by Corey Ostman
“Jacob told me you’re going after the pawns. Wouldn’t it be better if you monitored, and I went after them?”
“I can do this,” she said, bouncing over to the cabinet that once held the PodPooch. “And the bode needs its doctor. Tapang out.”
Opening a cabinet, she pulled down a gamma emitter from the top shelf. The bright yellow radiation symbol on its handle mocked her thin pressure suit. Pointless to dwell on it now. With one last glance around her castle, she clipped the gamma emitter to her belt and hopped out into Spoke-B, continuing toward the center of Bode-6. She pulled to the left when she reached Spiral-3. The ladder for the maintenance tube lay to the right, ten meters ahead.
“We have a crawler in distress, five kilometers east-southeast of Bode-6,” said Jacob.
If Panborn were having problems piloting the craft—if his life were in danger—he would certainly unleash the pawns. He’d have nothing to lose. Mhau flew up the ladder, opened the hatch, and pulled herself inside the maintenance tube, grabbing handfuls of cable and conduit to speed her along. Please, I’ve got to reach the clutch.
“Confirm gamma radiation source in your vicinity,” Kyran said.
Mhau used her visor display to blink her acknowledgement. Directly ahead she saw the crude access plate, now removed, and the pawns. She stopped a meter in front of the iridescent swarm and unclipped the gamma emitter from her belt.
She blinked through her helmet display until she reached the ISOLATION menu. It showed only her own squeeze ID in the vicinity. Nobody else.
“Kyran, confirm that Spiral-3 has been evacuated.”
As she waited for his reply, she extended three telescoping legs from the base of the emitter, adjusting each until the business end of the device was pointing at the pawn cloud. With the circular cross-section of the tube, much of this is going to reflect back on me, but—
“Confirmed,” Kyran said. “Mhau… the radiation…”
“Yes,” she said. “A fair trade.”
• • •
The crawler lurched and Grace used that moment to break free from Panborn. She grabbed a handhold, clinging to the wall. She didn’t want to be stuck midair. It was hard enough to counter the aposti’s attacks without the ability to create momentum.
Deafening squeals and shudders from below filled the crawler as it scraped against ice. In the din, Panborn’s fist flew from nowhere, aimed at her skull.
Grace dodged, flipping sideways, boots scraping against the ceiling of the cockpit. She caught the pilot’s seat with one hand and arrested her momentum. She felt the crawler skipping, like a smooth rock across a lake. She had to get the ship under control, or it might rebound off the surface and out into space. She twisted, struggling to stay in position long enough to get a read on all the moving bits of the enemy, her body, and the ship.
Panborn was now crouched on the deck, his long brown robes sinking to the floor. His cowl had slid backward, uncovering his bald head, pallid face, black eyes, and thin black eyebrows. He unnerved her. Her direct approach hadn’t worked: he was taller and stronger than she was. She would not be able to incapacitate him.
Grace withdrew Marty and sighted directly at Panborn’s chest.
“Stop!” she commanded, her elbows locking and her aim steady. Her throat ached where he had struck her windpipe.
“You won’t shoot,” he said, his eyes surveying the cockpit. “Not in here.”
“Try me,” she said. If she could keep him pinned down for even a moment longer, she could reach over and pull back on the throttle.
“If you destroy us both, who will transmit the command to disarm the pawns?” he said, calmly. “Or are you willing to sacrifice everyone in Bode-6?”
“That’s why my aim will be precise,” she said, trying not to react to the pawn reference. The aposti had just recently boarded the crawler, so whatever control he had over the pawns must be on his person. Or in the duffel.
“Shouldn’t you be arresting me? Telling me my rights? Eugene would be so sad that his protector has turned killer.”
“You’re the murderer!” she yelled over the shrieking of the hull. She let her emotions bleed into her voice, hoping to convince the aposti that his mark had hit. As she did, she reached over to the throttle with her hand.
She expected it to slide toward her easily, but it stuck.
