by A Keuser
Pulling the wire packet away from the tubular casing of the charges she exhaled a shaky breath. Nala flicked open her small driver set and repeated the motion she’d walked through inside the skywalk. She dropped the cover plate on the floor.
“You’re crazy, you know that, right Ethan? If you’d followed station protocol….” Nala swallowed a heavy lump in her throat. If he’d done that, she’d still be dead when the bomb went off. “You shouldn’t have cut through blast plating.”
Kneeling next to her, Boudri shrugged. The movement was exaggerated enough that she could see it in her periphery. “We’re here now. No point in arguing about it.”
She did look at him then. For a man minutes away from an obvious and painful death, he didn’t look worried.
Gritting her teeth, she sorted through the tangled wires. Red and blue twisted together… black and white…. The lamp’s light tried to suck all the color from the wires. She should get a medal for patience under duress.
Every bomb she’d built for The Face was the same – a redundancy that had made her contract extremely lucrative. “Lemon and lime, lemon and lime.” She muttered under her breath, searching for the right bundle.
She sorted through the wires again, and a third time. “Shit.”
“That’s never good,” Angela said sardonically.
“It’s not mine.”
Ethan stood, and took a couple of steps backward. “I thought they contracted out to you?”
Pulling her hands down her face, she picked up the cover plate and rechecked the smooth surface.
“They did. Clearly they were fudging when they said it was an exclusive arrangement.”
“I guess you do need me after all.” Angela glanced at him with a frown.
Nala stood, making way room.
Pausing, Angela’s eyes settled on the red numbers counting down. She ran her fingers through her hair and snapped her teeth together as she studied it.
Beside Ethan, Nala leaned against the bulkhead and tapped her toe in a staccato rhythm.
Boudri slid down into a kneeling position beside her, biting his thumbnail as they both watched the numbers. “Right now, I really wish I didn’t know what that meant.”
Angela worked methodically, pulling tools from her belt, replacing them, clipping off wires. She hadn’t started cutting yet. She pulled a screw driver from Nala’s set and dismantled another part of the device.
Watching her in silence, Nala couldn’t help but berate herself. She should have realized it wasn’t hers immediately. It was similar, but the differences were glaring now that she knew to look for them. Staring at the copper leads two centimeters apart, she muttered under her breath.
Angela made a disgusted noise and Nala took a step forward. “Who in their right mind uses a zap terminal ignition?”
“People who want to get killed by their own work,” Nala said, wishing there was some way she could help.
Ethan’s eyes were locked on the bomb like it had hypnotized him and chewed on his nails.
Taking a step away from Angela and the bomb, she pulled her knife from its pouch. Slitting open the thick gloves she’d just used to handle live wires, she sat down beside Angela. Inside the rough leather exterior, she tore apart the layers of insulation, gathering as much of the cotton fluff as she could.
“Can we stuff this in between the connections and the brick?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
Angela took the fluff and worked it into the gap between the mechanical ignition’s terminals.
“Ethan,” Nala said. “Get me the rolled up kit in my bag. It has a bunch of bottles in it.”
He did as he was asked, pulling it open as he moved toward them.
The bottles spun out of their bands and he scrambled to gather up those that tried to roll away. Nala snatched up the non-conductive liquid from where it lay beside Ethan’s foot. She prayed her idiotic plan would work as she handed it to Angela.
Discarding the cap, Angela poured a stream of the clear liquid onto the ignition point, squeezing three more times after the bottle was empty.
As the numbers on the front of the bomb counted down, Nala took Boudri’s hand and pushed her tongue between her teeth to keep from clenching her jaw.
“What is that going to do?” Ethan asked.
“Hopefully,” Nala said, her voice wavering, “The insulation soaked in non-conductive fluid should terminate the connection.”
Angela nodded, but she did not sound hopeful either as she said, “If it works, the detonator will fry its own circuitry instead of blowing us up.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
Nala exchanged a glance with Angela, but neither said a word.
“At least it’ll be a quick death.” He smiled at them and Nala winced.
Angela laughed mirthlessly. “It’s a waiting game now.”
They sat, backs to the cold bulkhead, eyes trained on the slowly descending numbers.
When they reached ten seconds, Nala held her breath.
At five, she squeezed Ethan’s hand tighter.
One, she closed her eyes.
A pop echoed off the bulkheads around them.
She opened them again.
Boudri pulled her into a rib-crushing bear hug. “I honestly thought we were dead when you said it wasn’t yours.”
Together they let out a hesitant breath and slumped against the bulkhead.
“You know you don’t have a job anymore, right?” Nala said to Ethan. “You put the colony at risk… just to take a chance on saving me.”
Angela let out a choked laugh. “Oh yeah; he’s so shit canned after they get my report.”
He shrugged and kicked at the carpeting. “I’ve already got a new job lined up on Lunar Twelve. I was actually in the middle of giving notice when the alarms went off.”
“Think they’d hire an ex-bomb builder? I have a feeling that report is going to put me in a very awkward position.”
