The Ghost Line Page 6

  Saga stared at the pattern. “Subtractive overlay?”

  Michel shook his head, thoughtful. “Onion-skin algorithm, actually. You get better temporal resolution.”

  “In English, please,” Wei snapped.

  “It’s a map,” Michel said. “The AI is riddled with hidden code. It’s a type of neural network that isn’t in the original mind’s programming. I only found it when I split the code into layers and started moving through them, minimizing everything that was supposed to be there.”

  “Could it be a virus?” Saga said.

  Michel shrugged. “Whatever it is, it seems to be growing. It’s already one percent larger than it was an hour ago. Maybe turning on the ship’s mind woke it up.”

  “A ghost in the machine,” Saga said. Like something half glimpsed in a mirror. Like the man she’d seen in the dining room, Wei’s man. Yet another mystery their employer was keeping to herself.

  “It’s preventing the course change?” Wei waved her hand, signaling for their attention.

  Michel nodded. “Looks like it.”

  “Then turn it off. Edit it out.”

  Michel stared into space, viewing readouts that only he could see. “Problem is, the map isn’t the territory. We’re just looking at my best guess at what’s there. It’s a different story to go in and try to change something that’s embedded that deep without damaging anything. Do you have any idea how complex a ship’s mind is?”

  “I don’t care about the fucking details. Just do it.” Wei’s face was flushed, her gloved hands opening and closing.

  It took three more hours to find a work-around. Wei insisted that none of them leave. Saga kept Michel hydrated, fed him a protein bar when he looked like he needed it, made comments when she had something useful to say. But this deep expedition into the code was his.

  The final result was messy, inelegant. Michel had no hope of teasing out all the unusual code, so instead he put parts of the ship’s mind back to sleep. He kept the motor areas—the attitude and drive controls—awake. To access this partial mind he created a simple interface, more plumbing than programming. They would use the Sigurd’s computer to control the burn.

  Wei did the work on the Sigurd’s systems, refusing Michel’s and Saga’s offers to help her. When everything was ready, Wei brought the reactor up to full strength. She opened the propellant valves. The liner rumbled and they all felt the gentle, growing push of acceleration as the Martian Queen began to change course.

  “I need a break,” Michel said, stretching his back. “I have to move.”

  “Go ahead,” Wei said. “I’ll message you if I need anything.”

  * * *

  They were both exhausted. Saga had a long shower; when she got out Michel was sprawled on the bed, snoring gently. She lay beside him. She would close her eyes, but only for a moment.

  Saga woke with a start when she felt something damp on her face. Her hair was going to be a mess. As she reached for her towel, something nagged at her. She picked up the towel and let it go, then watched as it fell slowly, taking a slightly curved path to the floor.

  “Michel,” she said. She shoved his shoulder.

  “Mmm,” he grumbled.

  “We’re still under thrust.”

  He pushed himself up on his elbows. “That’s odd, it’s been . . .” He paused, checking his implant. “Merde, it’s been nearly three hours. Why is Wei still running the engines?”

  When they got to the bridge, they found Wei at the console. She might not have moved since they left her.

  “What the hell, Wei?” Saga said. “This is no minor course correction.”

  “Change of plans.”

  Saga looked at Michel, who was gazing, unfocused, at a point over her shoulder. Calculating something. After a minute he made eye contact. “We’re moving too fast for a simple orbit change,” he said. “We reached solar system escape velocity a few minutes ago.”

  “Fokk,” Saga swore. Wei had just ruined their travel plans back to Earth. “What is this?”

  “What needs to be done.” Wei tapped the console and the engines turned off. They all swayed slightly with the loss of acceleration. “There,” she said. “Good enough.” She touched the control interfaces, and readouts around the room shifted.

  Michel looked confused. “What are you shutting down?”

  “All of it: the reactor, the ship’s mind, the life support.”

  “We never agreed to that,” Saga said. She thought of the carved doors cracking, water freezing, and pipes bursting.

