The Ghost Line Read online

  “His eyes—they were completely black. As if they’d been replaced. His mouth and nose were sealed over. I still tried to pull him back, but he was so strong, even stronger than my powered suit. He tossed me towards the Queen. I don’t know what he was, but once he’d eaten the food the ship had made for him, he wasn’t human anymore. Ayanti was gone.”

  “What did you do?” Saga knew the answer already, but she wanted to hear it from Wei herself.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Wei looked at Saga, eyes pleading. “I thought he was going to destroy our ship. I went back and took control of the anticollision systems and I . . . I burned him up. I burned him until he was nothing but a cinder. And then I put everything back in the Queen, and I mothballed it, and I ran away.”

  She closed her eyes again, took a shuddering breath. “I came back to the belt with nothing. I told his family that he’d died on a mission and I couldn’t recover his body. I loved him. I really did. I had to do it. You need to understand.”

  * * *

  Her story over, Wei huddled in the chair. If she was hoping for some sort of absolution, she wasn’t going to get it. Saga couldn’t imagine doing what the other woman had done, even in self-defense. And to do it to someone she loved—to Michel?

  The nightmarish image of Gregor’s disintegrating corpse surfaced in her mind, and Saga’s anger bloomed, a red-hot coal in her chest.

  She stood up. “What happened to Gregor was your fault. You knew what the ship’s food would do to him and you didn’t say anything.”

  Wei stared at the floor. “I told him to keep his suit on.”

  “But you didn’t tell him why. You didn’t tell any of us anything. You killed him, and you incinerated him. Just like Ayanti.”

  Wei didn’t react. Saga wanted to kick her.

  “Was there even a company who wanted this route?” Michel said.

  “Yes.” Wei looked up. “I didn’t have the resources to come back on my own, but when I heard about their colonization plans I convinced them to fund this mission.”

  “But why?” Saga said. “Why did you bring us here? Revenge?”

  “Not just that. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Queen, lurking out here like a predator in the dark. I had to send it out of the solar system.”

  “Why didn’t you do it the first time?” Michel said.

  “Because she couldn’t.” Saga jabbed her finger at Wei. “Ayanti was the hacker. You didn’t know how to override the navigation controls, how to make the ship’s mind do what you wanted.”

  “I tried,” Wei snapped. “But none of my hacks worked. I knew I would need experts.” She paused. “And you wouldn’t have come if I had told you the truth.”

  “We’re calling for help now, Wei. I don’t care what you think.” Saga turned to Michel, who was already accessing the communications system.

  He frowned. “That’s . . . odd.”

  “What is?”

  He swore, tapped at the control surfaces. “The comms system is working, but no signals are getting out. It’s as if—”

  Saga turned to Wei. “What have you done to the ship?”

  “What I had to,” she whispered. She picked up her helmet and put it back on.

  Michel activated the ship’s external cameras. He clicked around until he found what he was looking for: the antenna array was twisted and scorched, melted into an abstract sculpture. Wei had turned the anticollision lasers on it.

  “That’s it, then,” he said. “We don’t have the Sigurd, and now we don’t have working antennae. We can’t call for help.” He loomed over Wei, furious. “Are you insane?”

  Wei stood and he grabbed her shoulder. She hit him hard in the chest and he fell backward, her blow knocking him across the room in the bridge’s low gravity.

  Saga took a step forward, but stopped when she saw the gleam of metal. Wei had Gregor’s cutting laser in her gloved hand. “Don’t move. I don’t want to hurt you if I don’t have to.” She pointed the laser at the console and fired, plastic and glass crackling and smoking as the beam ran over it. She swept it down across Michel’s and Saga’s pressure suits, then backed her way to the stairs and slid out of sight.

  Saga ran to Michel’s side. “Are you okay?”

  He touched his chest gingerly. “I’ll survive. But I think she broke a rib. Maybe a couple.”

  She helped him up. “Careful. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”

  “Just be quick,” he said. “Who knows what she’s up to.”

  Saga helped Michel to a seat at the console, then grabbed the kit from their half-melted pile of gear. As she applied compression tape to his torso, his fingers tapped on the bridge’s undamaged control surfaces, interrupted by sharp gasps of pain.

  She looked at the display. “What are you doing?”

  “If we don’t have comms, we need helm control so we can fly to safety. I’m trying to see if I can transfer it from the console she wrecked.”

  “Trying?”

  “Wei locked us out and she zapped the nav systems with that laser. I’m not sure I can do it.” He swore. “Can you locate her? Use the internal cameras.”

  Saga started flicking through the video feeds, then realized there was a better way. “Ship,” she said. “Could you show me the other person on board? The one not in this room.”

  The view changed in front of her. She saw the back of Wei’s head for a moment. The image flickered, shifting to another camera. There was a cascade of sparks, a tiny sun in Wei’s hand.

  “She’s welding something,” Saga said. “Ship,” she said. “Where is she?”

  “The person you are observing is at the drive access hatch,” the ship said. “She is inside the propulsion section.”

  “Michel, she’s going to the drive. Can she manually control it from there?”

