Iapetus Shift

Chapter 11

Silence and the smell of blood filled the air. With no one directing it, The Nile floated the same endless orbit as The Basilisk, a years-long dance around Ganymede.

Adya lay on the one bed in the medbay. Olan, Estha and Resa stood over him. He'd fallen unconscious as Olan pulled out the bullets.

"Do you think he'll live?" said Estha, still stroking Adya's forehead despite her damaged arm.

"I have no idea." Olan had done his best to follow the directions the medical computer had given him, but he had no training or experience to speak of. The pilot's life was out of his hands, and so was his own, it seemed. With no one to pilot the ship—assuming it was still pilotable after the damage—they had nothing to do but sit and wait for the military to come capture them.

Olan left the medical bay, holding his injured neck at an angle. His nanobots had patched up the damage for the most part, but the pain still lingered, and though he'd gotten his voice back to normal, his lattice was still unresponsive. "I'm going to see if I can figure out any of the controls," he said. "If there was a course preset, maybe we can just switch back to that and let the computer fly the ship."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" said Estha, following him into the control room. "If you don't know what you are doing, you could send us flying into a star or something."

"I'll be careful." Olan swiped his finger across the screen as he'd seen Adya do to activate the UI. Nothing happened. He ran his hand over the scatter of bullet holes and sighed. "Well, shit."

"Yeah," said Estha. "You're not going to be fixing that any more than you're gunna fix my arm." She shifted to the side in an attempt to hold up her tattered limb.

"I can fix it," said Resa behind them.

"My arm?"

"The ship?"

Olan and Estha spoke at once.

"Yes," said Resa.

They both stared at her for a moment, then looked at each other.

"She did alter this belt," said Olan tapping the contraption around his waist. "And I never told you, but she fixed a print scanner in Red Sands so I could get out."

"Well, if you want," said Estha, gesturing with her wounded arm. "I guess you could look at it."

Resa approached hesitantly, but once she saw that Estha was not resisting, the tools sprang from her fingertips, and her hands darted in and out and around Estha's wound.

"Holy shit that's fast," Estha said, staring.

Resa smiled, and a moment later stepped back. "Try to move it."

Estha flexed her arm, first slowly and carefully, then exuberantly waving it above her head. "It feels normal!"

Resa gave a satisfied nod.

"How did you know how to do that?" said Olan. "Androids are no simple thing. Did they train you in how to build them at Red Sands?" As soon as he asked though, he knew it wasn't the case. She'd fixed the belt in just as short a time, and no one had training in that kind of technology.

Resa shrugged. "I just know how things work is all."

"What kind of things?" said Olan

"Machines, computers. They just make sense to me. Should I fix that now?" She pointed at the bullet-riddled controls.