Chapter 71: The Long Voyage

Every morning, Lethan polished the nameplate beside the dining hall.

There was little polish left.

He used a folded cloth instead, working carefully around the raised letters.

SUMMER ORCHARD.

Below them, in smaller script, the ship’s owners had once promised a pleasant journey.

Someone had scratched through that part.

Lethan had never asked who.

Behind him, chairs scraped across the floor. The kitchen crew were setting out breakfast, measuring portions from a pot large enough to serve several hundred people.

There had been smaller pots once.

Meals chosen from menus.

Fresh bread every morning.

He remembered those things more clearly than the faces of some people he had lost.

“Grandfather.”

He turned.

A girl stood at the passage entrance, holding two cups.

“Yours will get cold.”

“It generally does.”

“That’s because you keep cleaning things.”

“They keep becoming dirty.”

She considered the nameplate.

“Does it matter?”

Lethan folded the cloth.

“Yes.”

He took the offered cup.

The girl looked at the letters again.

She had learned to read beneath them.

To her, the Summer Orchard had never been a ship going somewhere.

It was simply where the walls were.

The original deck plans showed six restaurants, two observation gardens, a theater, and a swimming pool.

Gilgamesh examined the projection.

“A pool?”

“It was a passenger liner,” Cleopatra said.

“In space.”

“People still enjoy swimming.”

He looked at the dimensions.

“That is a considerable quantity of water to carry for enjoyment.”

Dinraal glanced at him.

“You’re sounding dangerously practical.”

“I’ve been spending time with Julius.”

“An unfortunate influence,” Julius said without looking up.

At the center of the operations table, the bright old model of the Summer Orchard turned slowly.

Beside it hung the scout’s image.

The two versions were difficult to reconcile.

The observation gardens had been covered with metal plating. Several escape craft were missing. A broad structure enclosed the stern, concealing most of the original engines.

Eve marked the changes.

“External power connections here. Fluid transfer lines below them. Several additions whose purpose we haven’t identified.”

“Could it leave under its own power?” Alexander asked.

“Not from what we can see.”

Dinraal studied the ship.

One thousand, one hundred and nine people had boarded twenty-six years earlier.

That was the only number they possessed.

He would not let himself turn it into a count of survivors.

Isolde moved the original model closer.

“The ship was designed to keep people alive for long voyages.”

“Yes,” Cleopatra said. “Food stores, water recovery, medical facilities.”

“How long?”

“Long enough for a journey. Twenty-six years would require considerable help.”

Or considerable ingenuity.

Dinraal looked at the plated gardens.

“Find out what they changed.”

They began with the liner’s builders.

The company still existed.

Its name had changed twice, and most of the original engineers had retired, but a courier returned with construction records and a message from a woman who had helped design the life-support system.

She was eighty-three.

She had read the missing ship’s name three times before agreeing to the interview.

The recording showed her sitting in a room crowded with models.

“My brother was aboard,” she said.

Nobody in the operations room moved.

“Don’t tell me he’s alive unless you know.”

Dinraal lowered his gaze.

On the recording, she took a breath and turned toward the plans.

“The pool has a separate filtration circuit. If they’ve survived that long, they may have converted it to cultivation. The gardens too.”

She marked several routes.

“Service passages run behind the passenger decks. They’re narrow, but a suited worker can use them. The outer inspection ports were built for mechanical access.”

A pause.

Then she pointed toward the stern.

“If someone has attached a power source there, do not simply pull it free. The emergency batteries were never meant to last this long.”

Enna stopped the recording.

She looked toward Dinraal.

“We take our own power.”

He nodded.

“And people who know how to connect it.”

The expedition took four ships.

Alexander commanded the escort.

Two transports carried medical teams, supplies, and enough temporary accommodation for more people than the old manifest listed.

A small engineering vessel carried generators, pressure shelters, and a tug assembly designed to move damaged ships.

It was still less than Dinraal wanted.

It was as much as they could send without stripping Hearth’s defenses.

Arcturus remained behind.

So did Tiamat, who took responsibility for training the next reference crews.

She met Dinraal beside the boarding ramp.

“I dislike this part.”

“Staying?”

She nodded.

He understood.

There were dangers she wanted to face and people she wanted to face them with.

“There’s room if you—”

“No.”

She said it quickly, then softened.

“I agreed to do this. The fifth station will need operators before it needs me somewhere else.”

Dinraal nodded.

