1.0 Midshipman Ravi MacLeod, weightless and adrift in zero g, did what he often did. He barfed into his sick bag. With an ease born of long practice, he sealed it up and tossed the whole schmeer into the recycler. The little machine gurgled gratefully, adding its vibration to the gentle thrumming of the elevator. The car, he noticed, had finally passed the ten-kilometer mark. Less than five to go. The elevator car-the only one that ran express to the engine rooms-was a blast from the past. Seldom used as it was, it was one of the few parts of the ship still in its original condition, right down to the bronze plate with its early version of the ship's logo. First Crew would have been right at home here. He doubted First Crew would have appreciated being cut off from the hive, though. He didn't quite know when it had happened, but happened it had. At some point during his descent, the ebb and flow of data through his implants had died away to nothing. The nearest working routers would be in the docking ports, he reckoned, several kilometers "above" him and getting farther away by the second. His face twisted into a wry grimace. He would be offline for the duration. An image of Chen Lai popped into his head. In his imagination, the engineer's stern, gray-haired visage looked both disappointed and annoyed. Explain to me, Middy, the engineer would demand, how you can be offline WHILE STILL ABOARD THE SHIP? Chen Lai would lean forward, peering relentlessly into Ravi's eyes. As the scene played out in his head, he could picture his mumbling response all too clearly. It shouldn't happen, sir. No matter where you are, you should always be in range of a router. So, Chen Lai might respond, what the hungary do you think is going on? The old man would stand there, stone-faced. Waiting. The routers, sir. There'd be the usual rush of blood to his face. There are routers in the engine rooms. They're not working for some reason. And then Chen Lai would have nodded and sent him off to do something menial and humiliating. Ravi grinned to himself in relief. Thank Archie the pedantic SOB was nowhere in sight. The grin faded as quickly as it had come. There was something wrong with the routers. He hung motionless in the middle of the elevator car. His face twisted with strain as his implants reached out to the engine rooms, feeling blindly for any sign of the silent equipment. The sudden beginnings of a headache stabbed at his temples. Would he have to fix the routers before he did anything else? The headache, unpleasant to begin with, was intensifying rapidly. Did he even know how to fix the routers? He threw an anxious glance through the roof of the car. What if he had to go all the way back up without accomplishing anything? His mouth dried up at the thought of Chen Lai's disdain, the unspoken mockery of his well-bred classmates. His jaw tightened with mulish determination. No way, he told himself. No sarding way. He'd space himself first. A series of musical chimes rang through the cabin, and Ravi, without really thinking about it, pointed his feet at the floor. A minute or two later he was drifting downward. The elevator, after an hour-long journey to get there, was decelerating. A weak, ersatz gravity pulled him to the deck, only to vanish the moment the elevator slid to a halt. "Engine rooms," the elevator announced. The airlock lights were all green, so he went ahead and opened the hatches. Which was stupid. The whole module, unvisited since Archie knew when, was still warming up. It was barely above freezing. Ravi looked around in dismay. Every surface was covered in a thin layer of frost. White breath billowed in front of him, drifting lazily in the direction of the nearest filter. The air itself, stored away for far too long, tasted of metal. Its cold fingers slid effortlessly through the thin blue fabric of his fatigues and pressed against his skin. Ravi cursed silently. He'd been careful to bring his toolkit. He hadn't thought to pack a sweater. His headache was still getting worse. A sigh escaped from his lips in a puffy cloud. He followed it deeper into the compartment. The room was set up for thrust, which meant he was floating in through the ceiling. "Beneath" him, the monitors were in sleep mode, an iced-over landscape of dark screens and drowsy orange lights. Ravi brushed the rime off one of the chairs, strapped himself in, and used his hands to fire up the boards. The switches burned cold against his fingers. The boards lit up: green mostly and a bit of red, but nothing critical. The hive burst into life. He could feel the press of data against his implants, the quiet hum of information, the mindless chatter of systems. He breathed a sigh of relief. The routers were working after all. Left alone in the dark for maybe