Jessica solar's Arc

Chapter 11 of 15

The blue glow in the corridor dimmed as the trap's charge bled off. Jessica listened past the humming plates. Boots. Wolves. Both closer. She turned to Michael and saw his pencil stop against the pad. His hand was shaking. Not a small tremor. A whole-arm shake he could not hide. She crossed to him. His face was gray. Sweat cut a line through the dust on his temple. He had thrown the switch. He had watched men drop. He had not eaten since the diplomat sat down at her table. "Sit," she said. "No time." "Sit or you fall over in the next fight and I lose you." He sat against the bulkhead. She dug into the crate by the hatch and pulled out a pressurized canister the florist had left with the water rations. She cracked the valve, poured a cup, and pushed it into his hand. He drank. She watched his throat move. She watched the shake slow. "Eat," she said, and gave him a ration bar from her belt. He chewed. He swallowed. He set the pad down. Then he set it back on his knee, opened it, and turned it to face her. "Before the next wave," he said. "You need to see this." She almost told him no. She looked anyway. It was not a comic page. It was a copy of a star chart. Alien marks. A ring of symbols she did not know, linked by thin lines into a shape like a bent crown. In the corner of the page, his neat block letters: FOUND UNDER THE WRECK. LEVEL SIX. STONE ROOM. "Under my ship," she said. "Under the hull. There's a hole in the drydock floor. I found it the second week. There's a room down there older than the ship. The map was on the wall. I copied it." "How long have you been sitting on this." "Six weeks." She looked at him. He did not look away. "The crimson faction isn't here for the debt," he said. "They're here for that. I think they always were. The coils. The plant. All of it. They were buying time to find what's under you." Her hands went cold. The scavengers. The surveillance before she had reported a thing. The diplomat's patience. It all lined up in one clean line she could not unsee. "Why now," she said. "Because I'm scared. And you deserved to know before they got to it." Boots hit the far corridor. Wolves clicked closer on the hull. Jessica took the page from him and folded it into her jacket, against her ribs. "Get up," she said. "You can walk?" "I can walk." "Then the fight changes. We're not defending a ship. We're defending a door." She pulled him to his feet. His hand was steady in hers.