Gemina

by Amie Kaufman

  Nik M: this is taking too long

  Pauchok: it’ll take even longer if I have to stop every three seconds and talk 2 u

  Nik M: ella seriously, I’m gonna need dentures soon

  Pauchok: relax have a smoke god

  Nik M: I had 3 already

  Pauchok: look, after I pulled that **** with the airvents, their deckers r on full alert. They know I’m back in the grid and they hunting for me. i can’t just brute force this thing, they’ll be all over me like white on extremely fabulous rice. now shut up this is harder than i thought

  Nik M: am I distracting u

  Pauchok: yes shut up

  Nik M: what if I sing to u

  Pauchok: SHUT UP GODAMMIT

  Nik M: AHA ALL CAPS!!

  Nik M: ALL CAAAAAAPS!!!!!

  Nik M: HOW DOES IT FEEL *****?!?!?

  Malikov does this weird little dance and punches the air, just as a heavy clunk resounds around the bay and the sirens start blaring. Panic bleaching his features, he glances up at the flashing red globes around the airlock before turning back to the palmpad.

  Nik M: **** is that bad?

  Pauchok: I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU NOT TO DISTRACT MEEEEEE AAAAAAAHDB#OWALEKVNLAKENLQWENVLQKENV”KQENV”LQENV”LAV

  Pauchok: THEY RIGGED THE ****IGN QUARANTINE ALARMS HAD EM SNITCHING TO A REDUNDANCY IN CASE SOMEONE TRIED TO JUMP SHIP AND YOU MADE ME MISS IT YOU ***HOLE

  Nik M: um. soz?

  Pauchok: **** they coming. 2 of em close by, already in the elevators.

  Pauchok: **** **** ****

  Nik M: can u get the airlock open

  Pauchok: trying

  Nik M: **** **** ****

  Pauchok: I said that already

  Pauchok: gimmee 3 minutes

  Malikov scans the bay, scrambles for cover behind a shipping container. He checks his mag just as the elevator doors ping open and the chorus of “Lollipop” accompanies four concussion grenades into the bay. They burst in quick succession, overloading the compensators on the sec cams. Audio track is squealing static, followed by full-auto gunfire, heavy caliber. The blasts echo around the chamber, thunder rolling off the walls. When the cams recover, I can see the air vents have been cut to pieces and the AAL suits are all for the recyc—looks like the audit team is learning from past mistakes. Good thing Malikov didn’t decide to repeat history.

  The BT goons are Ji-hun “Flipside” Park and Ragman—the two pilots assigned to Falk’s crew. Ragman is missing his eyebrows, courtesy of the Donnelly-Grant sugar bomb episode, and his skin is looking slightly charbroiled. Both are wearing sealed helmets and breather rigs over their tactical armor.

  Review of sec footage shows that the men were following Falk’s orders in Bay 21, rigging explosives on the airlocks and drive systems of the Talisman, a midweight ice freighter from the Saine system. Fortunately, they hadn’t reached Bay 24 to rig the Boop yet, but Bay 21 was close by, which meant they were first on scene when the alarm began screaming. For all they knew, this was the same hostile that X-ed out Beta Squad and took Ragman’s eyebrows. It could’ve also been Grant, the MIA chief Falk wanted alive. But with the amount of killing their team had seen since they arrived, they were taking zero chances.

  Nikky’s still hiding as they arrive, breathing quick. As the BT goons prowl deeper into the bay, Ella arcs up the fire extinguishers. Ceiling vents spray potassium bicarbonate fog into the air, cutting visibility to maybe four meters—though the laser sights on their VK rifles still give away Flipside and Ragman’s position. The Little Spider finally cracks the airlock, and the rumble of heavy doors echoes through the bay. The goonsquad train their weapons on the sound and steal toward it. And with their backs turned, Nik rises from cover and aims his pistol at Flipside’s head.

  Malikov knows these guys will deep-six him the first chance they get. They X-ed out his friends, his uncle, tried to X him and Donnelly, too. But he’s hesitating. His fingers are drumming the grip, not squeezing the trigger. Maybe he’s thinking of Juggler, head blown off in that toilet. Maybe he’s thinking of Oksana Balashova. His brother, Erik. Any of them.

  All of them?

  He glances at the palmpad dangling from his belt, blinking the sweat from his eyes.

