Chapter 22
Ren was lost. No matter how hard she tried to get to the ruins she couldn’t figure it out in the forest. Every tree looked the same as the one she’d seen an hour ago, and the dwindling sunlight was making it harder to navigate. Night was getting close and she knew that it was only the leaves covering her tracks, but the thought of being unable to find her way back scared her.
What if she could never get back to Mahendra and Elian? What would he think?
Asking Sheridan or Abetha to come with her and miss the swearing-in ceremony seemed selfish, and she couldn’t do it. Ross had finally been released and was going to join the Guardship. Ren couldn’t ask either of them to leave that. Mainly because of her feelings of guilt, but also because she knew Sheridan would try to stop her.
She needed to find the ruins herself and hoped to learn a bit about what the Sisterhood was hiding. The only thing Ren could think the Sisterhood would hide had to do with the rebels and the Monarchy. Kian seemed to know, and maybe he would be willing to tell her, if she offered him something in return. What that might be however, she had no idea. The rebels must have needed food, or clean water, or some kind of supplies; she hoped it would be something simple like that. Something she wouldn’t have to think twice about handing over.
Biting down on her bottom lip Ren searched for anything she could recognize. It looked very different in the forest during the day, and without anyone else around the subtle sound of the birds were beginning to become overwhelming. She took a few more steps before thinking, Have I seen that fallen tree before?
It looked familiar, much like everything else. Ren groaned but kept moving. If anything she knew moving would be her only option. Maybe she’d get lucky and stumble upon the rebels, or find she’d somehow turned herself around and ended up back at the manor. Either way moving was her only option.
After a few minutes Ren could hear the sound of trickling water. The more she moved the louder it grew, and soon it was a roar. It echoed all around her, and for a moment she thought she was wrong and it was a creature there to kill her. She reminded herself of the Howling Jade Abetha had mentioned, and started in a run. Why she was so hurried to see some water was beyond her, but it could, at the very least, be used as a landmark.
Dashing through the trees, Ren leapt into a patch of dense thorns. Scratching at her skin, they dug in tight, and with some struggling Ren stumbled into a clearing. She picked the thorns from her skin as best she could and found they hadn’t gone in too deep at least.
When she looked up at what she expected to be a waterfall or an entrance to the Undercurrent she gaped. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
A waterfall she found, but what it coated was something very unnatural. The boxy exterior and clunky metalwork told Ren more than enough, but the words written across the side of the ship that sat propped against the waterfall was reassurance.
“The Absolution,” Ren said. “How—?”
Ren thought of all the warnings she’d gotten, and how nobody was willing to go into the “dangerous” territory of the ruins and find the ship. It was locked away, lost forever because the people of Novae didn’t care to learn anything more about it. They had their Beginning, and that was all they wanted, or so they said. Ren didn’t believe it.
Water crashed atop the Absolution and when she moved closer to it, shuffling her feet over the grass and dirt, Ren saw that it trickled down, meaning most of the water went inside and through the ship to connect to the river below.
Forgetting her original plan, Ren was overcome with curiosity. The people of Novae might not want to learn why the scow crashed, or why their ancestors didn’t try to get help, but she did. There had to be some kind of record and maybe it would tell Ren how they’d cloaked the planet. Or where the planet had vanished to all those years ago.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and a smile grew on her face. She ran forward, forgetting about the minor pain in her arms and legs, and searched for a way inside. It was a miracle that the water hadn’t destroyed the hull, with hundreds of years pounding down onto the scow. It should have been scrap by now, or at least very close.
Moving forward Ren stepped onto the rocks that coated the small river. They were round and slippery, and after two steps she fell in hard. She cried out, but quickly stood and brushed herself off. Nothing was going to stop her from getting inside the scow.
As Ren came to the Absolution she could feel heat emanating from it, an unnatural warmth. There was no way it was coming from the ship, she thought. It had to have been dead for years. Yet there it was. She placed her hands against the metal and felt its heat.
“You’re still on,” she mused. “How is that possible?”
A power supply that lasted hundreds of years wasn’t something Ren had ever heard of. She furrowed her brow and started moving around the ship. Careful to step around the rocks, Ren felt the cold begin to soak into her feet.
