by Jeffrey Lang
“Get off of me, you filthy peasant, you worthless piece of trash!” He inhaled deeply and Maxwell thought Finch was getting himself back under control, but, instead, he used the breath to continue his tirade. “You’re worthless. I know . . . I know about you. Know enough! Things hidden, because of your Starfleet friends, but I can put the pieces together! I can guess the story.”
Suddenly very tired, Maxwell released his grip and let Finch flop to the deck. From the corner of his eye, he spied the Mother in its half-enclosed tank, its tendrils palpitating. Maxwell said, “I’ll tell you the whole story whenever you like.” Motivated by who-knew-what malice, Finch attempted to grasp Maxwell’s leg and drag him down, but his grip was too weak and Maxwell only had to yank his leg away. For good measure, he gave Finch a little kick in the side with his heel. “But here’s the punch line, the part you should remember: I’ve killed a lot of people.” He paused to catch his breath. Their fight had taken more out of him than he had realized. “Even more than you, I bet.” Maxwell reached down, clutched one of Finch’s legs, and slowly dragged him across the deck toward one of the exits. “Fortunately for you, I’ve decided not to add to the total.” He looked over at the tank and the thrashing blob within. Addressing it directly, Maxwell added, “You don’t count.”
Finch grasped his meaning. “No!” he shouted, trying to kick free. “You can’t! I won’t! Your friends!”
Maxwell tightened his grip and shut off Finch’s channel. No sooner did blessed silence descend than a new sound interrupted: a hailing frequency. Finch stopped struggling, apparently hearing the hail too. Maxwell groaned. A half hour can go by so quickly when you’re preoccupied. He tapped his suit’s comm switch and said, “This is the Hooke.”
Finch’s customer replied, “Time is up.”
Chapter 19
Two Months Earlier
Deck Two, Robert Hooke
“Did they forward the manifest?” Nita Bharad asked. Wendy Newsham struggled to keep up with her friend’s rapid pace. Whenever they walked together, Newsham always felt winded, despite the fact that she was half a meter taller and had longer legs. What it came down to was that Bharad just moved faster, she wanted to get wherever she was going sooner so she could start doing whatever it was that needed to be done. Or so Newsham thought.
“Not the whole thing,” Newsham said. She defrayed some of the cost of her tiny lab space and quarters by working in the hangar as a freight handler. It was one of the “programs” Finch made available to his tenants to help them cover their costs. Working there had one other benefit: Newsham had a pretty good idea what was coming into and leaving the station. “Finch won’t document his private stash.”
“Private stash?” Bharad gave her a sidelong glance.
“You know what I mean. His stuff gets highest priority. If whatever you ordered didn’t fit on the transport, then it’s still sitting in the loading bay back in . . .” She lit up her padd and scanned for the most recent transfer point. “Vulcan? Can that be right?”
“Seems like an awfully roundabout route.”
“Funny thing about Vulcan: they’re very strict about following the letter of the law, but they tend to err on the side of the recipient on questionable items.”
“That’s a very circuitous way of saying something, but I’m not sure what,” Bharad said. She stopped at the lift and pressed the button several times in quick succession: click, click, click, click. This bothered Newsham, who had once dated a turbolift technician. “You only have to push the button once,” Severan used to say. “It gets the idea with just one push.”
“It means that if you know how to list things on an invoice—le mot juste—Vulcan will let it go through.”
“I just wanted my damned vitelline membranes,” Bharad said. “My research is at a standstill! The last batch I got was contaminated! I wasted six months and an entire generation of embryos!”
“Embryos?”
“Eggs, dammit!” Bharad pushed the button six more times.
“I know what embryos are. I just didn’t know you were working with them. Never mind. It’s better I don’t know.” Newsham knew Bharad was some sort of genius with genetic manipulation, but she’d never quite gotten her head around exactly how or why or even whether it was (strictly speaking) legal. Newsham’s work in quantum beekeeping was, by comparison, dull, even when you factored in the fractal honeycombs.
