Part XIII: Somasteria

A few hours later, Jyra lay on her bed, turning her mother’s locket in her fingers. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Derek had said. It made her realize she hadn’t considered the sacrifices she might have to make to get to the bottom of Dario’s death.

Her life on Tyrorken had been one of perpetual hardship and struggle. It was hard to forget the nights when it was difficult to breathe because of the pollution. As she grew older, her parents spent more time at work. TF even consumed most of the time Jyra would have had with Dario. There was little to be excited about on Tyrorken besides her dream of becoming a pilot.

Jyra knew she couldn’t escape her past experiences, but she could move beyond them. She no longer lived on Tyrorken. It was her home planet, but it wasn’t her home.

Jyra sat up and set the locket on her bedside table. She dug a mirror out of her duffel and examined her reflection. Her dark eyes glittered at her beneath her equally dark hair, which hung past her shoulders. She gave herself a small smile, which disappeared when she noticed no trace of the Mourning Mark on her forehead. She touched the spot where it had been. As she lowered her arm, she caught sight of the cut near her elbow. It no longer pained her, but Jyra could tell a scar would remain; the skin around the wound glistened in the dim light.

It would likely shine for a few weeks just like the scar on the back of her hand. Jyra looked at the white line that began at the base of the knuckle of her index finger. The sight of the scar reminded her of Jed. She couldn’t think of him without considering his message.

Did he carry his grudge against TF into his career with the company? When did he decide to sabotage the ship? Did he act alone? The last thought opened a whole new path of inquiry. If others helped him, were they associated with the resistance?

Though she fought to resist it, the memory of her parents’ murder filled her mind. Just before the killing shots sounded, the guard had said information had been passed to a known enemy. Could that enemy have been the resistance? Tadwin had also said TF had killed Dario. Jyra clutched her head in her hands, straining to recall the details.

“How far does this go?” Jyra breathed aloud, unable to assemble the information into a coherent thought. How had all these different people come to turn against TF? Jed, Jyra’s parents and brother, and all the members of the resistance with Jyra on this ship had a common goal and somehow weren’t aware of it. After witnessing the TF agents’ assault on Derek, Jyra understood the need for secrecy had been of utmost importance. As she thought about it, however, the confidentiality had undermined the resistance more than protected it. If they all had been able to work together from the beginning, perhaps TF would have fallen long ago. Then again, the resistance could have suffered that exact same fate.

Jyra’s thoughts returned to Tadwin’s insistence that TF had killed Dario. He had said it with a conviction Jyra had never heard in her father’s voice. He was often soft-spoken and vague, never one to speak in absolutes.

Before she could consider the idea further, voices in the corridor distracted her. Jyra stood up as quietly as he could and pressed her ear to the door. Berk’s gruff tone was easy to identify, but it took several moments before Jyra recognized that a second, breathless voice belonged to Macnelia.

“Settle down and just tell me what’s wrong,” Berk said gently.

“I’m having a hard time,” Macnelia gasped. She sounded out of breath. “I…I’m not sure what my…our next move is.”

For a moment, all Jyra could hear was the sound of Macnelia taking deep breaths.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Berk said.

“No,” Macnelia said. “It’s not that. We’re adrift in more ways than one. I don’t know what happened back there, but the Nilcyns were already attacking. We need to understand why. And we’ve got to get this ship back online. It’s all we have to further our campaign.”

“What do you want to see happen?” Berk said. Silence followed his question and Jyra strained against her door, listening.

“I want to see Tyrorken restored,” she said. “I want to save that planet and drive TF into oblivion.”

“Well we’re off to a good start,” Berk said.

“And we have a long way to go,” Macnelia continued. She began to sound more like herself. “Taking out their headquarters doesn’t eliminate them. There’s still more to do.”

“Do you feel better?”

“I think so,” Macnelia said, her voice faded with footsteps as she and Berk continued down the corridor.

Jyra returned to her bed, thoughts of her parents and the resistance suspended as she pondered what might be troubling Macnelia.

                       *

After another shift of rest, the resistance resumed work on Valiant Conductor II. Leonick completed his inspection of the engines and insisted they were ready for power. Shandra instructed everyone how to check for damage to a ship’s hull from the inside. Then everyone split off and began assessing different parts of the enormous vessel.

Jyra ventured into the stern below the engine room, making her way toward the starboard hull. “Ships of the Kaosaam System” had indicated this part of the ship would likely consist of storage and power bunkers. An empty cargo bay lay behind the first door she entered off main corridor. The closed door gave her moment’s pause, until she saw the marks from Berk’s hammer that marred its left edge. Members of the resistance had already been through this part of the ship to check and fix the doors.

A number of crates were stacked in the next room, which was dark. Jyra flipped a switch on the wall and several lights clicked on. She began reading the packing labels on the crates, moving between them with mounting eagerness and urgency. “Crackers, bread, oats, rice, pasta” Jyra read aloud, her voice trembling with excitement. Another label listed dried fruit, nuts, and chips. One box contained jars of water.

“There must be fifty crates here,” she said, pressing her fingers into her hair. “This will last us for months.”

For the first time in a long time, a sense of relief spread through Jyra and she sat on one of the crates. The fortune of finding such a large supply of food overwhelmed her. She put her face in her hands, surrendering to her feelings. For a moment, she remembered the feeling of her bed on Tyrorken, the creases in the sheets and the weight of the blankets. She thought of the days before she fled her planet, when her brother and her parents were still alive. It suddenly seemed as though no time had passed since their deaths.

Jyra pushed her hair back and wiped her eyes with the back of her arm. She waited for the relief of discovering the crates to fade, but it remained fixed inside along with her sadness.

Jyra heard footsteps in corridor and stood up to find the label on the crate so she could pretend to be reading it.

“Oh,” Craig’s voice said from the doorway. “I’ve strayed into your part of the ship. What’s in the crates?”

Jyra did her best to keep her face hidden as she tested her voice, wondering if it would betray her emotions.

“Food,” she croaked. “There’s food and water here.”

“Are you kidding?” Craig said, rushing into the room and checking the first label he saw. “I can’t believe it.”

Jyra gave a jerking nod and Craig noticed something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked, the excitement draining from his words. He approached from behind and put a hand on Jyra’s shoulder.

She turned and pressed her face into his chest so that he couldn’t look at her. They put their arms around each other. One of Craig’s hands traced small circles on her back. Jyra focused on the sensation, managed to quell her tears, and she broke the embrace. She shuffled back to the pile of crates and sat down, staring at her hands in her lap.

“I’ve lost so much,” she said slowly. “For what? We destroyed a building, but TF ships are still out there. I thought the resistance would give me something I wanted.”

“What do you want?” Craig asked, joining her on the crate. Jyra glanced up into one of the lights, thinking.

“Vengeance,” she said dully.

“You don’t sound very convinced,” Craig said with a small smile.

“I know,” Jyra said. “I think it’s what I want, but I have no idea how to get it. When I heard about the plan to bomb TF headquarters, it seemed like the perfect solution. I thought it would satisfy me. But it didn’t and now I’m worried that whatever I want, I won’t be able to get it.”

“It sounds like you need to choose that first,” Craig said. “Once you’ve got a goal, you’ve got something to focus on and achieve. It doesn’t need to be related to the resistance.”

He stopped talking abruptly and stared at the floor. His eyes narrowed and his brow was furrowed. Jyra glanced at him and remembered the only other occasion when Craig had looked that way. It had been Jyra’s first day back at Jed’s Garage after getting stitches in her hand. Craig had arrived late and he wore that same expression when he entered the shop.