Panborn lunged, roaring an ugly, bestial bellow that sliced through the noise of the crawler scraping bottom. His left hand shot past her and grabbed the seat, her only anchor. His right hand balled into a fist, swung out, and impacted her abdomen. Pain mixed with a rising tide of nausea. She folded, her body crumpling as it flew backwards. Grace was airborne for what seemed like minutes until her back hit another wall. Marty flew out of her hand on impact. She let the weapon drop to the deck—regaining her footing was a higher priority.
Panborn watched Marty slide away from her. He clung to the bulkhead door, where his attack had rebounded him, planting his feet for another rush. Grace hastily pushed off for another wall, keeping her left side facing him, stealthily unclipping the hammer at her right. She hoped to reach the wall before he moved, but he seemed to possess a preternatural ability to predict where she’d be, sailing toward her, looming larger and larger until he was upon her, pressing her back against the hull of the crawler as it shook and popped.
She was covered in aposti, his robes, his strength, his sour breath. His hands were at her throat, her own hands locked on his wrists. She kept him from crushing her throat, but just barely.
Grace released and brought the heel of her palm against Panborn’s jaw, trying to push his head backwards. With her other hand, she reached along her right side. Ah! She brushed against the hammer, then wrenched it from her belt. For a moment she was back in the airlock with Tim, wielding the hammer in practice, trying not to lose her balance. Tim. With her heart in her throat, she swung, squinting through the tears as she stared into Panborn’s eyes.
The hammer connected with his left temple.
Die, you bastard!
The impact throbbed down her arm. Panborn emitted a deep gurgle. Blood escaped from the wound. His eyes quivered as convulsions tore through his body.
But it wasn’t enough. After fighting him, after seeing him twist the people of the bode, after Tim’s murder and death. It wasn’t enough. She howled and swung again, feeling a surge of aggression swell up her chest. She heard Panborn’s skull crack, felt the crunch up through the handle of the hammer. His body slumped, blood oozing from his head. Then Panborn was falling backwards, away from her, his robes a ripple of brown.
Too late for Tim. Grace released the hammer and stared, for a moment, at the widening pool of red. Revulsion at killing a person caught up with her anger, twisting inside her stomach.
Then the ship rebounded off the surface with a clatter, and her training kicked in. Grace distanced herself from her lethal actions as protector. She’d debrief with a psych later. For now, she had to stop the ship. She turned away from Panborn’s body, scanning the cockpit for the engine’s kill switch. Alongside the yoke, in a panel with switches and pulsing red lights, she saw an orange panel and a large button labeled EMERGENCY ENGINE SHUTDOWN. She strapped herself in and punched it, rocking with the ship as the retro thrusters fired and the treads groaned beneath her.
The ion drive died. Grace grabbed the yoke and steered as the crawler slowly stopped skipping across the icy Cererian surface. Finally it came to a halt, leaving her covered in blood in the dim light of emergency life support.
• • •
Mhau rested on her belly behind the emitter, sighting the pawn cloud with a laser. She winced as the amber light brushed against the top of the cloud, but the pawns didn’t react.
Don’t care about a laser sight, eh? Can’t hurt you?
She had to hurry: from the comm chatter, it seemed the crawler was on its side, rescue beacon activated. Jacob was meeting Plate at Chamber Two. If they were about to rescue Panborn, the pawns could move
at any moment.
Mhau switched off the laser target and moved her hand over the security keypad on the top of the emitter. She took a deep breath, then keyed in a sixty-second burst of gamma radiation.
The COMMIT button winked green.
Cold sweat seeped from every pore. Sixty seconds would allow her to crawl halfway back to the maintenance hatch, but it wouldn’t be enough distance to prevent a severe dose of radiation. It was enough time for a short goodbye to this place, to the people. Paalam, Jacob. I love you.
She reached to press the COMMIT button, glancing up at the pawns. Die, she thought.
As if in response, the pawn cloud evaporated.
Mhau blinked, involuntarily bringing her gloved hand to her helmet in an impossible attempt to rub her eyes. She pushed herself up with her arms, getting a clear view over the emitter.