She couldn’t tell if the ship was on its side or straight up, and getting in was beginning to become a problem. Clearly most of it was embedded into the ground, but she couldn’t see an entrance. She’d only ever been Transported onto a ship; walking on was a thing of the past. And even as an archaeology student, Ren hadn’t studied too many ancient scows.
Her wristwatch beeped as it linked to something. Glowing a pale blue, it came up with a code that she didn’t recognize. Elian might have been able to decipher it but the best Ren could do was tell that it had somehow connected to a scow server.
Ren twisted her neck behind her and then to the sky but there wasn’t a scow in sight. Unless…she pressed the button, and the Transporter shot her onto the ship.
It wasn’t nice and easy like with Maks’s scow. This system was old, made during the time when Transporters were just being developed. As she was pulled into the darkness Ren fell to her knees, her stomach rolling. After a few gasps of air she threw up her breakfast, unable to even attempt to keep it down. She never thought she would consider Maks’s scow “nice and easy”.
Wiping at her mouth, Ren stood and surveyed her surroundings. She was definitely on the scow, that much she could tell, but she wasn’t sure where. When her eyes adjusted to the dimmer lights she thought it might be the mess hall. Everything that had once been in the room was thrown to the left, and Ren realized she was starting to slide there as well. Tilting her centre of balance as best she could she moved towards the nearest door, where she spotted a flickering light.
Her first priority was multiple things; everything about finding the Absolution felt important, so much so that she had long forgotten about finding the ruins and contacting Kian. It wasn’t even in her mind, or the fact that she didn’t know exactly how to get out either. She wanted to find records from when the ship had crashed, and if they’d made a distress call or not. She wanted to find what was powering the ship, and if it could be used to help the universe in other ways. Because a power source that lasted hundreds of years was something the universe sorely needed.
Wading through the ankle-deep water, Ren tried to make her way to the command deck. If she could get there, and it wasn’t submerged or too damaged, she might be lucky enough to search through the records. Although she didn’t know exactly how the first scows were powered, or how to navigate through their systems.
“Elian you would love this,” she muttered. He might not get excited about the history of the ship, but he would love to study the technology outside of a museum. Ren was still holding on to who her brother used to be, and not who he was becoming.
Maybe telling him about the Absolution would spark memories of how much he loved to build strange little gadgets and discover the unknown. She missed the brother who always looked forward, while she was looking back.
All the doors were open, at least the ones she could see. Some of them were temporary bedrooms, while others led to more hallways. Doing her best to remember how to get around on more rec
ent scows, Ren took what she hoped weren’t random directions. Eventually she found a room that caught her eye, with papers and books strewn about.
She stepped inside, moving along the metal floors as best she could with wet shoes.
It looked like some kind of laboratory, one that dealt with keeping the scow in top shape—not its crew. A grey cabinet had fallen on its side, its drawer’s open to reveal more papers, dry ones at that. Ren started flipping through them, hoping they were some kind of records or first hand account of what the Absolution was doing in this part of the universe. It had been so long since she had flipped through actual papers—not a book, not a computer—just a pile of papers. It was oddly calming to Ren.
Nothing, just schematics for the scow. Ren folded a few up and pocketed them, planning on giving them to Elian when she got back to the manor. If I get back, she thought. Shaking away the negative thoughts Ren started to leave when she noticed a corkboard on the wall by the door. She hadn’t noticed it coming in, and she took a closer look.
Boxes and lines and impossible equations coated the surface in what looked like ink. She had thought it would be pencil, or at least faded away from its time on the damp ship, but there it was, in perfect condition.
It looked shockingly similar to the cloaking device Elian had been playing with weeks earlier. The same round bulb sat on top of the three prongs, and the diagrams looked too close to the ones she’d seen growing up. Ren traced her index finger along the lines, feeling the raised ink as it glided across the paper.
She stopped on a set of numbers. 2114. Two years before cloaking had ever been discovered.
Her eyes darted across the page, studying the numbers and lines but unable to make real sense of them. “The first schematic,” she breathed. The Absolution had that kind of technology already? Ren shook her head and took the paper down.
Was this the secret that nobody on Novae wanted to acknowledge? Was Elian’s theory about the ship crashing and cloaking a planet actually correct? Ren stood a moment in the water, wondering why the Monarchy wouldn’t come out with the cloaking technology earlier if they’d had it.