She checked the fastening on his rescue harness.

It did not need checking.

He let her.

“Bring them back.”

“We’ll try.”

“And yourself.”

He took her hand briefly.

“Yes.”

Rhiannon had packed food again.

This time, she handed it to Isolde.

“Apparently he believes a meal is something that happens accidentally while he is reading.”

“That is unfair,” Dinraal said.

Both women looked at him.

He considered recent evidence.

“Mostly unfair.”

Rhiannon kissed his cheek.

Then Isolde’s.

No one mentioned the scale of the place they were approaching.

They had all seen the images.

Aurelius stood near the ramp with Aramaeis, speaking quietly.

When Dinraal approached, Aurelius embraced him.

“Remember that finding them is work too,” he said.

Dinraal drew back.

“If we can’t bring them out immediately.”

“If you can’t bring them out immediately.”

He nodded.

It was a promise he did not want to need.

Isolde came beside him.

Together, they boarded.

The journey took days.

At the resupply stop, Dinraal helped the engineers secure a generator housing.

During the next transit, Isolde worked with the medical team on moving patients through the liner’s narrow service routes.

Gilgamesh tested every stretcher frame.

One broke.

He looked offended.

Enna looked grateful.

“That is why we asked.”

By the final jump, the plans had acquired so many annotations that Alexander ordered clean copies made.

Neral’s navigation instructions brought them into the system well beyond the outer planet.

The waiting scout met them there.

Its captain looked exhausted.

“The structure remains active,” she reported. “Traffic varies. We haven’t identified a reliable quiet period.”

“The liner?” Dinraal asked.

“Still attached.”

“Any movement?”

The captain called up a recording.

A tiny figure crossed one of the liner’s outer service decks.

It paused beside a vent housing.

Bent.

Straightened.

Then continued along the hull.

The figure wore an ordinary pressure suit.

Dinraal leaned closer.

For the first time, the Summer Orchard contained more than lights.

They watched for thirty hours.

It felt longer.

The four ships remained concealed near a dark outer moon while the scout carried passive instruments inward.

They learned the path of several maintenance craft.

They watched cargo enter the liner.

They saw a waste container leave.

Most importantly, they saw the suited worker return to the same service deck.

Different movements.

Different timing.

A person doing a job.

Not a recording playing endlessly through abandoned machinery.

Eve compared the route with the builder’s plans.

“Air-handling access.”

Maera stood beside her.

“Which means they’re maintaining their own circulation.”

“Can we reach it?” Dinraal asked.

Alexander studied the distance between the liner and the nearest active ring.

“A small team might.”

“The whole fleet can’t,” Aramaeis said.

“No.”

Dinraal watched the worker kneel beside the vent.

They had brought generators and transports.

Now they needed permission to use them from people who might have spent twenty-six years learning not to trust a knock.

Lethan ate his evening meal with the maintenance crew.

He had stopped being chief steward years earlier.

There were no passengers left to serve in the old sense.

Everyone worked, if they could.

He still checked that the children received their portions before he took his own.

Across the table, a woman named Sovan unwrapped a sore wrist.

“The outer intake is fouling again.”

“Can it wait?”

“Two days. Perhaps three.”

Lethan nodded.

They had become very good at perhaps.

His granddaughter sat beside him, carefully dividing a piece of green vegetable from the cultivation deck.

She put half on his plate.

He looked at her.

“You need that.”

“So do you.”

Sovan smiled faintly.

Then the overhead lights dimmed.

Conversation stopped throughout the hall.

One breath.

Two.

The lights returned.

A low tone sounded from the ship’s old announcement system.

Lethan felt the room tighten around him.

Sovan closed her eyes.

A voice began reading cabin numbers.

Six this time.

When it finished, no one reached for their food.

Dinraal crossed to the liner without lights.

Isolde moved beside him.

Aramaeis remained with the little recovery craft tucked against a drifting fragment of old hull several kilometers away.

Farther out, Alexander waited with the escort.

The rest of the expedition held its position beyond the inner system.

The immense arc curved across Dinraal’s view.

From a distance, its broken sections had looked like gaps.

Here, they contained fields of wreckage.

Some pieces still moved with machinery inside them.

He forced himself to look back at the liner.

A window passed beneath his feet.

Dark.

Another held a strip of warm light.

He saw hanging fabric.

A shelf.

Something drawn on paper and fixed to the wall.

Then he reached the service deck.