  “You had your time,” Wei said. “The job’s done now. You’re going to want to suit up soon if you enjoy breathing.”

  “Helvítis bjáni,” Saga spat, the English words failing her. “You’re going to wreck the Queen.”

  Wei ignored her. Status lights switched from green to amber all over the display.

  “They’re in the room, Saga,” Michel said. She looked at him blankly. “Our suits. We left them in the room.”

  “So?”

  “Wei’s shutting down life support. We need to get our suits on.”

  Saga glared at Wei, who continued to ignore her. She looked at Michel, saw the urgency on his face. She took a long breath, trying to calm herself.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  They pulled on their suits quickly. Michel fumbled with one of his gloves. Saga reached over and adjusted the stuck bearing that had prevented a proper seal. “You have some sort of plan?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We get the hell out of here and go home.”

  Saga picked up her helmet. “That’s it?”

  Michel closed his eyes for a moment. He looked tired. “What do you want, Saga? You want to pick a fight with Wei, who has control of the ship and is shutting down life support? You want to stay on this empty liner? You were the one who was so desperate to return to Earth.” He paused for a second. “Look, the sooner we do this, the sooner we can start back.”

  Saga winced. “Yes . . . Yes, of course.” She sighed. “We have to take Gregor’s body with us. If Wei’s so damn worried, she can put him in her fancy biocontainment box. But we have to do the right thing by him.”

  “I know,” Michel said. “He was crew. We owe him that.”

  They packed their few things. Saga slipped the black dress into the thigh pouch on her suit. Michel carried her video and mapping gear. They walked through the ship, heading for the galley. Halfway there an alarm sounded and the rotational force that had provided the sensation of Mars gravity dropped away.

  “She wasn’t kidding about shutting everything off,” Michel said over the suit comm.

  Saga looked at the environment display in her suit. It showed the temperature and air pressure dropping steadily. “She’s crazy. What if we hadn’t made it to the room?”

  Wei’s voice sounded in their helmets. “Come now. I have camera control and I can see your data readouts. I knew you were suited up.”

  “And comm access,” Michel grunted.

  “Obviously.” A pause. “I know you’re going for his body. Don’t. Nothing from the ship comes back.”

  Saga looked at Michel. An understanding passed between them. They were going to get Gregor anyway. She didn’t care what Wei wanted anymore. They continued through the doors marked Staff Access Only, pushing themselves toward the main galley.

  Michel stopped short in the open doorway, and Saga collided with him. He lost his grip and they both tumbled into the galley.

  It took a moment to get themselves straightened out. Over the comm Saga could hear her husband’s breathing, muttered curses. Then she saw why.

  The door to the cold storage locker they’d put Gregor in was wide open. The locker was empty.

  “Wei?” Michel mouthed.

  Saga nodded. She must have dumped the body already. This was beyond caution; something had to be wrong with Wei. Some deep pathology. Would she even let them back on the Sigurd? Would they have to fight her?<
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  There was a stirring in the air. A vibration swept through the ship. If she hadn’t been holding on to the door frame with her hand she might not have noticed it. Saga felt her body being drawn aft.

  “We’re under acceleration,” she said. “Wei, can you hear us? What are you doing?”

  “We can’t be.” Wei’s voice was strained. “The reactor’s offline. The drive isn’t on. Don’t move.” A wobble in the last word.

  Michel caught her attention. There was a window in the galley door. As the ship’s temperature dropped, frost had formed. He quickly wrote on the glass: Where to? Bridge or Sigurd? Or?

  Saga pointed to the Sigurd. Michel nodded.

  * * *

  They were almost to the service bay when Wei contacted them over the comm. “I need your help.”

  Saga shook her head. “Screw you, Wei. You spaced Gregor.”

  “I wish I had. You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Why should we believe anything you say?”

  Michel went ahead to open the service hatch, but it wouldn’t respond to the code they’d programmed in. Their previous hack was gone. He swore and kicked the hatch, floating backward toward Saga.

  She pushed off the wall and snagged him as he came by.

