“Sure. But you fuck with me, Blizzard, I’ll blow your boyfriend’s balls off.” Liz retreated without a word. Hussein reached out and flipped a toggle, killing power to the radios so no one could place a call from the passenger compartment.
“I got to hand it to you, Lad,” Terson said with as much admiration as he could muster, “you thought of everything. For a minute there I thought those two were in on this with you.”
“You asshole!” the spacer snarled. “You thought I was too stupid to plan something like this by myself, didn’t you? Well, you fell for it; you’re the stupid one!”
“You don’t have to rub it in,” Terson said sullenly. “I’ll be in big trouble with Shadrack when he finds out how stupid I was.”
“That’s right,” Lad said, savoring the thought. “Fact is he’ll probably throw you off the ship!”
They continued through the swap meet’s tangled streets in silence, except for Hussein’s occasional directions. The Mall fell behind and the congestion thinned the farther they got from the port. Finally the spacer pointed at a large, run-down concrete structure with a rollup door more than large enough to accommodate the sled.
The door started to rise the moment they pulled onto the apron. Lights came on inside and a man motioned the sled forward. He didn’t bother with a respirator, suggesting that the building had a life support system or that he was particularly tolerant of Assend’s atmosphere.
Lad motioned Terson to precede him out of the cockpit with the pistol. He followed well out of arm’s reach and scooped up the discarded beamer on the way. Berriochoa and Liz stood uncertainly. “Outside,” Lad ordered. “And remember: these aren’t the kind of people we want to piss off.”
Terson opened the hatch leading to the cargo compartment where the strong boxes were strapped to the deck. Lad ordered Liz and Berriochoa to load Terson down with as many as he could carry, then pick up two apiece. He tucked Terson’s pistol beneath his jacket before he lowered the ramp, but holstered the useless beamer in plain sight.
Two armed men stood waiting at a distance from the bottom of the ramp: the one who guided them in and a mountainous man Terson recognized immediately. “Put them down there,” the man from the hotel lobby rumbled. The Embustero’s crewmen lowered their burdens to the ground and backed away. The second man stepped forward to open one and removed a small plastic carton from inside, which he handed off to the big man for inspection.
“Where’s my money?” Lad demanded.
The big man motioned to someone and a third armed thug emerged from the shadows pushing a stout, wheeled platform bearing a pair of strongboxes remarkably similar to the ones already on the ground. The big man grabbed a handle on the side of each and pulled them off the deck. They struck the concrete with obvious force and the other two thugs began loading the Embustero’s boxes.
Lad dropped to his knees and eagerly opened one box. It was filled to the top with large gold ingots, but the sight didn’t seem to please Lad. “I told you I didn’t want gold,” the spacer complained. “I can’t carry this around!”
“Not my problem,” the big man told him. “Incidentally, the lease on this structure will revert to some rather greedy, unpleasant individuals the moment my associates and I leave. I suggest you load up whatever you can carry in the next five minutes and depart post haste.”
Lad stood slowly, face growing red with rage. “You’re trying to cheat me,” he growled.
The thugs leveled their rifles at his midsection. “I suggest you drop your weapon before something unfortunate occurs,” the big man said reasonably. Lad drew the beamer with his fingertips and tossed it to the ground, then set to prying an ingot out of the box.
Terson watched him struggle to extract the heavy, tight-set bullion with undisguised amusement. “Yep, Lad, you thought of everything, didn’t you?” he teased.
“You,” the big man said, aiming a finger at Terson. “You’ll be coming with me.”
“You bastard!” Lad exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “You’re in on this with them!” No one knew what to make of the sudden turn of events: Liz, Terson and Berriochoa of the big man’s unexpected order, or the big man and his cohorts of Lad’s paranoid accusation. To his credit, the spacer didn’t give anyone time to sort it all out; he pulled Terson’s pistol from beneath his jacket and fired.