Isolde caught the rail beside him.

They stayed low.

Inside the vent housing, a tool tapped against metal.

Dinraal raised one hand into view.

The tapping stopped.

Sovan stared through her helmet.

Two figures in silver held the outer rail.

For a moment, she could not make sense of them.

They did not resemble the attendants.

They did not resemble the things that sometimes moved along the docking arms.

One held up a flat panel.

Words appeared across it.

WE CAME FROM OUTSIDE THIS SYSTEM.

She gripped her tool.

The words changed.

WE HAVE SHIPS. WE NEED TO SPEAK TO YOUR CREW.

For several seconds, she did nothing.

Then she shook her head hard.

The silver figure waited.

Sovan pointed toward the far end of the service deck.

A small dark lens sat beneath the overhang.

The figure turned.

Looked.

Then moved back into the shadow beside her.

It had listened.

That frightened her in a different way.

She lifted her tool and scratched three words into the frost on the housing.

NOT THIS DOOR.

Sovan led them along the underside of the service deck.

They moved when she moved.

Stopped when she stopped.

At a narrow panel beneath the old garden section, she opened a manual cover.

A wheel sat behind it.

Dinraal looked at her.

She pointed to him, then to the wheel.

He turned it carefully.

The panel opened into an inspection lock barely large enough for two people.

Sovan entered with Isolde.

Dinraal waited outside until the chamber cycled and emptied.

For forty-seven seconds, he could not see his wife.

He counted every one.

Then the outer panel opened again.

He went in.

The passage beyond smelled of warm metal and growing plants.

Dinraal had prepared himself for decay.

For silence.

For something terrible waiting behind familiar walls.

He had not prepared for laundry.

Shirts hung from a line beneath a hot-water pipe.

A pair of small trousers had been repaired at both knees.

Isolde stood beside Sovan, helmet withdrawn.

Her expression told him she had seen them too.

Sovan pointed at their communicators.

Dinraal disconnected his external receiver and showed her.

Isolde did the same.

Only the narrow, wired link to their equipment remained, with its transmission disabled.

Sovan removed her helmet.

She was older than he had first thought.

Or more tired.

“Who are you?”

“Dinraal. This is Isolde.”

“Who sent you?”

“We found your ship in a scout recording.”

Her gaze moved to the silver on his arm.

“You found the ship.”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“Long enough to bring supplies and transports.”

Sovan swallowed.

“How long has it been?”

Dinraal hesitated.

“Since the Summer Orchard disappeared?”

She nodded.

“Twenty-six years.”

Her hand went to the wall.

Isolde stepped forward.

Sovan shook her head, keeping her upright with one small movement.

After a while, she whispered, “Then our clocks are close.”

She brought Lethan to them.

He arrived carrying an old crew jacket folded over one arm.

The name stitched above its breast pocket had faded.

He looked at Dinraal.

Then Isolde.

Then sat on a storage crate because his legs would no longer hold him.

Sovan crouched beside him.

“They came in a ship.”

Lethan shook his head.

“I heard you.”

Dinraal knelt so they were level.

“We have help waiting outside the inner system.”

“How many?”

“Enough to begin. We need to know how many of you are here.”

Lethan rubbed his palms against his knees.

The movement was slow and deliberate.

“Eight hundred and forty-six on our own count.”

Isolde breathed in softly.

“How many need medical assistance?”

“Most of us could use a doctor.”

“Urgent assistance?”

He looked at Sovan.

“Thirty-one who cannot walk without help. Eleven confined to beds. Others we’ve kept working when we shouldn’t.”

Dinraal nodded.

He wanted to ask how many of the original passengers remained.

Lethan answered before he could.

“Four hundred and seventy-three were aboard when we left.”

Dinraal looked at him.

“The others?”

“Brought here from other ships.”

A pause.

“And born here.”

From farther down the passage came the sound of a child laughing.

Dinraal closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, Lethan was watching him.

“They’ve never seen a sky.”

They spoke in the little storage passage while Sovan kept watch.

The liner received power, water supplements, nutrient compounds, and replacement machinery through its docking connections.

In return, the occupants repaired equipment.

They copied records.

They answered questions.

Sometimes, people were transferred out.

Sometimes, new people arrived.

Lethan maintained lists of both.

Dinraal listened until he could bear the next question.

“How often do they take people?”

“There isn’t a pattern we trust.”

“When was the last time?”

“Tonight.”

Isolde straightened.