“You’re thinking about your goal, aren’t you?” she said gently and he nodded. “What do you want?”

Craig took a deep breath and drummed his fingers on his knees.

“I should start by reminding you of some advice I gave you once. After we got out of the TF complex, I told you not to regret things you didn’t do.”

Jyra recalled the exchange more vividly that she cared to, but she only nodded to encourage Craig to keep talking.

“We’ve both lost our parents to TF, but in different ways,” Craig said and Jyra felt her eyes grow wide with curiosity. “I haven’t done a very good job of taking my own advice. I know I did all I could to prevent my parents’ fate, but it’s easy to blame my efforts, because, obviously, they weren’t enough.”

“What happened to them?” Jyra said. Craig rarely discussed his parents and Jyra had never seen them.

“Have you ever heard of Somasteria?” Craig asked. Jyra shook her head.

“TF has gone to great lengths to keep the disease out of public knowledge. Once someone contracts the illness, TF quarantines them. If they or members of their household are caught discussing it, they are thrown in a medical facility. More of a jail really.”

“What causes it?”

“Somasteria is caused by several of the products TF uses for drilling. Excessive direct contact with skin leads to the early stages of the disease. It primarily attacks the blood, but eventually compromises the nervous system. There’s no cure, only symptom blockers, but within about two years, the victim is completely comatose.

“Both of my parents contracted the disease on a weeklong drilling mission. They weren’t even handling the solvents, but they were exposed to the fumes. Your susceptibility depends on the strength of your immune system.

 “The first symptoms weren’t very severe—lapses in memory and difficulty sleeping—but they got worse as time passed. They had trouble eating and drinking. Forming complete sentences became a challenge. They developed paranoia and night terrors. Even through all that, it wasn’t too hard to look after them, until they began to forget who I was. There was a two-week period where they asked my name each day. At the end of those two weeks, they stopped asking. Not long after that, they just stared straight ahead and never said another word.”

Craig pushed himself off the crate and crossed to the opposite wall. Jyra was too stunned to move. She couldn’t believe such a debilitating illness could be hidden from the public, let alone that it had affected someone so close to her. It sounded too horrible to be real. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have her parents gradually forget who she was. Craig’s ordeal seemed even worse because he had been there, watching it happen.

“I wanted to hide them,” he said, turning away from the wall. “I wanted to get them somewhere safe, but they were each in medical beds by the end. There was no way to move them on my own and when the TF doctors came, it was all over. My parents were transferred to the medical facility, beyond my reach.”

“Can’t we go after them?” Jyra said.

Craig gave a hollow laugh and shook his head.

“That brings me back to my point,” he said, pushing his hair off his bowed forehead. “I could try to rescue them. And what would happen if I did? Get myself injured or killed in the process. At the very least, I’d get a company of TF agents pursuing me. The way I figure, even I get out of there with my parents, it’s more of a risk than I care to take. They look at me but don’t see me. Even if they’re still alive, my parents have left their bodies. Sometimes it takes all I’ve got to fight back how I regret not being able to save them from TF. I can regret the things I did, because I could have prevented them. But it’s not worth going through the anguish and grief over things I didn’t do. Life’s hard enough without extra misery anyway.

“Let’s finish checking the hull,” he said after a brief pause. “Then we should head back to our ship.”

“All right,” Jyra said, but before we regroup with the others, we need to do something.”

After completing the inspection and finding no faults with the hull, Craig and Jyra made their way back to Mastranada. They bypassed the cargo bay, ignoring the chatter within.

Jyra entered her quarters and promptly began digging through her duffel while Craig lingered in the doorway. After moving Dario’s dagger and setting “Ships of the Kaosaam System” on the floor, Jyra found the small canister. She stood and beckoned Craig forward. He stood in front of her, eyeing the silver vessel in Jyra’s fingers.

“Close your eyes,” she said, unscrewing the lid.

She dipped two fingers into the charcoal powder and applied the Mourning Mark to Craig’s forehead. Some of the black dust fell into Craig’s eyebrows and eyelashes, disappearing immediately.

Jyra screwed the lid back on the canister and gripped Craig’s arm. He opened his eyes and a let out a deep breath. Jyra extended her fingers again and pressed the Mark and Craig blinked before pulling her into another embrace.

“Thank you,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“You’re welcome,” Jyra replied. “May you carry their memory with you forever.”

“And you,” Craig said.

                        *

“Well?” Macnelia asked when Craig and Jyra stepped into the cargo bay.

“The hull’s solid,” Craig said.

“In that case, I suggest we prepare to power up the engines,” Leonick said. Berk gulped his whiskey and passed the flask to Leonick.

“Right, let’s get to it,” Macnelia said. “It’s time we had little control over our direction. What do we do first, Leonick?”

“If you mean in order to start the engines, we need to calibrate them and bring each one online and link them to the bridge.”

“Jyra, can you help Neeka and me forge the link from the bridge?” Macnelia asked.

 “Of course,” Jyra said.

“Leonick, why don’t you take Craig to assist in the engine room?”

“I cannot think of reason, so come along,” Leonick said, motioning to Craig.

“The rest of you will work with Berk in the main hangar,” Macnelia said.

“What are we doing?” Shandra asked.

“Getting the auxiliary laser cannons mounted in place,” Macnelia answered. “Once we fix the shield drive, we’ll start hunting down the remaining TF ships.”

Part XII: Repairs

Mereda—Two Tyrorken years earlier:

“You’ll like him,” Craig assured Jyra as they walked toward the shabby building in one of Mereda’s run-down neighborhoods. “He comes on strong at first, but you’ll get used to it.”

Jyra followed Craig toward Jed’s Garage, second-guessing the apprenticeship with every step.

They entered the small office and the door closed behind them with a loud bang. The temperature was at least twenty degrees warmer than it had been outside. A desk covered in invoices, many marked with greasy fingerprints, took up most of the office. Craig and Jyra looked at the man sitting behind the desk. A small bald spot on the top of his head reflected the sunlight streaming through the open aluminum shutters mounted on the window. The man was busy writing, his head bent low, so his eyes couldn’t be seen. The sleeves of his stained work shirt were rolled back, revealing his oil-smeared forearms.

“Jed?” Craig said. Jyra glanced back at the door. Jed was obviously used to the noise it made; he hadn’t so much as flinched when they entered.

“One moment,” Jed replied, stretching the words out as though counting down to the moment they’d have his attention.

He lifted his pen, slammed the point on the paper, and threw himself back in his chair.

“All right,” he said in a booming voice that filled the office and nearly made the shutters rattle. “This is the new apprentice?”

Craig nodded and stepped aside. Jyra took a step forward, extending her hand.

“Jyra, sir,” she said, aware of how soft her voice sounded compared to Jed’s rambunctious one.

“Swap the ‘sir’ for ‘Jed’ and I think you’re hired,” Jed said, standing to shake hands. He caught sight of his own and seemed surprised by the oil. “Guess we should save it for later. Hand’s a little grayer than it should be.”

“My hands will be getting dirty sooner or later,” Jyra said, keeping her arm over the desk. Jed stared for a moment then shook her hand and smiled.

“I like your attitude. Might be a good change around here. Word is I come off as too intimidating. Do you believe that?”

“Hard to say, I haven’t even known you for a minute yet.”

Jed laughed. It was louder than he talked. He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his overalls, which appeared just as soiled as his work shirt. The whole outfit seemed stretched over his portly figure. Jed’s pale blue eyes glimmered against the tan skin of his round face.

