Ascending - James Alan Gardner [81]
Many of the hatch-doors were closed, and most were exceedingly stronger than the one Lajoolie had broken. The biggest doors were designed to remain secure despite vast extremes of air pressure; so thick, even I had no chance of smashing through. Fortunately, such violence was not required—though the doors no longer opened automatically, they contained Cunningly Concealed Mechanisms that allowed manual operation via wheels and cranks. Once Festina showed me how these devices worked, I got to turn all the wheels…which I did most prettily, ensuring our party’s speedy progress toward the bridge.
We were not the only persons desirous of making contact with the captain. As we moved forward through the ship, numerous crew members peeked out of doorways, saw who we were, and joined our company. The newcomers did not speak; I do not know if they were intimidated by my beauty, Festina’s rank, or Uclod’s orangeness, but they seemed as shy as woodland creatures, keeping their distance yet mutely following.
This muteness struck me as foolish. If I had not already known this darkness was the result of a complicated computer tragedy, I should have been asking, “What happened? What happened?” But then, I was not such a one as greatly revered machines. Perhaps these humans were so cowed by the demise of their ship, they had plunged into grief-stricken mourning.
Or perhaps they were not so much wallowing in sorrow as silently giddy with excitement. It is Eerily Thrilling to walk through soundless corridors when your only illumination is a tiny wand of silver, and the blackness stretches for light-years in all directions. You feel that anything could happen…and even if there is danger afoot, it will be vastly preferable to lying on the floor with a Tired Brain.
Having a perilous adventure is always better than comatose safety. Always, always, always, always, always.
In The Halls
I did not know how many hatches stood between us and the bridge…but I could tell when I opened the last. As I pushed back the great thick door, I saw light on the other side and heard voices talking in subdued tones. Five crew members had gathered in the corridor to listen to a sixth person: a dark-skinned man in a powder blue suit.
He stood slightly apart from the others as he spoke to them, and he held a glow-wand just like Festina’s. At the moment I opened the hatch, he was gesturing with the wand, pointing in our direction. The waving light made shadows leap along the corridor walls in a manner delightfully creepy. However, the man stopped waving as soon as he saw our party.
“Admiral!” he said—in a voice not loud but fervent. “I don’t suppose you know what happened?”
“A saboteur,” Festina told him. “Hacked the ship-soul into committing Captain’s Last Act. I’m afraid the ship is…”
“EMP’d to rat-shit from bow to stern,” the blue-suited man finished her sentence. “That’s what Captain’s Last Act means.” He gave Festina a rueful smile. “At my court-martial, you’ll testify I didn’t do it, right, Admiral?”
“Of course, Captain…if any of us lives that long.”
I looked at the man again. This must be Captain Kapoor, who spoke to us earlier on the intercom. He did not impress me much as a Figure Of Authority: he was shorter than I, with thinning black hair and a poorly shaped mustache. I am not well-informed on the subject of mustaches—my own people do not grow true hair, we merely have the suggestion of hair as part of our solid glass skulls—but if I were to possess a mustache, I would endeavor to carve it with bilateral symmetry instead of letting it become an unkempt blob of fur that appears to be sliding off the left edge of one’s lips.
Still, this Kapoor man did not seem totally foolish. He had happy crinkles around the edges of his eyes as if he must laugh a lot…and for all the tension that filled the air, he did not seem snappish or stressed. Indeed, one could argue he was altogether too blasé about the situation, considering that his ship had been disastrously