The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

Reedy’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say. Betrayal was written all over her face.

  Petoskey took off his headset. “Lukinov, I trust you to take care of this. Nikomedes. ...”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Petoskey couldn’t seem to think of any orders to give him. “I have to go talk to Chevrier. We have our mission. With the second ship out of the way, we have to prepare to dive.”

  Max followed Petoskey out into the corridor, but returned to his room to stash the stolen memory. Only two things mattered now: getting the information to his superior, and keeping Lukinov from getting it to his. It needed to be used as a defensive weapon, not as an excuse to start a war. Lukinov had access to the radio and official channels. Max didn’t. That stacked the cards in Lukinov’s favor.

  He had to do something with it soon, before they jumped to Adarean space. And he had to hope that a baby-faced ensign just out of the Academy didn’t fold under pressure and give him away. It was like a game of Blind Man’s Draw. Max had already put everything he had into the pot.

  There was nothing else he could do at this point except play the card that he was dealt.

  Meal time. Max sat by himself, as usual, at his own narrow table in the galley. Even the trooper guarding him sat with some of the other crewmen.

  Lukinov entered, saw Max, and came straight over to him. “Reedy won’t say that you were lying, but you were,” the intelligence officer said. “Not that it matters. The machines are buggered, the data’s all gone. Even Burdick can’t find it.’

  Max had a blank sheet in his pocket. He pulled it out, and a stylus, and passed it over to Lukinov. This was the way duels were proposed at the Academy. According to the Academy’s cover story, it was the way Reedy had arranged to meet with Vance.

  Lukinov looked at the sheet, then scratched “observation room” and a time two hours distant on it. He pushed it back over to Max, who shook his head, and wrote “reactor room.”

  “Why there?” asked the intelligence officer.

  “They’ve got cameras there, but no mikes. It’s off limits to Simco’s troopers, but not to us. We won’t be there long.”

  “So this is just to be a private conversation? I should leave my weapons behind?”

  “I wish you would.”

  “More’s the pity,” said Lukinov, and stormed out.

  Max was putting his tray away, trying to resolve his other problem, when Simco came in. “Lukinov won’t let us throw the ensign in the brig, not yet. But he thought it was best if I stuck with you personally in the meantime.”

  Perfect, thought Max, just perfect.

  * * *

  Two hours had never stretched out to such an eternity before in all Max’s life. Simco escorted him to his quarters and joined him inside.

  “Do you want to follow me into the head and shake it dry for me?” asked Max on his way into the bathroom.

  Simco laughed, but remained in the other room. Max retrieved a bottle of pills and an old pair of nail clippers from the medicine cabinet, putting them in his pocket. Then he led Simco on a long, roundabout trip through the corridors that ended up on the floor of the Black Forest. He stopped when he got there and snapped his fingers.

  “I forgot something,” Max said. “You don’t mind if I borrow that multi-tool in your pocket, do you?”

  Simco stuffed his hand automatically into his pants, wrapped it around the bulge there, and froze. “Sorry, sir, I don’t have one with me,” he said, grinning. “Got one in my locker. Or do you want to hit Engineering to borrow one?”

  “No, it’s nothing I need that badly.” He jumped. “Meet you up top, in the exercise room.” He grabbed hold of the service ladder outside one of the missile shafts, and pulled himself up. He used his momentum to spin, kicking off from the side of the shaft, and shot like a rocket toward the ceiling.

  “Hold up there,” called Simco, halfway up the stairs.

  Max ducked into the upper corridor. He dove through the hall as fast as he could, past the exercise room, down the access shaft, and back out the corridor below, returning to the missile room. He watched Simco’s feet disappear above him into the top corridor, and then he flew straight across the cavern to the section over Engineering, opened a portside hatch, and closed it again after himself.

  A long time ago Max had modified his nail clippers to function as a makeshift tool. Bracing himself against the wall, he used it now to remove the grille from the ceiling vent—it was the supply duct for the HEPA filters in the clean hood corner of the battery room directly below. He squeezed inside, feet first, pulling the grille after him. There was no way to reattach it, but with no gravity he didn’t need to. He simply pulled it into place and it stayed there.