  “Unlock the fucking hatch, Wei,” Michel said.

  Silence. Finally Wei replied, “I can’t. The ship won’t respond.” Wei swore. “Oh just look for yourselves.”

  A screen on the wall next to the hatch blinked to life, showing the exterior of the Queen. The familiar shape of the Sigurd was there, as expected. What wasn’t expected was the blue glow of her main drive, a flood of energetic particles lighting up the darkness behind her. The image switched to show Gregor in his pilot’s chair. He sat still, staring blankly ahead, only wearing the underwear they’d put on him when they found him.

  “Oh my God,” Saga said. “He’s still alive.” She touched the screen, as if the image would vanish. Instead she could feel a steady vibration.

  “Find a way to stop him,” Wei said. “He’s changing our course back.”

  “Didn’t you contact him? What did he say?”

  “Of course I tried to fucking contact him. He’s not responding. Just do something.”

  Saga looked at Michel, his wide, surprised eyes. She was sure she looked the same. “You’re going to have to do it, Michel,” she said. “You have the gear.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What do I do first, open the lock?”

  “Get control of the ship’s systems. Turn the engine off,” Wei said. “Then we’ll figure out the next step.”

  Michel tethered himself to the wall by the hatch. Saga watched as he closed his eyes, saw the twitches of his fingers as he entered the virtual space of the intrusion software.

  Saga tried to puzzle everything out: Wei’s odd behavior, the reappearance of Gregor, his actions on the Sigurd. Gregor must have woken from some sort of deep unconsciousness and found a safety lock release inside the storage area. What would it have been like to wake in the cold and dark like that? But it still didn’t explain why he would go to the Sigurd and fire up the engines. Unless he was trying to leave.

  She stared at the screen. Containers moved behind Gregor, all drifting in the same direction as the thrust from the Sigurd’s main drive pushed both ships. His face was pale and waxy. No expression. He reached out mechanically and touched a control, then returned his hand to his lap. “He hasn’t blinked,” she said after a minute. “Not since I’ve been watching. Something’s wrong with him.”

  “Shit,” Michel said. “The Sigurd’s engine controls are manually locked out.”

  “Wei,” Saga said over the comm. “Are you seeing this?”

  “Just deal with it, Saga. I don’t care how. He’s burning hard. He’s using up our propellant. If he keeps this up, we won’t have enough left to get anywhere.”

  “Anything, Michel?” Saga said.

  “I have low-level access,” he said. “But nothing useful. I can’t access propulsion or navigation.”

  “Can you access environmental controls?”

  “No.”

  Something occurred to her. “What about emergency systems? Fire suppression?”

  A pause from Michel. “Yes,” he finally said. “We have that.” He blinked at her with alarm. “You really want to suffocate him?”

  “Just temporarily. If we make him lose consciousness, we can flush the atmosphere, right? Bring it back to normal. No harm done.”

  “Maybe some harm,” Michel said hesitantly. “None of us are doctors.”

  “How are we for propellant?”

  He paused again. She could see he was afraid. Well, so was she, but they had to act.

  “What are you waiting for?” Wei said. “Just do it! He’s already dropped our velocity by two kilometers per second. The engine’s running over one hundred percent load. If he keeps it up we’re totally screwed.”

  Saga nodded at Michel. “Go.”

  On the screen, warning lights strobed in the cabin. Then a billow of fog as the cold nitrogen of the fire suppression system flooded the room. Gregor faded to a shadow on the screen, a statue shrouded by mist. A minute later everything was clear again as powerful fans pulled the gas from the room.

  Gregor sat at the pilot’s station, unblinking. Unchanged. He reached forward and touched the control surface.

  “That’s impossible,” Michel said. “There was no breathable air in there.”

  Saga felt the vibration through the wall, a ragged syncopation. “What did he just do?”

  “Emergency thrust,” Michel said. “He’s overridden all the safeties.”

  “Get away from the hatch,” Wei yelled. Her voice was distorted, almost unrecognizable.

