Unknown

by Microsoft Office User

  45

  T

  he orbital shuttle New Terra was one of the workhorses of the colonial era, flown more than 800 times – mostly for the transfer of construction personnel to the Andorran arrangement site and to the nearby space station Alexi Romanov.

  It was a standard Class IV vehicle, the basic design utilized by ASTROcom for more than 30 years of near-Earth transportation. The shuttle, often called the “flying milk carton” because of its rigid but practical design, comfortably seated 20 passengers and two crew members. It was equipped with a pair of squat, retractable wings for sub-orb flight and four shallow landing shoes. It was almost 25 meters long from the cockpit to the hemispheric Sprintjet boosters that projected from the stern.

  Sam Raymonds new flew one of these vehicles. Everything he knew of their internal systems he gleaned from viop tutorials he studied twice – the first time when ordered by his PAC supervisors, the second time more than a decade later inside this mountain in the Dakota Territory. And on this day, knowledge of the vehicle's capability was something for which Sam was thankful to have.

  The chaos of final preparations drew toward calm in the primary departure platform of Second Sunrise, and a voice from the command pod regularly announced the countdown to launch. Only five minutes remained until New Terra would get to prove its space-worthiness after more than 25 years without employment.

  Sam kept his vidtext pad raised high but looked at no schematics in particular as he entered New Terra's passenger cabin and painfully studied the two uptechs who were conducting final, localized diagnostics on the environmental controls. He mused that these men, both of whom were in their late forties and got their start in ASTROcom's research and development division, would probably never be completely satisfied with the readouts on their pads. He knew the only point at which they would breathe with ease would be upon the shuttle's return to Earth. This machine had been idle for all but about 12 hours in the past quarter-century, flown only when Adam and Rand stole it from Orion base in 2025, and later on limited test runs near the mountain and under the protection of the wv.scan shield.

  “Let's wrap it up.” He spoke curtly to the uptechs, who raised themselves up grudgingly.

  “I'd like to do one more ...” One of them began, and his supervisor cut him off.

  “Look, this damn milk carton is heading out of here in five minutes whether it's ready to fly or not. Doesn't make a bit of difference if you find something, because we don't have the option to delay. So let's pack it in and get clear of the platform.”

  The uptechs complied, studied every detail of the dimly lit cabin on their way out.

  Sam started to whirl around toward the cockpit, where George Cleopolous and Stephen Kreveld were already buckled in. But another missile of pain staggered him, and he winced, exhaled slowly. The wide, tall leather chairs were seductive at this moment, and Sam wasn't certain how much longer he could play this out with such pulsations of agony throbbing against his skull. But he held his stance until this latest episode became more manageable.

  He could hear the voices of the pilots talking to the command pod, running down their final checklists. He heard Stephen make a remark about “Four minutes to love, glory and all that other wicky-ass jazz.”

  Details! He told himself. Running out of time! Remember the details!

  His eyes searched the cabin expeditiously: Emergency medical kits, oxygen back-units, liquid meal dispensaries, R-40 blast guns.

  Instantly, the image of a deceased Benyard Crantz flashed before him, and Sam acknowledged how surprisingly simple it had been for him to kill a man. He stepped eagerly toward the clamp shelf where four hand weapons were stowed, and he wondered whether it was true that after killing one man, it was even easier the next time around.

  And then the next.

  He removed a blast gun, settled the weapon on its side in the palm of his right hand, rubbed the long, thin barrel with his other hand and raced through his options.

  I don't have to use this! Only if necessary. Only if necessary. This can be clean.

  46

  G

  eorge and Stephen were much too preoccupied to notice a third person enter the cockpit behind where they sat, X-straps buckling them into their flight seats.

  “That's good, command,” George said. “At three minutes to launch, beginning to marginate the booster mix for sub-orb velocity.”

  Stephen responded to the data he was receiving on the viop directly before him. “We're just checking out fine and dandy from bow to stern, folks,” he said with giddiness. “Got just the slightest discrepancy on the load ratio, but not a darn thing for you folks to get in a snit about. How about giving us retraction on the inner portal?”