“I won’t tell them who you are.” Angela watched her, eyes flicking across her face. “Not as long as you tell me why you etched ‘verity’ on you bombs.”
“It stood for a truth of feeling, and my belief that what I was doing was right.”
“It’s also her real first name,” Ethan added, giving her the side eye. “She changed it when she ditched that profession.”
“I like Nala better anyway.”
The safety protocols normalized and the pressure door to Nala’s right opened. It was time to face the proverbial music.
GRAVITY DARKENING
N
ala Klef was in big trouble.
Someone had tried to blow up one of the colony’s sky walks with a bomb she’d
made. She doubted the Colony Partners would care that her bomb making days were far behind her. The most she could hope for was that they never found out. And as the only two people who knew were seated on either side of her, in the same disciplinary hearing, she had to hope they never would.
Massaging the bridge of her nose, she imagined the softness of her bed, much like a woman in the desert would dream of rain.
Ethan Boudri sat on her right, calm and collected. He had nothing to worry about. He was mere hours from a transfer to Lunar Colony Twelve and when he left, nothing he’d done here would follow him. At least that’s what was supposed to happen. They both knew her past had managed to follow her from Earth.
To her left, the station’s incendiary specialist picked at the corner seam of her cargo pants’ pocket. Angela had more at stake than either she or Ethan did. Having a daughter – currently being watched by a friend – she was at higher risk for removal back to the planet’s surface. An idea few found appealing.
The door to the Partner’s chambers opened and she stifled a yawn. Now was not the time to look as though she was bored.
Partner Dendrond was the first to emerge from the room. The woman was tall, lithe, and drew on heavy black eyeliner to accentuate the upward slant of her gorgeous brown eye
s. Her black hair was cut short and hung straight against her chin. She looked over the three of them with a sternly puckered mouth as the others filed out behind her.
Each of the partners represented their individual country’s interests as well as their own, and the entirety of the colony – at least that was what they were supposed to do.
Lunar Colony Six, like most of the other colonies, had slowly shifted to an entirely female governing body. It had happened in such an organic matter that no one had noticed until Lunar Three made a fuss about it.
“You violated directives from this council,” Partner Chadha began. Her bindi glittered in the light from the ceiling over her head. From the brightly embroidered sari the woman wore, Nala knew the bomb scare had interrupted her biweekly fete. “You should be removed from the colony entirely.”
Swallowing heavily, Nala waited for the rest of the verdict, casting a glance to a bored-looking woman. Despite her French name, Partner Elodie
– like Nala, Angela and Boudri – was originally a citizen of the DRC. She returned the glance, looking them over with altered green eyes and a pitiless air of apathy.
Only Partner Turan seemed truly sympathetic, but she said nothing.
“After much discussion, we put your
deportment to vote – excluding you, of course,” Chadha said, nodding toward Boudri. “While we find your … methods … unfortunate, the outcome was not disastrous. You will be allowed to remain on the station in your current positions. However, we will discuss further punitive measures, tomorrow.”
For the first time, Nala noticed that Chadha looked as tired as she felt.
Dismissing them with a toss of her hand, the partners left them again. Only Dendrond looked back over her shoulder, a question in her raised eyebrows.
Nala hadn’t forgotten her job. As maintenance chief for the colony, it was Partner Dendrond’s service requests that had spurred her last minute course change through the sky walk. Dendrond’s leak was still on her to-do list, but she was going to have to live with it a while longer – if it existed at all. Boudri held the door open and ushered them out of the chamber’s annex room.
In the hallway, Angela let out a long, heavy breath as she fell back against the bulkhead wall. “That could have been awful – what if they find out where the bombs came from?”
Nala’s mind was too fuzzy to engage. She stifled a yawn, and before she could respond to Angela’s worries, Boudri had placed a consoling hand on the incendiary specialist’s shoulder.
“We’re the only ones who know, Angela. It will be fine,” Boudri said.
Her face remained a mask of worry, “Unless whoever set the bombs knows.”
“The Face is long gone. Like I told the partners in our farce of a trial, it was likely a leftover remnant from the defunct cell.”
“What if it wasn’t?”
Nala paused, her jaw slack, and considered a hundred different ways to answer that question. She finally settled on an exhausted sigh and said, “I’ll think about that in the morning, when I have more than three firing brain cells.”
Leaving them both, she wound through the station corridors, finding her way home on autopilot.
She’d deal with the potential for expanding consequences in the morning.
Her door opened when she tapped in her code, and she walked through the kitchen compartment. She stopped abruptly when the heady smell of lilies accosted her nose. A bouquet sat on her kitchen counter, neatly arranged in a drinking glass.
Rolling her eyes, she left them where they were and added a sharp reprimand to her list of todos in the morning. Partner Dendrond didn’t know when to quit.
Nala woke the next afternoon to the sharp buzzing of her comm and glanced at the calendar. She’d forgotten the impending eclipse. It wasn’t as though it was a major event – or even an
uncommon one – but the colony had strict requirements and regulations. And with her normal crew on leave it meant she had to do all the prep work herself.