  He frowned, searched the air for invisible information. “Yes,” he said. “I think so. She doesn’t need to do anything fancy, just turn it on and leave it on until we run out of propellant. Then we’re completely screwed.”

  “So we have to stop her. You can’t do anything from here?”

  He shook his head. “I’m locked out. We have to get to her.”

  “Ship,” Saga said. “Will you help us?”

  “I am happy to assist,” the ship said. “What help do you need?”

  “We have to get to the propulsion section, but not through the drive access hatch.”

  “There is no other way to access the propulsion section from inside the Martian Queen.”

  “Unfortunately Wei fucking welded the hatch shut—unless you have another cutting laser.”

  “I’m sorry, but you will have to talk to the head of engineering to obtain work tools. I cannot locate this crewmember.”

  Saga looked at Michel.

  “I was already in engineering,” he said. “When we looked around the ship. You know I like tools; I wanted to see what they had. It was stripped clean. Gregor must have brought the laser with him from the Sigurd.”

  Saga thought of something. “Ship, you said we couldn’t access propulsion from inside the Queen. What about outside? Is there external access?”

  “There is one emergency hatch,” the ship replied. “As well as four maintenance ports for mech access.”

  Michel looked at their gear. “Is there any hope?”

  Saga lifted the torso section of her suit. A scorched line cut through it. “They’re both ruined. They’ll never hold pressure.”

  Michel slammed his hand on the console. “There’s got to be something else. This is a spaceship, for God’s sake.”

  “Come on.” Saga held out her hand. “There is something we can try.”

  They raced to Gregor’s room, Michel grunting and holding his side. At the doorway, Saga felt something drop in the pit of her stomach.

  Michel nudged her. “You’re sure this was his?”

  She nodded, looking at the space before her. It was empty. No suit was crammed under the bed. “Ship, did you cle
an this room?”

  The ship’s voice came from a panel by the door. A light pulsed gently as the ship spoke. “The guest has left the ship, so housekeeping was activated.”

  “We need something he left behind.”

  There was silence. “Ship?”

  The ship finally spoke. “The materials in the room are no longer retrievable.”

  “What does that mean?” Michel said.

  “It doesn’t sound good. Ship, are there any other pressure suits on board? Anywhere?”

  “I’m sorry, but my stores inventory is incomplete,” the ship said. “Ship systems have been in hibernation mode. I do not currently have a complete knowledge of all items on board.”

  “Fokk,” Saga said. She kicked the door frame and her foot went through the wall. “What the hell?” She bent and examined the hole her foot had made. The edges of the wall material crumbled in her hand. Wei had described the ship being hollowed out, and here was the proof. She felt a prickling across her skin.

  “Michel,” she said.

  But her husband was occupied, tapping quick commands in the air, his gaze far away. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  The lifeboat section had three hatches.

  “They have to have suits, right?” Michel said. He paused for a moment, thinking. “They’ll also have emergency beacons. Food and environment systems to keep a hundred or more people alive for as long as rescue might take . . .”

  Saga looked at him in surprise. “You think we should abandon ship?”

  Michel nodded. “This isn’t our ship. It isn’t our fight. Wei can do whatever she wants after we’ve set off. We can switch on the beacons and wait to be rescued.”

  “Ship,” Saga said. “Open the lifeboats. Prep for evacuation.”

  “Is this a drill?” the ship asked. “There has not been a declared emergency.”

  “It is an emergency,” Saga said. “Abandon ship. Sound the alarms, do whatever you have to.”

  “I do not detect any emergency conditions. I cannot initiate an abandon ship without senior crew authorization or a confirmed emergency.”

  Saga looked at Michel, frustrated. He frowned, then his face brightened. “Actually, it is a drill,” he said. “We need to test the lifeboat systems. Please grant us access.”

  There was silence from the ship. Saga was intensely aware of Wei, working away in the drive section. They didn’t have time. Then the hatches opened with a click and hum.

  They stepped down and stopped in the first hatchway, startled by what they saw.

  The inside of the lifeboat was in motion, a slow shifting like the surface of a deep river. What looked like mother-of-pearl coated the walls and floor. The layout was still vaguely recognizable as a spacecraft: consoles and chairs, the outlines of compartment doors. But everything shimmered with an otherworldly iridescence. A ripple moved through it, spreading from where they stood, as if their presence had disturbed something living.

  “No,” Michel said. “No.”

  “The next one.” Saga grabbed his arm and they both backed out of the lifeboat. A few steps took them to the second open hatch. Inside everything looked reassuringly normal.

  Michel opened a compartment, revealing rows of emergency supplies: water containers, packages of nutritional bars. Saga tapped a control on the console at the stern of the craft. Lights flickered to life.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re in business.” She closed her eyes in relief. They’d just have to override the safeties that kept the lifeboat docked to the ship, and they could escape the doomed Queen.

  “Um. Saga?”

  She opened her eyes, looked at her husband. He held something in his hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “A food bar,” he said. “I thought we’d better test one.”

  He tossed it to her and she caught it. It was rubbery, lighter than it should have been. She put it on the floor and stepped on it, and the bar popped. A simulacrum. She turned and kicked the metal wall beside her and her foot went through it. The console lights went out.

