“I’m Buck Rogers,” Gary whispered as he pushed off from the wall and turned a corner where two narrow passageways met. Imagining himself as a character in a space adventure—someone who always made it out alive while rescuing his friends and saving the galaxy—kept him from getting lost in more mental diatribes against Rufus, and against himself for having ever signed a contract with that snake.
He counted the doors of the crew cabins and yanked on the third one on his right. He floated in the doorway, staring at the turquoise paint on the walls, the array of constellations laid out in silver sequins on the floor and ceiling, and the poster of Gary Nelson—the Face of Space himself—plastered to one long wall. His face had been x-ed out with black marker.
So. Barbie’s cabin.
He’d gotten turned literally upside down somewhere along the way. Gary put his back to Barbie’s quarters, opened the door immediately opposite, and entered Hannah’s cabin.
The smallest of her equipment bags was right where she’d said it would be, tucked neatly into the top storage cupboard along with two tablets and about three dozen data cards held together on a keyring. Gary held his breath and opened the bag—all four cameras were nestled inside, and every one of them was blinking red and beeping.
There wasn’t the drama of a countdown timer or Rufus’s voice warning Gary that he had mere seconds to act, but the assumption remained that the cameras were bombs of some kind. He hadn’t heard any update from Manny to the contrary.
Gary zipped up the bag and bolted out the door. He made it down to the docking bay in what had to be record time, though everyone else had beaten him there.
He pushed the bag of Hannah’s spare cameras toward Joey, who stuffed it into a larger sack in which seven other cameras floated and collided with one another. Manny puzzled over the unit he’d cracked open.
“Everything’s just so tiny.” Manny’s cheerful lilt didn’t diminish under pressure, or maybe it was the alcohol. He’d positioned himself in the dead center of the compartment, apart from all the tethers and cupboards and wall-mounted workstations. He poked at the innards of the fist-sized camera with a pair of needle-nose pliers.
Everyone else pressed back against the walls and watched as Manny dug through the rubber-coated wires and tapped at the minuscule circuits. Gary wasn’t sure if they were simply keeping out of Manny’s way or if a blast-zone perimeter had been established. But on a compact space ship, there might not be anyplace that was really safe.
“See here?” Manny used his pliers to point at something deep inside the camera. Whatever he’d uncovered was obscured by wires. “This itty-bitty little EMP, but that’s not—”
“Let’s go, Manny,” Dana was positioned by the airlock with Sid. The inner door was standing open.
“It’s time,” Sid said.
Manny pushed the camera toward Joey, who shoved it into the bag with the others and then tossed the lot of them into the airlock. Sid sealed the door up tight and cycled the airlock.
“That’s all of them, right?” Gary made his way over to Hannah, hovering in a corner.
“We got all twelve of them.” Hannah’s voice sounded small and tight as she gripped his arm. The only sound in the compartment was the identical, slightly asynchronous beeping of twelve little cameras on the other side of the airlock door. “You don’t think the tablets might be rigged, too? Or maybe something in the other supplies?”
Gary looked quickly to Sid. “Our capsule.”
Sid shrugged. “Maybe.”
Hannah’s grip tightened on Gary’s arm. “I didn’t even think to check the equipment they gave me. Why would I? The whole thing was rushed. Barely got to pack my own bag before I got strapped to that stupid rocket.”
She was shaking, and Gary wrapped an arm around her.
“I just can’t believe Rufus would really try to do something like this.” She nestled into him.
“I can,” Gary replied.
Manny bit his bottom lip and frowned. “Well. As near as I can tell, it wasn’t any kind of explosive device.”
Hannah blew out a long, tense breath and relaxed against Gary’s chest.
“But, that little EMP, you know, positioned so close to the camera’s internal battery, that was mighty interesting,” Manny added. “Have to assume the others were wired the same.”
The airlock completed its cycle. Sid opened a panel in the wall, flipped a few levers and then hit a large button—an override, Gary guessed.