  “Why?” Saga said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Not me: him. There are alarms all over the board. The hull’s failing. Get out of there.”

  Michel was still tethered to the wall. She grabbed him, then unclipped and pushed off in a fluid motion. They were floating back toward the service-bay doors when the wall around the docking port ripped apart.

  The noise was a hammer. Saga felt it in her bones. Decompression alarms wailed, then rapidly faded to silence as air rushed from the cargo area. Flashing red lights. Emergency doors sealed. Beyond the destroyed hatch stretched the black fabric of space, punctured by a landscape of stars. The force of escaping air had counteracted their movement, and they slowly drifted back toward the hole where the port had been. Saga watched over Michel’s shoulder as the Sigurd tumbled away, engine still flaring.

  The silence was broken by the sound of her gasping breath.

  * * *

  They understood the situation they were in only later, after Wei had sealed and evacuated the cargo compartment behind the service bay, allowing them to get through the emergency doors. After they had made their way, stunned, up to the Queen’s bridge, where Wei had shown them footage from the ship’s cameras.

  The docking port had been ripped from the ship under the Sigurd’s emergency thrust. It shouldn’t have; it was rated for far more stress than it had taken. But the hull around it had crumbled, the metal strangely fragile, almost hollowed out. Afterward, the Sigurd had tumbled and spun, engine still firing. It was heading directly toward the Queen when the liner’s anticollision systems had engaged.

  The systems were designed to vaporize fast-moving fragments of rock and ice or push larger objects out of the way. They made short work of the Sigurd. The footage showed the sparks of pusher drones: chemical rockets that connected themselves to the ship’s hull and fired to slow it. Next, powerful lasers had made the metal of the Sigurd’s hull glow yellow. Although its momentum had been reduced by the drones, the half-melted ship had still made contact with the Queen and was now fused to the hull, a warty growth on the liner’s sleek side.

  It had been their way home. Now it was slag.

  Saga couldn’t pull herself away from the footage, puzzled and horrified in equ
al measure. One of the cameras had captured the moment the ship split apart, ripping like paper as a glowing dot traced its side. A half-shadowed body had tumbled out before being pinned in laser light like an insect under a magnifying glass. Gregor had boiled away into space under the ferocious heat of the ship’s defenses.

  Saga rewound and watched again, confused. The corpse was no threat to the ship. It shouldn’t have noticed him. Yet during a moment when the Sigurd was still on a collision course with the Queen, the lasers had focused on his body instead. They’d allowed the ship to collide with the Queen rather than ignore Gregor. It didn’t make sense.

  “So I guess we’re going to get caught,” Michel grumbled, interrupting her musing. “No sneaking home now. Any port we take the Queen to, they’re going to make a fuss.”

  Wei’s faceplate had been dark as she sat brooding. Now it flickered on, revealing her expression. She looked shaken. “No port,” she said. “No port. It doesn’t matter. There’s only one thing left to do.”

  “What thing?” Saga said. But Wei just dimmed her faceplate and became silent again.

  She was useless; they’d just have to route around her.

  Saga stood up. Wei had reversed the shutdown procedure. Gravity had returned. Her suit showed normal temperature and pressure in the room. It also showed she’d depleted half its oxygen and power. She stripped it off. Watching her, Michel did the same. “I’ll search the ship for supplies,” she said to him. “If we’re going to be here a while, we need to know what we have.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She shook her head, then tilted it at Wei. Keep an eye on her. “Why don’t you stay and run some numbers? We need to know how much propellant is left, how long it will take us to get back to civilization.”

  Michel nodded. “Of course.” He sat down at his console and a work space opened up in front of him. When Saga left, he was deep in orbital calculations.

  * * *

  Saga went back to the casino. The melancholy space felt even emptier than before, now that Gregor was gone. She checked behind the bar and found the water dispenser and a small sink. A food printer that was empty and offline. Rows of glasses and neatly folded bar towels. A box of drink coasters with the Martian Queen’s logo. She touched one and a small image of the liner slid slowly across its face.