“Damn it, Buzz, hold on.” Beckman went silent as he looked up the information. “Shit.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” whispered Sioux.
“I’ll get back to you,” said Beckman.
He disconnected.
“We’re fucked,” said Buzz.
Thirty-Eight
Rock hopper fifteen touched down on the surface of Dactyl with Alvin aboard. Utility lights illuminated the landing pad and cast stark shadows across the gray regolith. Nothing moved. Rinsler’s white-domed cabin looked untouched. Alvin leaped out of the hatch as soon as he could get it open. His thrusters flew him over the long row of hand railings to the cabin. A flurry of messages from Sabrina Meyer arrived in his Opti-Comp before he reached the door.
Shit. She knows. Wait, how are they getting through?
He looked back toward the communications dish and saw no light.
It’s powered off.
He peeped open one of the messages as he glided forward—it was from Meyer.
“Baylor, I’ve received a report from Beckman that there is a riot in progress at Ida. You are to secure Dr. Rinsler and his invention at all costs. Corporate Security is en route.”
He closed it. A glance at the inbox showed four more like it.
Fuck.
He reached the airlock and looked through the porthole. The inner door was open. Katy sat at Rinsler’s console. She wore a space suit with the face guard open. Her face looked haggard. Sunken eyes focused on the floating screens. He could see the tips of Rinsler’s black mane bobbing in the corner beyond her.
Is he alive? He’ll be killed if I open the door.
A call came through. It was Buzz. “Houston, we have a problem.”
“Not now.”
“Alvin, the water tanks are venting into space.”
Must be the gas I saw when I took off.
“So we’re gonna die from dehydration?”
“Yes. If we aren’t killed by each other first.”
“One problem at a time, Buzz.”
The shadows moved over Alvin’s shoulder.
He turned around and was bathed in light. His visor dimmed under the glare as an old mining frigate hovered above the landing pad, blowing dusty debris off the surface.
Who the hell is this?
As if in answer, the ship rotated, turning its rear toward him. A name was stenciled on the hull—Cronus. The cargo door lowered and a rock hopper exited. It made a beeline for Alvin at dangerous speed.
“I’ll call you back,” said Alvin.
He disconnected and leaped from the cabin door.
Thirty-Nine
Forty minutes earlier, Rouja Natastae had touched down on Dactyl in rock hopper fifteen. The autopilot brought the ship down a little way from a habitat unit. She would have used her suit thrusters for the flight to the door, but she’d never been trained with synaptics. Instead she relied on her physical prowess to make the distance. She leaped from handhold to handhold in the low gravity like a gymnast. Her dismounts ensured a return trajectory aimed at the next section of railing.
Reminds me of the Moon.
At the door Rouja brought up Alvin’s security credentials. A palm press opened the airlock door. She walked in and peered through the porthole at the next door. There was a man on a bed in the corner of the room. He didn’t stir as she entered the cabin. She sealed the airlock behind her and approached.
His chest rose, then fell. He was fast asleep.
Hello, Dr. Rinsler.
She opened her face guard and scanned the room. In the opposite corner sat a large computer console. Sitting on top of the long desktop was a glossy white chest. She bounced over and touched it.
The action woke the computer. A touch-field display lit up above the tabletop showing multiple camera views. Among them the hopper, an empty crater, and a dish shooting a red laser into space. There was a flashing prompt onscreen.
Must be the quantum console Alvin mentioned. I can hack Leung’s data here.
She picked up the chest and opened it. Inside were two black spheres. She plucked one out with her fingers.
“So you’re what all the fuss is about.”
A tickling sensation started in her fingertips and moved throughout her body. It rippled through her like an electrical charge and made her head buzz. It was mild, but reminded her of being shocked by Watkins’s eel suit. She placed the sphere back in the chest.
“You’re Baylor’s tryst,” said a man’s voice.
She turned around to see Mohammed Rinsler sitting upright in bed.
“I know about you,” said Rinsler. “I’ve seen his Opti-Comp feeds. You look older in person.”
“I am older,” she said. “You must be Rinsler.”
He nodded. “Who do you work for?”
“Myself. I need you to crack some data for me.”
“Why would I do anything for you?”
“Because if you do it I won’t kill you or take your lawn bowling kit,” she said, hefting the chest.
His eyebrow arched. “What kind of data?”
“DNA data store. I yanked it out of a pimp. I need to read his files.”
“DNA will take a while to crack.”
“How long?” said Rouja.
“It takes as long as it takes.”
“Then get started. If your machine takes too long, the deal is off,” she said.
She walked to the bed, grabbed him by the collar, then tossed him toward the console. He landed atop it in the low gravity.
He grumbled, climbed down, and sat in the chair.
“Give it here,” he said.
Rouja handed over a small sliver of holographic foil.
He took the strip and inserted it into a slot on the console, then he brought up another floating display and began a cryptographic decode of Leung’s data.
She paced the carpeted floor and bounded slightly off the ground with each step.
“Would you mind not walking around, you’ll ruin the grip,” said Rinsler.