Only one reason came to mind; because they didn’t want to. Ren racked her brain for every excuse she could think of; the technology wasn’t perfected so they didn’t let anyone know about it, or they didn’t want their enemies at the time to know what they were capable of, but it all seemed too weak.
Unless they didn’t know about it, Ren thought. Unless whoever drew these schematics was the real inventor and—a clunk down the hall interrupted her thoughts.
Her heart skipped a beat before she could breathe again. Another clunk came through, and then another, and then she heard someone walking through the water. Pressing against the wall, Ren didn’t know who to expect to come through the scow; or how they got in for that matter.
She looked around the room for anything that might be used as a weapon and came up with nothing. Whoever was on the Absolution with her had to be from the Monarchy, otherwise how did they get on without the Transporter link?
Fear rose into her throat and she thought she might throw up again. The footsteps continued down the hall, hesitating only a moment as they walked past each door. Ren prayed they weren’t poking their heads in to check for anything, and when they came to her door she held her breath. Her fingertips began to turn white as she tried to grip the wall, pressing her nails in so hard they could have snapped off if they were any weaker. When the footsteps continued Ren soon heard clunking metal, and listened as the person descended to the lower levels with the ladder.
She released a shaky breath but didn’t move for a few minutes. When she was certain nobody else was around she carefully peered around the corner. The water had already stilled, and whoever was there was long gone. Still, she thought it would be best to minimize her movements to ensure she wasn’t heard.
Taking another look at the schematics she grabbed them off of the board. Folding it gingerly, she held onto them to ensure they didn’t crumple or tear. She continued her search for anything that was powering the ship, or the command deck.
After a long hour of searching one floor, Ren knew she had to go up if she wanted to find the evidence she required. The only way to do that was with the ladder, the same one the intruder had used. She bit her bottom lip and stared at it, wondering if whoever was there had left already. Peering down the shaft she couldn’t see any light or anything to tell her where the person had gone.
So she stuck a foot on a rung, and began to climb. It was difficult with wet shoes, but she kept her grip tight, and pressed the schematics between her teeth. This was something she’d always dreamed of doing; discovering a lost ship and finding out what happened to it. She always knew she would get to do it one day, she just never thought the circumstances would be so dire. She didn’t think it would be important to anyone currently alive.
It was awkward climbing as she was. Ren was pushed onto her stomach more than anything, and every so often her legs would give in to gravity and threaten the smash against the metal.
By the time Ren climbed up two floors she awkwardly got out of the shaft. Her knees were sore from digging into the rungs but she’d found the main command deck, with the centred captains chair, and the surrounding crews spots. The front window was cracked, with water pouring over it; when Ren got a closer look, climbing over the chairs and controls, she saw the water wasn’t actually coming into the scow; it was gliding right over the shield. It must have activated over the window when it broke, and diverted power to keeping the one area safe.
“Why are there so many fields on this planet?” Ren grumbled. And more importantly, how was this one still functioning? At least it explained why the ship was in such good shape. Taking a breath, Ren sat at the main control panel, forcing herself to not try to stand on the floor. It was impossible with the angle. She watched the clear water fall over the field, and thought the sky looked beautiful behind it. The blue wavered to and fro, and the sunlight danced at all angles.
As she leaned back her hand pressed against the console and she heard the click of a button. It wasn’t the best move she could make, considering she knew how sensitive everything was, and she swore under her breath. The console came to life, illuminated in red, blue, and purple. Ren climbed around, hoping she’d gotten lucky and she could find some kind of log about the crash.
Jamming her foot against the immobile chair and the crooked floor, Ren looked at the screen. It crackled and fizzed, the power barely coming through. She flipped through multiple logs, finding the ones when the ship had first launched, and found the Captain hopeful and full of fervour. She stood and listened to each recording, and with each one she heard the Captains tone grow darker and darker.
