Page 6 of Mutiny

"If Sara operates on him, then this will stop happening?" Andrea demanded.

"Yes, Andrea," Mei said, exasperated.

"Fine!" Andrea snapped. "I'll take him to Sara."

She stared down at the prone unit in front of her, then looked over at me, her tone rising in pitch again. "Can you carry him? He is far too heavy for me, and you're such a big, strong guy."

"I'll help you," Mei said before I could respond. "We can move him; we just need the proper tools. Find a floating tray. If there isn't one in a supply closet, you're going to have to grab the one that Lyssa's been using."

"Fine," Andrea said and walked off.

Mei looked at the tool in her hands and then up at me.

"Since you know what is wrong with this, do you know how to fix it?" she asked.

"You don't need my help with that," I said, pointing out the obvious. It was clear from my observations that now that I'd pointed out the flaws, she was more than capable of fixing them and would prefer to do so herself. But so she wouldn't think I was rejecting her request, I added: "But I will if you wish me to, as well as answer any questions you have."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Why doesn't the ship want to talk to us?" she asked.

"I will show you," I told her.

THREE

MEI

Bulwark didn't say a word as we hauled Andrea's 'Big Guy' into the medical bay, nor when he dragged me back out into the maze of metal corridors. He just kept moving, ignoring my questions until we were deep into the labyrinth.

"Well?" I demanded, my heart thudding in my chest. It was nerve-wracking to be alone with him, not just because he ultimately was a stranger who used to be my enemy, but because of the way my body reacted to him, the way I tensed in anticipation of something I wasn't sure I wanted.

He put his palm on the metal bulkhead.

The wall split, and my stomach plummeted into the open air.

I slammed a hand over my chest, my heart hammering against my ribs. After weeks trapped in enclosed spaces, the sheer violent vastness of the space in front of me hit me like a physical impact. My head swam.

"You appear to be experiencing distress," he said.

The word for it was agoraphobia, a sudden fear of the outside, brought on by staying in indoor spaces for too long. Still, this wasn't the outside; it was just a bigger space than I had seen up until this point.

"How did you find this?" The demand ripped out of me, spurred on by panic and awe twisted up together.

The room was a monster, stretching out under a towering dome that spilled artificial sunlight across the open-air space, warm and wonderful all at the same time. The space was the size of several football fields put together, and the ceiling was high enough for redwoods to grow, but nothing was tall enough to warrant it. The entire floor of the room was dirt- dry, dead-looking dirt, but dirt nonetheless. No metal floor. Just real earth. Cutting straight through the packed soil was a grid of freakish purple cabbages the size of watermelons.

This ship had a huge monocrop farm on board.

"None of the scouting parties found this place," I said, still angry and frightened and in awe and delighted. "They should have found it."

"Your expansion into this ship is being curated. I requested access to more physical space," Bulwark said. "You were willing to rush into using an untested tool to cut through the wall of a spaceship that you had no experience with. You had no way of knowing for certain if the area you were cutting into was pressurized or had a survivable atmosphere. You are an intelligent, thoughtful woman, so those actions indicated that your needs were not being met and you were attempting more desperate action to meet them."

I flushed with embarrassment, but also felt the warm glow of appreciation. He was right. Normally, I wouldn't have gone ahead with something like that. He saw me clearly enough to know it was outside my usual, identified my dangerous decision-making as an unmet need, and then immediately sought to both confront me and show understanding.

"We need to have control of something," I said. "We're stuck on an alien spaceship we were previously held captive on, and as much as it appears to be adapting for us, we have no idea of where we are going or how to get back home. We have a sense of freedom, sure, but if we can't control our destination... we need more."

"I've been on this ship since just after it was captured," Bulwark said, his words slow and careful, holding the greater weight of a larger story behind them. "It was small, barely the size of a deployment shuttle."

"So you're used to not being able to move about freely, is that it?" I asked.