“If we can even find them,” I add.
“Exactly.”
“We can pull from the LINA and splice to fit,” Nysus says. “It’s a workaround, but we can make it do what we need it to.”
Kane pulls himself upright, keeping a hand on the corner of the control bank to manage his movement. The sooner we can get thegravity on, the better. But we can’t boot up the lifeboat gravity generator and environmental systems without closing the bulkhead doors, and I don’t want to do that until I’m sure we’re not sealing ourselves into a dead ship.
“The problem is,” Kane begins.
“If we pull from the LINA, we’re rendering her nonfunctional in the same way,” I say.
He nods. “Exactly. And if we make adjustments to the rig for theAurora—”
“It won’t fit back into the LINA,” I say.
“Not easily,” he agrees.
Which means, if everything goes to shit, we won’t have a way out. Worry gnaws at me. Redundancies. That’s what’s been drilled into my head, over and over. Redundancies in space save lives.
“Technically, we would be stuck once the bulkhead doors were closed anyway,” Nysus offers. “Unless we pressurize the whole ship, those doors won’t open. And there’s no airlock. No one is meant to leave once the Versailles Contingency is enacted, until outside help arrives.”
So, really, LINA’s (functional) presence in the cargo bay is nothing more than a comforting thought, anyway.
But Ilikethat comforting thought.
“All right,” I say with a sigh. “Let’s do it.”
“I can pull what we need,” Nysus says. “Just a minute, and I’m on my way.”
“Voller, start running the lifeboat systems diagnostics,” I say. “No point in doing all of this if those aren’t up to snuff.”
I head to the stairway to wait for Nysus. It takes him longer than I expected, but I suspect that’s because he’s stopping to examine everything along the way with an unseemly amount of glee.
“Did you know that every room, even crew quarters, was stocked with genuine cotton sheets? An obscene thread count. CitiFutura wanted everyone to brag about the experience when they got home. It was meant to prove that the future of space living didn’t have to mean roughing it in a hab on a dusty planet somewhere,” he says.
From the top of the stairs on the Platinum Level, I watch as he makes his way across the atrium, a small form in a white enviro suit with a black pack strapped to his back.
“Look at this,” he says in delight, catching himself on one of the planters. “Genetic copies of rare plant species for that extra-special exclusive feel. CitiFutura even had a botanist on board to care for them.”
From what I’ve seen, I doubt anyone had had the time or inclination to appreciate that level of detail. Even before they started killing each other or themselves.
Then he looks up. “Where did you see Opal again?”
“Nysus,” I say with a sigh.
“Right, right.” He bobs toward the stairs, hesitating only briefly at the sight of the passengers Kane and I brought down. At the top, he grins at me, his eyes crinkling at the edges. At least someone is happy.
Without gravity, he’s floating even with me, though if we were on the ground, he’d be at least six inches shorter. His glossy dark hair is chopped short and ragged, his own handiwork. And he’s paler than the rest of us, almost as pale as me, because he doesn’t bother with the required time underneath our sun lamps.
“Good to see you, Ny,” I say, a smile tugging at my mouth in spite of the circumstances.
Even though we’ve lived and worked together in the tiny LINA for more than two years, it’s still strange to see Nysus in person, out of the server room. He’s not, as far as I can tell, antisocial exactly. He just prefers to spend his time alone, connected to us by technology rather than physical proximity.
“You, too, TL,” he says. But his focus is already on the corridor of suites behind me. “‘Ethically harvested hardwood,’” he murmurs, seemingly quoting from theAurora’s specs or marketing materials. “They grew it especially for theAurora.” He moves past me, through the open bulkhead doors, to touch the still-shiny panels. “I loaded my Forum downloads onto a portable drive, so we’ll still have access to the blueprints and any other information the Forum has collected over the years.”
Great. The solar system’s largest collection of facts and fantasy about theAurora,still at our fingertips. Though I can’t complain, because the information Nysus has provided so far has been accurate.
Once Nysus is in place on the bridge with Kane, I tell Voller to head back to the LINA to gather whatever he needs for the trip.