Blood, bone and brain fountained from the nearest thug’s head. The pistol’s unexpected recoil drove Lad’s forearm back over his shoulder and the weapon flew out of his hand. Terson went after it while Berriochoa stamped his feet and waved his arms in fright, screaming: “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Liz dove for Lad’s beamer while the big man and the remaining thug fired wildly at Lad, who’d dropped flat behind the two strongboxes. Bullets and energy bolts chewed through the side of the container, but the bullion within absorbed the punishing onslaught while the spacer huddled behind.
Terson leaped, rolled, and came up on one knee with pistol in hand just as Liz gained control of the useless beamer. The bright, impotent spark it emitted caught the big man’s attention; he adjusted his aim a few centimeters, fired once, and turned the weapon back toward Lad. Liz doubled over and fell, smoke rising from her midsection.
The magnum bucked and thundered in Terson’s fist. The heavy slug took the big man square in the chest and he staggered back a step, but did not fall. A fleeting thought raced through Terson’s mind—body armor—and he fired again. The giant took another unsteady step backward and sat down hard on his ass. Unbelievably, though dazed by the pain and impact, he started to rise. Frustration drove Terson’s finger back and forth three more times. The three rounds to the chest in rapid succession knocked him on his back, head striking concrete with an audible crack, after which he lay still.
The remaining thug ejected an empty magazine from his rifle and tugged at a replacement hung up inside a pocket. Lad leapt at him with an ingot carried high in both hands and brought it down on his forehead with a sickening crunch. The man’s spine stiffened and he went over like felled timber. Hussein stepped to the first man he’d killed and wrenched the rifle from his limp hands.
“Lad, put it down!” Terson shouted. The spacer spun on him instead, firing from the hip. Terson rolled aside; bullets ricocheted from the floor beside him and whined into the wall. He fired as he continued to crab away, the discharges amplifying and re-echoing through the bay, almost drowning out Lad’s scream when his left knee exploded.
Berriochoa’s arms froze in mid-gesture. He sank to his knees and dragged a breath across pale lips. It was over.
Terson rose and ran to Liz. Except for the hole in her shipsuit and shock-glazed eyes she looked fine. He put his hand on her chest when she tried to sit up. “Take it easy.” She opened and closed her mouth, trying to speak, but no air moved. Her lips were turning blue.
Terson tilted her head back and blew into her mouth. Her chest rose, but the air rushed out again without restarting her respiratory reflex. He put his hand over her diaphragm to push but jerked it away from the warm, jellied mass beneath her clothing. Liz’s eyes turned frantic; she was suffocating, and she knew it.
He gently covered her frightened, pleading eyes with his hand, trying to communicate as much reassurance with his touch as he could, because his throat couldn’t voice the lie. She reached up, fingers clamping around his wrist.
Terson put the barrel of his pistol over her heart and pulled the trigger.
Liz jerked once. The shell casing pinged across the concrete floor and fell through a grate. Terson closed her eyes as he took his hand away, listening to the hollow rattle of the brass shell fade away.
The broken strongboxes next to Lad Hussein, he later found, were three-quarters full of solid lead.
“The lander is on final approach,” Colvard informed Shadrack over the intercom.
“I’m on my way. Get Druski back there, too. Any word from Markland about what’s going on?”
“No, sir. He’s still radio silent.�
��
The Embustero had received a series of terse, cryptic messages from the first mate: that the transfer from the escrow warehouse was underway, then that the cargo sled had vanished. Two hours later, that the sled had been located, the lander was departing to pick it up, and he was evacuating all remaining personnel from the surface.
The last communication only said that the lander had lifted successfully, but Markland could not or would not disclose any details. Shadrack nearly drove himself crazy wondering what had gone wrong. When he reached the lander bay he found that it was much worse than he could have imagined.
A body shrouded beneath silver space blankets lay on the deck next to the lander’s hatch. Druski and Cormack MacLeod hovered over a stretcher where Lad Hussein lay pale and unconscious. Nearby, Markland knelt next to Berriochoa, who sat with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Druski threw her medic’s bag into the stretcher’s undercarriage and guided it into the lift while MacLeod pushed. “Bring Berriochoa up when you finish,” she told Shadrack as the doors closed.