He clapped Craig on the shoulder as he passed him then turned at the door. His smile had disappeared, the gleam in his eye was gone.

“We’re way behind on work,” he said. His voiced sustained the same volume, but it contained a chill that seemed impossible given the stifling conditions of the office.

“Craig, go over what’s what in the shop and then you two get your asses in gear. I’d like to keep the customers we’ve got who aren’t put off my intimidating nature.” The door slammed as he left, as if to fortify Jed’s commands.

“You did well,” Craig said. “Let’s get to work.”

The shop building was more bedraggled than the office. The ceiling sagged and the walls leaned to the left. The front and rear of the shop each had a large articulated door that could be raised on tracks. When Craig pushed them up, Jyra saw the ceiling flex as it took the weight of the doors.

An extra wide skiff occupied both service bays. Two old workbenches ran the length of the shop, one on each side. All the tools and supplies had to be stored below, on, or above the benches since nothing could be kept in front of the doors. The smell of grease-cutting solvent filled Jyra’s nose. The overhead lights buzzed as the lamps blinked to life.

“Not too hard to see what we’re starting with today,” Craig said, closing the cover over the light switches and laying a hand on the skiff.

“Fuel powered,” Jyra declared, walking closer to the machine. “More expensive to run than electric. Who can afford something like this?”

Craig pulled a rag from his back pocket to scrub the grime near the nose of the skiff, which revealed the logo for Tyrorken Fuels.

“I should have guessed,” she said.

“It’s better to not call attention to it actually,” Craig said. “Jed’s not too fond of TF. He’s been turning down repair offers from them for months, but they’ve got plenty of machines that need service and the money to pay for it.”

“Why didn’t he want their business?”

“The same reason most people don’t want to get involved with TF,” Craig said, shrugging and turning toward the workbench to the right of the skiff. “A company that big might start out as a customer, but before you realize it, you’re working for them. Jed’s worried they might take his shop.”

Jyra couldn’t quell the sense of unease that settled on her as she pondered this information. Her parents, both TF employees, rarely spoke about what they did at work. Recently, they looked more exhausted than ever when they came home. Dario said they were working harder than usual, but it shouldn’t last. Jyra sensed something more to the change than just her parents’ declining behavior. An aura of anxiety seemed to follow them and spread to whatever room they occupied. Their silence in the midst of the vague lurking turmoil only added to the ominous feeling Jyra felt when she woke up every morning.

The clatter of tools freed Jyra from her thoughts. She realized she was gazing at the cracks in the drooping ceiling and the slanted walls. Few things seemed to distract her lately more than a mention of TF.

“Understand I’m delighted to be an apprentice here, but why would TF want this place?” she said, glancing overhead.

“I’m sure they could find a use for it,” Craig said. “Probably be better off tearing it down and starting over, but until that happens we’ve got a few repairs to make.”

They crawled under the skiff and lay on their backs while Craig gave an overview of the work they had to do. He directed his flashlight beam to parts of the machine as he talked.

“Fuel power means more maintenance, but most of that work it purely mechanical,” Craig said. “We hardly need to do any programming on this thing. The work order calls for a larger fuel tank, so you can get started pulling this old one off.” He slapped the side of it and a low metallic note reverberated inside it.

“Where do I start?” Jyra said.

“I’ll get you some wrenches. You’ll need to unhook the fuel lines here”—he indicated the disconnects with the beam of his flashlight—“then you just unbolt it from the frame. Grab that jack over there and put it under the tank so it doesn’t fall when you loosen it.”

The first part of the task went well. Jyra managed to unfasten the fuel lines in a few minutes. She raised the jack until it started to press on the bottom of the tank then she began looking for the mounting bolts. Sand and dirt covered the head of each one, but the large brackets welded to the tank made the bolts easy to locate.

The grime, however, nearly fused the bolts in place. Jyra had to tug on the wrench with both hands to make any progress.

The last bolt was hardly accessible. Jyra had to place the wrench inside a narrow cavity and align her body next to the tank. Anticipating resistance, she yanked back on the wrench. The bolt gave way immediately. Her hands slipped free and the back of her right hand struck the corner seam of the tank.

She crawled from beneath the skiff. When she raised her hands to push stray hair from her face, she felt a warm wet rush on the back of her wrist.

“Oh,” she said automatically. Blood flowed over her dirty hand where it had hit the fuel tank. Craig looked over from the workbench and saw Jyra’s bewildered face before noticing the blood advancing down her arm.

“What happened?” he said, dropping wrenches and rushing around the skiff to take a closer look.

“My hand slipped,” Jyra said. “I cut it on the tank.”

Craig took her wounded hand and examined it briefly.

“That’s exactly what you did,” Craig said, with a sharp intake of breath. “We need someone to stitch you up. Come on.”

                        *

The injury became the most memorable part of the day, so much in fact that Jyra completely forgot about meeting Jed and his attitude toward TF. She didn’t return to the shop for two days on the medic’s instruction. Her hand felt stiff, especially around the wound. Jyra had never before appreciated how much she depended on the flexibility of her skin between her wrists and fingers.

When she was able to work again, Jed was the first person Jyra saw in the shop. Craig hadn’t arrived yet. Jed wore a ratty pair of coveralls and held a stack of papers in one hand and a pen in the other as he circled the skiff, examining it. Craig had finished removing the old fuel tank and the new one now sat under the skiff, waiting to be secured in place.

Jyra stood near the door, not wanting to break Jed’s concentration. He slapped the stack of papers into the same hand as the pen and shook his head.

“Breaking even’s a thing of the past,” he said as he approached. “Write that down. It’ll be on the test.”

“I’ll remember without writing it down if that’s all right,” Jyra said with a small smile.

“Not up for too much writing?” Jed said, pointing at Jyra’s stitches.

“Not at present.”

“It’s tough work,” Jed said. His voice deepened, becoming more serious. “Patching up ships gets harder when you need patching up, too.”

“Sorry, sir,” Jyra said, then remembered. “I mean, Jed. I’ll be more careful.”

“No need for apologies. That’s a thing of the past, too.”

Jyra nodded and glanced at her stitches. Something caught her eye beyond her hand. Jed’s boots were covered in vibrant red dust. Jyra had never seen dirt that color, but she had heard of it from Dario.

“What were you doing out on the Crimen Plains?” she asked. She motioned her head at his boots and Jed lifted one of them.

“My brother just started working on the oil platforms,” Jyra added. The Crimen Plains were full of the rich red soil. As far as anyone knew, it was a natural phenomenon located to the west of Mereda. The brown earth turned red for several square miles. TF had just set up an operation to drill three test wells there. Jed didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, his voice was quieter and he spoke slower than usual.

“I was checking on some opportunities,” he said vaguely. “I’ve been looking for some extra work outside of the shop.”

“Are you working for TF?” Jyra said. Jed looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Then he set his papers down on the workbench and leaned against it with a sigh.

“Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve had to look to the big business for help,” he said. “I thought offering TF shop service here might get ends meeting again, but so far it’s a wash. I went out to see about becoming a field tech.”

Jed frowned and his shoulders rolled forward, tipping him into a defeated posture.

“What wrong with that?” Jyra said.

“TF is what’s wrong,” Jed said, his tone becoming heated. “It’s taking control of this whole world. It’s got the money, influence, and resources to do it. All I ever wanted to do was make a living with my damn garage and now I can’t even do that!”