  It was an eighteen-inch duct and he was a small man. Even so, he felt like toothpaste being forced back into the tube. He had to twist sideways and flip over to get past the L-curve, but after that it was a straight trip down to the reactor room. With his arms pinned above his head, and no gravity to help him, he writhed downward like a rat caught in a drainpipe. He reached bottom, unable to go any further. His kicks had no effect at all and his heart began to race as he wondered if he’d be trapped inside the duct. Finally, by pressing his elbows out into the corners, and hooking one foot on the lip where the vent teed out horizontally, he was able to push the other foot downward until the duct tore open.

  He eased downward into the plenum space above the hood ceiling and kicked through the tiles. When he finally lowered himself into the battery room he was drenched in sweat and his pants were ripped in the thigh. He hadn’t even noticed. He undid his belt and looked at the scrape on his leg. It was mostly superficial. Not much blood.

  He leaned in the corner, with the hood’s softwalls pulled back, catching his breath. The cameras were all installed to monitor the reactor, so they faced the center of the room. Most of them close-upped on specific pieces of equipment. He eased out, pushing himself up toward the high ceiling.

  He glanced at his chrono. Already seven minutes past his meeting time with Lukinov. He waited two more minutes before the hatch popped open. He had a split second to decide what he would do if it was one of the engineers.

  But a familiar balding head poked through the door. Max eased out of the hood area. “Hey, Lukinov.”

  “Max?” The other man twisted around to see him. He entered, closing the hatch behind him. “How the hell did you get in here? Chevrier’s guard at the door gave me the runaround, swore he hadn’t seen you. The mate watching the monitors said you never came in here either. What are you, some damn spook?”

  Max ignored the questions. “You wanted to talk to me about the radio room. It was me. I stole the memory chips.”

  Lukinov came toward him, pale with fury. “You did what? By god, I’ll see you shot.”

  “Intelligence won’t touch me,” said Max. “Not for this.”

  “I’ll get Political Education to do it, you goddamn weasel,” Lukinov vowed. He launched himself toward Max, keeping a hand against the wall to orient himself. “Your boss, Mallove, is a personal friend of mine. He won’t like—”

  Max jumped, tucking his knees and spinning as he sailed in the air. He wrapped his belt around Lukinov’s throat, pivoted, twisting the belt as he pulled himself back to the floor. The motion jerked Lukinov upside down so that he floated in the air like a child’s balloon.

  “Your boss, Drozhin,” whispered Max, “doesn’t like the way you’ve been selling Intelligence’s secrets out to Political Education and War.”

  Drozhin was Max’s boss too. He’d moled Max in Political Education as soon as the new Department formed.

  Lukinov panicked. He thrashed his arms and legs, disoriented, trying to make contact with any surface, clutching futilely at Max, who was behind his back and below him. Max twisted the belt, pinching the carotid arteries and cutting off blood flow to the brain. Lukinov was unconscious in about seven seconds. His body just went still. He was dead a few seconds later.

&nb
sp; Drozhin had ordered Max to watch Lukinov, not kill him, but he couldn’t see any other way around it. He shoved the body toward the corner, under the vent, and put his belt back on.

  Still nobody at the hatch. Maybe they hadn’t noticed. Maybe they were summoning Simco. There’d be no denying this one, not if he’d missed the location of any cameras.

  But he had no time to think about failure. He didn’t want anyone looking closely at Lukinov’s body and he didn’t want the ship making the jump to Adares. Intelligence was publicly part of the war party, but Drozhin believed that war would destroy Jesusalem and wanted it sabotaged at all costs. Max took the medicine bottle from his pocket and removed the two pills that weren’t pills. He popped them into his mouth to warm them—they tasted awful—while he removed the wire and blasting cap from the bottle’s lid.