The lift arrived. Several weary-looking scientists slumped out; Bharad impatiently pushed into the throng, not bothering to wait until the departees were clear. “Hangar!” Bharad barked, and the elevator doors slowly slid shut.
“You need to calm down, Nita,” Newsham said.
“Do I?” Bharad asked. “And if I don’t? What’s going to happen?”
“Maybe your head will explode?” Newsham grunted under her breath, but then Bharad’s fuming silence got on her nerves. She suggested, “One of the biotechnology guys started brewing beer and is serving it at the lounge on deck four. Want to go check it out?”
“Beer?” Bharad asked. “Brewed here?” She shuddered. “Sounds unsanitary.”
“Possibly,” Newsham conceded. “Doesn’t the alcohol make it sanitary?”
Bharad dismissed the comment with a wave. The lift descended slowly. Newsham sighed. She wasn’t sure why she and Nita were friends. She wasn’t even completely sure they were friends. The one fact she knew for certain was that they were the only two Terran women on the station. Both of them had tasted real vanilla ice cream and knew what a Scooby-Doo was. They had a bond.
“Do you know the mass of whatever Finch had shipped in?”
Newsham lit up her padd again. “Four hundred kilos.”
“Four hundred!” Bharad shouted. “The transport only carries five hundred! How is anyone else supposed to get anything out here?”
“That does seem like a lot,” Newsham admitted. She scrolled through the parts of the manifest that she had permission to view. “Oh, here’s why.” She pointed to a line item. “Meat space.”
“Meat space?” Bharad asked. “He’s having meat shipped out here? Through Vulcan?”
“No,” Newsham said. “Sorry. Jargon. He’s transporting personnel. A person. He hired someone.”
“Someone?”
“A hundred and fifty kilos of someone.”
“That’s a big someone.”
“He’s probably bringing some personal effects,” Newsham said. “You know: clothing. A pillow. Things.”
“I didn’t get to bring things. Or, I should say, I did, but I had to pay for them.”
Newsham shrugged and felt her ponytail come undone. She handed her padd to Bharad, reached behind her head, and whipped her hair back into a loose knot. “Maybe he did too. We don’t know, do we?”
“He? He, who? What’s his name?”
“Maxwell,” Newsham read from the manifest. “Benjamin Maxwell. He’s going to be the maintenance engineer.”
“Huh,” Bharad snorted. “Janitor, you mean.”
“Sure,” Newsham allowed, “janitor.”
“Sounds like a loser.”
“He’s been hired as a janitor—sorry, maintenance engineer—out on the ass-end of nowhere,” Newsham said. “Of course he’s a loser.” She chuckled. “But we’re all losers, Nita. Otherwise, why would we be here?”
The lift ground to a stop, and the doors slowly parted. The hangar deck was, as usual, chaotic and disorganized. Badly packed crates were piled just outside the Wren’s cargo hatch. Underpaid pilots and shipping clerks milled about uncomfortably, waiting for someone to sign off on manifests. Finch, naturally, was nowhere to be found.
Bharad waded into the fray and began tossing about shipping containers, looking for something with her name on it.
A man with newly (though unevenly) shorn hair stood off to the side of all the nonsense, a carry-on bag at h
is feet and a small shipping container hanging loosely from his hand. He was watching the hubbub on the deck passively, like he was trying to solve some kind of puzzle. When he noticed Newsham’s gaze, he cautiously approached her, moving, she thought, like a horse that had been beaten. “Um,” he said, “hi. I’m looking for Anatoly Finch?”
“Then you should just follow his stuff up on the lift,” Newsham replied. “His will be the last stop at the top.”
“Oh,” Maxwell said, and retracted in on himself a bit. “Damn. Okay. Well, can you tell me where my bunk is?”
“I’m guessing you’re the new maintenance engineer?”
“Janitor, yeah.”
“I can help you find your way. As soon as my friend is finished tossing the place for her package. You have all your stuff?”