Gone.
“Mhau! Stop! Don’t use the emitter!” shouted Kyran.
“Kyran! What happened? The pawns disappeared.”
“I just received a comm from Grace,” Kyran said.
Chapter 38
Kyran looked up as Mhau came out of Grace’s bedroom. She looked less haunted, though exhausted, after working much of the past twelve hours. She’d spent most of that time wrangling roiders and performing exhaustive systems tests to ensure all interference had vanished with the pawns’ disintegration. After her shift, she’d chatted with him to make sure the blurp network was still clean, then went to check on Grace.
“Still asleep?” he asked.
Mhau nodded. “Will she be all right?”
“She’ll be fine,” he said. “She isn’t good at sitting still, so I have her under to speed her healing. Minor contusions and two fractured ribs. A bruised jaw.”
“But what about her…?” Mhau motioned to her earlobe and the back of her neck.
“Her dermal dot was simple adhesive, no neural attachments. And she removed the squeeze deftly, only superficial abrasions,” Kyran said. “I was surprised.”
“Not angry?” Mhau said. Her voice rose as she balled her fists. “She played with our lives, Kyran. She ditched our plans. Just because she got lucky—”
“She did what she thought best, and you did what you thought best,” Kyran said.
“I’m still mad.”
“So is she, I’m sure.”
Mhau sighed, then sat in the chair beside him.
“Are you ok?” Kyran asked.
She shook her head. “Not really, no.”
“You were willing to sacrifice yourself if you could save Bode-6,” Kyran said, gently.
“I’m not sure that’s how others will see my actions. Especially Renken.”
“Renken?” Kyran said. “His guilt is tenfold. Besides, I’ve already spoken with him and he supports your staying on as engineer.”
Mhau blinked and looked directly at him. “And you?”
He smiled. “Of course I want you to stay. And without the colony sponsor corrupting what should be a simple slushing operation, the roider hive mentality should bring some welcome stability.”
Mhau bit her lip and lowered her gaze to Kyran’s workbench.
“What are you doing with Tim?”
“Just running some tests. Still hoping.”
Mhau closed her eyes and rubbed her face. “I’m going back to my place to get some sleep. You should do the same.”
She slipped past him and left the apartment.
Sleep? Unlikely, he thought, turning back to his screen.
“Repeat,” he said.
The screen flickered into his brother’s face, his curly hair like a badly-wired circuit board. He looked directly into the camera, his eyes red.
“No guarantee that a restart is possible,” said Raj. “And it might be a clean wipe. Tim’s matrix has changed dramatically since he began. Was born.”
“But there’s a chance,” Kyran murmured.
“A chance you know I’ll take, no matter what,” said Raj, as if he’d heard his brother speak. “It’ll be hard to get Tim to me. I don’t dare show myself in Port Casper.” He shook his head. “And I know Grace will want to make the delivery herself. I don’t know how she’ll do it, though. I almost didn’t get into Cloister 11, and I hadn’t been banished like she was.”
Adventure never deterred Grace, Kyran thought.
“Let me know how Grace is, ok?” Raj’s concern framed his mouth with vertical lines. “You were vague in your message. Even when Grace wins, she’s sometimes in worse shape than her opponent.”
Though the statement came from worry, Raj’s words still bit. She’s my patient, Kyran thought. I’ve tended more sick roiders out here than you will in your lifetime.
He continued the replay.
“Now, back to the chassis,” Raj said. “Your instinct is correct, and you remember the initial coldstart perfectly. Just test the gel’s ability to self-organize by providing it with an external neural input.”
Kyran paused the playback of Raj’s message and rolled his seat over to the cabinet near the door. Sliding open the second drawer from the top, he extracted a pristine gray grafty, one that had never been used, so its wave output wouldn’t have any engram clutter. He stood and bounced over to his exam table where Tim still lay.
If Raj is correct, he thought, I should get immediate feedback.
