Back down in the infirmary I saw that Ana-Zhi had been placed in the MedBed and had been given oxygen, fluids, and CP stabilizers.
“She’s halfway through her exam,” Chiraine said. “So far, so good.”
“She’s a tough woman,” Narcissa said.
I turned to her. “She definitely is. And so are you. That was some amazing shooting.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had nineteen years of practice.”
“A good use of time,” Chiraine said.
Then it dawned on me that the two women hadn’t officially met. I quickly remedied the situation.
“Unbelievable,” Chiraine said. “Two humans marooned here and we met both of them.”
She was referring to Wade Murroux, but she’d forgotten someone.
“Three, actually,” I said. “Although you haven’t really met my father.”
“Not your flesh and blood dad, but we’ll remedy that soon enough.”
“So you were serious about that?” Narcissa asked. “Sean Beck is here? On this ship?”
“Do you want to see him?”
“Of course.”
The three of us went down the hall to the crew quarters.
“Qualt doesn’t know about my dad, does he?” I asked Chiraine.
“Not as far as I know. I don’t think he came down this way.”
I made my way to the cabin where Sean Beck rested, preserved in his exosuit and cradled in webbing. There was no sign that he had been disturbed, and the power indicator on his suit was still lit. Everything appeared to be functioning normally.
Narcissa gazed upon my father’s face, visible through the visor on his helmet.
“Oh my god. This is unreal. What happened to him?”
“He was betrayed by one of the guys on his ship,” I said. “And left for dead on Bandala.”
“This was back in ’51,” Chiraine said.
“He knew he wouldn’t survive the bots in Bandala, so he activated the suit’s hibernation mode.”
“That’s insane!”
“Well, it worked.”
“I can see that.”
“We just need to get him through the karokinesia process safely,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the trick.” She looked down at my father again. “If it was me, I’d get him back home first. Much safer that way.”
“So I’ve heard.”
I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, I didn’t want to risk accidentally killing my father by trying to revive him without all the safeguards in place. But on the other hand, I felt like the longer I waited, the more chance there would be of something going wrong. That suit had been keeping him alive for seven years—two years longer than its expected operating life. It could fail at any moment.
“I need to check on the Inspector,” Narcissa said.
“The what?” Chiraine asked.
“The Rhya,” I said.
“I can’t believe you actually found a survivor,” Chiraine said.
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me you also found some mimonite.”
“Possibly,” I said.
“Possibly?” The color drained from Chiraine’s face.
Before she could say another word, I assured her that we had found something. We just weren’t able to test it. I filled her in on all the details as we walked back to the hold. The piece of statuary we had found was still on the sled.
On the way we looked in on Ana-Zhi again. She was sound asleep.
The MedBed’s report found no sign of physical damage from the trembler effect, but Ana-Zhi was dehydrated and still suffering from multiple contusions and a fractured cheekbone. Her face had swollen up again, as well.
According to the MedBed, Ana-Zhi would probably need to sleep for at least twelve hours.
When we arrived back at the hold, we were greeted by an unwelcome sight. The Rhya was gone.
We searched the hold and the cargo bay area, but there was no sign of it.
“I guess the Rhya isn’t worried about the environment in here,” I said.
“Where could it have gone?” Chiraine asked.
“The ship’s pretty large,” I said. “A lot of places to hide.”
“I don’t think the Inspector is hiding,” Narcissa said. “I think it’s probably learning the ship. Which way to engineering?”
She was right. We found the Rhya in the engineering bay, hovering over a display. As we entered the room, it turned and floated towards us.
“Wow,” Chiraine gasped.
It was obvious that she had never encountered a Rhya before. She bowed formally and introduced herself.
“Once we get the power stabilized, we’re going to see if we can rig up a non-verbal comm module so we can talk to you,” I told it. I had no idea whether or not it understood me, though.
Narcissa seemed to relax now that we had found the Inspector. “You guys want to point me in the direction of your fabbers and we’ll see if we can get that discharge retainer rebuilt.”
“You know about that?” Chiraine asked.
“She was an engineer,” I said.
“Still am,” Narcissa said. “Now let’s get going.”
“What about the Rhya?” Chiraine asked.
“It knows what it’s doing,” Narcissa said.
We returned to the hold and I found Ana-Zhi’s satchel on the sled. I presented Chiraine with the hunk of statue. “Here’s what we found. What do you think?”
She ran her hands along the carved pinkish gray stone. “Amazing.”
“You don’t even know what it was from,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m actually holding something made by Yueldian hands over a thousand years ago.”
“Let’s just hope that it passes your test.” I fished out the testing kit from my belt pack and handed it over to Chiraine. Then I took a few steps away so I wasn’t crowding her as she worked.
A minute later she held up a bright blue testing rod. “Jackpot!”
It would take several hours for the fabber to extract the raw mimonite from the hunk of stone we loaded into it. While we were waiting, Narcissa decided to access the KB and familiarize herself with the isolator module schematics for the LV-900.
“Seems pretty straightforward,” she said. “I’m just surprised that the discharge retainer failed. Usually those things