“Say goodbye, little electro-bombs.” Sid peered through a small glass porthole in the closed hatch, and Gary heard a grinding squeal as the outer airlock door opened.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Joey said. “Another casualty of the landing. Going to need to get that checked.”
“Add it to the list.” Sid turned away from the airlock window. “It’s away.”
“I’m glad that’s over.” Dana pushed away from the wall to place herself in the center of the compartment. “Good job, everybody. Especially Manny. What’s next?”
Manny turned to his captain with a sheepish expression. Dana frowned back at him. “You disabled those things, right?”
Manny shrugged. “Don’t have the right tools, captain. I was just trying to figure out if we were looking at remote trigger or a timed action. But that thing was tiny.”
“But big enough to fry some nearby circuitry, right?” Joey asked. “And those cameras were concentrated in the cockpit. If they’d gone off there . . .”
“Yeah, anything within about a square meter would’ve been toast. Navigation, communications, life support, you name it.” Manny pocketed his pliers. “Why do you think I was checking it in the middle of the room instead of at a workstation?”
“Rufus always did like drama,” Gary scoffed. “Those things are probably still recording, sending a live feed back to The Ranch. The final moments of the Midden and its crew.”
“It’s under control.” Manny looked anything but certain. “Even if the camera batteries exploded with the EMP, it’s all outside the ship now.” He turned to Sid. “Now, I’m not intimately familiar with the layout of your ship. Anything important or combustible near that airlock?”
“Son of a bitch.” Sid tapped at the side of his head, trying to activate a headset he wasn’t wearing. He cursed under his breath and pushed his way over to a mic and speaker mounted in the wall. “Brett, I’m conscripting you as my secondary pilot. And I’m going to need you to get us underway. Immediately.”
“Uh, okay,” came Brett’s startled response. “Any particular place you want to go?”
“Anywhere!” Sid barked back. “Just get us moving now.”
“Yeah, all right.” Brett’s reply was slow and a bit confused. Gary worried the pilot might actually be inebriated. “You know you’re running a different system on this ship than I’m used to.”
Dana rushed over and smacked her hand on the mic. “Brett! Figure it out. And do it now. Barbie, get him in gear.”
“Yeah, uh, yes, captain,” Brett stammered in reply.
Dana turned to face the others in the compartment. “And you all might want to find something to hold onto.”
“Captains!” Barbie’s voice was urgent over the speaker. “We’ve got an incoming signal. I think it might be—”
Gary felt the percussive thud move through his body like a thunderbolt as he and Hannah were thrown together against the wall.
“Status!” Sid called out at the same time that Dana exclaimed, “What the hell was that?”
“Are you okay?” Gary held Hannah by the shoulders and looked her up and down. His right arm ached fiercely, but at least he hadn’t slammed into anything with his face again.
Hannah grasped Gary’s elbows to steady them both. “I’m okay. What happened?”
“Rufus’s last gasp?” Gary glanced around the compartment but didn’t see anything out of place—other than Dana disentangling herself from Manny, while Joey had been tossed into the corridor. The scene
was nothing like the control cabin of the Churly Flint after the wreck on the moon. There were no exposed wires or sounds of hissing atmosphere, but there was an intense ringing in his ears.
“Status!” Sid demanded again, his face turned to the comm panel.
Barbie and Brett were yelling over the speakers at once, their words incomprehensible as they shouted over top of one another.
Dana pushed Sid aside and took over the mic. “One at a time!”
“Something blew!” Brett cried over the speaker. “It blew up.”
“Yeah, we got that. You got any information beyond that?”
Sid nudged Dana from her spot. “Hey, Barbie?” he said calmly into the mic. “Since you know the ship a bit better than our possibly impaired guest pilot, you wanna weigh in?”
