“That just means we get to rebuild it,” Mari said. “Let’s try the other passage.”
This one was wider, leading a longer distance but staying level until it suddenly opened into a massive room. Kira stared around, seeing four rectangular shapes with curved edges and corners, each as large as a small ocean-going ship. “What are these things?”
“Demeter’s shuttles,” Jason said, awe in his voice. “Actual colonization project shuttles. This is amazing.”
“These things could fly?” Mechanic Dav asked. “They don’t look like the ship that brought you here.”
“This technology is centuries old on Earth,” Jason explained. “Archaic to Earth. But it’s way ahead of what Dematr has.”
“Do they still work?” Mari approached the nearest shuttle cautiously, studying its exterior. “The outside looks a little corroded in places. Look there. That material is drooping down and disintegrating like some sort of rotted cloth.”
“I think that’s a synthetic material,” Jason said. “Let me think. I did some virtual walk-throughs of shuttles like this on the way to this world.”
“You haven’t been in a real one?”
Jason gave Kira a sidelong look. “Nothing… virtual… is real.”
“Did you tell him to say that?” her mother demanded of Kira.
“Not that,” Kira denied.
Jason gave a small sound of satisfaction, walking to a spot on the outside of the shuttle and pushing something that gave way under his hand. “That should… it’s not. Can somebody help me here?”
Calu, Dav, and Alli came closer, grabbing on to the crack that had appeared in the side of the ship, tugging until it widened and they could get a better grip. They staggered backwards as the opening suddenly fell outward, turning into a ramp that led to a dimly lit space inside the shuttle.
“That was supposed to come out under power,” Jason said. “The lights are still working, but they’re dim. The power supply on this shuttle must be almost exhausted.” He led the way up the ramp, Kira rushing to be beside him, the others following.
The inside of the shuttle smelled musty and slightly tinny, like an empty piece of armor left buried too long. “Is this air safe?” Lukas called.
“Yeah,” Jason said, holding up Doctor Sino’s device. “This says there’s safe atmosphere in here. If it goes off again that’ll mean we’ve encountered toxic gases.” Jason paused as he and Kira reached a place where the passage they were in met another running at right angles to it. “Okay, if I remember right, this should lead back toward the cargo bay and forward toward the command deck.”
“Where are the engines?” Mari asked, looking around.
“Under us,” Jason said, heading in the direction he had said the command deck lay.
A large hatch blocked them. Jason looked on either side of it, finally spotting what he was looking for. “This is normally a power-actuated hatch, but there’s a manual release as a backup. Here. It’s… wow. It’s stuck. Kira?”
She grabbed the handle Jason was pulling on and strained to help him yank it down. The handle gave way as abruptly as the ramp had, almost making Kira and Jason fall.
“I’m not getting a good feeling about the condition of this thing,” Alli commented.
Kira and Jason tugged the hatch open until it came to rest on a latch against the wall behind it. The room beyond was dark, but as Jason stepped in lights sprang to life, bright enough to reveal several seats positioned before narrow desks bolted to the floor.
“Command positions,” Jason explained. “Like the pilot and flight engineer and stuff. When these controls were powered up, the displays would project above them.” He studied one of the desks. “Okay. Flight engineer. That should tell us what shape this shuttle is in. Should I turn it on?”
Mari indicated Queen Sien, who everyone watched.
“Can it cause any harm?” Sien asked.
“No,” Jason said. “See, this is the on/off. When the desk powers up, the other controls will light up, but nothing else will happen until I activate another command.”
“Then do it.”
Kira watched Jason push the button with the familiar on/off symbol on it. As they waited for something to happen, she leaned close to him. “I’m so proud that my man is the expert on this,” she murmured.
He gave her a nervous grin before looking back at the desk.
Lights rippled across it, then to Kira’s astonishment glowing symbols appeared in the air above the desk. “This is like that stuff inside the egg-shaped thing we rode when we were first heading off to hide the drive from your mother’s ship,” she said to Jason.
“The pod. Yeah. A few generations older, but yeah,” Jason said. He turned to look at Queen Sien again. “This says ‘ship status.’ If I touch it, it shouldn’t do anything but tell us how well everything on the ship is working.”
“How can it do that?”
“It’s like… ” Jason hesitated, thinking. “The automated systems monitor all the other systems and see how well they’re working. If anything isn’t working right, they can tell.”
“Sort of like Master Mechanic Lukas,” Calu commented.