“How many?”

“Six.”

“Have they gone?”

“No. The attendants collect them after the lower lights change.”

“When?”

Sovan checked a little mechanical timer.

“Less than two hours.”

Dinraal looked toward Isolde.

He could already hear Alexander asking the necessary questions.

How far was the transfer point?

How many guards?

What would happen to the other eight hundred and forty if the attendants did not return?

He made himself ask them.

Lethan watched him closely as he did.

At the end, the old steward said, “You understand why we’ve stayed aboard.”

Dinraal nodded.

He hated that he did.

Sovan brought them to a sealed observation alcove above the docking deck.

Through a narrow gap in its shutters, Dinraal saw the connections at the stern.

They were larger than the scout images suggested.

Power lines thick as tree trunks.

Fluid conduits.

Several structures that seemed grown into the hull.

Beyond them, the docking arm ran inward toward the arc.

And farther beyond—

Dinraal stopped.

Through a break in the surrounding machinery, the central darkness was visible.

A vast line extended from it toward the docking structures.

Along the line, lights pulsed in the same rhythm as the liner’s power indicators.

Isolde touched his wrist.

“I see it.”

Sovan followed their gaze.

“Every time one of the big gates opens, our supply drops. That’s when the air systems fall behind.”

Dinraal looked at the living spaces behind them.

At the improvised garden built over a swimming pool.

At the people who had spent twenty-six years making worn equipment last.

“Can the ship hold pressure without the dock?”

Sovan nodded.

“We test the closures.”

“Why?”

She looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious.

“In case.”

Lethan returned carrying a handwritten ledger.

He placed it in Isolde’s hands.

“This is a copy.”

Names filled the pages.

Cabin numbers.

Medical notes.

Marks beside some entries.

Children’s birth dates.

“You kept all this?”

“We needed to know who was here.”

Isolde turned a page carefully.

At the back lay a separate list.

The six selected for transfer.

One was a boy of sixteen.

One was Sovan.

Dinraal looked up.

She stood beside the door with her injured wrist tucked against her chest.

“You didn’t tell us.”

“I was showing you the ship.”

There was no accusation in her voice.

That made it worse.

Dinraal stepped back into the service lock to make a brief, shielded transmission through the recovery craft.

He gave Alexander the count.

The dependencies.

The deadline.

Then he waited.

The answer took long enough for him to hear his own breathing.

Finally, Alexander spoke.

“We can bring the engineering vessel closer under the broken arc. The transports stay out.”

“The six?”

“We don’t let them cross that dock. But we need the liner’s closures secured first.”

Dinraal looked through the inner window.

Isolde stood beside Lethan, bent over the deck plans.

Sovan was pointing.

Already working.

“Understood.”

Alexander’s voice softened slightly.

“Dinraal. This becomes an evacuation if we interfere.”

“Yes.”

“Make certain they know that.”

Lethan listened without interrupting.

Then he stood.

His knees still shook.

He put on the old crew jacket anyway.

“We’ve had drills,” he said. “Quiet ones. Fire. Loss of pressure. Everyone knows where to go.”

“Can you move them without an announcement?” Isolde asked.

“Yes.”

“And without telling the attendants?”

A small, tired smile appeared.

“We’ve learned a few things in twenty-six years.”

He turned toward Sovan.

“Gardens first. Then the medical rooms. Tell the section stewards it’s the real procedure.”

She nodded.

Dinraal caught her gently before she left.

“We need someone at the stern closures.”

“You’ll have me.”

“You’re on the transfer list.”

“I know where the closures are.”

For a moment, they looked at each other.

Then he let go.

“Show us.”

Before they moved, Lethan went to the dining hall.

His granddaughter waited beside the empty serving counter.

“Another drill?”

He looked at her.

He had wanted, so many times, to tell her that the journey would end.

He had never been willing to invent a date.

Now he took her hand.

“We’re going to the forward shelter.”

“Why?”

“Some people have come.”

Her eyes widened.

He saw fear arrive first.

He knelt despite the pain in his knees.

“Different people.”

She looked past him.

At the entrance stood a woman in silver, speaking softly to one of the kitchen workers.

Beside her, a man was helping move a cupboard away from an emergency passage that had not been used in years.

They worked quickly.

They looked worried.

His granddaughter watched them for a long time.

Then she whispered, “Are we going somewhere?”

Lethan held her hand more tightly.

“We’re going to try.”