Maxwell jostled his bag with the tip of his boot. “All set.”
“That’s it? Nothing else? No . . . pillow?”
“There aren’t any extra pillows here?”
Newsham thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Maybe?” She nodded at the box Maxwell was cradling under his arm. “What’s that?”
He shook the package gently. “Oh, right. I saw this on the flight deck. Read the label and realized it was perishable. Figured I wasn’t bringing all the mass I was allotted, so I grabbed it.” He shrugged. “Do you know who it belongs to?”
Newsham scanned the invoice label with her padd. Bharad, Nita, it read. Vitelline membranes. “Well, damn,” she said. “You’ve just made a friend for life.”
“O-kay,” Maxwell said. For just a moment, his slack features twisted into a knot. It looked, Newsham thought, like he had forgotten how to smile, but was doing his best. “Well,” he concluded, “that’s good. Can’t have too many of those, can you?”
January 9, 2386
Deck Five
“Do you think she can survive outside?” Nog asked.
“I don’t know,” O’Brien said. “But she seemed to be doing fine in the core.”
“I think there was at least a little air pressure in there.”
“Maybe,” O’Brien said, leaning out through the crack in the hull, staring out at the stars. “But she seems to be doing well enough now. I think we thank our lucky stars and go with it.” He looked back over his shoulder at Nog and his new best friend. Studying Ginger’s face, O’Brien noted that there was some kind of thin film over the two largest eyes, while the half-dozen or so smaller orbs were shut tight against the vacuum. Her mouthparts were folded shut too, and some sort of carapace closed over them. The arachnoform might not be completely invulnerable to the extremes of open space, but O’Brien had a strong feeling Ginger could tolerate more hostile environments than any Terran spider could. O’Brien wondered if Nita Bharad really understood what she had brought into the universe, but he knew that the present moment was definitely not the time to ponder such questions.
“But we don’t even know if she can cling to the side of the station,” Nog said.
“You’re looking for reasons not to do this, Nog,” O’Brien said. He very badly wanted this part of the mission to be over.
“I am expressing a reasonable amount of caution about expending our scant resources, Chief,” Nog retorted. O’Brien was impressed despite himself. The kid knew how to use officer language. “In my estimation, we only have one shot at this, and I am hesitant to proceed until we fully understand the parameters of the mission.”
O’Brien chuckled. “That last bit was practically Sisko-esque,” he admitted. “Well done.” Nog scowled, but he couldn’t maintain it and grinned. Performing a quick mental calculation, he asked, “Do you know we’ve known each other for over fifteen years?”
“Seventeen, Chief.”
“Seventeen?”
“Seventeen.”
O’Brien considered. There was, at minimum, a strong probability that they were about to die. The plan—his plan—was ridiculous, though he knew it was also their best shot at survival, based on the information they had at hand. “It’s possible,” he said, “that it might be time for you to start calling me Miles.”
Nog seemed startled. He appeared to consider the statement very carefully. Despite the clock that was ticking in his head, O’Brien let him. “It’s possible,” Nog allowed, “but it’s just as likely that I really like calling you Chief.”
O’Brien turned the sentiment around in his head for a minute or two and then laughed, using, he knew, precious oxygen. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. You win. Let’s get on with this. I can’t feel my toes anymore.”
Nog hesitated. “Hang on a second, Chief. We’re all the way down here at the bottom again. Maybe we should go back to the hangar and get something that might help us.”
“No phasers there,” O’Brien said. “Remember that conversation?”
“I do,” Nog sighed. “And no, there aren’t any phasers. But maybe there’s something that could be almost as useful.”
Finch’s Lab
“People are stranded here,” Maxwell said. “Civilians.” He wasn’t sure if the word would have much impact on Finch’s customer. Was he a military man? Maxwell still couldn’t place the accent; he couldn’t detect anything in the customer’s cadence that screamed military. While he didn’t subscribe to the idea that there was such a thing as a military personality, he believed that being part of a service organization enhanced certain modes of behavior. If nothing else, military personnel were polite when there was no cause not to be, and Finch’s customer was being a rude ass.
