrosting now. Excuse me while I go check on Sheila.”

  “Check her out, you mean,” snorted VanVean. “Give me a second and I’ll go with you.”

  “Put your clothes on, Greg, you’ll scare her to death. Hurry up and don’t forget to get some coffee. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Crawford turned and shoved himself along the rows of cold-sleep capsules. A dozen of them were in revival mode and would be opening soon. He was glad that there was a fairly simple emergency override right on each capsule. He had just opened the plastic shield and pressed the button; easy. He reached the first row of the women’s capsules and pulled himself over to the only one with a reviving occupant. The closed capsules had areas on the transparent front which had been frosted to provide a little modesty (unless you looked from certain angles), but Sheila MacIntyrre’s capsule had already opened. The woman was starting to breath deeply—and she was quite naked.

  He took one admiring look and then carefully, and awkwardly with one hand, tucked the towel he had brought along around her. She stirred and groaned when he touched her. All the control readouts were in the green range; she would be awake very soon. She groaned again and began moving.

  “Sheila? Wake up, Sheila, it’s Chuck.”

  “Go ‘way. Still night time. Scram.”

  “I know it’s early, but I need you to wake up. We got some problems.”

  Her eyes popped open and wandered around in disconcerting circles before finally coming to rest on him. Her full lips were still a bit blue and her face very pale, but the sparkle in her brown eyes was there. “Problems? Already?”

  “Yeah. Try to wake up, okay?”

  She started to nod, but the telemetry leads restrained her. She looked puzzled for a moment and then glanced sharply at him. “What the hell’s going on? Why are you already awake and why are you in Women’s Country gawking at my girls—and me?”

  “Never could keep my eyes off you, Sheil. But I’ve left your girls alone; in fact that’s why I defrosted you first, so you can wake them up yourself. I’ve even provided you with a fetching wake-up garment.”

  Sheila reached a hand up and disconnected the leads on her head. She looked down at the towel, which was starting to drift loose. “How nice. But if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get dressed—alone.”

  “Sure thing, Sheil. Decide who else you want awake and I’ll meet you in the galley. Coffee’s on.”

  “Until you tell me about the problem, how can I know who to wake up?”

  “True enough. So get dressed and come have some coffee.”

  “Right. Now beat it.” Crawford grinned and started to leave, but then he grimaced and groaned as his arm moved. Sheila was instantly alert. “What’s wrong? You hurt?”

  “Yeah. My arm. I think it’s broken. I think you can at least start defrosting Doctor Barringir.”

  “Right away. Now scoot—if you can.”

  “I’m going.” Crawford left the ladies behind and returned to his foremen. VanVean was now dressed and helping the others out of their capsules. Shortly, he had herded them down to the galley and gotten them all coffee. Sheila arrived soon afterward and helped herself to a bulb of the hot, black brew.

  “Okay, boss, what’s the deal?” demanded VanVean.

  “The deal is that it’s still eight days until we were supposed to wake up. Sixteen days until we are scheduled to drop out of hyper. And something is seriously wrong.”

 
“What?” demanded a dozen people all at once.

  “I can’t raise anyone on the cruiser that is supposed to be on watch, and there’s a homicidal female wandering around assaulting innocent engineers for no reason I can see.” Crawford launched into a description of what had happened, casually passing over his unauthorized awakening. “After she skedaddled, I checked out what she was doing in the cold-sleep control room. It looks like she was resetting the revival date for about five months from now. None of this makes any sense to me, but it sure doesn’t seem like normal operating procedure.”

  “Nope,” said Sheila, “but what do we do about it?”

  “Shouldn’t we revive some of the ship’s crew?” asked Fred Kimmal, the chief scheduler. “We’re going to need them, Chuck.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted a few friendly faces around me to talk this out, first. Y’know how snippy those sailor-boys can be—even the merchies. Too damned worried about regulations to see a problem floating in front of them.”

  “Well, what do you think is going on?” asked VanVean. “I know you well enough to know you’ve at least got a theory, Chuck—which is a hell of a lot more than I have right now.”

  Crawford frowned. He did have a theory and he did not like it one little bit. He glanced from face to face and all were looking at him anxiously. He took a deep breath and let it out.

  “I think there’s a saboteur loose in the fleet.”

  * * * * *

  “Damn him, damn him, damn him,” groaned Carlina as she dabbed the wet cloth to her head. She looked at herself in the mirror of the sick bay on Exeter and winced at the ugly bruise that was emerging as she slowly wiped off the dried blood that covered a good portion of her head. The pain that throbbed in her skull was so intense she felt like vomiting.

  She finished her washing and slowly applied a bandage. She cursed when she saw blood starting to seep through. Damn, she was still bleeding. She dazedly looked around for a coagulant, but did not see it immediately. The hell with it, it would stop soon enough on its own. She wobbled out of the compartment, wishing she could reduce the artificial gravity. She reached the bridge and collapsed into her chair at the com station. She sat there for a long while, staring at nothing. It was so hard to think. After a while she began to cry.

  “I’m so tired. Oh, Maker, I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “I don’t need this, I don’t!” Her frustration turned to anger, but that produced such a blinding pain in her head she was left weeping and gasping. She dimly realized that the blow from the damn droid might have done worse than give her a bruise and a cut. She might be more seriously hurt. There was an auto-medic in sick bay and she wished she could just put herself in it, go to sleep, and let it work on her.

  But she couldn’t.

