Dead Space by Kali Wallace (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

some wealthy incorporated Exodus cult. Can’t remember the name it has now.”

“Wait. Was it Divine Immutability?” I asked. “It launched, what, about six months ago?”

Adisa shrugged with one shoulder. “Aye, that’s the one.”

“I remember seeing a documentary about them,” Hunter said. “That seems like a mission designed to fail.”

I had seen the same program. It had been all over the news, because while it wasn’t the first pioneer ship to set sail for extrasolar destinations, it was one of the largest. But that wasn’t why I remembered it.

“Avery’s family is on that ship,” I said.

Adisa was surprised. “I didn’t know.”

I felt a pang of doubt; maybe that was something Ryu preferred to keep quiet. They had never wanted to talk about the cult they had been born into or life on the orbital where they had grown up. All they had ever said to me about it was, “I left as soon as I could. They never much wanted me around anyway.” I hadn’t asked for details. All I knew was that Divine Immutability had launched with some eight hundred people on board, more than seven hundred in long-term stasis, because they believed they were divinely destined to claim and colonize a distant planet. Among those people had been Ryu’s siblings, cousins, parents, childhood friends. I couldn’t remember what exoplanet they had picked as their destination. I did remember telling Ryu, at the beginning of one of the nights we had spent together, that anybody with even passing knowledge of exoplanetary research could have told them it was a stupid fucking place to go, they would all be crushed by the planet’s gravity and roasted by its late-cycle sun, never mind what they believed their god was going to provide for them. Ryu had shut me up with a kiss and a shove onto the bunk. I had thought it was because I was being pedantic and annoying, or because neither of us was there for conversation. I hadn’t considered how cruel and thoughtless I was being, consigning their family to certain death with my arrogant certainty. I hadn’t wondered if they were hurting beneath their mask of casual amusement. They probably knew their family was seeking an impossible paradise aboard a former prison ship. That was the sort of thing Ryu would make a point of knowing, however much it hurt them.

It was also beside the point. I couldn’t worry about Ryu now. They were safe in Res. We had a much bigger problem to deal with.

“So,” I said, “you were able to trigger a false radiation alarm on what was probably one of the most heavily guarded ships ever built. As a kid.”

“A teenager. It wasn’t that impressive, really.”

“But you didn’t get caught while you were doing it, only after. Even on a UEN ship with constant surveillance.”

Adisa looked at me for a few seconds. “True, yeah. Why?”

I looked at Adisa. I looked at the closed hatch. I looked back at him. “No reason. No reason at all.”

SEVENTEEN

Adisa hopped down from the terminal. He clearly wanted to ask me what the fuck I was talking about, but instead he started wandering around the room. Locating the cameras, just as I had a few minutes ago. After a bit, he pointed at Hunter’s tool bag.

“Sure, but what are you—”

I put my finger to my lips. Hunter cut herself off and nodded slightly. She opened her mouth again, closed it, instead lifted her hands in an obvious question. Her eyes darted to the cameras as well. Good. They were both wary now of the fact that we were being watched.

“The basic mechanism never really changes, aye?” Adisa said. He searched through the tool bag until he found a screwdriver. “Every security system has local components that have to decide at every door whether it’s more dangerous outside a room than inside. That was part of why what I tried on Terese Hanford didn’t work. The UEN didn’t care if there was more danger inside the prisoners’ blocks than out. The warden made that decision.”

I understood what he was saying: he wasn’t going to try to get us out of that room until I convinced him that the danger outside wasn’t real. I didn’t know how to do that, but I did know that I needed a way to explain what I was thinking—and I needed to do it without letting whoever, or whatever, was watching know.

Just as David had done when he sent his message to me.

“So I have a confession to make,” I said. I didn’t know if Hunter was trustworthy, but I knew she hadn’t killed David, whatever other kind of trouble she was mired in. I would have to take the chance. “David contacted me before he died.”

“What?” Hunter said. “When? What did he say?”

Adisa raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t look particularly surprised.

“Did you know already?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “But I did think you weren’t telling the truth about not having spoken to him in over a year.”

“I was telling the truth about that. Until he sent me that message, I hadn’t heard from him in eighteen months. We weren’t in contact at all.”

“He didn’t talk to any of the other survivors,” Hunter said quietly. “He said it was too painful.”

“It was. It is.” I shook my head to brush that aside. It wasn’t important right now. “The thing is, his message didn’t make any sense. He went through all this trouble to send it anonymously and hide the transmission, but nothing he said made any sense. He was reminiscing, but he had some details wrong. He was talking about this debate we had once about the warship Excelsior. It’s, um, it’s a wreck off the coast of England. It crashed during one of the old orbital rebellions. We had an argument years ago about whether the crash was human or machine error. David insisted that he was right, that it