“I doubt they’re that good,” Lukas replied. “Basically, Jason, this is like someone watching gauges and dials and reporting whether everything is functioning well, but mechanized rather than using humans to report that. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Jason said. “Basically.”
Sien nodded. “You may do as you asked,” she told Jason.
Jason reached and pushed the glowing symbol in the air just as if it were a real button. “Nothing is real,” Kira said.
“Nothing is real,” her father and Asha agreed, speaking together.
Red symbols abruptly appeared, and a voice began speaking in an accent different than Jason’s but still understandable. Kira listened, awed to realize this was the voice of someone who had died centuries ago. “Danger. Critical system failure in primary lift. Danger. Critical system failure in primary maneuvering. Danger. Critical system failure in life support. Danger. Critical system failure in primary power. Danger. Backup power at less than one percent. Danger. Critical system failure in navigational sub-systems. Danger. Critical system failure in radiation shielding. Danger. Critical system failure in hull integrity.”
The voice was getting quieter, the red glow of the symbols becoming fainter. Kira realized the lights overhead were also dimming further. She pulled out her hand light and clicked it on as the voice continued to fade.
“Dan-ger… critical… sys-tem… fail… ”
The symbols above the desk winked out, the voice fading out completely, the lights on the desk itself rapidly dimming. Kira saw other hand lights coming on behind her.
The lights overhead flickered before settling into a dull glow that barely illuminated the control deck.
“Too bad it didn’t tell us what still worked,” Dav commented as he and the other Mechanics used their hand lights to study the now quiet and nearly dark room.
“I’ve got a feeling nothing still works,” Alli replied. “Except that desk that told us everything was broken.”
“Do you think there’s any chance you could fix the broken parts?” Queen Sien asked.
“No,” Lukas said, and none of the other Mechanics disputed him. “Looking at what was inside that beta field generator, and the other things we’ve seen in here, we’re a long ways from being able to fix any of it. We’re a long ways from knowing how it works.”
“There are four shuttles,” Kira said. “Maybe one of the remaining three is in better shape.”
But when they pulled open the ramp on the next shuttle they picked, everyone staggered away from the noxious smell that rolled out from the interior and Doctor Sino’s device wailed a warning. “Something bad broke in there,” Calu said as they muscled the ramp shut again.
“We’re not going in that thing without trying to test the air and venting it out first,” Alli said. “The other two
are like these first two. You can see the corrosion on the outside of them.”
Jason looked around, puzzled. “They must not have planned leaving these down here this long. There are ways to prepare stuff like this for long-term storage, and they didn’t do it.”
“How do you know they knew about those ways?” Lukas asked.
“That’s how these shuttles were prepared for the trip here. They spent a long time on the Demeter before the ship reached this world. The crew had to bring them out of… I think it’s called hibernation? Something like that. So they would have known how to put the shuttles back in that condition. But they didn’t. Whoever was in here last thought they’d be back before long.”
Kira gazed at the shuttles, broken monuments to the original crew. When had the last ones visited this place they had built to hold devices they denied this world but wanted safe in case they ever needed them? What had they been like, those men and women who had decided to suppress knowledge and technology so that they and their descendants could control this world? Had they looked and acted like Maxim or Stimon? Or would they have claimed false kinship with Lukas, Alli, Dav, and Mari?
They had been here, and they had left, planning to come back, and no one ever had. Pacta Servanda. Agreements Must Be Honored. But they had honored nothing, and left nothing useful to those they had sworn to protect and serve.
Mari sighed heavily. “It looks like they’ll all be in the same shape, then. We’re not flying to the moon in these.”
“There’s probably still a lot we can learn from them,” Calu suggested.
“We’ll see.”
They walked all the way out, past the guards in the basement, sealing the door to the underground facility again to keep out anyone who might explore and be harmed by the radioactivity.
Outside, Kira breathed the open air with relief, trying to wash the dust of old treachery and greed from her lungs.
Jason gazed to the southwest. “There has to be some concealed hangar door over that way for the shuttles to use. If we opened it now, some buildings would probably fall in.”
“The librarians will want to see what’s in there,” Calu said.
“I need to talk to the librarians about a number of things,” Mari said. “That reminds me. Kira, I understand you declared war on Urth. At least, that’s what the librarians told me you did.”
“I told Urth that we were free, and they couldn’t tell us what to do, and we would fight if they tried to control us or tried to take Jason. Did the librarians tell you that? Urth threatened Jason! They said they’d send a ship to arrest him and take him back to Urth.”
“A ten-year trip to arrest him and another ten to get home?” Lukas said. “That sounds like a bluff to me.”