Berriochoa started to cry. “He shot the guy,” the man sobbed, “then Joey grabbed the gun and he shot her, and they shot and shot and she was laying there and Joey shot her again! She tried to get up and he just put his hand on her face and shot her!”
Markland looked up at Shadrack and shook his head. Shadrack motioned to two crewmen. “Take him to the infirmary.”
Markland stood as they helped Berriochoa to his feet, holding his bloody hands away from his sides even though his uniform was already smeared. He hesitated for a moment before wiping them against his legs. “I helped carry them off,” the first mate explained at Shadrack’s expression.
“What happened?”
“Berriochoa talks like Pelletier flipped out, started shooting, but Liz took a beamer in the guts and Hussein’s pretty much missing a leg from the knee down. Pelletier drove the sled back because Berriochoa was too screwed up to do it. I don’t know.”
“Where is Joey?”
“They said he came through the hatch and just walked off,” Markland said. “Then I was too busy to look.”
“Seal the lander bay,” Shadrack said. “Then find Joey.”
“Aye, sir.”
A grim afterthought occurred to the Embustero’s captain: “Is he still armed?”
“Presumably,” Markland nodded.
“Find him,” Shadrack repeated, “but leave him be until I get there.” He escorted Liz’s body to the infirmary and dismissed the crewmen. “Get out of the bloody clothes and run them through decon.” Eventually Druski wheeled Hussein out of the OR and parked him. She pulled Liz in and emerged thirty minutes later, stripping off gloves and bloody operating gown. She threw them in the decon hamper and sat down next to Shadrack.
“That’s the hardest post mortem I’ve ever had to do,” she murmured.
“Berriochoa says Pelletier killed Liz.”
“Don’t listen to Berriochoa until he calms down,” Druski told him. “Liz took a beam in the guts and a slug in the heart. I can’t tell which one killed her. Lad took a slug in the knee. I got him stabilized, but he’ll need an artificial limb to walk again.”
“What is it you don’t want to tell me?”
“The bullets came from Joey’s gun. There’s no confusing the caliber.”
Shadrack sagged. “You’re saying he did it.”
“Damnit, Shad! Her guts were all fucked up; I can’t tell you why she didn’t die instantly!”
“The point is he’s the one who killed her.”
“That is not the point!” Druski stood and turned away from him. “Say he did get her back—and I’m not saying he could have—and I hooked her up to a respirator. Would you have kept her here on a machine for the rest of her life?”
“I would have done what she wanted.”
“What if she wanted to die? Could you take an innocent life, even if that’s what she wanted?”
Shadrack drew his hand across his face. “How could I know that, Meggy?”
“You need to figure it out, because this is what he can do—and probably worse if he has to! If the thought of it is too terrible for you, put him off the ship.”
“I need him. We need him!”
Druski sat down again. “He’s not the kind of man you are, Shad. If you can accept the responsibility for putting him in a situation where he might do something you wouldn’t, fine. If not…”
Shadrack nodded and stood. “Send a summation of the autopsy to my office.”
“Aye, sir.”
Markland met him at the door on his way out and handed Shadrack a holstered beamer, twin to the one he wore. “Joey’s in the commons, sir. He went straight there from the lander bay.”
“Alright. Let’s go get him.”
Sweat dampened Shadrack’s armpits even before the lift doors closed. The weapon weighed ominously on his hip. He looked at Markland, who stood straight-legged, feet spread, arms folded against his chest. Markland had killed a man once, in the line of duty. Shadrack hadn’t. He’d never even had to fire at a human being. In that one respect he felt inferior to Markland and a few others on the crew, including Druski. A perverse envy, like he’d felt as a young man when other crewmen complained of their venereal diseases, brought on by perverse pride, like he’d felt when he, too, could add his voice to those complaints. He’d learned since then that in most cases that perverse envy and pride came not from the affliction or deed, but from the desire to demonstrate that he’d suffered, and feared, and succeeded in spite of it.
He hoped Markland had wet armpits, too.