He lifted one of his slippered feet from the carpet with a ripping sound for demonstration.
She gave him a stern look then pulled out a pulse gun. Rinsler cowered and covered his head. She shot out the inner airlock door controls with a laser blast. The door swung open.
“If I hear anything out of you besides ‘I’m done,’ I’ll shoot the outer door and you’ll be sucked into space. You get me?”
Rinsler nodded sheepishly.
Rouja continued to pace.
After thirty-five minutes of silence, he spoke the words. “I’m done.”
She stopped in place and looked at him apprehensively. Then she dashed forward and shoved his chair aside. Rinsler bounced off the cabin wall.
On screen was a directory dump of Leung’s files. She began searching through them, looking for his ledger—a database of the eastern sex trade that could lead to her daughter. Her attention was stolen when the camera at the landing area shimmied. The hopper lifted up from the ground into orbit.
It’s been recalled.
“John, I need you now,” she radioed.
She received no response.
“John, I have it,” she radioed again.
Silence.
“I thought you weren’t taking my invention?” said Rinsler.
“I lied.” She eyed the scientist. He didn’t startle. Then she noticed her Opti-Comp data wasn’t updating. “You’re blocking transmissions.”
He frowned and raised his shoulders.
“Disable it.”
“We’ll be sitting ducks,” he said.
“You will. I’m leaving. Do it now.”
She pointed her gun at him. He gritted his teeth and walked with sticky steps back to the console. He reached over the keyboard to tap out some characters.
“Now, John,” she said again.
“I’m on my way,” said Padre over the radio. “What the hell took so long?”
“Complications. I’m cracking Leung’
s ledger.”
“No time for that. Just take the prototype and go. We can buy you a crack on Earth.”
She ignored him and went back to her search at the console. She had minutes to find a record of her daughter before the hopper would return.
Please don’t be Alvin.
Forty
Damn it, Rouja. Give it up.
John Padre set his ship to descend from the outer orbit of Dactyl then pulled up the communications app given to him by Barton Aimes.
All right, shithead, let’s do some gloating.
He waited for the call to route as he brought the Cronus down over Dactyl’s surface. The view outside was barren. He expected Rouja would exit the white dome momentarily.
Where is she?
There was a click as someone answered his faster-than-light call. He got the jump on the conversation. “I win, Aimes,” said Padre. “You fucked with the wrong guy.”
“John Padre,” said a raspy female voice.
“Who the fuck is this?” said Padre.
“This is Margaret Aimes, Secretary of Defense and Barton’s mother. You fucked with the wrong people.”
“Listen up, bitch. I got your precious toy.”
“Yes, and I have your location.” The connection dropped.
“Government cretin,” he grumbled.
Can’t handle a little rough talk. I’ll bet Alteris killed her kid already.
He laughed nervously.
Then eight objects came up on the scopes.
“Oh hell.”
He radioed out. “Rouja, get your ass in gear! We have incoming.”
Whatever was coming was still ten minutes away. Then a new dot appeared ahead of the pack. It was almost on him.
A hopper came into view and landed on the moon below.
What’s this?
The hatch opened and a man in an obnoxious royal-blue space suit wrapped in lightning bolts emerged.
Baylor.
He hated the guy more than Aimes.
I got time for this.
He glided to the rear of the ship and boarded his rock hopper.
With the synaptic cap on his head, he snapped his fingers in eager anticipation. The hopper tendrils whipped around at deadly speed.
She spent another night with this creep . . . time to erase him.
When the cargo hold opened, he gunned it and dove straight at that precious blue suit.
Baylor flew for his parked hopper and Padre overshot him. He pulled up to avoid hitting the cabin, then turned back around. Baylor’s ship was already skybound. It rushed up from the ground to meet him and rammed against his hull.
Daring little fucker.
Padre’s ship careened sideways and impacted against the dome.
“Fuck!”
He scanned the structure for damage. It was dented. Atmosphere was venting.
“You sonofabitch. You hurt my girl and you’re worse than dead.”
He flew upward and Baylor’s tendrils smacked down and spun him in circles.
“This creep’s pretty good.”
He reached out with his hands and the tendrils extended. When the ships met again, their limbs tangled up. One craft sat over the other with bright, spindly appendages that intertwined.
Enough of this. The guy has no weapons.
He fired up two of the plasma jets at the end of the hopper limbs. They cut through Baylor’s tendrils and he broke free.
“This was worth the wait.”
He powered on two more jets and sent them tracing back and forth across the hull of Baylor’s hopper. It was scored black, then it burst.
Forty-One
Rouja hunkered down over the computer console in Rinsler’s cabin hurriedly reading through line after line of sales entries. Leung’s sex-trade ledger eclipsed her view of the landing pad camera. She narrowed her search by geography and date until she was looking at Greece before it was overrun.
She felt her guts go hollow when she saw the name: “Lia Padre.”
My baby.
She selected the record and held her breath. The status came back as active.
She’s alive.
She relaxed her shoulders and hung her head over the console. Rinsler viewed her curiously.