Yawning, she stuffed her feet back into her work boots – she hadn’t bothered to undress – and tabbed through the list of maintenance requests that had come through the server since she’d last checked. Nothing dire popped out at her as she stumbled into her kitchenette.
Punching in the coffee maker’s settings in a habitual pattern, she glanced at the flowers. They were pretty, but she didn’t want the attention.
She gathered some things and grabbed her bag. Then, hot mug in hand, she left the lilies for later.
Eclipse prep wasn’t terribly difficult – and in the machine rooms, no one bothered her with random questions or favors. The heavy noise of the processor cooling fans drowned out everything that might have echoed inside from the colony’s daily operations.
Almost everything about the process was automated. All the checks she made now would be rechecked by the techs upstairs. But if she caught a problem first….
The readouts and connections were sound. Things should go easy as pie.
There was only one thing left to do before she started on the normal daily tasks. Closing up the machine room, she set off to make her rounds of the exterior hatches.
The lights shuddered, their ballasts clicking and popping overhead before they died entirely. “I don’t need this right now,” she growled.
Ignoring sounds of panic from a nearby lab, she calmly felt through her tool bag for her flashlamp. The beam flicked to life and she swept the hall in front of her. With the power out, the scientists would have to figure out the manual release themselves, or they could sit tight and wait for her to sort it out. She hoped they would do the latter. She didn’t need a bunch of eggheads stumbling around in the dark.
She pulled her tablet from her bag and flicked it on, hooking the lamp to her belt and letting its arc of white light swing gently across the floor.
Her tablet’s screen allayed her worst fears. The colony’s air processors and gravity generators were still functioning. General power was out, but the medical facilities had already kicked back on with their backup generators.
Her comm buzzed incessantly. She touched the “accept” button and said, “Klef.”
“What’s happened?”
Nala didn’t need Partner Chadha to identify herself.
“I’m working on figuring that out. Vital systems are operational, auxiliaries are down and I haven’t had time to check the usual suspects yet.” Nala heard the general buzz of disapproval and could imagine the partners sitting in their council chambers bellyaching over the
inconvenience.
“Fix it,” Partner Chadha said sharply.
The comm cut out and Nala took a deep breath before she set out once more in the direction she’d been headed. Grumbling to herself, she said, “What else am I going to do?”
She turned sharply and collided with Partner Dendrond. The woman’s hands shot out and wrapped around her arms, keeping them both upright.
“Apologies. I didn’t see you there, Partner Dendrond.”
Dendrond’s smile was awkward in the ghostly white beam of Nala’s flashlamp.
“How many times have I told you to call me Eri?” she asked.
“I haven’t been counting. What do you want? Anything wrong with your apartment will have to wait.”
“My apartment is fine, I dealt with it myself. I’m here to help you.”
“Great, don’t get lost.” Stepping around the partner – who was extremely difficult to see in her all black ensemble – Nala made her way through the corridor
Nala’s flashlamp cast eerie shadows on the corridor walls as they hurried through to the most likely place the system could have failed.
It wasn’t a long walk.
Pulling open the access panel beside the door, she activated the hatch’s manual release and with Eri, she slipped inside.
Placing her flashlamp in the crux of two bits of machinery, she set to work inspecting the wiring in front of her.
Components wore out over
time, but she’d replaced the majority of the wiring in this sector less than a year ago. The frayed ends and missing sliver of jacket told her it wasn’t an issue of wear and tear... the wires were severed.
It could have been rats. Somehow, she doubted it.
Irritated, she got to work reattaching the wiring.
Glancing up at Partner Dendrond, Nala asked, “How did you know where I was?”
Eri bit the side of her lower lip and looked away sheepishly. “Sometimes I follow you on the station’s personnel monitor.”
“That’s not creepy at all.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Eri said, looking into the panel. “What do you need me to do?”
“Look up the legal definition of ‘stalking’?”
“I meant here… now.”
Nala glanced at her. “You could hand me those needle nose pliers and hold the flashlamp for me.”
“Done.”
Nala set to work, but with Eri standing over her shoulder, she couldn’t ignore the nagging memory of the gift she’d found waiting for her the previous night.
With a sigh, Nala said, “The lilies were out of bounds.”
“The lilies?”
“The ones you left in my apartment. They’re beautiful, but you really shouldn’t. I told you last time. Special attention from you is only going to make my life harder.”
Eri blinked at her, confusion slicing a deep wrinkle between her brows. “I didn’t send you flowers.”
“The partners are the only ones who can override door locks… so if it wasn’t you, who could it have been?”
“That is a worrying thought…. What worries me even more is that lilies are a flower of death. Odd that they should show up in your home the night you are almost killed.”
Nala paused, a shiver running through her, but she shook it away and kept working. Eri was thankfully silent.
She connected the wiring and stood, flipping open the panel that would energize the systems in the compartment.
Inside, the gauges all read zero; the normally illuminated push-buttons remained dark.
Nala reached back and took the flashlamp from Eri’s hand. In a quick motion, she turned it off and cursed as they returned to complete darkness.