Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

“Oh, that.” He looks one last time at his daughter and turns off the holopad. “Sure we can’t keep him on ice a few weeks longer?”

“I wish. We’ll be in Gold territory in five days. Time to see if he’s on board.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then you get to space him. And we burn for Mercury.”

Pebble finds us in the hall on our way to the chute down to the fourth deck. She looks tense. “We have a problem.”

We find Colloway hovering over a holoDisplay in the sensor room on the second deck. Clown stands behind him with his arms crossed, foot nervously tapping. “What’s going on?” I ask.

“Tell him what you told me,” Pebble says.

Colloway rubs his temples. For as much sleep as the man gets lazing around on the recreation room’s couch and playing immersion games, he looks exhausted. “So, you know this ship has an internal monitoring system that detects our thermal signatures.”

“Sure.”

He brings up the blueprint of the ship. Human-shaped figures glow red amongst the decks. I see Winkle’s cool signature on the bridge, Thraxa’s hot signature as she trains endlessly in the gymnasium. Sevro chuckles and points to two thermal signatures side by side in one of the staterooms. “Looks like someone’s going to Bone City. Who is that?”

“There’s twenty-four of us,” Colloway continues, counting off the figures one by one. Many are still in their bunks. “Ten Golds in the cells.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Sevro asks. “We got shit to do.”

“Last night I couldn’t sleep…”

“You mean you were perving on people.”

“So I synced into the ship and I saw this.” He rewinds the blueprint to the middle of the night. “Count them.”

“There’s twenty-five.” Sevro squints. “Shit. How did you just notice this?”

“There’s no reason for me to sync when we’re on autopilot. It’s a waste of my time,” Colloway says in annoyance. “It looks like they’re masking their signature, staying near the engines or wearing a thermal blanket.”

“They could have been on the ship before it was stolen,” Pebble says. “Could be a dockworker or one of Quick’s servants.”

“If it’s a docker, then they could sabotage our life support systems or melt down the helium core,” Colloway says. “That would be—and I say this as understatement—cataclysmic.”

“A gorydamn grandma in the com center would be as dangerous as a Stained,” Clown says. “If they transmit on our coms, the whole gory system will know where we are. Society and Republic. We’re slagged! They’ll find us, obliterate us, and our molecules will drift through space for ten million years.”

I turn to Clown. “You done?”

“Not really.”

“You’re done. Get Alexandar and Thraxa and meet me in the armory.”

Ten minutes later, Clown, Alexandar, Thraxa, Sevro, and I shoulder our multiRifles. I toss them green clips of ammunition. “Spider only,” I say. “I want the stowaway alive.”

By eliminating the known thermal signatures one at a time, Colloway manages to track the signature of the intruder back from the galley to the engine room. The open room spans all four decks at the back of the ship. Metal walkways switchback down from the top and extend out amongst the machinery. The lights won’t turn on. Thraxa and Clown guard the bottom exit while the rest of us come down from the top, searching level by level. Our helmet floodlamps chase the shadows away as we comb through the machinery. Sevro signals me as he kneels. He shows me a wrapper for a Venusian noodle bowl. There’s more litter in an alcove on the third level, along with a holoVisor and a bundle of blankets.

There’s a patter of feet on the level below. “Rat?” Sevro says with a grin.

“Go,” I say. Sevro and Alexandar jump off the side of the metal walkway and land on the one below. There’s a thump and a laugh.

“Darrow, you better come down here,” Sevro calls up.

“It’s definitely a rat, a bloodydamn big one with freckles,” Alexandar adds. I take the stairs and find Alexandar and Sevro standing over a small woman who sits on her haunches. Her face is illuminated by their floodlamps.

“Rhonna?” I sputter.