  As they looked through the view shield, the pilots saw a portion of the wall directly ahead of them pull away to reveal a long tunnel, perhaps no more than 25 percent wider than New Terra, but certainly large enough through which to navigate. At 30 seconds, they knew, the outer portal along the side of the mountain would also pull back, opening their way into the night.

  George could barely resist a mocking snicker at Stephen's incredibly nonchalant approach to these pivotal moments, but when he turned to say something to his co-pilot, he felt a sudden sensation of paralysis, and his breathing stopped. The sight of the barrel of an R-40 blast gun penetrating Stephen's curly black hair was startling enough. To acknowledge the holder of the weapon was far more difficult.

  And as George tried to process what he was seeing, to warn his co-pilot, Sam Raymonds lifted his free hand and put his forefinger perpendicular to his own lips.

  “Shhh,” he said in the softest of whispers.

  Stephen jerked as soon as he felt the cold of the barrel against his skull, and his next words were nothing like George expected.

  “Hey, Sam our man! Now that's a hell of a way to send us off! But you better get clear of the shuttle in a pretty hurry here or ...”

  Sam's gritted teeth appeared as his lips fell open. “You, I really don't like. Shut up, Kreveld!”

  Sam opened his left hand to reveal a small black cylinder in his palm. He held his thumb firmly against the object.

  “You're cut off for the moment,” he told them both, then turned to George. “I'll release the jammer when I need for you to speak to command. In the meantime, remember I can press the trigger button in the tiniest fraction of a second. And when I do, the most annoying part of Kreveld will be plaster on the view shield.”

  “Sam, I'm not believing this,” George said, his words awkward and laced with fear. “What are you doing?”

  “This is all very simple. We will be leaving in a little more than 120 seconds. That's the three of us. When you resume communications with command, you are to follow procedure, stick only to the necessities of conversation. The first hint from either of you that there is trouble onboard will force me to press this button. If you've never fired an R-40 from point-blank, you don't realize just how vicious the effects can be. Are you both understanding this?”

  After each of them nodded, George continued: “Why, Sam? Why? What are you planning to do?”

  “I'm not going to Andorran, that's for certain. I thought we'd make a slight alteration in the flight plan. Have either of you ever been to the AFD?”

  “Shit,” Stephen more than mumbled as his confused eyes locked on to George's.

  “Now, George, resume communication.” Sam took this thumb off the jammer, and immediately there were nervous words from the command pod.

  “Come back to me, New Terra! What's the problem, guys?”

  “No, nothing,” George stammered. “Our own technical mix-up. Corrected now. Showing countdown at 90 seconds. Engaging primary Quinnian fusion matrix to the boosters' inertial manifold.”

  “You know what?” Stephen said suddenly, and he drew a wide smile across his face. “I'm pretty goddamn forgetful, Sam. Here we are about a minute to go, and guess what I find out? I didn't ful
ly integrate the X-straps over my chest. They're loose! How about that. And us heading to space!”

  Sam took a half-step forward, started to look over Stephen's shoulder, then snarled. “Don't fuck with me, Kreveld. It's going to take a good 35 minutes to reach the AFD and ...”

  “Fuck with you? Hell, I wasn't kidding! See?”

  Stephen instantly flailed both arms back and up, his left elbow ramming the blast gun and, for less than a second, knocking it from Sam's grip. But as the traitor jerked to catch the gun in midair, Stephen rose simultaneously, dove out of his flight chair as he whirled it around and launched himself into the man who had been his supervisor.

  His head bore into Sam, just centimeters below the man's rib cage, and the traitor offered a loud, startled moan. He winced as he fell back against the side of the cockpit portal and his head slammed hard against the metal.

  “You fuck, Kreveld,” Sam wheezed as he struggled to push the man off him.