  He couldn’t blow any main part of the reactor, he understood that much. But the cooling circuit used water pipes, and a radioactive water spill could scuttle the jump. Max darted in, fixed the explosive to a blue-tagged pipe, plugged the wire in it, and hurried back to the hood. He pushed Lukinov’s corpse in the direction of the explosive before he climbed through the hole into the vent.

  There was a soft boom behind him.

  Max cranked his neck to peer down between his feet and saw the water spray in a fine mist, filling the air like fog. All the radiation alarms blared at once.

  They sounded far off at first while he wiggled upward. He thought he was sweating, but realized that the busted air flow was drawing some of the water up through the shaft. Droplets pelleted him with radiation, and that made him crawl faster. He got stuck in the bend for a moment, finally squeezing through, and thrusting the vent cover out of the way without checking first to see if anyone was in the corridor. But it was empty—so far his luck held! He retrieved the grille and screwed it back into place. One of the alarms was located directly beside him. Its wailing made his pulse skip.

  He emerged into the shaft of the weapons compartment as men raced both ways, toward the accident and away from it. No one noticed him. He was headed across the void toward his quarters when someone called his name.

  “Hey, Nikomedes!”

  He saw the medtech, Noyes, down by the corridor that led to Engineering. “What is it, Doc?”

  “You don’t have your comet, do you?”

  Max touched the empty spot on his breast pocket. “No. Why?”

  “Radiation emergency!” he screamed. “You’re drafted as the surgeon’s assistant—come on!”

  Max considered ignoring the command, but according to regulations, Doc was right. Anyone who wasn’t Vacuum and Radiation qualified was designated an orderly to help treat those who were. Plus it gave him an alibi. He jumped toward the bottom of the Black Forest and joined Noyes.

  “Here, carry this kit,” Noyes said, handing over a box of radiation gear as he went back across the hall to grab another.

  “Where is it?” asked Max. He held the gear close, covering the rip in his pants. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t know. The com’s down again. But it has to be the reactor.”

  Nobody guarded the main hatch to Engineering so the two men went straight in. A crowd gathered in the monitor room, spilling out into the corridor. Noyes pushed straight through, and Max followed along behind him. Chevrier was shaking a crewman by the throat.

  “—what the hell did you let him in there for?”

  “He ordered me to!” the man complained. It was DePuy.

  “There’s water everywhere!” another one of the men yelled, coming back from the direction of the reactor room hatch. “The reactor’s over-heating fast!”

  “It’s already past four hundred cees,” said one of the men at the monitors.

  Chevrier tried to fling DePuy at the wall, but they just flopped a short distance apart. The chief engineer turned toward the rest of crew in disgust.

  Rucker, the first lieutenant, showed up behind Max. “Captain wants a report—the com’s down again!”

  “That’s because the reactor’s overheating,” Chevrier said. “The cooling system’s busted.”

  “My God,” said Rucker, invoking a deity he probably didn’t believe in, thought Max.

  Noyes slapped a yellow patch on the first lieutenant’s shirt. “Radiation detectors, everyone. When they turn orange, you’re in danger, means get out. Red means see me for immediate treatment.” He handed some to Max. “Make sure everyone wears one.”

  “We’ve got to go in there, fix the pipe, and cool the reactor,” said Chevrier. Some of the men started to protest. “Shut the fuck up! I’m asking for volunteers. And I’ll be going in with you.”

  Rucker wiped the blond cowlick back off his forehead. “I’ll go in,” he said. Six other crewmen volunteered, most of them senior engineers. Max slapped radiation badges on those men first.

  “Here’s the plan.” Chevrier pointed to pictures on the monitors. “We’re going to shut off these valves here and here, cut out and replace this section of pipe—”

  Noyes, looking over his shoulder, said, “That man in there ought to come out at once. He looks unconscious.”

  “That man is dead,” said Chevrier, “and it’s a good thing too, or I’d kill him. Then we’re going to run a pipe through here, from the drinking water supply—”

  A moan of dismay.

  “—shut up! We’ll take it from the number three reserve tank. That ought to be enough, and it won’t contaminate the rest of the water. Once we get the main engine back up, we can make more water off the fuel cells.”