the best part of a decade, they'd simply turned themselves off. Tap. Tap. Ravi would have jumped out of his seat, but the straps held him back. He let out a nervous laugh. Like there'd be anyone down here, he chided himself. As if. His hands were still shaking, though. He tried to blame it on the temperature. Creepy noises were only to be expected, he told himself. Until a few hours ago, the engine rooms had been deep-space cold. Sleepy, huddled molecules, newly energized by an infusion of heat, would want to fly farther apart. The materials made of those molecules, the switches, the consoles, the decks-stuff-would have to expand to accommodate them. There would be all sorts of creaking and cracking as the edges of things stretched into new spaces and fought each other for the right to be there. Tap. Tap. Tappity-tap. He ignored it. He unstrapped himself from the seat and floated free. He had work to do. The last time the drive had been fired was nine and a half years ago-a minor course correction. Ravi had been a child at the time and incapable of understanding the details. But he remembered the excitement leading up to it, how parts of the ship had been broken down and turned through ninety degrees, the way his mom-less brittle then, with Dad still around-had checked and double-checked that his toys and belongings were properly stowed. He remembered how the ship's great habitat wheels had ceased their endless rotation, the way everything and everyone had floated. It had been awesome. And his young-boy stomach hadn't cared one bit. He and his friends had wriggled free of their parents' grasp and soared through the living spaces, bouncing off the bulkheads, playing tag on the ceilings, throwing stuff in impossible directions. Flying. And then, finally, the drive had stretched and yawned and woken from its long slumber. He remembered the gentle but relentless way it flipped everything sideways, turning walls into floors and windows into skylights. It plucked at the whole enormous vessel like a guitar string, making her hum and rattle along in harmony. Every step he took was suddenly and unbelievably light. In a moment of carelessness, he would fly high off the deck, arms flailing, but the drive would always bring him back down, safe and sound, cradling him in soft hands. It was magical. It lasted for three whole weeks. At the end of it, with the wheels spun up again and everything returned to normal, the ghost of those soft vibrations lived on in his imagination. He couldn't let go of it. He needed to know how the drive worked, how to make it work, how to keep it working. He needed to be an engineer. An officer. Tap. . . . Tappity, tap, tap. Years later, when he'd nervously confessed this ambition to his parents, his father's reaction had been less than encouraging. "Who cracked your motherboard?" he'd asked. "You're a MacLeod, son, not some bastarding officer." There'd been laughter then; all bitterness, no humor. "You'll never pass the exam. And even if you did, they'd find some other way to sard you. Don't think for one second that that lot'll ever let someone like you near their precious sons and daughters. A MacLeod in officer training? Never gonna happen. They despise us. They're afraid of us. And don't you forget it!" "Just because you never made it doesn't mean I won't," he'd said defiantly. "All I need to do is keep out of the brig." He'd seen the flash in his father's eyes too late. But the backhand never landed. His mother had gotten in the way. "No harm in a kid dreaming," she'd said, her smile fragile but firm. "Let it go, eh?" He'd been packed off to his pod instead, where he'd lain in the dark, the ceiling mere centimeters above his nose, tears of anger pricking at his eyes. And then the awful sol when they'd come for Ramesh MacLeod in the early hours of the morning, two ShipSec officers and a drone, escorting him away through corridors that were still night-cycle dark. They'd not known how awful it was at the time, of course. Ramesh MacLeod was no stranger to the brig. But this time was different. He never came back. Only his molecules returned, recycled into biomass and polymer and Archie knew what else. In a unit that was suddenly too big, Ravi salved the scars of his grief with schoolwork and movies. Hour after hour of extra study, followed by something in black and white from the twentieth century. Anything to delay the onset of night-cycle and its tear-stained memory. He sat the officer's entrance exam. Passed it by the width of a transistor. And now, despite the disdain of his betters and the disbelief of his family, he was well on his way. One more semester till graduation. He grabbed his toolkit. Tap. . . . Tap, tap, tap. The drive had been checked and triple-checked, of course. But Chen