“It was the secondary fuel tank, captain,” Barbie came back, each syllable more controlled and confident than the last. “When that signal came in, I guess it triggered whatever was in the cameras, and it sparked the tank.”
Sid looked to Joey. Joey shrugged. “I’d have to see it for myself, captain, but that tank was mostly empty. Probably ripped a good hole in it, though, from the feel of it.”
Sid nodded. “Add it to the list.”
“Uh, guys?” Brett’s voice came over the speaker again. “You know Gary and Hannah’s crew capsule? The one we left back there, drifting around the moon?”
Sid almost laughed. “Yeah, we’re familiar with it. What’ve you got?”
“Well, uh, it just exploded.”
11
It was a long, slow limp to the nearest space station.
Apart from the loss of the secondary fuel tank, the explosion left the Midden down two communications antennae and with half of the maneuvering thrusters compromised. After traveling to the moon and back in just under forty-eight hours, Hannah grew restless over the four days it took the Midden to reach safe harbor.
ISS-4 was one of three international stations in geosynchronous orbit, about 40,000 kilometers above the Earth, and the crew was still getting used to entertaining visitors. It was an experiment in commercial-governmental orbital partnership. Space tourism was only beginning to lure wealthy travelers away from terra firma for a few uneventful days floating free and looking down on planet Earth, and ISS-4 had recently added a large module of private suites—sponsored jointly by fast-food giant Burger Bunny and the Major Orange entertainment conglomerate.
While the rich and famous guests weren’t overly impressed by the basic accommodations and lack of spa services aboard ISS-4, the rough and weary space salvagers and production team found the change nothing short of delightful—even if all of the quick-dry towels were emblazoned with Burger Bunny’s “Get Hoppin’!” mascot and slogan.
Shortly after the Midden’s arrival at the station, Brett and Gary both got checked out by a proper doctor while Joey started making arrangements for ship repairs. Manny retreated to his single cabin to sleep and hadn’t been seen in hours, while Barbie jumped on the station’s data stream to give one interview after another to media outlets on the ground. Dana and Sid had disappeared into the guest module’s only deluxe suite to “sample the botanical lotions” and to make plans for their first vacation together in gravity in three years.
Hannah, though, spent most of her time in the hospitality module’s snug lounge area. Starting at the top of a list of science fiction books Gary had given her as recommended reading, she was almost halfway through Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 and had been taking frequent breaks to gaze out the domed window at views of the Sea of Japan, the east coast of China, and the scattered islands of Indonesia as the station meandered north and south along its figure-eight path. The Earth was turning toward night now, and the twinkling lights coming to brilliant life along the coast connecting Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Hong Kong were more mesmerizing than the best fireworks display.
She’d tried to sleep, but every time she drifted off her dreams were full of fireballs hurtling toward the moon, Rufus’s smug smile—or worse, being back on Earth without a job, without references or a place to live, and getting into the same fight over and over again with Gary about joining the Mars Colony Program.
So she floated free and read and looked down on the world to which she’d inevitably have to return.
It would be another few days before the capsule from the Mars Colony Program arrived to ferry them all back to Earth, where an endless stream of subpoenas from judicial bodies across the globe awaited them. Suits against Rufus Day and DayLite Syndicate had been filed in seventeen countries and counting, on top of the criminal warrants issued for Rufus’s arrest. At least Olivia’s last email gave Hannah the peace of mind that none of Rufus’s remaining underlings were at risk of being charged, as he’d already fired everyone who’d guessed what he was up to.
“Hey there, space cutie,” came a familiar voice behind her.
Hannah turned to find Gary with a splint across the bridge of his nose and dark bruises under his eyes. She smiled. “Did you just call me a space cootie?”
“No, no, cutie. I swear I said ‘cutie.’ Cutie,” Gary stammered as his face flushed red.
Hannah set a digital bookmark in her reading and motioned him to her side. “I heard you. I was just teasing.”