  Everyone had a badge now, and Max hung back with Noyes.

  “I’d like someone to go in there and turn off these,” Chevrier tapped spots on one of the monitors, “here, here, and here, while I get the repair set up.”

  “That’ll be me,” Rucker said. Like any junior officer, Max thought, trying to set a good example.

  Chevrier gave him a nod. “This one here is tough. It’ll take you a few minutes. It’s right next to the reactor, and it’s going to be hotter than hell.” He gave Rucker the tools he needed and sent him off down the tube to the reactor room.

  “I’ll need a shower set up for decontamination,” said Noyes.

  Max found the air shower over by the other clean room, and showed him where it was. Noyes started setting up the lead-lined bags for clothing and equipment disposal.

  By the time they went back to the monitor room, Chevrier had diagrammed his repair. His volunteers double-checked the equipment lined up in the hall. He sent others, who hadn’t volunteered, to run a connector line from the freshwater tank. They were just getting ready to go in, when Rucker staggered back out. He looked ... cooked. Like the worst sunburn Max had ever seen. His clothes were soaked, and glowing drops of water followed through the air in his wake. Noyes was there, swiping the droplets out of the air with a lead blanket. He wrapped Rucker in it, and started leading him toward the shower.

  The lieutenant’s badge was bright red.

  One crewman bolted, another threw up. No one said anything about the smell, but one of the men took off his shirt and tried to catch the vomit as it scattered through the air.

  Chevrier ripped his badge off. “Won’t need this. Just one more distraction. If we’re going to go swimming, we might as well go skinny-dipping.” He stripped off his clothes and the other volunteers followed his example. “Can’t handle tools in those damn vacuum suits anyway.”

  Anger, fear, those things were contagious, Max reflected. But so were courage and foolhardy bravery. He hoped the price was worth it.

  He supposed he ought to be at decontamination, with Noyes, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the monitors. There were no cameras aimed directly at the spot where the men were working with the pipes, but they passed in and out of the vids. The radioactive water pooled in the air, drop meeting drop, coalescing into larger blobs like mercury spilled on a lab table and just as poisonous. Or perhaps more like antibodies in a bloodstream. The me
n splashed into them as they moved and the water clung to their skin, searing wherever it touched.

  Simco appeared at the door demanding a report for the captain. Max ignored him. Paint peeled off the overheating reactor, curling like bits of ash as it burned away. Water that hit its surface boiled away into steam, but the steam hit the other water, and became drops again instantly, a swirling rain that never fell. And, except for the dead tone of the radiation alarms, it all happened in silence, with no one in the monitor room speaking for long minutes, and no sound at all from the reactor room.

  Noyes appeared beside Max. “That man needs to come out right now to have those burns treated,” he said, tapping at one of the monitors. Glowing circles spun in slow lambent spirals on one man’s buttocks.

  Max laughed, a sound that came out of his mouth only as a breathless sigh. Those are tattoos, Doc. Jets. Lightning bug juice impregnated in the subdermal cells.”

  “I’ve ... never heard of that,” said Noyes.

  “It’s supposed to bring a spacer safely home again.”

  It’s an abomination,” blurted Noyes. The people of Jesusalem were against any mixing of the species. “Let’s hope it does,” he said.

  “Indeed,” replied Max.

  DePuy stood beside them, shaking his head. “They’re not getting it fixed.”

  Max began to think he’d miscalculated badly. He hadn’t wanted anyone to look too closely at Lukinov’s corpse. He wanted the ship to turn around and head back home. But with the main engine down and the back-up scuttled, they were in big trouble.

  The hatch flew open and two men came out.

  “They’ve been in there almost an hour,” said Noyes, checking his chrono and calculating the damage to them.

  “Is it done?” the men in the monitor room demanded. Max heard his own voice blurt out, “Is it fixed?”

  But their faces were mute. The blistered flesh bubbled off as Doc wrapped them in blankets. Noyes helped one toward the shower, and Max took the other. “This is hopeless,” Noyes said, trying to clean the men. “You have to go back there now and get the other men out before they die.”