“I do not care,” the speaker replied. “I’ve come for my product. I paid in advance. It’s mine and I want it now.”
In his corner, Finch, who had been rolled up into a ball, uncurled just enough to correct, “Only half.” Maxwell had reopened the channel to Finch’s suit, but considered shutting it off again.
The customer must have heard Finch, too. “If it isn’t ready, it doesn’t matter if I’ve paid for half, all, or nothing at all. Any way you look at it, I have no reason to stay. Except, perhaps, to have the satisfaction of watching this place explode. It will soon, too. My scans have revealed several structural flaws.”
“And you could just watch that happen?” Maxwell asked. “To innocent bystanders?”
“Would Finch be one of the ‘innocent’ bystanders?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a reply.”
“So, then the answer is: yes, absolutely.”
Maxwell nudged him with the toe of a boot. “Finch,” he said, attempting to keep his voice under control.
“Leave me alone.”
“I need information. Some kind of leverage.”
“Leave me alone. I’m ready to die.”
Maxwell grabbed the loose cloth of Finch’s environmental suit and attempted to roll him over. “I’m not,” Maxwell said. “And there are a dozen people down in the hangar who might have an opinion.”
Surprisingly, Finch relaxed and turned his head so that he could look Maxwell in the eye. One of Finch’s eyebrows was cocked up. Something had amused him. Maxwell guessed what it was: his desperation. “Not ready to die yet?” Finch asked. “I’m surprised to hear you say it. Ever since you’ve come here, it seemed to me that you’ve been watching for it just out of the corner of your eye. Didn’t want to see it coming head-on, but you’ve been bracing for it, when the moment came. Why else come to a place like this?”
“I’m the only thing that’s kept this place from falling apart.”
“Hmmm,” Finch said. “But only just enough. Just enough so that it wouldn’t fly apart all at once. Just enough so that no one would think to blame you. You made things nice enough that your ‘friends’ thought well of you, clapped you on the back, shared their home brew with you. Couldn’t be too obvious, could you?”
Maxwell was compelled to ask, “Too obvious about what?”
�
��About how much you want to die. Out here. In the inky black. You just needed to find the right place to do it. Somewhere no one would even notice.” Finch pointed at the center of Maxwell’s head with his stubby finger. “You live here, out in the black. Even when you’re not here, you’re here.”
Ben Maxwell’s face felt numb and his eyes burned. He tried to recall what time it was and how long it had been since he’d slept, but couldn’t get the numbers to add up. He couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so he did the simplest thing he could think to do under the circumstances and told the truth. “You might be right, Finch. The evidence is stacked up behind your theory. Some days.” He shook his head. “But not today.”
Finch smirked, showing his pearly, white teeth. “Doubt there’s much you can do about it,” he said. “At least without my assistance.”
Movement at the opposite side of the lab caught Maxwell’s attention. He was afraid to take his eyes off Finch, not believing the big man had given up. Indeed, Finch’s entire monologue seemed designed to distract Maxwell and, if that was true, the ruse had almost succeeded. Now, across the room: signs of life.
Finch was on the deck with equipment lockers and consoles blocking his view of the Mother. He couldn’t see what Maxwell was seeing, a fact that made Maxwell just a tiny bit sad. The creature’s tentacles waved in agitation. The cluster of limbs that were thrust out through the cracks in the lab’s hull were pulsing and throbbing as if the Mother was attempting to retract them into its body. The Mother was not happy.
A bright light flared outside the hull. Maxwell shut his eyes against the flash and turned away. When he looked back again, the light had faded and Miles O’Brien was standing in a wide gap in the bulkhead. Under one arm, he awkwardly held what appeared to be the still glowing nozzle of an ion thruster pack. Miles must have been using the thruster as an assault weapon or bludgeon or maybe both.