Jason frowned. “That’s not exactly what they said, though. Kira, I just realized. Earth said they’d send a message to arrest me to the next ship to arrive here.”
Mari turned an alarmed gaze on him. “The next ship? You’re sure that’s what they said? That sounds like one is already on its way.”
“I know others were being built when my ship left Earth,” Jason said.
“Will it be like your mother’s ship? Out to exploit us?”
“I don’t know. Can I ask a big favor, Lady Mari?”
Mari looked surprised at Jason’s use of her title. “What’s that?”
“From now on, when we talk about Talese Groveen, can we just use her name? And every time we talk about my mother, can we mean you?”
“I think we can do that,” Mari said, smiling.
“If there’s a chance of another ship from Urth coming,” Dav said, “maybe Kira and Jason should get married as soon as possible. Once they are, he’ll legally be a citizen of this world. Urth won’t have any basis for trying to arrest him, and we’ll have legal grounds for fighting to keep him with us.”
“That’s a good idea,” Kira’s mother said. “Are you willing to do that, Kira?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, acting put-upon. “I guess it’d be all right to get married soon. Jason?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good with that.”
“They are already married,” Asha said, her voice Mage-calm as usual. “I can see it when they speak of it. That is why Kira cited the promise vows to Jason.”
“Aunt Asha!” Kira gave the others an apologetic look. “Yes, we said the promises. But it hasn’t been officially, formally done.”
“Then we’ll keep it quiet until it’s officially, formally done,” Queen Sien said. “Who isn’t here that we need?”
“Aunt Kath,” Kira said. “And we need to set her up with some nice guy while she’s here.”
“I’ll leave that to you,” Sien said.
“Fine. But you need to get to know Kath, your Majesty. She has a very big heart. The biggest heart in the whole world.”
Sien smiled. “I’ll have to spend some time with Kath, then.”
Jason gave Kira a disbelieving look, but she shook her head in warning to him not to say anything.
“My parents,” Mari said. “And if it’s all right with Kira, Sergeant Kira’s family.”
“Oh, of course it’s all right!” Kira said.
As the others discussed dates and people who had to be invited, Kira led Jason off to the side. The street was nearly empty, still sealed off because of the access to the facility in the building here. The structures in this part of Pacta Servanda were old, only rising two or three stories, a wide swath of blue sky flecked with clouds visible above. She held him, looking up at that sky. “Do you really think another ship from Urth is already on its way here?”
“Probably,” Jason said.
“The last one brought you. And Doctor Sino. Maybe the next one won’t be all bad, either.”
Jason smiled. “We can hope. Miracles happen sometimes. One happened to me. I love this dream I’m in.”
“It’s had its nightmare moments, hasn’t it?” Kira laughed. “It’s funny. We’ve come so very far from when we first met, but we’re still right here in Pacta.”
“I like it here,” Jason said.
“So do I. Once I couldn’t wait to leave it, to go somewhere else, anywhere else, but now I know how happy I am to have this place.” She smiled. “To know that inside me this place will always be there with me, no matter where else I go. And you’ll be with me, too.”
“Always,” Jason said. “No matter what.”
“No matter what,” Kira agreed.
“But I hope we don’t have to take a train to get where we’re going.”
They heard a ruckus behind them and looked.
“Kira,” her father said. “Mage Asha has just had a vision in which you appeared.”
“Oh, blazes,” Kira sighed. “Now what?”
ALSO BY JACK CAMPBELL
THE PILLARS OF REALITY
The Dragons of Dorcastle*
The Hidden Masters of Marandur*
The Assassins of Altis*
The Pirates of Pacta Servanda*
The Servants of the Storm*
The Wrath of the Great Guilds*
THE LEGACY OF DRAGONS
Daughter of Dragons*
Blood of Dragons*
Destiny of Dragons*
THE LOST FLEET
Dauntless
Fearless
Courageous
Valiant
Relentless
Victorious
THE LOST FLEET: BEYOND THE FRONTIER
Dreadnaught
Invincible
Guardian
Steadfast
Leviathan
THE LOST STARS
Tarnished Knight
Perilous Shield
Imperfect Sword
THE GENESIS FLEET
Vanguard
Ascendant
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Ad Astra*
Borrowed Time*
Swords and Saddles*
STANDALONE NOVELS
The Last Full
Measure*
* available as a JABberwocky ebook
THANK YOU FOR READING
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Sincerely,
The JABberwocky Team
Jack Campbell, Destiny of Dragons
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