He stepped back from the bench and kicked one of its wooden legs. Dust billowed off his boot and the tools clattered from the blow.

“Sorry,” Jed said wiping his flushed face with a grimy hand. “It’s not easy being civil all the time when you feel like you have no control over your own affairs. TF is the only source of additional income around here. I hate that company but I’ve got no other choice.”

The door opened and Craig walked in. Jyra thought he hardly looked in better spirits than Jed.

“You made it,” she said, trying to smooth the tension from Jed’s outburst.

“Sorry I’m late,” Craig said. “Trouble with my folks this morning. How’s your hand?”

“It’s been better,” Jyra said, turning it so Craig could see the stitches. He approached and extended a loose fist to her.

“Can you do this?”

Jyra made the same fist with her wounded hand and nodded.

“Great,” Craig said. “That means you can pick up that wrench and get the new fuel tank bolted in.”

Valiant Conductor II—Present time:

Jyra never forgot Jed’s temper and the disdain that filled his voice when he discussed TF. After that day in the garage, she never saw him much, presumably because he had found work in the Crimen Plains. A few months into the apprenticeship, Craig mentioned Jed had received a promotion with TF. This meant Craig had to take over managing the invoices and scheduling repairs for customers—essentially doing all the work Jed used to do.

Not long after Craig undertook his new duties, Jyra thought about how Jed had been promoted so quickly. For someone who despised TF as much as him, it seemed odd that he had managed to make such an impression on management. The way Dario told it nearly every week at dinner, it seemed the Plains were the place to be. The first three wells had yielded more oil than even the loftiest predictions and TF had focused its workforces below the mysterious red soil. Amid all the activity and qualified people, TF selected Jed to advance to a grander position.

Jyra stared at the text on the screen, her mind racing to find words. She was completely transfixed by feelings of loss coupled with disbelief.

“Craig?” she said. The chill of the surroundings crept into her tone.

“What’s wrong?”

“Jed sabotaged the ship,” Jyra said. She couldn’t take her eyes off the screen, reading and rereading the message.

“What?”

“You heard me. He left a note on the bridge. It’s signed with his name.”

“Who is Jed?” Shandra asked.

“My former mentor at a repair garage on Tyrorken,” Craig said. “Jyra worked there as an apprentice. It’s the same garage where we launched the ship that brought us to Drometica.”

“Why did he, or at least why is there a message claiming that he deliberately undermined this ship?” Berk said.

“Is there anything in the message about how much he hates TF?” Craig inquired.

Berk and Macnelia looked at each other then both fixed Jyra with a stare.

“Did you know anything about this beforehand?” Macnelia said. Jyra began shaking her head and even though he was on the opposite end of the ship, Craig picked up on the beginnings of an accusation.

“I knew nothing about the message,” Craig said quickly. “But Jyra can confirm Jed made no secret of how he felt toward TF.”

“Could someone please read the message?” Shandra said. It suddenly occurred to Jyra how frustrating it must be sitting in the cockpit of Mastranada listening to the proceedings while being so removed from the action.

Berk read the message. Leonick broke the brief silence that followed.

“If the message is authentic, it seems like we can work out what he did to the ship so that we can go about fixing the modifications, as he calls them.”

“If it’s authentic,” Macnelia said.

“What he mentioned is consistent with what we’ve seen,” Craig said. “Not even the bulkhead doors engaged. He probably loosened the wall panels back here, too. Leonick was right about the screws being removed.”

Macnelia frowned, but Berk nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Our goal here is to get this ship back in order. The message raises new questions, but it’s not something that needs to be resolved right now.

“Wait,” Jyra said. The screen bearing Jed’s words suddenly flashed and the words ‘transmission complete’ replaced the message.

“Transmission to what?” Macnelia said, stepping in front of the monitor. “We need power on the bridge now,” she said. Jyra glanced at her. The way Macnelia spoke sounded more like an order than a request.

“I am already tracing the circuits,” Leonick replied, his voice as level as ever. “The severe atmospheric shift caused most of the breakers to trip. It is a standard safety feature.”

“Just get it done,” Macnelia said, cutting off Leonick’s rambling.

Berk moved to the back wall of the bridge, inspecting it with his flashlight. He opened a hatch in one of the wall panels and flipped a number of switches.

“Local breakers,” he said. “Once the power surges up here, we don’t need it damaging the processors.

After several tense minutes, Leonick’s voice came through the earpieces.

“The bridge should have power restored.”

“We’ll let you know,” Berk said has he leaned into the electrical panel and activated a switch. Lights sputtered overhead, casting a dull glow over the bridge. Berk immediately cut their power.

“Darker is safer for the moment,” he said. “Tell me when the monitors turn on.

The third switch he tried caused all the bridge screens to flash brightly as electricity flowed into them. The hum of the processors filled the silence.

“Got it,” Macnelia said. “Now we can find out where the transmission went.”

The keyboard lit up as the computer came online and she went to work. Jyra couldn’t make any sense of how Macnelia did what she did, but after another few minutes, a list appeared on the monitor.

“Other TF ships,” Macnelia said, the glow of the screen reflecting on her face.

Berk lowered his flask with a telltale swishing sound and approached the console.

“He broadcast the message to the fleet,” Berk said.

“If they believe it,” Jyra said, considering Jed’s words, “they’ll think this ship is lost or at least unoccupied.”

Macnelia pushed herself back from the console with a heavy sigh.

“Hopefully it throws other ships off our trail until this one is ready to go after them,” she said. “Let’s head back to Mastranada, gather our supplies, and get to work.”

                        *

Jed was on Jyra’s mind for other reasons besides his message. An hour later, she was working on routing cables in the engine room back to their original terminals. The task wouldn’t have been so difficult if her arm wasn’t injured. Jed’s phrase filled her head every time pain shot through her arm: “Patching up ships gets harder when you need patching up, too.”

Jed had managed most of his sabotage by crossing wires or unhooking them entirely. Doing so had compromised many of the systems designed to protect the crew in the event of a hull breach.

Leonick was busy inspecting the engines for signs of damage. Jyra caught sight of him occasionally when he crossed one of the catwalks in hurried strides, eyes focused straight ahead. Jyra remembered the disciplined fashion of how he performed maintenance in Mastranada’s engine room. In this much larger setting, Leonick seemed to become part of the machinery, finding his place and methodically completing tasks.

Everyone else besides Neeka and Derek were testing and repairing the doors throughout the ship. Many had been damaged by the relentless pull from space. Sometimes a door just needed to be refitted onto a track or a pair of glides. Others needed several strikes from Berk’s hammer to bend them back into shape.

A small clock in Mastranada’s cockpit was all that reminded Jyra of the passage of time. The resistance worked an entire week, rarely stopping for meals or sleep. Jyra caught sight of Tyrorken through a porthole once her work took her out of the engine room. Her home planet spun against the black canvas of space. Valiant Conductor II had drifted far enough that the ruined ships around dusty sphere were no longer visible. How had such an insignificant world hosted so much pain? Jyra turned away from the porthole, and returned her attention to the panel.

The sound of approaching footsteps caused her to set the soldering iron aside, but before she could meet the person, he rounded the corner.

“Hi,” Derek said, still leaning on his crutches. “Macnelia said I might be able to help you.”

“Maybe,” Jyra said, raising her eyebrows at the crutches.

“I’m healing up just fine now that I’ve got proper care,” Derek said. “Just tell me what do.”

Jyra fought back a slew of questions she longed to ask in order to show Derek what needed to be rewired. They hardly got into the work, however, before Jyra’s curiosity overwhelmed her.

