Page 51 of Defiance
Novak reclined back on his elbows on my bed with his trousers still undone, a roguish grin playing along his muzzle.
“Alright, sunset. When Vin and I were pubescent little shits that shared one brain cell, we found a vent that led out of the lab…”
21
The Uaeri Corridor was a dark void in deep space that smelled like burning rubber and ozone. No system was close enough to distinguish from any other, leaving crews with a sense of drifting, timeless ruination. A sense that something had been here once. Not just the remnants of planetary bodies and passing satellites, but people.
Ferulis stared at the dark cargo vessel through the porthole of the intake pressure chamber. He rubbed his aging talons behind his back.
That ship was a ghost too. Not a single crewmember on board. One living soul, according to his ship’s AI. His own agent, not a stowaway or prisoner.
“What’s he found?” Baellanus asked, joining the chairman. The hatches hissed and their tympana popped. The cargo vessel was drawing them into its orbit. They would dock soon.
“Nothing.”
“As in no cargo?”
“No food, no waste, perfect filters and nutrient filaments for the commissary. The ship is sterile.”
The eldest Atarian son had the good sense to look skeptical, but thoughtful. “You think… there was another vessel inside.”
Ferulis nodded once with slow deliberation.
The ghost swallowed their small ship without a sound and their faces flashed with the cargo bay’s blue warning light. Gravity returned slowly as it usually did with massive class ships, and the agent outside was opening the door before his feet touched the ground.
“Welcome aboard Med-Go’s supposed flagship freighter,” the agent said. He nodded to Baellanus Atarian. “Agent Bjorek Dasin.”
Ferulis let them introduce themselves, examining his newest probationary agent. The green-mailed advenan was a young whipcracker with an unruffled way of carrying himself. He’d previously been a special operative aboard theYafridi,Commander Lokurian’s old ship, but he showed more promise than a shit transfer onto some Union ship that would make him scrub toilets and fix drones.
He had the makings of a good agent. By the confidence of his stride and the alert scan of his eyes, Ferulis knew he’d made the right choice.
Thank souls. He’d need to recruit more at the rate the humans were gobbling up his people and turning them into hopeless romantics.
“Do you want to confirm my walk-through, sir?” Dasin asked.
Ferulis waved it off. “Later. Take us to the exhaust pad.”
“Yes, sir.”
Baellanus and Ferulis flanked Dasin as he led them into the cargo bay. The room was as large as an assembly hanger. Dust accumulated in the metal rafters high overhead without the air being circulated. They passed a blast door with a window into one of the extra wide conveyer belts to find it filled with thick white mist, as still as a crypt.
“It’s an ionizer,” Dasin reported. “Keeps static from building up and causing electrical fires. It’s not in the crew’s living quarters.”
“Which is why you could report on the food bays and waste,” Baellanus guessed.
Dasin nodded to him. “Gotta wear a BDRE if you want to go anywhere else. Even then, it’ll start causing interference.”
“Don’t bother. No one’s in there,” Ferulis said gravely. “Alive, anyway. Worse than silica dust.”
They stopped in front of a large grated landing pad similar to the ones in Renata’s hangar that absorbed the heat of plasma engines on take-off and landing. Novak expanded a holoscreen from his holotab and angled it down towards the ground to share his scans in live view.
“This is the only exhaust pad with any sort of chemical drift. Whoever parked their ship here left the bay doors open in the hopes that it would dissipate into space, but the atmospheric safety shield and zero gravity kept it hovering right where they left it.”
Baellanus and Ferulis shared a look, both pulling up their contacts.
“I’ve got Renata,” his not-really-an-assistant said.
“Comm Xata,”Ferulis barked at his linguitor.
