The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(62)

“That ship of yours. We think we found it. Way the hell away from here.”

*

“Another ship, another airlock,” PFC Gamis said, and cranked open the airlock to Marce’s mystery ship with his spreader. Marce, Gennety Hanton and Sergeant Sherrill floated in, and Gamis uncranked the airlock’s outer door closed behind them. He opened the inner door to the ship and was surprised, as was everyone else, to hear and feel the air rushing in.

“It’s still got an atmosphere,” Sherrill said.

“Want to take off your helmet, Sarge?” Gamis asked.

“I wouldn’t suggest it,” Hanton said. “Not unless you like breathing air that’s two hundred and seventy degrees below zero.”

“Come on,” Marce said, and led the team away from the airlock, in the exhausting magnetized gait.

“This is odd,” Sherrill said as they walked the length of the ship. “All the bulkheads are open. Nothing is secured.”

“And no one here,” Gamis said. “Not a single frozen corpse.”

“Captain Chuch said the crew of this ship joined the survivors of Dalasysla,” Marce said. “This ship didn’t meet a violent end. It probably just got parked.”

“A hell of a long way from Dalasysla,” Hanton said. The ship had been parked in the trailing orbital Lagrange point of Dalvik, Dalasysla Prime’s largest moon. The Bransid’s crew spotted the ship only several hours after Dalvik emerged from the far side of its planet. Dalasysla itself orbited much farther out than Dalvik, to avoid the large moon’s gravity and also Dalasysla Prime’s violent magnetic field. The shuttle, flying flat-out, took six hours to get there. The team would have only a few hours before this ship winged itself back behind Dalasysla Prime.

“Maybe that was the point,” Marce said.

“I think they hid the bridge as well they hid the ship,” Gamis complained. “This would be easier if we had a deck plan.”

“Found it,” Sherrill said, ahead of them. Gamis grumbled at this.

The bridge was small, almost intimate, and dark, with only one glowing light, positioned at what looked like the navigator’s workstation.

“There’s a light on,” Hanton said, pointing. “This ship still has power. After all this time.”

“Let’s find the heater,” Gamis said.

Marce walked over to the workstation and peered in close at the small light, which was embedded in the workstation itself.

The light flashed in Marce’s eye. He sputtered and took a step back.

The lights on the bridge flickered on.

“What the hell?” Sherrill said, looking around.

“What did you do?” Hanton said to Marce.

“I looked at a light,” Marce said.

“Well, don’t do that anymore.”

“I think it’s a little late for that.”

From away in the ship, thrumming began. The sound of a ship waking itself up. Marce felt a pressing on his shoulders. A push field, or something very much like it, had turned on and had begun to simulate something like a full g.

“Okay, I’m very officially not liking this now,” Gamis said, and turned to exit the deck.

There was someone standing in the doorway.

Gamis yelled in alarm and raised his weapon. Sherrill did the same.

The person in the doorway held up a hand, as if to say, Don’t do that, please.

“Wait,” Marce said. Gamis and Sherrill both held their ground and didn’t back up, but stayed where they were. Marce walked up to the person in the doorway, who watched him approach, his hand still up.

Marce stood in front of the person and poked at his hand. His finger went through the hand like he wasn’t there.

Because in reality, he wasn’t there.

“Gamis, if you’d shot him, you just would have put holes in the wall,” Marce said.

“That’s a projection?” Gamis said.

“Either that or a ghost.”

“That’s great,” Sherrill said. “Of who?”

Marce looked back at the image of the person in the doorway. “That’s a really good question.”

“Your accent and grammar are strange to me, but I think I can follow it now,” the apparition said. Its accent was as strange to Marce as his was to the apparition, but perfectly understandable. “You speak like the Dalasyslans, but not quite the same as they do.”

“I’m speaking Standard,” Marce said.

“Standard. Yes,” the apparition said, and tilted its head slightly. “Are you from the Interdependency? Aside from the Dalasyslans, I’ve never met anyone from there. I would be delighted to change that.”

“I am from the Interdependency,” Marce said. “We all are.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I’m Lord Marce Claremont, of End.”

“An actual lord,” the apparition said. “How unexpected. And the duo still aiming their weapons at me, although it will do them no good at all?”

“Sergeant Sherrill and Private First Class Gamis,” Marce said, and motioned to them to lower their weapons. Both of them complied, reluctantly. “And over there is Gennety Hanton, computer expert.”

“I thought I was, anyway,” Hanton said. “Looking at you, I’m maybe changing my mind.”