“How did you do it?” she blurted. “How did TF never suspect you?” This wasn’t how she had envisioned this conversation beginning. She had thought of it for so long, imagining different situations when she might interview Derek about what happened. She felt like lunging at him, as though it might help get her questions answered faster.

“Are you all right?” Derek asked, leaning away from her. “You look crazed.”

“I’ve wanted to talk to you since we got you back,” Jyra said. “I’m sorry, I have lots of questions about the resistance, you, my brother, and all of it really.”

“Well, to start with your first question, TF agents definitely noticed something wasn’t quite right about me. It was easier to keep a low profile until I started leading the mining expeditions. Do you—?”

“Macnelia told me about that assignment.”

“Yes. Well about the time that began, I was definitely under close scrutiny, especially after the ship I piloted to Drometica went down.”

“Do you think they rigged it to fail?” Jyra said. Derek nodded.

“That’s when I realized they must know I was up to something. They kept me on Tyrorken after that. I met your brother and he, Craig, and myself began working on an offensive strategy. I knew TF was keeping an eye on me, but we had larger problems. The most significant was a lack of participants and how do you recruit people to rise against the corporation that sustains them? Or they think sustains them,” he added bitterly.

“I had my rig team to draw from, but no matter how loyal they might have been to me, it would only take one detractor to ruin everything. My frustration replaced better sense at this point and there’s no doubt I started making stupid decisions because of it.

“Giving my team the day off for the funeral and coming to see you were the right things to do. They weren’t smart, though, especially for someone like me. I was already on the wrong side of TF, but I didn’t realize how much I lost their favor. They got a tracer on me and the night of the launch, they knew right where I was. They probably even knew I’d gone to your house. I should have been more careful.”

Derek paused and turned back to his panel. Jyra picked up her soldering gun, reflecting on the new information.

“What was Dario’s attitude toward the resistance?” she said, as wisps of smoke blew away from the cooling solder.

“He thought it was a great idea,” Derek replied. “He was working to get the oil platforms networked. If that had happened, a single glitch could cause them all to malfunction. Dario should have been the leader. He had the charisma, the energy, and the gift for getting people to see his point of view.”

“Do you think TF was responsible for his death?”

“I have no idea,” Derek said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know that.”

“I’m going to find out,” Jyra said.
“That might be harder to do now that we dropped a bomb on TF headquarters,” Derek said. He turned and their eyes met. “I’m sorry for all TF has taken from you. I understand your need to do what you must, but I’d hate to see TF consume your life, too.”

Part XI: Valiant Conductor II

“I need someone to get to the engine room!” Berk hollered as both consoles lit up with warning beacons.

Leonick jumped off the floor and, keeping his arms wide for balance, fled the cockpit to head aft.

Macnelia handed her earpiece to Berk who fitted it on his own ear. Jyra tried to remain focused as she checked diagnostic reports.

“Engine control fuses blew,” she said. “We can’t maneuver.”

“Standard safety mechanism,” Craig said. “There should be spare fuses back there.”

Mastranada sailed through space, knocking debris from the battle aside as it headed for the TF freighter. They could see the port entrance to the main hangar that bisected the ship. It could hold four fuel transport tanks, each four times the size of Mastranada. With the introduction of tankers, TF didn’t rely on freighters as much as it once did to take its product to other planets. Jyra suspected TF agents must have sent it up to fight since it wasn’t as valuable.

“Does anyone else think our trajectory is taking us toward that hangar?” Shandra said.

“They’ll destroy us before that happens,” Macnelia said. “We need to change course.”

“Leonick, are you there?” Berk said.

“What’s all that?” Craig said, pointing.

Jyra noticed what he referred to: a cluster of debris floating alongside the freighter, slowly drifting apart as each individual object followed a seemingly random direction.

“Those look like the laser cannons from that battery that fired at us before we dropped the bomb,” Jyra said, identifying two of the larger objects spinning lazily as though suspended by cables. As she watched, they skated straight away from the ship.

“Are we heading toward the hangar?” Craig said, referencing Shandra’s question.

“I don’t know,” Macnelia said. “The freighter’s moving across our path. We might collide with it.”

“Leonick!” Berk shouted. He clamped the earpiece to his head and gave a small sigh, indicating he’d established contact.

“We’ll get the damage sorted out soon,” Berk growled. He dug in his coat for his flask, but Macnelia slapped his arm.

“You need to stay alert,” she warned. The ship struck another stabilizer and lodged against the cockpit glass. A white divot appeared where it dug into the transparent barrier between the cockpit and space.

“We can’t maneuver,” Berk said, jerking his flask free of the pocket and swallowing a mouthful. “There’s nothing to do about it.” He glared at the stabilizer, which shook against the cockpit glass.

Berk jumped in his seat and pulled the earpiece away from his scalp, reminding Jyra of when Macnelia had shouted in Shandra’s ear with a similar misunderstanding.

“What?” Berk yelled, hoping to match Leonick’s volume. Everyone leaned in to hear the answer.

“The blast warped the fuse station! We have no control until we pound the contacts back into alignment, repair several cable leads, and install replacement fuses.”

“You’re all satisfied?” Berk snarled and everyone left his side. “Leonick could use some help.”

“I think Shandra’s right about where we’re headed,” Macnelia said.

The freighter seemed to be turning away from them, but they were definitely closing in on its hangar.

“What do you think?” Macnelia said, jerking the back of Berk’s seat. Berk furrowed his brow and clutched his temples with both hands.

“It’s a risk, but we’ll crash into the hull of the damn thing if we do nothing,” he said.

“Leonick, bridge the contacts with whatever you’ve got. We need the strongest thrust we can get!”

“Hang on,” Leonick’s voice crackled through the earpiece. Craig heeded Berk’s suggestion and left to assist in the engine room.

“What’s going on?” Neeka’s voice said through Berk’s earpiece.

“We’ve been hit and we’re heading toward a TF freighter,” Berk said. “Not sure if we’re going to land in the hangar or crash into it. I need to talk to Leonick, now. We’re trying to restore engine control.”

“Those are bodies,” Jyra said, staring at the debris field near the freighter. Macnelia walked between the consoles and squinted ahead of them.

“You’re right,” she said.

At least fifty bodies floated amid the laser cannons and other wreckage from the freighter.

“Leonick, we’re running out of time here,” Berk said.

“The hangar’s lit, but the rest of the ship is dark,” Shandra said. “What happened?”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll be around to find out,” Jyra said.

“Standby,” Berk said. “They’ve got a bridge over the fuses set, but it’s probably going to fail after a few seconds of engine power. Aim for the hangar. Ready, Leonick?” he added into the earpiece.

“Go!” Berk ordered.

Mastranada lurched forward as the energy from the twin cores cycled into the engines. Jyra guided the ship to starboard and it shot toward the hangar. The stabilizer caught on the cockpit glass shuddered in place. As soon as Jyra felt the vibration of the engines, the sensation disappeared.

“Hopefully that’s all the push we need,” Macnelia said, resuming her position behind Berk’s chair.

Mastranada glided by a laser cannon that rotated in place like a top whirling in slow motion. Jyra averted her gaze as the nose of the ship hit one of the floating bodies. When she looked again, the hangar entrance yawned before them. Mastranada crossed the threshold of the larger ship and immediately sank—the gravity drive of the freighter was still operating. Berk didn’t have time to lower the landing legs and the impact when the ship hit the hangar deck tossed everyone in the cockpit upward.

