“The pirates weren’t supposed to be dangerous,” someone said.
There was some laughter at that.
The pirates had taken the ship to Aurora and the crew had been taken off and brought here. Twelve women were in the group. Tina asked about the rest of the crew.
“They kept us separate, men and women. We don’t know where the men are.”
Tina knew, but she didn’t want to talk about that now. She didn’t know if all the men had been taken to the dark zone to be infected with rift virus. Maybe the pirates had only done this to a few people. Maybe by now Jens had disabled the system and the cubicles had opened so that the men could wake up and hopefully walk away unharmed. From all she understood about it, the infection took longer than a few days to take hold and didn’t transfer easily. Exposure to ultraviolet light was a factor.
“There are men locked up in other parts of this prison,” Tina said.
“Yes, but none of them are part of the crew. We already checked that.”
“Maybe they took the crew back to the ship.”
“Why? We have the captain and pilots here.”
“The ship is being prepared for departure,” Tina said.
“How do you know that?” another woman asked.
“I saw it myself. The readiness percentage is going up.”
In the darkness of the room, a female voice said, “Shit. Are you sure?”
Evelle asked, “Aliz?”
“Who are you?” Tina asked.
“Aliz Paduano. Flight Officer First Class, SF Manila.”
“She’s the first pilot,” someone else said.
“I’m familiar with the language,” Tina said. Then she asked Aliz, “Is there a problem?”
“Are you absolutely sure the readiness is increasing?”
“I saw it myself. I know what to look for. I used to work for the Force as biological scientist at Project Charon. I’ve been on many flights. It know what it looks like when a ship is being prepared for departure.”
“When you saw this, was there a sign of crew on board?”
“Not that I could see.”
Aliz said again, “Shit.” And after a short silence, she continued, “The SF Manila has two reactor cores. After arrival, they need to be manually powered down before the engine can be shut down and the ship is ready to remain in dock for any length of time. Normal passenger ships with reactor cores don’t have this requirement, because much of it is automated and starts without involvement from the crew, counting back from the scheduled arrival time. It’s a safety issue. However, this process hampers engine output so it’s unsuited to a warship like the SF Manila. This means that the reactor will keep burning and will start to ramp up power and readiness again, save that the ship is not actually being prepared for departure.”
“That sounds nasty. What are the consequences? A lot of damage to the ship?”
“Sure, but the immediate concern is that if nothing is done, the reactor will blow up.”
“Shit.”
“Eeyup.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“So we’re kind of screwed,” Evelle said.
“You said it,” Aliz said. “When the ship goes, it will take out the entire station.”
“How long before that happens?”
“I’ve never tried it myself. Probably a few days.”
And the Manila had been in dock for a few days already.
“How about we get out of here before that time?” Tina said.
“I would love to, but overwhelming the guards is very risky. We’ve already tried that once, when they came to bring food. Several of us got taken away. We haven’t seen them since, so we’re reluctant to try again without a plan because we’ll still need a skeleton crew to fly the ship, and if we lose too many people we might not be able to occupy all essential positions.”
Tina said, “I have some options.”
“What kind of options?” Aliz sounded interested.
“Ways of getting out of here. Extra crew, maybe.”
“Go on.”
Tina lowered her voice. “Make a bit of noise while I’m speaking. I’m sure someone is trying to listen in.”
“We’ve already ripped that thing out of the wall,” a woman said.
Several other women had started dragging their feet over the floor which made a scuffling noise over the carpet.
The women all gathered around her.
Tina continued, “There is likely to be more than just the visible camera. I ran a business that installs and maintains security systems. Cayelle is a backwater world for many reasons, and because of that, it has a lot of crime. People buy advanced security systems. In fact, they’re much more advanced than any I’ve seen here. I know how to disable these systems.”
“That’s pretty hard to do unless you have access to their computer systems.”
“I have a solution for that, too.” She told them about Thor, Jens and Rex without mentioning their names.
“But how would you get in contact with them?”
“I have some options. I may need some help.” She explained that she wanted the women to study the walls of the room very carefully to look for panels or other ways to open the wall recess. “Keep chatting, talking about personal things, whatever.”
They all spread out over the room and inspected the wall panels closely. Tina first got on her knees, starting from the ground up.
Evelle sat next to her. She said, “It’s such a coincidence that this is how we meet.”
“Did you ever wonder about me?”
“Sometimes. We weren’t allowed to contact our families most of the time. It was very hard on some people.”
“But not on you?”
She let out a sigh. “When I first joined, I was very angry. I was always facing some form of disciplinary action on board. Half the recycling plant was probably maintained by me. There’s a reason I never got picked to become a pilot no matter how much I applied. It was all that stuff that went on that probably wasn’t as important as I thought it was and made me angry. I was always angry.”
Tina hated to think back to that time just before Evelle left home. She didn’t remember all the things that were said in arguments that she had long forgotten and Evelle