  George unbuckled himself and whirled about, found himself staring directly into the barrel of the blast gun; and for a fraction of a second he froze, his eyes meeting those of a man who he knew was ready to kill. The barrel of the gun turned inward, ready to splatter Stephen's intestines across the cockpit.

  George lunged, but just as quickly was able to pull back. Stephen dug a hard left fist into Sam's gut, and the traitor staggered, the blast gun lowered. In almost the same instant, Stephen flailed his right arm into the weapon and sent it flying past George. It landed hard against the flight controls and bounced across the panels before finally crashing to the deck.

  Sam had the awkward, frightened coldness of a defeated man, his eyes wide and his jaw dropped as Stephen unleashed a furious volley of fists into him.

  The pounding continued into the passenger cabin, and it was not until Sam reeled and dropped, his head slamming hard against an armrest and his consciousness having faded, that Stephen relented.

  George walked slowly into the cabin, and the only two sounds he heard were Stephen gasping for air and a worried voice practically shouting at them from the command pod.

  Stephen took a seat in the front row. He tapped his lips to check for blood. And then he smiled.

  “You know, George, I really wasn't buckled up properly. Sorry about that, fella.”

  47

  A

  rilynn Smith saw the “devilinbluebox” coming together, segment by segment. She was excited that her mind and her hand were continuing to connect, and the challenge of understanding something that did not come from MassGrid was itself a thill. Nonetheless, this remained a puzzle to her wandering consciousness, her hand only able to draw a piece of the whole on each canvas.

  With the completion of each page, she tore her sketching from the pad and placed it on the floor at the foot of her bed, against which she continued to kneel as she drew.

  Some of the details were accompanied by a series of words that had no meaning to her, but that her hand spelled out next to the individual bearings, conduits or tubes she had drawn. One sketch detailed a cylinder braced with wide bolts equidistant from each other along its rim face. Arilynn studied her work and then, without hesitation or understanding, clearly printed the words “join the splinding plexor extension to UR-620 housing unit with 6.4-centimeter flex bolts.”

  As the hand moved at lightning speed, the words queued up at the front of her mind to guide her through the process. She reveled in each new fragment.

  Timetimetime. Timetimeagain. Timers. Tie6guides totimers. Whatyoudevildo? Bluebox watchoutdevilbluebox. Goneswitch to 3-oh-5. 3-oh-5. Goneswitchradial. Switchingtimerto radialgoneswitch. Devil. Lovedaddytoo. Gonebefar awayradialswitch. Timerswitch gonebefar. Gonebefar way.

  The tubes she sketched were long and very thin – each no more than a couple of millimeters in diameter. She drew within them what resembled tiny bubbles. And then she wrote more instructions in a margin next to the tubes:

  “Ensure baryon encasement tubes are filled precisely to 3.5-point ml. Timer housing must not be linked to encasement tubes until radial switches are submitted at prescribed depth of 1.9 ml.”

  She placed the page upon the floor and continued, and the next sketch emerged more swiftly. The image was ovoid, and from the shadowing, clearly metallic, well-polished. She drew a sliver of a cavity into the face of the ovoid, and then a digital display she shaded in violet. The numbers within the display were too tiny to read. She placed more instructions in the margin next to the ovoid:

  “Timer housing must be programmed to ignition temperature and termination point of countdown before housing is linked to encasement tubes.”

  Arilynn stopped, studied her handiwork for a moment, placed this new page on the floor as well, and quickly looked over the pieces that had been laid out in no particular order.

  “Youdevil1more togo. Watchoutdevilinblue ...”

  Her concentration was disrupted by three successive and gentle bells that echoed through her softly-lit bedroom. She recognized their meaning, because they came every day at this time.

  “Eathungry! Eathungry! Lovedaddytooeathungry.”

  Arilynn stood to attention and dropped the pad, removed the pencils that had been tucked behind her ears, and tossed them across the room. She frowned as she looked again at the sketches. “1moretogo devilboxblue. Eathungry.”