Jyra gripped the arms of her chair, her eyes wide with fear, as they skidded toward the massive closed door on the other side of the hangar. Were it open, the momentum would likely carry Mastranada all the way through the freighter.

The view from the cockpit began to change. Mastranada started to spin slowly as its belly shrieked against the floor. It completed a full half-turn before jamming to a halt in the corner of the wall and door on the starboard side of the hangar.

Despite the unsettling arrival, Jyra glanced up and saw the foreign stabilizer on the cockpit glass fly free. She understood what the debris field had already proven; the atmospheric shield that should be cast over the open hangar door wasn’t functioning. Everything vulnerable to the vacuum of space had been sucked out of the freighter. She watched as the stabilizer soared in a direct path toward door they had just entered.

Then Mastranada shuddered and an eerie, grating groan climbed from the ship’s keel.

“We’re getting pulled back out,” Shandra said.

Jyra couldn’t see the stabilizer anymore, though she focused on the spot where it had passed beyond her sight.

Suddenly, on the far side of hangar, right near the doorframe, she saw an explosion of debris, but it was so small and the spectacle so brief it seemed to be just a puff of dust. A second or two later, the steel door slid into view, sealing the hangar from the punishing forces of space. As it closed, Mastranada slowed its progress and finally stopped when the door reached the opposite side of the jamb.

“What is going on?” Neeka said, stepping into the cockpit with Derek behind her, leaning on a crutch. They both looked extremely shaken.

The lights of the hangar filtering into the cockpit made both of them pause in the doorway.

“We just succeeded in landing on an enemy ship,” Berk said, turning in his chair to face them. “And I’ll be surprised if we find anyone besides us who’s alive on it.”

                        *

Macnelia suggested everyone head to the cargo bay. It worked better for meetings and Leonick and Craig wouldn’t have to travel all the way to the front of the ship from the engine room. Berk instructed them where to meet via the earpieces. Within minutes the resistance crew assembled, surrounded by supplies and crates, some of which had scattered during the rough landing. Weapons used in the mission to rescue Derek were still piled in a corner near the cargo door.

Craig had fallen from a ladder after he bridged the contacts on the fuse panel under Leonick’s instruction. He smiled as he dabbed the small cut over his eye.

“Definitely worth it,” he told Jyra and she couldn’t agree more. If they hadn’t managed to land in the freighter, they would have either collided with it or their ship would have drifted onward, crippled in space with no control.

Macnelia looked around at the group with a grim smile, which disappeared altogether when she saw the fresh Mourning Mark on Jyra’s forehead. Derek sat on a crate and clutched Neeka’s hand. His clothes were in good condition and Jyra realized he must have had some stored in the cave that he’d been able to retrieve from the crates. Except for the wounds on his face, he looked much better in his pressed outfit compared to the shabby attire everyone else wore.

“We accomplished the two goals of our mission,” Macnelia said. “Although, we didn’t plan much beyond them. If we had, it seems those plans would’ve been upset anyway. What we know so far is we’ve crash-landed in a TF freighter hangar. We’ve got our ship’s scanner checking the enemy vessel for people, but as we were able to penetrate the open hangar so easily, it looks like it has been exposed to space for a long time.”

“What about airtight bulkheads?” Craig said. “TF could afford to upgrade its ships.”

“This freighter looks like it’s a bit on the older side,” Berk said dismissively. “In fact, I think that’s why they sent it into battle.”

“Isn’t that still going on?” Neeka said. “Why isn’t the freighter a target?”

“There’s nothing to say it isn’t,” Berk said. “But it’s not likely to be.”

“I didn’t think freighters came equipped with guns,” Neeka said.

“They don’t,” Derek mumbled.

“They mounted laser cannons on the hangar floor and used those,” Macnelia said. “It was probably a quick retrofit, too. When the Nilcyns attacked, TF had to act fast to repel the enemy.”

“Which is why they threw cannons into what is usually an unarmed ship,” Derek said. “An unexpected battleship.”

“The crew was small,” Jyra said, recalling the floating bodies. “If all of them were vented into space, I counted only fifty or so.”

“Cannons could fire through an atmospheric shield,” Derek said. “Which is what they must have been doing, but if there were bodies in space, the shield failed somehow.”

“The laser cannons were torn free and pulled out there, too,” Shandra said.

“We’ve got a few unanswered questions,” Macnelia said. “Some of which concern the damage to our own ship. Until we can get outside, we won’t be able to resolve most of them.”

“Will we be able to get outside?” Neeka asked. “Into the hangar?”

“After we entered the freighter, the door closed, sealing us in,” Berk said. “Although plenty of air systems would have been overwhelmed, some immediate data I gathered before coming down here is the freighter seems to be restoring safe environmental conditions for us. Even the gravity drive still works.”

“How did the door close?” Neeka asked.

“I’ve got a theory,” Jyra said. “We’ll know for sure once the freighter is ready to receive us.”

                        *

Jyra returned to her quarters and pulled off her topcoat. She extracted Dario’s dagger from the pocket and turned it over in her hands. Her eyes then fell on the locket, which she had moved to the chair. She set the two souvenirs side by side, the objects that tied her to her past. Jyra’s own memories seemed foreign to her somehow. They were now marred, half by a numb void and half by an aching sadness. Even as the thoughts entered her mind, she felt her knees weakening, the sense of loss dragging her toward despair. First her brother had been torn away and then her parents had been taken beyond her reach.

Jyra shook her head and tried to think about something else. She had hoped to talk more to Derek, but he seemed keen to leave after the meeting. Before adjourning, Berk had estimated it would take about an hour before it would be safe to open Mastranada’s door. The ship had served them well for the previous mission, but the absence of an airlock was now a noticeable drawback—there was no way to keep Mastranada’s atmosphere isolated from the freighter’s when they opened the door.

Jyra’s put her theory aside about the closing hangar door to tackle the likelihood of others surviving on the freighter. It was a far more complex problem that could distract her from the pain that lurked on the fringes of her mind, waiting to rush in to occupy any cerebral vacancy. She rummaged in her duffel and pulled out “Ships of the Kaosaam System,” searching for a ship similar to the class of the freighter. Once she located it about halfway through the book, she flipped to the cross-section illustration.

The first detail she noticed was the size of the main hangar compared to the rest of the ship. Though it didn’t look like it from the exterior, the hangar took up about half of the volume of the ship’s living areas. Jyra imagined the size of the breach and how much of the oxygen had been sucked free immediately. The massive loss of pressure and sudden demand for oxygen hadn’t overloaded the air systems. Even so, the enormous vent from the hangar door could have reduced air levels to the point that humans couldn’t survive.

Jyra studied the cross-section further and remembered what Craig had mentioned about the bulkheads. Despite the age of the freighter, the illustration suggested it likely had two of them, one in front of the engine room and one behind the bridge. Between the bulkheads and the hangar were crew quarters, bathrooms, and, in the forward section, a galley.

It was possible that others were still alive, sealed safely behind the bulkheads. Jyra leaned in to examine the page more to see if the bridge and engine room had their own air systems, when she remembered something else. Except for the hangar, the rest of the ship had been dark. Jyra put her tongue between her teeth, thinking of returning to the cockpit. From there she would be able to see if TF agents entered the hangar, once they realized the breach had been sealed. As she left her quarters, she thought about the airtight bulkheads.

