Chapter 72

Chapter Seventy-Two

Even before Connor’s tender butt hit the moss-covered ground, he struck at the thing that had attacked him. His mind would normally have registered what it was, but he’d been off-balance standing in the cup of Vicente’s clasped hands, and the thing had come from the dark of the airlock.

So it was the snap of bone that caused Connor to freeze.

Then the heavy weapons expert and the Moon boys were laughing.

And Connor realized his attacker was a human skeleton dressed in an armored vest and black pants. He’d knocked the thing’s skull from its spine, and now the scent of dusty, old death was in his nose and the taste of rotten flesh was on his tongue.

He tossed the thing off of him and spat to clear its desiccated flesh from his mouth.

Vicente offered a hand and pulled Connor up. “Nearly get you, Boss?”

Connor chuckled, but he was still shaking. He scooped up the battery pack and interface system, then grabbed his sword from the tool bag. He pointed the tip at the open airlock. “Help me back up.”

Once in the airlock, it was easy enough to activate the ramp, but his eyes were drawn back to the skeleton.

Had Mosiah said anything about leaving people behind?

By the time Connor was halfway through the ship, he’d forgotten the thing in the airlock. There were five more skeletons inside: in cabins, in the passageways.

Worse, there was obvious damage to the interior. It looked like bullets.

That pointed to a firefight, another thing Mosiah hadn’t mentioned.

Maybe there’d been a mutiny, and Mosiah and his friends had been forced to fight off the traitors just to survive.

But why not say that? No one would question killing to survive.

Connor’s radio crackled: It was Selen. “I’m in the ship.”

“Yemi says something attacked you.”

“I panicked. It was a skeleton.”

“A skeleton?”

“There are six.” Connor stuck a gloved fingertip into a bullet hole. “Looks like there was a pretty nasty gunfight.”

Selen went quiet.

He cleared his throat. “They seem to have searched the ship, whoever they were. There’s a lot of debris scattered around.”

“Anything of value left?”

“I’m still looking. I’ll let you know if I find anything.” But Connor had already decided he was coming away with at least one thing.

He slipped into the engineering section and headed to the shielded main computer section. Even after decades, the core would be intact, and it would hold security and operational data that a computer expert could extract—

A computer expert like Drew.

Maybe Gregor could do at least a little something.

Connor popped the panels from the core housing unit and removed the six core modules. They were silvery rectangles, ten centimeters long, four wide, and two high. Each weighed about two kilograms and could probably survive a bullet.

He put the modules in his pockets, then returned to searching the ship. It was too old to provide much of value, but there were a couple crates in the cargo hold that offered promise. Sure enough, one of them contained spare parts.

Yemi had both rear landing gear cases removed when Connor reached him. The mechanic’s eyes darted toward the remaining vines. “Yemi sees vines move.”

Connor tried not to look at them too hard. “I’ve got the jacks in the airlock.”

“The jacks contain hydraulic fluid still?”

“It takes forever for that to break down.”

The older man nodded. “Yemi brings the jacks down.”

“You know the parts to pull?”

“Yemi knows.”

“I’ll leave the Moons to watch out for you.”

Yemi turned back to his work.

The other old ship held a similar nightmare, although this time there were only three skeletons. Connor took the computer cores and more spares.

Selen was waiting for him in the Lucky Sevens’s cargo hold when he and Vicente dragged their loot through the airlock.

She picked up the pistol sitting on top of one of the cargo cases. “A gun?”

Vicente patted the case. “And some ammunition.”

Connor pulled his gloves off and wiped sweat from his forehead. “The new ship’s more promising.”

Selen arched an eyebrow. “How?”

“Well, it still has power, for one thing.”

“Power?”

He waved for her to follow him, then led her to the other ship’s airlock. “The same problem.”

“Bodies?”

“Not skeletons. They’re decomposing, but I don’t think they’ve been dead even two weeks.”

“Those big bugs we fought at the crash site?”

“Bullet wounds.” He paced around the outside. “It’s a big ship, and the cargo hold still has a lot of valuable parts.”

“Atmosphere recycler filters?”

“Same model. I can have those all pulled and the ruptured pipe repaired in and hour.” He caught himself before pointing out that Drew could’ve had it done in half that time. That was a lost fight.

Selen took a deep breath. “That’s welcome news.”

“I think we’re all sick of this air.”

“What’s that mean?”

Connor tensed. She was looking for a fight. “Nothing.”

“You’re trying to make this about Drew again.”

“No.”

“She put a lot of lives at risk, Connor. Rescuing her would’ve been irresponsible.”

“We already discussed this.”

“Then quit bringing it up.”

Selen stormed up the ramp and disappeared inside the other ship’s airlock. She came back a minute later. “That’s a big cargo hold.”

“And there are a lot of empty cargo crates.”

“It’s too big for a few corpses.”

“I know.”

It was apparent in the way she searched the ground that she wanted to see the bodies. Connor waved for her to follow him to the spot where he’d hidden the dead beneath a carpet of moss.

She ran a gloved finger over a woman’s bloody jumpsuit. “Not mercenaries.”

“No. They only had that pistol and some ammo.”

Selen scanned the sky. “We need to get the repairs done.”

Before it gets dark, Connor thought. “I told Yemi to speed it up.”

She brushed her gloves off on her pants, then headed back to the Lucky Sevens. Connor covered the corpses up again, then followed.

He stopped by the communications room, where Gregor was napping.

Connor let himself in and closed the hatch, then rapped on the desktop. “Gregor?”

The communications expert leaned back in his chair, blinking. “We are leaving?”

“Not yet.” Connor took the data cores from his pockets and set them out on top of the desk.

“Data cores?” The older man lifted one and squinted at it. “Older models.”

“Some of them. I need you to extract everything you can from them.”

“This will not be easy. I lack the privileges to get to sensitive data.”

“So do I. That’s something else I need you to work on.”

Gregor frowned. “I am busy.”

Connor clenched his teeth. They were all busy. “Get Lem to help you.”

“He is a medical—”

“He can help. I need my access back on the Lucky Sevens, and I need to know what was on these cores. Please.”

“I can try.” The communications expert shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Connor opened the hatch, then closed it back. “And do me a favor.”

Gregor’s eyes widened, as if he were offended by the idea of even more favors being asked. “I—”

“I want backups. Everything needs to be non-destructive.”

“You cannot destroy cores like this.”

“Just…get a backup first. Okay?”

The older man hunched over the devices. “Yeah. Sure.”

Connor left it at that, even though he didn’t care for Gregor’s dismissive reaction. They couldn’t afford to lose any data, not if they wanted to know what had happened to Mosiah’s ships. People had been killed there.

And the data cores might have answers that could save lives.