Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(86)
Grace tsked. Of course not; her mind was just as sharp and her memory just as clear as the day she had last been on Earth nearly a century ago. Just because she was about to die didn’t mean she was dying. She walked to the other corner of the room and looked at the painting from the side.
The fading sun reflecting off the snow was perfect, though perhaps a shade too dark. It was an adequate reflection of home. Certainly nothing she would ever show to another soul—something she wouldn’t have any concerns with shortly—but definitely a piece of work she was proud of, considering the circumstances.
Grace looked out the window. The spinning stars had settled and were now just streaming by at a leisurely pace. The good Captain Monk, as narrow-minded and unimaginative as he was, had done a very good job righting the High Marker. She didn’t think he had it in him. Too bad all that work to stabilize the ship from its out-of-control trajectory toward the heliosphere was a waste of time.
According to the last report, energy reserves were down to 2 percent. The engineers were still baffled with the question of where all the rest of the fusion power went. Over 90 percent of a Titan-class starship’s levels doesn’t just vanish into thin air. That was enough power to keep Eris lit up for two years.
Grace knew the truth, though, and it was much more fantastic and logical than anyone else in this time could guess. She thought back to the meeting with the time traveler, her own personal Grim Reaper who signaled her impending demise. It was a slight comfort that the foundation she had laid down for this time-travel agency still existed. At least something of her creation would survive, something she had not expected of the Technology Isolationists. The war had gone badly …
The ship was rocked by a thundering explosion, and the blast shields protecting the interior of the ship slammed down. That’s twice this had happened in less than an hour. This time, though, something was different. Not only did the blast shields stay closed, she could hear additional sounds of other barriers coming down outside her room. The entire ship must be going into a full lockdown as the High Marker isolated her structural components. That could only mean a hull integrity breach.
Grace pulled up the bridge through her command console. “Report, Monk.”
Monk’s haggard face appeared as he yelled off-screen. The floating comm eye must have caught him at a bad time. It followed him as he ran across the bridge and scanned an array of flashing red lights on one of the side stations.
“Focus on that console,” she ordered.
The comm eye flew up just behind the good captain’s head and zoomed in on what half a dozen of the bridge officers were staring at as well. Grace clicked her tongue; what a waste of manpower. The ship had struck something, and the object, instead of being destroyed on impact, was hard enough to punch a hole straight through the exterior plating of the second level of section three. What was strange was that, according to the console, it had also penetrated the blast shields that had dropped down to cordon off that section as well as the hallway blast shields. Whatever this thing was had destroyed three layers of shielding. Four; the section blast shields had also just gone down. Grace’s eyes widened. The object made a right turn …
“Oh my,” Grace murmured. “So many interesting things. What a terrible time to die.”
Could it be? Hours before they were all going to die, had they actually discovered alien life? After five hundred years in space, did humanity just receive their answer about life outside this system? And was the damn thing actually rampaging through the corridors of the ship? She watched as the object or creature continued down different paths, turning left at another intersection, cutting through a common room, and then backtracking the way it had come.
“It knows how to use the lift,” she muttered as her eyes trailed the blinking red dot moving throughout the ship. “Interesting.” Monk yelled out orders and waved his hands wildly, almost knocking the comm eye out of the air.
“Pan to the captain,” she ordered.
The good captain’s face had gone sheet white, as had the faces of almost all of the bridge crew. Monk barked several more commands off-screen and then focused back on the screen. A few seconds later, a dozen green dots blinked to life on the screen and swarmed toward the red dot.
“Get a security eye in there,” he said.
Four additional screens floated in the air above his head, each showing a real-time feed of the security eyes zooming down corridors toward the red dot. It seemed the security personnel, the green dots, got to the red dot first.
“Initial contact from Sec Team One with visual says humanoid!” an acolyte said from off-screen.
Humanoid? That was a surprise, though something that could blow through the hull of a warship and blast through impact shielding was definitely more than that.
“Sec Team One down!” the acolyte continued. “Sec Team Two engaging from the rear.”
“Back to the console,” Grace said. She caught the screen just in time to see the first splash of green dots closest to the red target blink out of existence. She saw another group of green coming up from behind it. Then they too blinked out. Still, Monk sent more security personnel after it.
“Get some Kill Mutes out of stasis!” he roared. “I want them awake and working in five minutes. And get a mech team powered up.”
Grace watched as a third group of green dots disappeared. Well, if Monk was going to use Kill Mutes and combat mechs in the tight spaces of a warship, he might as well just blow it apart now. Those killing machines weren’t made to fight in such tight quarters. They would tear the High Marker apart from the inside out, though considering what that intruder was doing, did it really matter? She was deathly curious, and deep in thought when she caught the end of one of Monk’s orders.