The vacuum of space would have spread through the freighter the moment the breach occurred. Despite that, the crew would still have time to seal themselves on the bridge or in the engine room before being flushed from the vessel. Presumably, some crew members would be in both locations. But fifty people seemed like a lot to operate just two laser cannons. By the time she reached the cockpit, Jyra believed everyone aboard had been vented into space. But if the freighter did have the airtight bulkheads, why hadn’t the doors closed to close off parts of the ship from the consequences of the breach? And what caused the breach in the first place? Those were the two questions on Jyra’s mind as she took her seat at her console.

Berk was in his usual chair, flask in hand, watching the readouts on his monitor. He glanced at Jyra as she sat down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the scorched flask.

“I know I asked you if you had any spare flasks, but I really don’t need this one,” he said.

“I don’t need it either,” Jyra said. Then, keen to keep the conversation away from her family’s demise, she added. “How’s it look out there?”

“The oxygen level is still rising,” Berk said. “But if there’s anything harmful in the air, we’ll only find out once we step out of our ship.”

“How long now?”

“I’d say another half hour,” Berk said. He tipped his head back and poured the remainder of his whiskey into his mouth. “What’s your theory about the door closing?” he asked.

“It’s pretty simple,” Jyra said. “The stabilizer we hit that stayed on the glass flew off after when we landed. I think it hit the button to activate the door on its way out.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Berk said, leaning back in his chair. “Lucky for us, too. No idea where we’d have ended up.”

“Macnelia still in the cargo bay?” Jyra said.

“Preparing for the exploration,” Berk said. “She started cleaning the guns when I left. A couple of them jammed because of all the dust. Has there always been that much dirt in the air?”

“It got worse every year,” Jyra said. “Macnelia said TF operations could have destroyed the planet if they continued much longer. I guess we’ll see if our efforts paid off.”

“I think they will,” Berk said. “Of course, it’s not over yet.”

“I thought the resistance didn’t have any plans,” Jyra said, recalling Macnelia’s words from the cargo bay.

“Well we need to make some,” Berk said. “Judging by the glance I got of the TF complex after we bombed it, I think we finished it off pretty well. Trouble is, there’re agents hanging around, not to mention a number of ships just like the one we’ve landed in that are going to be returning to base. And we’ve got to be ready to face them.”

Jyra realized she hadn’t considered the next steps of the resistance and Berk had raised only a couple repercussions of destroying the complex.

“What about the Nilcyns?” Jyra said.

“We’ll have to deal with them, too,” Berk said. Jyra lowered her eyebrows and felt as though she were deflating where she sat.
“What’s the matter?” Berk asked.

“I don’t know,” Jyra said. “Aside from rescuing Derek, I saw dropping the bomb as our primary objective. We’ve done that and I didn’t expect we’d be hanging around long after we achieved that goal.”

“If we’re going to make a lasting difference, we’ll need to be here for a while,” Berk said.

“What do you mean?” Jyra said, rolling her eyes. “Form a new government?”

“Not quite that long, but maybe.”

Jyra waited for Berk’s face to break into a smile behind his whiskers or for a barking laugh to rise from his belly, but nothing happened.

“You actually mean that,” Jyra said.

“It’s what I’d like to see us do,” Berk said. “You don’t just go blowing up the source of people’s livelihoods and move on, expecting them to pick up the pieces, especially when vermin of the previous establishment are still alive.”

Jyra didn’t know what to say.

                        *

The search party assembled behind the door, testing their earpieces. Shandra agreed to remain in the cockpit, monitoring the receiver. Leonick was eager to be part of the expedition. Jyra rested one of her hands on the gun strapped to her hip, certain she only imagined the smell of gunpowder emanating from the weapon. She didn’t want to think about killing the guards.

“Opening door,” Berk grunted.

Light spilled into the hallway along with a rush of air. Berk leapt onto the hangar deck and Leonick followed. They both held their guns low, aiming them across the enormous room. Craig, Jyra, and Macnelia jumped free of Mastranada.

“Closing door,” Shandra’s voice reported through the earpieces.

“Go ahead,” Macnelia said.

“The air smells strange,” Craig said.

“Ozone,” Berk said. “The breach stressed the air processors. That odor will likely be pumped throughout the ship.”

Jyra gazed upward. Massive steel beams stretched across the ceiling and met vertical counterparts that supported the walls. The beams were spaced every ten feet. A series of heavy shutters hung on the wall opposite Mastranada. Jyra knew from her reading that the shutters concealed storage compartments. Lights were mounted on the ceiling between the beams. Jyra set off for the vast cargo door on the other side of the hangar. From her perspective, the opening only looked about four inches tall. If she fired her gun at the door, she doubted the bullet would even reach it.

“Where are you going?” Macnelia said.

“I want to see what caused the door to close after we flew through it.”

“Keep your eyes peeled for any movement,” Berk said.

The search party fanned out to the edges of the hangar. Jyra marveled how everyone, even Berk, seemed dwarflike against the towering white walls. The farther she walked, the more Mastranada looked like some kind of model or toy.

Not even halfway to the door, Jyra paused when she noticed a series of threaded rods poking out of the otherwise smooth floor. She approached them and realized what they were for.

“I think I found one of the laser cannon mounts,” she said. “The rods are bent toward the door, which is consistent with how the cannons would have been torn off their frames.”

“Any word on how the door closed?” Berk said.

“Almost there,” Jyra said. “It’s a long walk.”

She pressed on, looking over her shoulder at each exposed wall stud that could easily provide cover for two people standing side by side. She had already passed the door that led to the forward section of the freighter. If agents came through it into the hangar, Jyra would be cut off from the others.

At last, she reached her destination. Even as she took her final steps toward the door control panel, she could see it had sustained heavy damage. The buttons were shattered and the cover plate looked as though a giant had swung a dull axe into it—a deep crease cut across it horizontally.

“At the door panel,” Jyra said. “Or what’s left of it. Something hit it hard.”

As she spoke, she noticed the smudges of gray paint on the panel and on the wall nearby.

“It was the stabilizer we picked up on our cockpit,” Jyra said. “It hit the button when it was sucked back into space.”

“Looks like you were right,” Berk said through the earpiece. “Do you think the panel can be repaired?”

“Maybe, but we should see if we can lock the door from another location before fiddling with the controls here.”

“Good plan,” Berk said.

“Can you help me with this?” Macnelia’s voice cut in. Across the hangar, Jyra heard the rattle of metal and realized Berk and Macnelia were opening one of the shutters.

“I don’t believe it,” Berk said.

“What is it?” Craig and Jyra both said.

“There’s a laser cannon in here,” Macnelia said. “We can rearm this ship.”

“Check the other compartments,” Jyra said, jogging across the hangar.

By the time she met with the others, they were all moving along the same wall, opening the compartments. They had discovered a total of three laser cannons. Of the final three compartments, two were empty and they found one more cannon.

“Perhaps we should expand our search,” Leonick said. “If we cannot get the atmospheric shield working again, these cannons will be no better at attacking ships than the guns at our sides.”

The euphoria of finding the heavy arms dissipated as the search party realized the workload required to effectively wield the cannons.

“We might need lights before we move on,” Jyra said. “The rest of the ship was dark.”

Returning to Mastranada and conducting a hurried search through the crates yielded only three flashlights.

“I thought we had headlamps,” Berk said.

“I haven’t seen those for a long time,” Macnelia said.

“There must be some kind of emergency lighting in the freighter's corridors,” Craig said. “We can make do with what we’ve got.”

“Right,” Berk said. “We’re wasting time. Leonick and Craig, you two can check the stern. Macnelia, Jyra, and I will take the bow.”

Once they were back in the hangar, the two search parties headed for their respective doors.