  Pauchok: do it

  Pauchok: they cashed out soraya

  Pauchok: double G

  Pauchok: little ivan

  Pauchok: NIK THEY KILLE DMY ****ING DAD

  Pauchok: SHOOT THEM

  It’s true, what the Little Spider’s saying. Every word. But Malikov can’t take the shot. Teeth gritted. Breathing curses. He can’t do it. Given the choice, he can’t pull that trigger.

  Sadly, the BT goons don’t leave him much choice. Maybe it’s the sound of Malikov’s labored breathing. Maybe it’s just training or instinct. But at that moment, something makes Ragman glance behind to check his six. Through the mist of KHCO3, the pilot catches sight of the kid and his pistol, opens his mouth to yell warning.

  And finally, Malikov fires.

  Say what you will about his stones, the kid’s a crack shot. Tracking a moving target through a sea of chemical fog, Malikov’s bullet still punches clean through Flipside’s helmet behind the left ear, drops him like an anvil before he knows what hit him. Ragman wears a thin spray of his copilot’s blood, lifting his rifle and unloading a strobing burst into Nik’s cover as the kid empties his clip. Six of seven shots hit Ragman center mass, snapping the support strap on his VK and sending the rifle skittering along the bay floor. The man stumbles back into a freight ’tainer, slithers to the deck in a pool of red.

  In the silence following, Malikov loads another clip with trembling hands. Leaves his cover with the weapon still trained on the goons. Gasping for breath.

  “****,” he whispers. “**** me…”

  He kneels by Flipside’s body, peeks inside the satchel on his back. Rations. Water. Explosives. Detonators. Jackpot. He unbuckles the pack, struggles to pull it off the corpse’s shoulders. And as he’s slinging it onto his back, Ragman gasps and opens his eyes.

  The man drags in a rattling breath through what sounds like a punctured lung. Malikov’s shots hit him dead center, where his body armor was thickest, and the plasteel and kevlar have absorbed the worst of it. Broken ribs. Perforated sternum, maybe. But he’s alive. And he’s fumbling for his pistol.

  Malikov raises his own gun. Trains it on Ragman’s head.

  “Stop. Don’t ****ing move, chum.”

  Ragman coughs. Spits blood. Takes hold of the grip.

  “I mean it,” Malikov warns. “Don’t pull that piece, ****er.”

  Maybe it’s the shakes in Malikov’s hand that make him do it. Maybe it’s the death of his squaddies and the thirst for revenge. Maybe he’s punch-drunk from the shock or just unconvinced this kid has what it takes to look a man in the eyes as he pulls the trigger. I dunno. Won’t ever know.

  Ragman pulls his pistol. Raises it toward Malikov.

  “Don’t!” Malikov roars.

  The shot booms around the bay, spatters the ’tainer behind the pilot in red and gray.

  Malikov hangs frozen, arm extended. If it weren’t for his gasping, I’d swear the file had glitched. He just crouches there, not moving, not speaking, until finally the elevator doors close and the car begins ascending. Ragman’s commset whispers in the dark.

  “Ragman, this is Kali inbound, copy.”

  “Ragman, Kali, sitrep, over.”

  More audit team members are on the way. That shakes the kid awake, sure and true.

  Thirteen seconds later, Malikov’s running on unsteady legs across the deck and through the airlock. He stabs the controls with bloody fingers. Seals the umbilical behind him and bundles into the Betty Boop. Drops the palmpad onto the pilot’s seat beside him, underneath a dead man’s satchel and a still-warm pistol. The palmpad screen is flooded with pings.

  Pauchok: cuz, u ok?

  Pauchok: it wuz u or them

  Pauchok: Nik u did the right thing

&n
bsp; Pauchok: cuz talk 2 me

  Malikov’s pale. Drawn. Eyes a million miles away. He doesn’t even notice the constant pinging of the palmpad. He certainly doesn’t notice the slight auto-correction undertaken by the Boop’s flight computer, compensating for excess mass on the shuttle’s starboard side.

  Doesn’t notice the dull clunk of metal on metal beneath the Boop’s secondary thrusters as he punts slowly out into the black.

  Doesn’t notice the live hermium fuel rod lodged in the intakes under the Boop’s wing.

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 642

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Travis “Cerberus” Falk, Lieutenant, Team Commander

  Bianca “Mercury” Silva, Corporal, Engineer

  DATE: 08/16/75

  TIMESTAMP: 15:06

  MERCURY: Cerberus, this is Mercury. Over.

