The God Mars Book Five: Onryo by Michael Rizzo Page A

unwilling to touch the ship directly,
Straker uses her Blade to nudge open the inner hatch. The corridor
beyond it is empty. But then along its length, the ship’s lighting
comes on, though only barely, flickering.
    From what little I can see, this ship—if that’s what
it is—is much bigger than the Lancer, or the Siren’s Song. Wider.
The corridor goes forward several meters, then branches in four
directions. There are more smoke-stains on the bulkheads and
ceilings. There was a fire in here somewhere, but I don’t
see its source.
    Straker tells us to stay put, and takes a cautious
walk down to the junction with her Blade leading. She looks down
the side branches, listens, then comes back, shaking her head to
tell us she’s seen and heard nothing. Murphy flashes me a brave
grin, shrugs, and steps through into the corridor. Still nothing
happens, so they move further into the ship. I step in behind them,
the Ghaddar right behind me. And I feel…
    I know this place.
    I don’t know how. The shapes and spaces. I remember
them being brighter, cleaner. And more occupied. It’s probably just
my imagination, but I’ve had flashes like this, starting as early
as I can remember. When I was young, before I was taken in by Abu
Abbas, before my birth parents were killed by pirates, before we
were refugees, I remember bright spaces, clean spaces. Like a
colony. But the only colonies still like that are Shinkyo and
Tranquility that we know of, and we were from neither of those
(certainly not Shinkyo, and I checked the Cast records at
Tranquility). So I discounted it as a child’s fantasy, dreams of a
better life never had.
    It certainly wasn’t this burned, dark place.
    (Maybe my parents told me stories of living in one of
the pre-Bang colonies? No, they were too young. Grandparents? I
don’t remember grandparents, and I don’t remember my parents ever
talking about their parents, or any other family.)
    “This way,” I prod us left when we pause at the
junction. “Bridge.”
    “And how do you know that?” Straker questions.
    “I…”
    I look up and down the corridors again. Somehow I
know which way is fore and which is aft. I know where the crew
quarters are, the dayroom, the labs, the engine access… I have no idea how.
    “The… Um… Just a guess…” I point at the ceiling and
down the corridor. “But the smoke marks seem to be coming from
somewhere down there.”
    I can tell from the look on her face that she doesn’t
believe me, but she doesn’t know what to think. Murphy and the
Ghaddar look equally suspicious.
    Now I feel weird. This ship feels too small for some
reason, all wrong. Is this claustrophobia? I’ve never felt this way
before, like parts of me want to scream and get out, but I’ve slept
and lived just fine in shelters a lot smaller than this corridor.
Maybe it’s some kind of toxic reaction from eating Dragonfly Jerky,
combined with the smells in here. My gut feels like I’m
falling.
    Still, little details—fixtures, hatchways—all look so
familiar, but just in pieces. Obviously, if I have been this far
east before, I don’t remember it; and I’m pretty sure if we’d ever
been on a ship like this, my parents would have told me. But then,
they never really talked about where we came from, except to tell
the other refugees that we were from Tranquility. (That was a lie,
and I still don’t know why.)
    I shake it off, try to clear my head and breathe to
keep my strange lunch down where it belongs. I tell myself I’m just
spooked and tired and a little ill and my brain is splicing in what
I know from being on a Lancer-class ship with Colonel Ram.
    (But did I somehow open the hatches?)
    Straker pushes past me in the narrow corridor,
heading for the heavy hatch that’s probably the ship’s bridge. (If
I’m wrong, and we actually end up in the engine section, I’ll have
a good internal laugh and shake off what will be decisively proved
as my brain playing tricks on me.)
    “The hatch