Berk hit the button and the door sprang open, as though attached to a taut spring.

“You two saw that, right?” Berk said.

“Yeah,” Macnelia said.

A cry of surprise from Craig came through their earpieces.

“Sorry,” he said. “The door just…”

“It happened over here, too,” Jyra said.

It turned out Craig was correct about the lighting. An eerie red glow illuminated the passage beyond the door.

The stench of ozone increased in the corridor. Jyra turned on her flashlight. An odd assortment of objects—bits of metal, toiletries, clothes and shoes—littered the floor.

“Crew quarters are off this passage,” Jyra said. They explored the corridors to their left and right. Some mattresses had been pulled off the bed frames. Their lights gleamed on the smooth dark walls.

“This is creepy,” Macnelia said. Jyra was glad she said it instead of her. A pair of boots sat at the foot of one bed, the laces wrapped around the frame.

“Not keen on privacy,” Jyra said. “All the room doors are open.”

They moved on. Berk kept his gun aimed into the crimson gloom. Jyra pointed her flashlight on the floor so they wouldn’t trip on the debris. They reached a ladder and had to climb through a hatch to the next level.

Macnelia placed her hand on one of the rungs, pulled it away, and held her palm in the beam of her flashlight.

“Blood,” she muttered.

“To be expected,” Berk said from the next level. Jyra stepped off the ladder next to him and saw what he held in one hand.

“The vacuum sends a jagged piece of steel like this shooting down a corridor, you better hope you’re not the way.”

Jyra shuddered at the thought and felt the wound on her arm throb. Macnelia joined the others.

“Check in,” Berk said.

“Still here,” Shandra said.

“Leonick?”

“We’re working our way toward the back,” Leonick replied. “Lots of wall panels have been partially pulled free.”

“Makes sense,” Berk said. “Let us know when you get to the engine room.”

Jyra did her best to ignore the sense of foreboding that lurked in the back of her mind. She felt similar to when she and Craig had been in the middle of the food mission on Drometica. The darkness and unfamiliar surroundings of the freighter reminded her of the stockroom and the old man.

Berk’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“That looks like a bulkhead doorway.”

Jyra leaned left to see around Berk and realized he was correct. The jamb was thicker than usual, which they could see because the door was open. The three of them inspected both sides of the bulkhead.

“Aren’t these doors supposed to close the second a breach is detected?” Macnelia said, following the glow of her light as she trained it along the base of the door, which sat suspended above them, waiting to drop into place.

“They’re supposed to,” Berk said. Jyra swallowed hard. Every door she had encountered on the freighter seemed to have some abnormality if not an obvious malfunction. Berk seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

“Let’s get to the bridge,” he said. “If we don’t have more clues about what happened by then, we should come back here to do more tinkering with this bulkhead, see if it’s hiding anything from us.”

“Craig you were right,” Berk said into the earpiece. “This ship’s got airtight bulkheads. Have you passed one yet?”

“Coming up to one,” Craig answered. He sounded somewhat out of breath.

“Is the door open?” Berk asked.

“Looks like it is.”

Jyra, Berk, and Macnelia climbed another ladder. The landing floor was as cluttered as the rest of them, but the debris crunched beneath their boots.

“Glass,” Macnelia said. By the light in her hand, they could see the ink etched onto the larger fragments.

“Navigation panels,” Berk said. “We’re getting close. They must have been pulled all this way from the bridge. The smaller shards probably made it all the way to space.”

They climbed three more ladders until Berk gave a satisfied sigh.

“We’re here.”

He had to push a small cluster of chairs off the hatchway. The emergency lighting did little to make the bridge any more inviting. The same dark coat of paint from the dormitories reflected the red glow in large, blurry swaths on the walls and low ceiling. Dull standby lights winked on the various consoles that were arranged in a semicircle. Beyond them stood enormous clear panels that provided a panoramic view of the stars. The complete lack of activity that should have filled the room stole Jyra’s breath away. The unrelenting aroma of ozone made her head spin. She panned her flashlight over the bridge and Macnelia copied her. The lights glinted off the dark monitors. Berk stepped into the middle of the semicircle, passing the consoles. He noticed the corner of one nearest him was smeared with blood. At that moment, Loenick’s voice came through the earpiece.

“We have reached the engine room,” he said.

“Any sign of life?” Berk said. Macnelia and Jyra paused opposite the other, each standing next to a console closest to the vast windows. They listened to the conversation.

“No, but every door all the way back to the engine room was open,” Leonick said. “It is rather unusual. You did not come across any torn wall panels, did you?”

“I didn’t,” Berk said.

“Some of them seemed to have the screws taken out of the them,” Leonick said.

“Well they could have been pulled out when the vacuum ripped the whole panel forward and then the screws would’ve been easily vented clear of the ship,” Berk suggested.

“You misunderstand me,” Leonick said. “The screw holes in the panels are clean. The screws were removed by hand. Any stress against the holes would have warped or cracked them and they are as smooth as ever.”

“The more we add to the mysteries, the more chance we have of solving at least one,” Berk sighed, pushing his hair back. He set his gun on one of the consoles and dug in his jacket for his flask.

“We have located the breakers as well,” Leonick said. “A lot of them are tripped.”

“Don’t throw them just yet,” Berk said, swallowing a mouthful of whiskey. “We don’t need to advertise this ship’s got living folks aboard. I think our first priority is to figure out the doors, what happened to them, and make sure they don’t have any surprises for us.”

“Could the Nilcyns remotely sabotage them?” Craig asked.

“At this point anything seems possible,” Berk said. “But I hope the Nilcyns have nothing to do with this or we’re in more peril than we thought. I don’t like surprise peril.”

“So to troubleshoot the doors, we should check each one,” Leonick said.

“Indeed,” Berk said. “Start at your end and work back toward the hangar. We’ll meet there.”

“Affirmative,” Leonick said.

Berk glanced at the two women.

“I guess we’ll go see what the bulkhead door can show us.”

They headed toward the ladder hatch. The two flashlights fell on the far rim and the sight made all three of them stop. A mixture of blood, flesh, and hair hung near the edge of the hatch.

“Haven’t been checking that area of the other hatches,” Berk said. “They’re probably all like that. Agents getting pulled through when the breach occurred.”

Jyra turned to avoid looking at the gruesome remains and her eyes fell on one of the console monitors. Without the reflection of the bright flashlight glaring off the screen, Jyra squinted to make sure she wasn’t imagining what she saw.

“There’s text on that monitor,” she said.

She walked toward it, quickening her pace out of fear and excitement. Berk and Macnelia followed, crowding behind Jyra who leaned in to read the dark purple writing.

Though I do this at the cost of my own life, I do it for the good of my planet and in hopes of defeating TF, to forever banish it from Tyrorken.

After undergoing crude modifications, this ship, Valiant Conductor II, became a machine of war. Even in standard service, its purpose disgusts me. It’s gratifying to use my skills and knowledge to undermine this ship and I’ve made a few modifications of my own. I am about to override the safeguards and terminate the atmospheric shield. I’ve rigged all the doors to remain open, so everyone on this ship will empty into the void. Personally, I can’t think of a better fate for TF agents. Next time, you ought to have stricter checks and standards for those you hire as shipboard mechanics.

–Jed Skytok

“Never heard of that guy and it seems like I never will,” Berk said. “What’s the matter?” he added to Jyra as she leaned back from the monitor, biting her lip.

“He ran the garage where I trained as a mechanic,” she said. “He was Craig’s boss.”