  She put a thumb to her mouth and flexed the nail between her teeth. Her head bobbed back and forth between the doorway and the sketches. “Eathungry,” she whispered. “Watchoutdevilbox. Getyoudevil1more togo.”

  Her stomach sent an oral message resolving the confusion.

  “Eathungry,” she smiled and ran out the door. She knew that as soon as her stomach was filled, she could return and draw the final component for the devil, which was also known as a straddle bomb.

  48

  T

  hey were 90 minutes from home, and all Lara could think was: You’ve got to be kidding me! This is not real. What has happened to us? Weren’t we drinking champagne a couple of hours ago?

  The scene in medpod stunned her.

  Anatoly Tryvinski was unconscious on one bed, Olivia attending to a nasty series of burns on his chest. Miguel and Peter were laying Susan down just two beds away. Neither patient appeared conscious.

  “What …” Lara started, and then she saw Fran Conner, standing alone, face in her hands.

  “Mifuro didn’t tell me much,” she said, “just to get down here. Fran, what happened?”

  “I’m sorry, Lara. Really sorry. I didn’t know Sue would go this far. He and Boris were working on Napier. She went after Nat with a tri-mark accelerator. Thank god the beam was splintered, or he would have died on the spot.”

  “Ohmigod. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Don’t know, Lara. I didn’t recognize her. Took a lot of talking to calm her down, and then we had to jump her. Damn, she was babbling on about all sorts of nonsense.”

  “Like what?”

  “I … uh … don’t remember much exactly. It was all crazy. The captain was talking to her and she said – get this – ‘your feet are sour.’ What the hell, Lara?”

  “What …” Lara felt a sudden dryness in the back of her throat, and then a familiar echo through her mind.

  “I gotta get out of here, Lara. I can’t believe I set this in motion.”

  Fran pushed past, and Peter followed her, but Lara didn’t notice.

  Susan's words meant something. She knew it immediately. Lara needed them to be more than the rantings of a horribly angry woman in need of help.

  The nightmare of less than a couple of hours ago was much more vivid now. She remembered the exchange, the dialogue that was without any emotion. She heard Sh'hun again. “Do you believe in the union?” And then the reply, which surely must have come from her own mouth. Surely. “Your feet are sour.”

  And now Susan repeated that phrase, speaking directly to Miguel Navarro, a man who Lara was certain became paralyz
ed only seconds before the explosion that Daniel.

  “Dreams do have power, Fran,” she whispered, then studied Miguel, who backed away from Susan’s bed, certain the Carib woman was properly strapped down. She started toward him, but Olivia came between them.

  The doctor was obviously frustrated.

  “Anatoly will be fine. In fact, he should be waking up in a few minutes. But I'm having the computer run a battery of blood and chemical analyses on Susan,” she said.

  “What do you suspect?” Miguel asked.

  “Nothing and everything,” Olivia shrugged. “I just don't believe this is a nervous breakdown, and it's not temporary insanity. I was with Susan on the third rotation out and the fourth rotation back, and I never saw any evidence of the kind of, oh, bizarre personality she's exhibited today. It's easy to assume that the rape and then the intentional termination of her unborn child could have led to this kind of emotional collapse. But Susan doesn't fit the profile of a person who would suffer a mental breakdown and then manifest that breakdown through such rage.”

  “And what do we do next if the computer tests don't turn up anything?” Lara asked wearily.

  Olivia sat down, leaned back into a swivel and sighed. She looked up at Miguel for answers, but the captain shook his head.

  “Keep her under sedation for as long as we can,” Olivia said.

  Miguel agreed. “This is not a contingency we ever considered. Sedation might be one answer, or she could simply be confined to her personal quarters for as long as we have to remain in orbit. We simply never thought one of us might try to kill another.”

  “Many things didn't turn out as we thought,” Olivia said.

  Medpod fell silent, and the gentle, low hum of Andorran's mainframe systems was the only perceivable sound.

  Lara was rapidly losing sense of what she was supposed to feel at a time like this.

  Anger. Grief. Sympathy. Fear. Paranoia.