  That bastard on Neshaminy was still alive and she could not just let him be. She certainly could not let herself be put unconscious for hours by the medic. Could she? She tried to think. What was the date? She looked around her control console and eventually found the time. Sixteen days until drop-out. Sixteen days until they reached Landfall. And once there, it would be anywhere between two and four months before the relief squadron arrived. So, between two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half months before she could expect any help. What could that guy do with that much time?

  And it won’t just be him!

  The realization returned that she still needed to reset the revival settings in all the rest of the transports! “Oh, Maker, what am I going to do?” In just eight days the crew and passengers of the twenty ships she had not gotten to yet were going to start waking up. Thousands and thousands of people; Protectorate people and every one of them her enemy. The plan had called for her to visit five or six ships a day, resetting the computers—and a few other things she didn’t like thinking about. She’d have them all reset before anyone woke up and then none of them would wake until the relief squadron was here and in full control.

  How could she do that now? Did she dare leave Exeter and go to those other ships? Did she dare not to? The panic began to build in her and her head hurt so much she could scarcely think.

  A beep from her com panel made her jump. She looked and saw that there was an incoming signal from Neshaminy. Actually, there were several other messages from earlier, which she had not noticed. The guy had been signaling here? He must have noticed that she was aboard and called here to find out why—and got no answer.

  She dithered for a moment. Should she answer? Could she outwit him somehow? She couldn’t think of any way to fight him directly with those bloody droids working for him. Could she trick him? Trick him into getting close enough so she could kill him? She had to do something. She reached for her controls and a moment later she was facing the man on the monitor.

  “Exeter, here, go ahead, Neshaminy,” she said automatically. The man seemed startled to have gotten an answer. He was probably more startled by who answered.

  “Oh. Uh, hello, Exeter.”

  “Just who the hell are you, mister?”

  “I’m Charles Crawford, like I told you earlier. Who are you?” Carlina licked her lips. That’s right, he had told her his name, but she had forgotten. He’d said something else, too. He was a construction manager or something.

  “I’m Communications Tech Carlina Citrone. Mr. Crawford, why are you out of cold-sleep? That is a serious violation of regulations.”

  “Really? I wasn’t aware. But why did you break my arm? I’m no expert, but I’d hope that was violating some regulation, too.”

  “I…I’m sorry about that, Mister Crawford, but you scared me half to death. I didn’t act…wisely. Sorry about that.”

  “It looked like you wanted to kill me, Miss Citrone. You were very persistent about it, too, as I recall.”

  “I just wanted to restrain you. But that’s beside the point. I have to insist you return to cold-sleep. I can come back over there and put you into the capsule and set the controls…”

  “Why bother? We’re supposed to wake up again in just eight days—unless, of course, you’re resetting all the controls for another five months of cold-sleep.”

  Carlina sucked in her breath. He’d noticed what she’d done in the control room. She had been so rattled, she could not even remember if she’d gotten that far, but she obviously had—and he’d noticed. Had he noticed what else she’d done? “I, uh, I was doing that under orders. There’s been some change in plans and revival has been postponed. So you see it would be best if you went back into cold-sleep. I can come over there in a half-hour and…”

  “I’d like to see those orders. Can I talk to Lieutenant Hadley?”

  Oh shit. He’d checked the duty roster, too. Blast the man! “He... he can’t come to the com right now. He’s busy.” Actually, he was very dead.

  “That’s all right, I can wait.”

  “It-it might be a while. B-but if you wanted to come over here and talk to him in person, I think that would be all right. Can you make it here?” Yes, if he wouldn’t agree to her going to him, perhaps she could lure him over here. That would work even better. Just wait until he was on the ship with no easy retreat and no more Charles Crawford.

  “I guess that would be okay,” said Crawford slowly. Carlina smiled in as friendly a fashion as she could.

  “Can we come, too, boss?” said another voice and suddenly there were several other people in the background of the monitor image.

  “Who… Who’s that?!” she squawked.

  “Oh, I was getting lonely, so I woke a few friends. Any problem if I bring them along?”

  Carlina stared in horror for several long seconds and then cut the connection. She stared at the blank screen for a lot longer. Then she leaned forward and held her aching head in her hands and began to cry again.

  “Oh, Dear Maker, what am I going to do?”

  * * * * *

  Crawford looked at the blank screen for a moment and then sighed. “Okaayy… what do you make of that, folks?”

  “Damn peculiar,” said Sheil
a MacIntyrre.

  “She couldn’t produce the watch officer and she doesn’t want a mob of us coming on her ship,” said Fred Kimmal. “She’s hiding something.”

  “But what?” asked Greg VanVean.

  “Did you see how wrung-out she looked?” asked Doctor Barringir. “That woman hasn’t gotten any sleep for a week at least. She’s running on go-juice and not much else.”

  “So they are short-handed over there,” mused Crawford. “Maybe very short-handed.”

  “Just like you, Charles,” said Barringir, gesturing to his arm. “Will you please come down to sick bay so we can get you fixed up?”

  “We’ve got some pretty serious things to deal with, Giselle. Just give me something for the pain and I’ll come see you later.”

  “No way, Mr. Crawford,” snorted Sheila. “We can all talk down there as well as we can here. Greg, help me get Chuck to sick bay.”

  Despite his protests, Crawford was carried down to sick bay and forced to allow Doctor Barringir to treat him. All the others went with him, making helpful suggestions that ranged from enemas to amputations.

  “You have some torn ligaments in your shoulder and a fracture of your ulna, Charles,” said Barringir after working for a while. “She must have hit you pretty good.”