They clasped hands as Gary reached her, his momentum turning them slowly together in space. Carefully, Hannah leaned forward and gave him a feather-light kiss on the lips.
He frowned at her. “I think you can do a bit better than that.”
“But, your nose.”
He laughed. “Oh, they’ve got the good stuff onboard here. I’m feeling no pain.”
“Okay then.” She pulled him hard against her and planted her open mouth on his. He tasted of tangerines. Hannah guessed the station had gotten a recent shipment of fresh fruit in addition to strong painkillers.
Gary reached for the nearest wall to stop their slow spin. Holding onto her, he glanced out the lounge windows at the nighttime lights illuminating the Chinese coastline.
Hannah followed his gaze. “It’s quite a view, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
She felt her cheeks flush and smacked him lightly on the arm when she realized he was staring at her instead.
“So, three days to kill. Any ideas on how you’ll spend your time?”
Hannah tightened her grip on his jumpsuit. “A few.” She giggled when he nipped at the side of her neck. She pressed her hand against the back of his head and slid her fingers into his thick hair, pleasantly free of any grooming products.
Before they could progress much further, there was a loud crack from the direction of the deluxe suite followed angry voices moving toward the lounge.
“Yeah, well, you can suck rocket fuel if you think I’m going to spend five freaking weeks on a beach getting sand in my ears and every other possible orifice.” Dana emerged into the lounge area, pausing only briefly when she caught sight of Hannah and Gary tangled up together. Sid was right behind her.
“The whole idea is to relax, honey,” he replied as she drifted deliberately out of his reach. “And if you don’t like the beach, there’s a pool, too, though I think that kind of defeats the whole purpose of an actual beach. And there’s SCUBA diving and snorkeling—”
“Diving?” Dana shot her husband an incredulous look. “Haven’t you had enough of weightlessness and breathing canned air? You want to go downstairs and do it some more?”
As Sid and Dana filled the lounge with their bickering over vacation spots, Gary took hold of Hannah’s hand and drew her discretely out of the compartment and toward the more spartan quarters they’d been jointly assigned. They closed the door just as the couple started arguing back and forth on the relative merits of Disney World versus Las Vegas.
“You’d think after all their time in salvage ships, they’d want to spend some time on a safari or something. Get out into the wild,” Gary mused as Hannah started pulling at his jumpsuit.
“I don’t know wha
t they’re getting all worked up about,” she mumbled against the salty skin of his neck. “We’re all going to be stuck in wood-paneled rooms giving depositions once we’re on the ground, not sipping Mai Tais by the lagoon.”
Gary unzipped her suit and slipped it down over her shoulders, tracing her collarbone with his lips. “We’ll probably all be permanently grounded anyway.”
Hannah frowned at that and wanted to ask him for clarification but before she could continue the conversation, Gary’s mouth found her breast and she temporarily lost the ability to form coherent sentences.
He shoved off from the ceiling to push her against the padded wall and then tugged her suit down over her hips as she reached up to hold onto a wall tether. They hadn’t quite yet gotten the hang of sex in microgravity, but they were proceeding more gracefully than before.
She dug her free hand into his hair as he moved down her body, touching and tasting his way from her neck and breasts to her panties and what lay beneath. She giggled with delight at his gentle probing and breathed a sigh of relief that being on the station had allowed her a long, relaxing zero-g shower shortly after their arrival.
Letting go of the tether, Hannah twirled her fingers in his thick hair and cradled his head as he teased her. They were floating free together, no sensation in her body other than the warmth of his tongue. She worked her fingers beneath his chin and tried to lift his face, to draw his body upward, but he resisted. He grabbed hold of her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her buttocks as he pressed his mouth against her, his tongue eager and insistent.
She gasped aloud, her back arching as he ran one hand up her side to cup her breast, toying with one stiffening nipple as the thrill of desire sparked across her skin. She moaned as she moved against him, her breath coming in excited spasms.
Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2) Page 22