  CERBERUS: Mercury, Cerberus. I read.

  MERCURY: I have a question. One of highest import.

  CERBERUS: I await it with bated breath.

  MERCURY: Who’s your mommy, baby?

  CERBERUS: Mercury. I have at least four local hostiles loose aboard this station. Of my twenty-four original team members, twelve are either dead or wounded. I have a Voice of the goddamn Resistance opening air vents and letting my neatly partitioned civis out into the wild, a Shinobi-class drone fleet mere hours away, an inbound ship carrying living, breathing evidence of an atrocity on a scale not seen since the Cordoba Incursion, which was committed by the very company that pays my ****ing mortgage, and best of all, a possible infestation of hostile, parasitic alien life-forms in the mother****ing reactor area.

  CERBERUS: If ever under God there was a time not to **** with me, now is it.

  MERCURY: Maintenance in Engineering is complete. The system is green lights across the board, and we’re ready to commence testing the wormhole on your order.

  MERCURY: Who’s your mommy, Travis?

  CERBERUS: I…

  MERCURY: Say iiiiiiit. Who’s your mommy-wommy, Travvy-wavvy?

  CERBERUS: You are my mommy, Bianca. Thy bountiful loins are the wellspring from whence I flow.

  MERCURY: My bountiful loins aren’t really your business anymore, big boy.

  CERBERUS: …You started it.

  MERCURY: Made you smile, though, right?

  CERBERUS: …

  MERCURY: So you want me to begin testing this rip in the fabric of the universe or not?

  CERBERUS: Yes, thank you, Corporal Silva. That would be lovely.

  MERCURY: [laughs] Roger that. Mercury out.

  “Alert all stations. Alert all stations. Intraversal umbilicus initiation sequence commencing. Heimdall wormhole, destination Kerenza 101:421:084, will be online in T-minus 180 seconds. Please report to your appropriSweet as sugar. Sweet as pie. Kiss the boys and make them cry. But other boys don’t taste as sweet, now that I’ve had you to…”

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 901

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Travis “Cerberus” Falk, Lieutenant, Team Commander

  Fleur “Kali” Russo, Sergeant, Alpha Squad–Leader

  DATE: 08/16/75

  TIMESTAMP: 15:09

  KALI: Cerberus, this is Kali. Code Red!

  KALI: Cerberus, Kali! Repeat, Code Red!

  CERBERUS: Kali, Cerberus. Tell me your woes.

  KALI: Security breach in the docks. Bay 24.

  CERBERUS: Sitrep?

  KALI: Flipside and Ragman are flatline, and a shuttle is missing.

  KALI: Betty Boop, short-haul tugboat, ident HM-091—

  CERBERUS: God ****ing dammit.

  —SWITCHING TO SECURE CHANNEL 642—

  RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 642

  PARTICIPANTS:

  Travis “Cerberus” Falk, Lieutenant, Team Commander

  Bianca “Mercury” Silva, Corporal, Engineer

  DATE: 08/16/75

  TIMESTAMP: 15:09

  CERBERUS: Mercury, this is Cerberus. Over.

  CERBERUS: Bi, we have a local civi loose in a shuttle out there. Abort wormhole test now, over. Repeat, test abort.

  MERCURY: …Cerberus, Mercury, I read you. Aborting test now, over.

  MERCURY: Um…****…

  CERBERUS: Mercury, we have an unrestrained hostile out there. Abort now. This is a direct order.

  MERCURY: Christ…

  MERCURY: Travis, we can’t. System has locked us out. This ****ing malware is—

  CERBERUS: I thought you said you had that under control?

  MERCURY: We did! This thing’s like a case of the ****ing scratch. It just keeps coming back!

  CERBERUS: Jesus wept. What the hell happens if some cowboy is out there in a shuttle when this goddamn hole in the universe opens up?

  MERCURY: Well…nothing, really.

  MERCURY: Nothing bad, anyways. The wormhole is supposed to transport ships from one system to another. Worst-case scenario for us right now, he traverses the bridge to Kerenza. No big panic.

  MERCURY: I mean, we’re basically opening a tear in reality here. If things went really brown, we could all be ripped into another ****ing universe, Travis. Or our entire universe c—

  CERBERUS: So you’re saying this hostile could be transported to the Kerenza system? He could warn the Hypatia? Blow this entire ****ing operation? This is your idea of “nothing bad” happening?