“Captain Brackenreed, Absolution’s Log,” she said, her tone more sorrowful than the last. “It’s been two days since Dr. Husher has shown me her latest invention…and given me an ultimatum. I have one day to decide where my loyalties lie.” The recording crackled out of focus a moment when the captain’s face came on screen, no longer just a voice. Ren saw a woman with her hair tied back into a tight bun, eyes dim even on the black and white screen. She licked her lips. “If Husher is wrong then we will surely die on this new planet; Novae, she’s calling it. But if she’s right…” She gave a wispy smile, her wishful thoughts coming through. Her voice became a whisper, “If she’s right we could be free.”
Ren shivered with a sudden chill. The recording cut out and the next never played. “Come on,” Ren whispered, “what happened to you?” She scrolled through the archives but couldn’t find anything recorded after that.
Frustrated, and completely out of her archeologist mindset, Ren smacked an open palm against the control board. It beeped again, as did her bracelet. Something cracked ahead of her, but she was too distracted to notice.
A scream erupted from the console and Captain Brackenreed came on, her face covered
in blood. Her breathing was heavy as she gripped her side. Behind her people scattered, running back and forth and shouting commands. The scow was crashing. “This is the Absolution; our engines are failing, a piece of the console has been stolen.” She stared straight ahead, her eyes no longer darting around. “Someone aboard has sabotaged us.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “May God have mercy on us,” she said, “I did not take Husher’s deal.” She groaned and leaned back in her chair. “It wasn’t fair—they didn’t want this! We didn’t want this!”
Pulling an old pistol from her holster, Ren watched as Captain Brackenreed pointed it somewhere Ren couldn’t see. A shot was fired but it wasn’t from her gun; a small red hole appeared over the captain’s heart, and she slumped in the chair.
“Traitor,” a woman said. “I’m no traitor. You there! Get in that chair and land this ship—!” The recording cut out again, and Ren didn’t search for any more.
One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths later Ren was able to tear her eyes away from the static on the screen. She’d found exactly what she’d wanted but it still didn’t make her feel better. Her initial excitement at finding the Absolution was long gone. She bit down on her lower lip, scrunching the schematics in her hand when she heard another large snap.
The field that covered the window began to fail. The water had become too much for the shields, and it had already begun to leak through. Ren shifted her foot and felt the water already trickling past her toes.
The ship creaked again, shifting to the weight of the water as it pounded down on the scow. Ren moved forward as fast as she could, waiting for the moment the field would fall and she’d be tossed back by the rush of water.
She made it to the broken window, climbing carefully onto the front before the field completely fell. The sudden sound of harsh water surprised Ren even though she’d been expecting it, and it smashed down into the scow with more weight than she’d thought possible. Ren lost her grip on the metal and flew down to the rocks below. She was sloppy and disorganized but she managed to roll forward, saving herself from any broken bones. It didn’t help her stop from twisting her leg the wrong way. Pain shot through her centre but as she tried to scream water blocked her voice.
Sputtering Ren moved out of the spray of the falls, and crawled onto the grass.
“I was going to try to catch you,” a voice said, “but I thought you might not learn to wander off alone if you landed on your ass.” Ren jerked her head up to find Sheridan standing over her, arms crossed.
“I probably wouldn’t have learned,” Ren replied, still coughing. She sounded just like Naomi when she talked like that. Naomi never would have said it about herself; Ren however…
Sheridan pushed her hand in front of Ren’s face, and Ren gratefully took it. “Was it worth risking your life?”
Ren had crushed the schematics in her hand and they were soaking wet now too. She unraveled them once she was able to stand and stop coughing, and found the ink hadn’t run too much. “Maybe.” Her hand dropped to her side, the edge of the paper reaching her ankles. “Was that—never mind.” She almost thought it had been Sheridan inside the scow, but there’s no way it could have been.
Sheridan tilted her head. “Was that what?”
Ren shook her head and wish she had bitten her tongue sooner. “I thought someone was on the scow with me—but I never saw anyone.” There was absolutely no way it had been her imagination, but Ren wanted to believe it had been. There wasn’t anyone on Novae that she could think of who would be on that scow. “I need to go to the Sisterhood.”
“As I recall you were rejected,” Sheridan said, a hint of teasing in her tone.
“That doesn’t matter,” Ren replied. “They need this, and I need to talk to them. I think there might be a solution to their ‘problem’.”
Sheridan nodded and didn’t ask anymore. She only started leading Ren to the Undercurrent.