Shouts exploded from the corridor outside the commons when the lift opened. Shadrack was first out the doors, in time to see Joey Pelletier go down under a pile of flailing limbs.
Terson sat in the commons for an hour with the same drink in his hand, marking time by watching the ice melt. He tried once more to bring it to his lips, to start on a numbing binge, but the smell made him recoil—alcohol and blood. A cloud of blood permeated his clothing and clung to his skin. He put the glass down again, precisely on the water-ring it left when he picked it up.
Conversation in the room had dropped off shortly after he’d ordered his drink, when word came of what he’d done. Space cleared around him, slowly, as the cloud of blood pushed them away. They clustered in the far corner next to the door, where whispering voices rose and fell.
The heat from their eyes helped the blood dry.
Tiny flakes rained from the cuffs of his shipsuit and the back of his right hand where a heavy smear had dried to an itching, scaly patch.
Grogan’s voice rose above the rest as he detached himself from the group and walked over. “So what happened down there, Joey?” Someone hissed at him, but Grogan waved his hand and prodded again. “Word is, you killed the Blizzard—shot her like an animal. Is that right? You some kind of psycho?”
Terson didn’t look up at him. “She couldn’t breathe.”
“I see—like a horse. That what happened to your wife? She break a leg?”
Terson stood up and walked around him to the door. Grogan followed him into the corridor and grabbed his shoulder. Terson caught his arm and swung him full-face into the wall. Grogan bounced off, stunned, and Terson pushed him back, held him up with his body while he hammered him in the kidneys with both fists.
Someone grabbed him around the neck. Terson spun and struck, felt cartilage crunch under his fist, and the warm splash of blood. Then they were on him, kicking, punching, clawing, their combined weight dragging him to the deck. Terson curled in a ball; he let the blows dissolve into a distant, pulsing throb as his consciousness fell inward, away from the pain, somewhere numb and safe.
It seemed like only moments before he opened his eyes and found himself in a bed, strapped across the chest and knees, a light blanket tucked around his chin. His face was one steady, pulsing ache and he couldn’t see out of his left eye. To his right lay Lad Hussein, unconscious, with an I.V. feeding into his arm. The
back of Terson’s tongue rasped against his dry throat. His crusty lips stuck together for a moment, and when they parted his tongue did nothing to moisten them.
He cleared his throat, weakly.
“Ah, it wakes,” Druski said from his blind side. She leaned over and flashed a light in his eye. He shut it and she pried it open with her fingers. “Quit rolling it. Mmh. Blurry or double vision?” Terson made a negative-sounding noise. “Good. Feel like something to drink?” Affirmative this time. She vanished to his left again for a while, came back with a water bottle and touched the tube to his lips. He sucked some in and swirled it around in his mouth until it was warm, then swallowed and took more.
“I’ll live?” he asked when he finished.
“Five stitches over the eye, three in the lower lip, and two cracked ribs, but you gave as good as you got. Grogan will be pissing red for a week, and Frazier’s nose will be a little crooked. Bumps and bruises all the way around.”
He smiled as far as his face would allow. “I still had the gun. Didn’t think to use it.”
“It was empty. You never reloaded.”
“I guess I had other things on my mind.”
Druski patted his arm. “Shadrack is on his way down. Berriochoa told us what happened after he calmed down.”
“He was okay until we started back,” Terson said. “It was the smell—blood everywhere, and the body voided. Was I right, Doc? Did I do the right thing?”
Druski shrugged. “I might have gotten her back here alive. Maybe you could have, too. I don’t know.”
Terson closed his eye. He squeezed both of them shut so hard lights sprang up in his mind’s eye, but it wasn’t enough to stop the sting that burrowed upward and broke with liquid heat. His breath gushed out, and in, and caught in his throat. Druski daubed at the tears with the corner of the blanket.
“You’ll just pass out if you hold your breath, Joey.” He let it go and sucked in another, deeply, forced it out and drew in again, until his chest stopped trembling. “She was in bad shape, Joey. She would have needed better care than I can give. Whether or not you did the right thing is a moot point.”
Embustero- Pale Boundaries Page 38