  MERCURY: Um…

  MERCURY: Yeah, okay. Good point, well made.

  Again, footage for this entire journal is a locked-off shot of Ella Malikova speaking directly to the camera. Looks like she’s running on zero downtime—dark shadows under red-rimmed eyes, bleach-white skin and a veritable tower of empty Mount Russshmore Energy Drink® cans (now with 20% more Dexedrine!) piled around her terminal.

  I guess she figures she can sleep when she’s dead.

  Despite the O2 mask over her face, Ella’s talking so quickly it’s hard to understand her. I tried to punctuate where appropriate, but honestly, this kid doesn’t believe in it.

  Journal begins:

  “Hey, Zo. Miss you bad, monster hugzzzzzzzzzz, mwah, mwah. Mr. Biggles II sends his love, say hello, you little *******.”

  Malikova holds up a small fishbowl to the camera. A distinctly nervous-looking black goldfish floats amid a storm of pink pebbles and (too much) fish food before being whisked out of shot.

  “So, update on the siege of Heimdall, here goes. The less-than-super-turbo-awesome team of Her Majesty Queen Hanna of House Donnelly, first of her name, and my cuz has joined forces with Chief Grant from Engineering—you know, that crusty old ****er with the insaaaaane eyebrows, yeah, that one. Anyway, Crustyman has given me deets on a command-level backdoor he had built into the system for emergencies such as this, and if they expected a flying kick to the unmentionables from a covert ops team belonging to another corp, why the **** didn’t these mooks have a bigger SecTeam, is what I say.”

  Ella pauses to drag aside her O2 mask, take another gulp of Mount Russshmore.®

  “This stuff tastes like bubblegum mixed with cough meds, you ever notice that?” She squints at the label. “ ‘Recommend no more than two cans within a twenty-four-hour…’ Pfft.”

  Tossing the empty can over her shoulder, she continues.

  “So, anywaaaaay, the BT decker has outbound comms under lock and key, but I figure if I make a big noise trying to blast my way into the Defense Grid System, I might be able to fool ’em into thinking I’m looking to ax their big bad assault fleet when it arrives. And meantime, I use this channel the chieferino showed me to backdoor a tightband beam and warn the Hypatia that some capital T is headed right up their alley. Evil genius…right here, *****.

  “I hadda straight-up cook the air-vent control systems when I opened up the station but I can’t do anything slash and burn this time. We gonna need these comms to get word out to the Core. So I gotta creep careful-like. Full frontal assault on the DGS, and full ninja style into waypoint comms, which
hopefully they won’t even see with all the noise I make at the front gate. Things are going pretty bad for the BT goons, but their decker is still primo. I caught her handle trawling her logs and get this—she calls herself Mantis.

  “Spider versus bug—I know, right? I mean, who names themselves after a bug, seriously.”

  Ella pops another can, takes a sip, drags her mask back on. As she taps out lightning-quick commands onto her keyboards, the computer at her back spits out an ominous hum, diodes switching from quiet green to a burning, furious red.

  “Anyway, I gotta get stomping. Wish me luck, sugarpants. Love you miss you byyyyyye.”

  COMMUNICATION INTERCEPT

  FROM: WUC JUMP STATION HEIMDALL 524:099:847

  TO: SCIENCE VESSEL HYPATIA

  INCEPT: 08/16/75

  Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Ella Malikova aboard Jump Station HEIMDALL calling Wallace Ulyanov Consortium science vessel HYPATIA. Command clearance zulu one alpha niner two five bravo helix seven seven zero one.

  HYPATIA, please respond.

  Okay, listen up, kittens. Good news: We know about the attack on the Kerenza system, and we got your back, HYPATIA.

  Bad news: Jump Station HEIMDALL is under hostile control. At approximately 18:00 on August 15, the station was seized by a goonsquad belonging to BeiTech Industries. Said goons are to hold position until a drone fleet designated KENNEDY arrives at HEIMDALL, jumps through the wormhole to the Kerenza system and wipes out both HYPATIA and any survivors on the Kerenza colony.

  Most folks aboard HEIMDALL are locked down or KO’d, and the station commander’s dead. But there’s a few of us still up and about, including the chief of engineering, Isaac Grant, and we’re doing our best to monkey-wrench these ****ers and get word out to the Core systems about what’s happening here. We need to coordinate with you kittens about how exactly we’re gonna go about it.