The cabin shook as something slammed against it. The frame above the airlock dented inward and a whistling sound began.
Rinsler dove to the corner for his space suit. Rouja eyed him suspiciously, then she glanced at the damaged door and returned to the ledger.
Just hold a little longer.
She parsed through her daughter’s entry until she found the last delivery record—an address in Pakistan.
I found you!
There were three recorded transfers of ownership. Lia currently belonged to someone named Abbasi; before that she was sold by a Turk named Uzun. The last man named was her first owner. Rouja’s mouth fell open.
Her joy was replaced with anger. Padre had lied to her for seventeen years.
Dead man!
She reached for the box of spheres and pulled her gun. Rinsler was in a space suit now, but his helmet was still in his hands.
“Get it on.” She closed her face guard and the whistling sound ceased.
She fired the pulse gun as Rinsler slammed his helmet down. The laser blast blew out the lock. The door shook, then folded a third of the way from the top.
She dove for safety and Rinsler knocked the box from under her arm. Their bodies were yanked flush against the wall on either side of the airlock as air rushed from the room. The box bounced and opened. The spheres were ripped out. She reached and caught one. He caught the other.
Rinsler put the sphere in his belt pouch and was launched out into the vacuum. His body banged against the doorframe on the way out.
Suddenly the domed roof tore off, revealing the black starry expanse. The buffeting expulsion of atmosphere ceased and Rouja was left in stillness huddled against what remained of the cabin wall.
In the sky above, two rock hoppers were locked in combat. Their luminescing tendrils wrestled with one another. She recognized Padre’s modified hopper. The other was number fifteen.
Alvin. No!
Padre’s hopper ejected plasma from the tips of its limbs and broke free. The other ship’s severed legs went black and disappeared into the darkness. Then the plasma jets swung back across the front hull of hopper fifteen. Deep black welts formed and it exploded suddenly in a belch of gas and debris that spread out over Dactyl like sparkling confetti. Padre’s hopper was thrown back by the expulsion.
Rouja’s stomach dropped.
Padre’s ship pivoted in the air, then descended to the surface.
Rouja stepped over what remained of the cabin wall onto the gray regolith of Dactyl, then bounded out to meet him at the landing pad.
Padre came out of the top hatch of the hopper and landed in front of her.
“Time to go,” he said.
“You know that was an innocent man you just killed.”
“Wouldn’t be the first,” said Padre. “When did you get righteous?”
“Is this what you were after?” she said.
She bounced the black sphere in the palm of her hand. It moved slowly in the low gravity.
“Good work, baby. I can always count on you,” said Padre from behind his copper visor.
She wanted to kill him, but she wanted to see the look on his face when she did it.
“I got what I was after, too,” she said.
“You cracked the ledger?”
The bastard sounds worried.
She nodded. “Lia’s alive and I can use some of this money to get her back.”
“That’s perfect, babe. Everything is coming together for us at last. Now it’s time to go.”
“How much did you get for selling her?”
He went silent. His minuscule weight shifted from foot to foot.
She waited.
“They disavowed me in a foreign country in the middle of a war.”
>
“Answer me! How much did they pay for a three-year-old girl?”
“Without the money, we wouldn’t have gotten out. It would have cost us our lives,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Just yours. Women have value.”
She drew her pulse gun and fired it cockeyed to shoot out his visor.
He mouthed her name as ice formed from his last breath. An expression of horror hardened into a mask.
She fired again and his face exploded into frozen fragments.
His body fell slowly in the low gravity.
She looked up at hopper fifteen’s debris cloud as it spread over the horizon.
I’m sorry, Alvin.
She gripped the black sphere hard and felt it buzz through her fingers. Then she boarded Padre’s hopper.
Forty-Two
Alvin had only a moment to make his judgment. The strange hopper in the Dactyl sky that was coming at him was not friendly. He jetted toward the landing pad and dove under the attacker. The ship zoomed over the white dome.
Alvin peeped the remote controls for his hopper and instead of boarding, sent the ship straight up to intercept the incoming vehicle. It crashed into the other craft and bounced it into Rinsler’s cabin like a ping-pong ball. A vent of gas shot from the airlock.
No!
He sent the unmanned hopper back at his attacker. Sweat ran down his temple as the faint blue glow of his implants grew brighter.
He stuck the tendrils out in front and the other ship raced up to tangle with them; a wrestling match in the sky.
He thinks I’m inside.
Suddenly Rinsler’s cabin door blew open. Alvin saw a flash of gas and then a white streak shot out the front door. It looked like a person.
Rinsler?
The whole dome blew off next, and the gas pocket knocked Alvin into the air and sent him cartwheeling through space.
He dropped remote control of the ship to focus on his suit thrusters. The jets fired and stopped his roll. When he’d recovered his orientation, he looked back to see his hopper explode in the sky before him.
A sharp pain shot through his head. He grimaced until the feedback ceased. His temples cooled. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the enemy hopper descending. A female form in black bounded out to meet it.
Alvin Baylor Lives! Page 25