The Compromise
Page 3
*****
One Year Earlier:
Holton Station hovered in deep space, the most isolated human outpost in the Rim. But it was still famous even in New York, both for its engineering and the spectacle of its beauty. Adrienne couldn’t help but gape, and she was no small-town girl, or Rim-world colonist, to be stunned by a shiny building. She’d grown up in the mile-high towers of New York, worked Beijing’s trio of space elevators while attending college, and had summered twice in the sprawling space ports of Mars. And even to her, Holton was something else.
Artificial gravity supported a u-shape of skyscraper dragon teeth around a field of green. Of course, most of the city was façade. Behind the first row of apartments and lab spaces was a warren of tunnels, support structures and warship hanger bays. Holton was a military research station, after all. But people had to live there, sometimes for years. No space or procedure was wasted. If it could be done here, it was done beautifully. Case in point: the water purification system. Pools of carefully selected plants and algae removed toxins from the water, and glass-clear waterfalls oxygenated it. Windows of six-meter thick blast-glass displayed the stars beyond, and artificial sunlight fed the greenery sprouting in every possible corner.
But it’s cold, she thought. Like silk flowers on a receptionist’s desk. The first three hundred yards of the central thoroughfare were a perfectly manicured lawn. Adults sat in benches under the green trees, or on blankets spread over grass. There were no children. No birds. And because Holton floated between stars, the nearest several million light years away, there would never be real sunlight.
She continued down the space ramp, shaking her head at her own hypocrisy. She criticized this for being constructed and unnatural? Genetic surgeons like her rewrote biology. The nearest she got to “natural” in her work was old fashioned thoracic surgery. Meat cutting. And she was good at it. They’d given her the US Medal of Terrestrial Honor for her work during the New York Needle collapse. Not that it’d been her choice to take lead in emergency triage. Just her aching duty.
The papers had nicknamed her the Valkyrie. She had decided if a patient would live, or receive a heavy dose of morphine and a quiet corner in which to die. The memories haunted her. Row on row of bleeding bodies. Sterilizing cloth bandages until the irradiating field generator broke. Running out of medicines, her nurses collapsing after the first sixteen hours, her fingers gone numb but she didn’t dare stop. The smell of burned skin, the ever-present stink of blood. The first time she’d picked up a scalpel after the Needle collapse, she’d vomited at the thought of cutting in.
People who could handle severe triage these days were rare. They’d wanted her to keep going, and she’d gotten three offers she couldn’t refuse. One from the UN, one from Martian Cosmopolitan Government, and one from Holton Station. The decision had been easy. She’d spent too many nights dreaming of injecting a syringe of morphine into a child’s arm while some society barfly wailed about the shards of glass in her back. The universe wants Adrienne Parker to work triage? Fine. She’d do it at war.
“Dr. Parker?” This male voice was attached to a tall blend of Nordic sensibilities and East Indian grace. Tan skin, brown eyes, blond hair. His hand, when she shook it, was soft. He wore a Major’s uniform.
“Dr. Landry, I presume.” She frowned. “I thought you were a civilian contractor?”
He laughed. It fit somehow with the rest of Holton. Artificial. “Not hardly. Major Michel Landry. Mich when I’m off duty. I’m your escort to my brother’s ivory tower.” His eyes darted down, and his smile turned genuine. “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I saw a luggage bag. I mean, I know DMS can’t store medicines or foods, but…damn, lady. Even we use it for clothes.” He pointed at the chip on his lapel. It probably held six weeks’ worth of clothing and, knowing the Marines, a couple extra ammo clips. Not that Digital Matter Storage could hold live ammo; Marines just never stopped trying. “Could I buy that off you? There’s a real fad for retro around the station right now.”
She smiled. “No, you can’t buy it. And I don’t trust DMS with my valuables, Major. It works for replaceable basics, but if I want pretty clothes, I need a suitcase.”
“Good call.” A new voice, rolling and rich. The kind of voice that sinks into your bones. Mich scowled as if his breakfast had soured. Adry turned around.
He was obviously Michel Landry’s brother. His dual heritage had blended together in a strong chin, a nose like an eagle, thick black hair and eyes blue like day lit sky. Bright white teeth flashed in a glamorous smile. He walked forward, hands in his pockets. “Sorry, Mich. Didn’t I tell you I’d handle this one personally?” Mich glared, and the man waved a hand, forget about it. He kept going, kept teaching. “The myth is, you get things back from DMS. In reality, it destroys the object on a sub-atomic level and stores the resulting energy signature for remateralization. You can’t duplicate objects you store because it uses all the energy in the process, and you can’t store something organic like silk or canvas because you’ll get a loose soup of protean chains back. You’re getting an entirely new thing created by the tiny computer stuffed into that antique you’re pulling.” He pointed at Adrianne’s suitcase, an ancient battered wheelie in a red/green plaid. “You know, I hear they sell a new model. It comes with that flashy new LED fabric you can program. We just wrote up a new rule that you can’t program obscenities. Too many kids were showing up on base touting variations on a theme of ‘fuck you’.” He offered a hand. “Bryan Landry.”
She took it. “Adrienne Parker.” His hand was warm, and work-rough. Interesting. What did he do in his spare time? She patted the suitcase. “This was my grandmother’s. She was one of the founding colonists of Foster. The Overseers killed her in the first incursion, and my mother brought her ashes back to Earth in it. It’s only fitting that I bring it here when we drive them away.”
Landry laughed. “I like that attitude. With the New York Valkyrie on our side, how can we lose?” He hadn’t let her hand go, either. Instead, he raised it to his lips. His kiss sent shivers up her spine.
“Old-world charm, Dr. Landry?” Her pulse increased in a not-unpleasant way.
He let go. “Sunshine, you’re the girl with the retro suitcase.”