  Michel pulled items from the storage lockers. Empty water containers, more useless emergency rations. He kept going, tossing everything onto the floor.

  “Stop it,” Saga said. He ignored her. He tugged at the compartment door and the whole thing came away in his hands. He fell backward and hit the floor with a grunt, his face contorted in pain.

  She crouched, her hand on his shoulder. “Just stop.” She tossed aside the broken door. “You’re making it worse. You need to lie down, you have to rest.”

  Michel sighed. “How much worse can it get?”

  “There must be something we can do, but not if you puncture your lung or start an internal bleed.”

  She helped him hobble back through the hatch, then told the ship to open the nearest stateroom door. She laid him down on the bed and covered him with a blanket she found in the small closet. The bed felt solid enough. She took a couple of patches from the medical kit she’d retrieved from her suit and put them on his neck.

  He touched them. “What’s that?”

  “For the pain.” She stroked his forehead while the patches took effect. She’d added a sedative to the painkillers. She didn’t need him running around, trying to fix the unfixable. Not now.

  He closed his eyes. In a minute he was asleep.

  Saga sat on the edge of the bed and tried not to give in to despair. She leaned her head against the wall and felt a rumbling vibration. She picked up her first-aid kit and dropped it, watching as it fell slowly to the floor. It landed a few centimeters away from the point she’d let it go. Wei had gained control of propulsion, and she was adjusting their course. They were under thrust again.

  She could see it now. Wei would burn the engines until the ship was headed out of the solar system, as she’d always intended. Or maybe she’d steer it straight into Jupiter, just to be sure. Either way they would all die.

  There was a knock on the door. Startled, Saga stood up and touched the peephole display. The female synth named Krasivaya stood outside, dressed in a cream-colored shift. She wore a jeweled headdress, and her lips were silver, her cheeks dusted with reddish powder.

  Saga opened the door.

  “Dinner is served,” Krasivaya said. “Please join us in the dining room.”

  Saga closed the door, her heart thudding. She remembered an old movie about the Titanic, the musicians playing on deck while the ship sank. She imagined the synths and projections re-creating past feasts long after the three remaining humans had rotted away.

  She sat back down on the bed and took inventory. She’d removed the thigh pouch from her suit when they left the bridge. As well as the first-aid kit, it held other things: a protein bar; a suit power cell. The black dress she’d worn that first night on the Queen.

  Saga picked up the folded dress. The fabric had the weight and feel of silk. If the ship, or whatever had taken over the ship, had extruded this, it had done so with great skill. And it had crafted it for her: the dress fit perfectly.

  Wei thought the Queen had some sort of contamination. She’d used her biocontainment gear and found nothing. But no contamination could create something like that dress. That showed intent. Whatever Michel would have called it, she was sure of it now: the ship was haunted. Some intelligence, some spirit, had taken possession. If it had been malevolent, it could have easily dealt with them. Even when it took control of Gregor’s body, it had only been correcting the ship’s course. Just as Wei’s partner had returned stolen property, fixing the damage.

  So if it wasn’t malevolent, perhaps they had a chance. Perhaps there was still something she could do.

  She sat watching Michel sleep. She had been slow to agree to marry him, then she’d resisted his talk of children. Everything had to be pushed off to some future where she could be sure. Sure that they both wouldn’t somehow change.

  Her parents started out happy, like everyone else. Then that happ
iness soured and twisted. She always feared that would happen to her and Michel someday.

  “I wish . . . ,” she said. “I wish . . .” She had wished for a lot of things that hadn’t come true. When she had driven with her mother on their trip around the ring road, she’d wished that her father would leave them. That they’d come back to the house and all his things would be gone. It would just be the two of them, happy together.

  But when they had arrived at the small house with the red roof, her father had been standing in the doorway. At the sight of him something in her, some ember of hope, had winked out.

  What did she have left now?

  Krasivaya was still outside, patiently waiting, a message from the Queen.

  Saga began to get changed.

  * * *

  Wearing the black dress, Saga followed Krasivaya down the corridor. They stopped at the dining-room doors and Saga looked at the carving for a moment. One section showed a stag on a rocky outcropping. In the sky above gleamed a comet, its long tail silvery with the same opalescent shimmering as the lifeboat in flux.

  Behind the doors came the sound of clinking forks and conversation. Krasivaya pushed and the doors opened. They were back at the dinner party.

  As Saga walked over to the tables she searched for a familiar face, but the man in the turban was not among the diners. Their fashions were even older now. In the corner a string quartet played. She was witnessing one of the earliest voyages, perhaps the first.

  Saga sat down in an empty chair. Across from her, the projection of a woman who’d been sipping from a wineglass vanished, replaced by the man she’d seen before, both here and in Wei’s photograph.

  “You’re Ayanti, aren’t you? Wei’s partner.”

  The man looked at her. He didn’t speak, but she thought she saw something in his eyes. Some subtle change.

  “What do I do?” Saga said.

  The man glanced to the back of the room and Saga followed his gaze. A table had been set up near the bar. She recognized the male synth standing behind it, wearing his uniform. He was carving from a roast.

  When she looked back Ayanti was gone. The wine-drinking woman had returned.