He put on his goggles and opened the ventral hatch in Tim’s side, exposing the blue gel mass. Under 10x magnification, connecting tendrils appeared, looking like sparse spaghetti in a field of blue sauce. He had already left Earth before Raj had transferred Eugene to the chassis, so he had never seen the matrix fully formed, but he knew the spaghetti should have had a more systematic branching pattern.
Kyran held the grafty in his left hand, turning it over to reveal its link circuit. He tapped the small INIT button to activate it. Then he thumbed his ptenda to absorb and redirect the grafty’s carrier wave.
The blue gel began to shimmer.
Chapter 39
Grace propped herself up in bed, shoulders and back complaining. She needed to move, wanted to assess the state of Bode-6. She looked at her ptenda, hooked beside the bed, its large chronometer readout glowing blue. She’d been asleep for twenty-one hours.
Grace sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, strapping her ptenda to her wrist. She realized someone must have retrieved it for her. Was it Jacob? She stood, feeling weak at first, but appreciating the normality of sliding into her jumpsuit and zipping up her jacket.
Her stomach grumbled.
“I’m starving,” she announced to no one, her voice still scratchy from sleep. She wanted flapjacks. Steak. Coffee. She looked at the door. Maybe Kyran had created a cheesy egg puck while she was sleeping. He’d certainly had plenty of time.
To her surprise, the door opened. Jacob Rander slid into her bedroom, followed closely by Plate.
“Hey, Grace. Kyran said you’d be up soon.”
Plate nodded. “How are you, Gracie?”
“I’m ok.” She looked at the window, where Tim should have been. “Hungry.”
“When aren’t you hungry?” Plate beamed.
“Extra hungry.”
“Come into the main room,” said Jacob. “Kyran has some food waiting for you.”
“Right.” Probably not eggs. “How’s the bode?”
“Doing well. Especially with Plate’s help, here.”
“Plate?” Grace said, stopping in her tracks.
Jacob nodded. “If it weren’t for Plate’s quick thinking—and his eavesdropping on coded comm traffic—we might not have reached you in time. With your crawler on its side, life support was nominal at best.”
Plate is the best, Grace thought. I knew it before, and I certainly know it now.
“Are you thinking of retiring from slush and becoming an assistant protector?” she asked, regarding the big roider.
Plate answered her question with a quick nod and salute.
“Already sorted it out through a makeshi
ft clash,” Jacob said. “Plate can act as interim protector while I retrain.”
“And the way Jacob’s healin’ up, I shouldn’t have to stop slushing for more’n six months,” Plate added.
“Maybe even shorter, thanks to Tim,” Jacob said.
“Tim?” Grace asked, feeling the too-familiar knot low in her throat.
“He modified my sleep squeeze,” Jacob said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I notice a lot of tiny details now. Can almost read peoples’ thoughts by studying their faces, listening to their voices.”
“Tim could do that?” Grace said, incredulous.
Jacob nodded. “He said it brought me on par with you.”
Grace looked away to keep him from seeing her tears. Her stomach rumbled again and she decided to move, pulling out of her bedroom and into the main room.
“Ky! I’m famished!”
She slid toward the table where Tim’s body should have been laying, but Kyran intercepted her before she could grab a beaker of orange liquid. He was smiling. She’d never seen him smile so broadly. Not back home, certainly not here on Bode-6.
“What?” she asked. “I need a drink.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” he said, then turned to Jacob and Plate. “We’ve been waiting, haven’t we?”
They both nodded.
“Were you worried I wasn’t going to?” Grace said. She reached past the doctor and grabbed the beaker. Not bothering to transfer the contents to a bulb, she quaffed the solution. It was cold and wonderful.
Kyran shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I’ve been busy. Busy while you’ve been asleep!”
Kyran was shaking with energy, his words coming in short bursts, his body trembling like he’d just bounced around the bode. His enthusiasm wasn’t infectious, at least not to her. The liquid had helped, but she wanted real food. She didn’t see any eggs—not even hot pucks.
“Didn’t you say Kyran was getting food?” she asked Jacob.
“You drank the beaker,” said Kyran. “Now come on! This is important!”