Lai was a past master at finding trainee-level grunt work for every possible system-including the ship's main engines. According to Chen Lai, this particular job, the inspection of a tertiary coolant mechanism, was so simple, it required little more than a moron in a hurry. "Which is why," he'd said drily, "I chose you. Try not to break stuff." Ravi unlocked the hatch to the next compartment. It swung open with a tired creak. Orphaned pieces of ice floated away from the broken seal. After a moment's hesitation, he drifted through, his skin prickling with irrational goosebumps. Unlike the chamber he was leaving, most of the engine rooms had only standard shielding. If the drive were to suddenly burn, the radiation in there would fry him like an egg. No danger of that, he reminded himself firmly. Braking Day was weeks away. Weeks. He shook the feeling off and accessed the hive instead. A bunch of schematics flooded into his mind's eye. He cross-checked the data with his real ones. Sure enough, tucked away in one corner, was a small access plate. The label read ISV-1 archimedes, followed by a string of numbers and the curvy, old-style version of the ship's logo. The numbers matched the schematics, so Ravi opened it up. The cover came away to reveal the insides of a dark, spiraling duct. A shot of sub-zero air puffed against his face. Tap. He really wished his head didn't hurt so much. It was hard to concentrate, and what he was about to do required thought and a bunch of coding. He closed his eyes to make things easier. With his eyes shut, he could see only one thing: the back of his own knee in infrared. It glowed hot yellow against a cold, blue background. A drone's-eye view. This particular drone was staring at him from the inside of his toolkit. Having linked himself to the drone, the rest of it was easy. He fired up the machine's tiny thrusters and let it fly into the ductwork. The drone dropped through a series of specially designed gates and into the coolant system proper. Then it went to work, scanning every which way to Homeworld and piping the results into Ravi's head. Hands tucked into armpits, Ravi floated easily in the middle of the compartment and let the drone's readouts wash over him. Numbers and schematics coated the inside of his eyelids. Everything was green. Everything matched the remote diagnostics. The system, if it were ever needed, would do its job. The drone, inspection complete, headed for home. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, CLANG! There were no straps to save him this time. Ravi jumped out of his skin. His body spun through the air like a wayward top. The compartment rang like a bell. Tap, tap, CLANG! Ravi's breath was coming in short, cloudy gasps. Beads of sweat prickled his forehead. This wasn't creaking caused by heat. Something was banging against the hull. Right outside the compartment. Ravi held his breath. Not something, he realized suddenly. Someone. There was nothing random about the noise outside. This wasn't a collision with some broken-off piece of ice or other accidental debris. There was cadence to it. Rhythm. The deliberate act of an intelligent mind. Someone was banging on the bulkhead. In deep space. Aliens! The word smashed its way into his head, an unwelcome guest. The spit disappeared from his mouth. Then he laughed, sudden and hollow. Aliens were for kids. Stories for the pitch black. Halloween. This whatever-it-was was a trick. A stupid trick to scare him witless. Ansimov, probably, or maybe even Boz. He had to admire the trouble they'd taken. And the nerve. Fifteen kilometers-on the outside. They must have hitched a ride on the elevator running gear. Tap, tap, tappity-tap, tap. The sound was drifting away now, toward the next compartment. In which, so said the schematics, there was an airlock. Ravi's lips twitched, animated by vengeful mischief. He was meant to think that aliens were banging on the airlock door. Maybe even sound the alarm and make a complete fool of himself. And then Ansimov or whoever it was would burst in and live-broadcast his stupidity all over the ship. But not if the airlock was actually, like, locked. Ravi's smile grew wider. With the elevator going nowhere and standard tanks, there was no way Ansimov had enough air to freestyle fifteen klicks to safety. He'd have to beg Ravi to let him in. And when Ravi spread his hands and said the lock was jammed, Ansimov would be the one panicking. Punker punked. There was a small tightening in Ravi's right eye as he turned on the video camera. Technically, he was abusing the privacy laws. Only medics and engineers had a recording function, and it was for work use only. But Ansimov was similarly equipped, so . . . Excerpted from Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
