“I hope you’re better at catching than rescuing,” Ana-Zhi said.
“What?”
“Incoming!” she bellowed. Then she shot her device right at us.
It was a grappling harpoon with a magnetic head and a hundred meters of carbon nanotube line. Ana-Zhi Agrada’s aim was pretty good, but the head came towards us much faster than I expected. It flew between my outstretched arms.
“Fuck!”
“I got it!” Chiraine yelled. She had managed to nab the line as it flew past.
We both grabbed the line and each other as Ana-Zhi reversed the harpoon and yanked us back—as she simultaneous keyed the sled’s throttle to full.
Behind us, the Faiurae ship convulsed and cracked apart, almost in slow motion. I could see small hydrogen explosions ripple throughout the ship’s superstructure, and energy surges spilled from the fractured hull.
Chiraine and I whipped away, swinging wildly behind the sled, closing on the Freya. But there was no way we’d get inside in time.
And then the Faiurae ship blew.
A globe of bright light erupted from the craft, exploding outward in a spherical burst—just as Ana-Zhi swung us behind the Freya’s hull to shield us from the debris.
I held Chiraine so tight I thought I could feel her pounding heart through our suits. I know that was just my imagination, of course. But she looked reassured. We stayed that way for a long time.
“Everyone okay?” came Ana-Zhi Agrada’s voice.
“Yeah,” I responded numbly.
“Good. Let’s go inside so I can kick your ass properly.”
We barely had time to get patched up by the Freya’s MedBed before Ana-Zhi started chewing us out.
“I know it was a damn fool thing to do,” I said. “But there was no way I was going to leave Chiraine behind.”
“I know,” Ana-Zhi said. “Neither was I.”
“It sure looked like you were,” I said bitterly.
“It’s called strategic planning, junior. And we’ll talk about it later.” She turned to Chiraine. “Now I need to know what the Faiurae got out of you.”
“Nothing.”
“You sure about that?”
“They had their own data. They knew that the Kryrk was in Bandala.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “That’s why they were in the neighborhood.”
Chiraine continued, “But they didn’t have the coordinates. And neither did I.”
“So why aren’t you dead?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“Beats me. Maybe they were going to put me to work slicing.”
Before she could elaborate, Yates rushed in. His eyes were wild and it looked like he was hopped up on something.
“We found it. The location of the Kryrk!”
“The slicer worked?” Chiraine asked.
“Yeah, chewed through the encrypted section slow and steady, but it got the job done.”
“Start the mission programming,” Ana-Zhi barked. “Get Hap and Obarral down here. We need this sled checked and loaded ASAP! Jannigan, why don’t you put on some undies and get ready to join us.” She slammed her hand down on a worktable and announced, “We’re going treasure hunting!”
Chiraine followed me back to my cabin. Once we were alone, she told me to sit down.
“You’re acting weird,” I said.
She sat down next to me. “Right before the Faiurae took me, I was working on reviewing Bandala’s defense system status logs for the A419 node.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I thought it might give us a better handle on what type of defenses we’d be up against in the event we weren’t able to shut down the defense grid.”
“But we can shut it down, can’t we?”
“Yes, but I’m a little OCD about these things,” she said.
“You don’t strike me as OCD, but whatever. Go on.”
“So the logs are pretty boring. Yueld is a quiet place overall and these repositories have been largely undisturbed for seven hundred years or so.”
Then something occurred to me. “Not all of them have been undisturbed.”
She nodded.
“You found something about my father on Bandala?” My heart quickened.
“I can show you the logs,” Chiraine said. “There’s a lot of data there. Information about Sean Beck.”
I found it hard to speak the words, but I had to know. “His death?”
“That’s the thing, Jannigan. He might not be dead.”
13
A wave of dizziness washed over me. I took a deep breath and tried to get a grip. “What are you talking about?”
Chiraine took my hands in hers. “The system logged a life form in deep hibernation—possibly as a result of some sort of cryopreservation activity.”
“But, how do you know that—”
“The log entry first appeared after your dad and Yates entered Bandala and triggered the fortress’s defense grid.”
Her green eyes glimmered with hope.
Then she said, “I don’t think your father died. I think that somehow he’s in hibernation.”
How could that be? Then it hit me. “The exosuits. Even back then they had long-term life support.”
She nodded.
My head was spinning. “Let me get this clear. My dad and Yates enter Bandala…?”
“Yes,” she said. “They made two attempts. Both times they trigger the security grid—which results in a series of active security measures. All logged.”
“The scrubbers?”
“Yes, but there were also other active defenses,” she said.
“According to Yates, they went directly to the location of the Tabarroh Crystal.”
“That’s right. They obtained the Crystal and then the security bots caught up with them. At some point your father sacrificed himself so Yates could escape. Supposedly.”
Her last word hit me like a ton of bricks. “Supposedly?”
Chiraine looked me straight in the eyes. “What if Yates knew your father wasn’t dead? What if he abandoned him?”
“On purpose? That’s crazy.”
“Maybe not. Think about it. There’s a code among crewers. You don’t leave anyone behind, right?”
Chiraine was right. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered.
“What if Yates really thought that my dad was dead?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate.
“How? He didn’t see any definitive proof. We know that. In the best-case scenario, Yates might have been convinced that your father was in some sort of hopeless situation and was going to die. So he left him. But in the worst-case scenario…”
I finished the thought. “Yates left my dad to die. On purpose.” I rubbed at my eyes. This was inconceivable.
“I need
