by Piers Platt
At the barn, he slid the door open, and found the interrogation theater still set up, bright lights blazing on empty tables. Between the tables, two bodies lay in a pool of congealed blood and entrails. With the toe of his boot, he flipped one of the bodies over, then gave the room a final scan, capturing it all on his video stream. When he was finished, he walked back outside, and established a connection with his air car, which was parked on the plain several miles away, over the horizon.
“Auto-pilot on. Come to my location,” he ordered.
He propped his rifle against the side of the barn and pulled out his phone, waiting for the encryption procedure.
“700 for the director,” he told the automated system, when the connection was established.
He had to wait another two minutes for Director Nkosi to connect, during which time his air car appeared, and then hovered in for a landing.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Did you see the footage?”
“Not yet.”
“Collection team’s dead, 339 and 621 are gone.”
He heard an intake of breath over the line. “How?”
“It looks like an external party intervened. I’ve got a dead older male, not a Group employee, who appears to have been killed in a shoot-out with our team. Sent you his face, if you want to run it.”
“We will.”
“There was an incident in the local news, as well. A woman broke into an R&D lab, stunned half the security force, and then flew away. I’d put money on that being 339.”
“Yes. The Crisis Team here noted that, too.”
“Did 339 and 621 get on a flight after that?”
“We believe so,” she told him.
“So tell me where to go.”
4
Dasi finished mopping the cafeteria after breakfast, and then wheeled her mop and bucket onto the service elevator, and tapped the button for the living quarters. The hallways there took her another thirty minutes, after which she worked her way through the gym and indoor recreation center. As always, the other staffers took care to avoid her, and the only words directed at her were the occasional Excuse me as someone maneuvered around her.
After the rec center, she tucked the mop back into the cleaning closet, and grabbed an empty trash bag before riding up to the platform level. She spent ten minutes walking over the air car landing platform, looking for debris that might get caught in the car’s engines when it next landed, and tossing what little she found into the trash bag. That done, she continued her trash search around the rest of the platform, stopping from time to time to pick up a discarded tissue or piece of gum. She was finished with her rounds well before lunchtime.
As usual.
She sighed, and stuffed the half-empty trash bag into a garbage can, then took a seat on a bench looking out over the waves toward the island. To her surprise, the air car was in flight – she watched it approach, then hover in for a landing. She twisted on the bench to watch, and saw two men emerge from a hatch in the super-structure. They walked to the car, and one boarded the car. The car took off immediately, and headed back to the island.
What’s that all about?
The car disappeared into the distance, eventually blending into the far-off land mass of the island. Dasi held her thumb up at arm’s length, closing one eye and trying to judge the distance to the island.
Who am I kidding? I don’t know how far it is, or how to get there. I don’t even know what’s on the island.
Other than the shuttle.
* * *
Slowly, carefully, Dasi began testing the limits of her captivity. Her keycard gave her full access to most of the living areas of the platform, but the medical floors were off limits, as was all of the super-structure that rose above the facility’s upper platforms. There were sub-levels, too, she discovered – apparently some people lived or worked under the water line, but her keycard didn’t let her activate those buttons on the elevators.
There were datascrolls in the rec center – Dasi found them on her second day. She looked around furtively, then picked one up, turning it on. But just as with her viewscreen, all communications functions and internet connectivity had been disabled – apparently the people running the platform didn’t trust any of its inhabitants to have access to the outside world.
The loneliness was what finally drove Dasi over the edge. With no one to talk to, she dwelt more and more on Khyron’s murder. She replayed their final days together in her mind – how she had betrayed his trust in a moment of weakness, then kept it a secret from him. How Lizelle had saved her, but had let this mysterious organization kill Khyron. And how she had been powerless to do anything. Wracked with grief and guilt, she cried herself to sleep each night. She caught herself talking to reruns of TV shows on her viewscreen for companionship, and later, eavesdropping on conversations in the cafeteria, desperate for any human contact. The uncertainty of her situation gnawed at her nerves, and she finally reached out to Bekka, calling her four times at the end of her second week at the platform.
The first two times, the administrator answered, and spent some time talking to Dasi. She expressed some sympathy over her isolated situation, but reiterated firmly why it was necessary.
“When can I go home?” Dasi asked.
“I don’t know,” Bekka said.
“Can you find out?” Dasi asked.
“I’ll try.”
The third time, Dasi could tell the woman was becoming exasperated with her – their conversation was brief, after Bekka confirmed Dasi didn’t need anything specific. The fourth time, Bekka didn’t even answer her call.
Dasi focused on the air car first. She had learned to fly air cars growing up, and reasoned that it was the fastest, best route off the platform. After she finished her cleaning duties, she made it a habit of spending most days above decks, either exercising or reading books on a datascroll. But despite her efforts to log the flights and determine a pattern, the air car only rarely made the flight to and from the island. When Dasi made a half-hearted attempt to approach it while it was parked on the landing pad, a stern voice came over the loudspeaker, frightening her.
“Stay away from the landing pad.”
She nodded and hurried inside.
It’s automated, anyway – they’d probably just shut it down the moment I got inside.
Three nights later, Dasi’s alarm woke her just before three in the morning. She climbed out of bed and dressed in silence, bundling herself in several layers to ward off the cool night air. She cracked open her door, half-expecting to see one of the guards waiting for her. But the corridor was empty. She resisted the urge to tiptoe, and hurried down the hall to the cleaning closet. At the back of a storage unit, she pulled out a duffle bag which held several gallon jugs of water and a week’s supply of food that she had snuck out of the cafeteria – granola bars, fruit, and some sealed meal packs. Dasi shouldered the bag, and quietly closed the door.
She took the external fire stairs up to the platform, afraid that she might run into a guard or other night shift worker in the elevators. It took her five minutes to climb up to the top deck, winding her way up the massive pylons that supported the platform, and she was sweating and breathing hard when she finally emerged near the landing pad. The air car sat, silent and dark, but Dasi ignored it and hurried across the open deck, through the recreation area and to the edge of the platform. She peered over the edge.
Oh god, it’s higher than I thought.
Several feet below her, an emergency lifeboat hung from a pair of winch arms, suspended hundreds of feet above the dark waters below. Nearly three feet of yawning empty space separated her from the lifeboat, however. Dasi swung her bag of supplies back and then tossed it forward, watching as it dropped into the rear of the lifeboat.
Okay, that’s not that far. You can do it.
Closing her eyes, she jumped.
She landed heavily, and with an audible thump. Her heart pounded in her chest, but if anyone on the
platform had heard her jump, they gave no indication of it. She stood up, tucked the supply bag into the covered section of the lifeboat, and made her way to the center of the small craft. It rocked slightly in the air; the feeling made her queasy.
Now the winches.
She leaned out from the lifeboat, reaching back to the edge of the platform, fumbling to find the release switches for the winch arms in the dark. Finally, she had them. She grasped one in each hand, and with a deep breath, yanked down hard.
The winches had not been oiled in years, and they screeched in protest as soon as Dasi released them. The lifeboat fell fast – not quite free-falling, but nearly so – and Dasi gave a yelp of alarm, sitting down fast and grabbing one of the benches for support. The noise from the winches was excruciatingly loud.
Nothing I can do about that now.
The lifeboat splashed down seconds later, and the wind whipped some of the spray into Dasi’s face, blinding her momentarily. She wiped her eyes, pushed wet hair out of her face, and then clambered to the stern. The lifeboat’s motor started at the push of a button, and Dasi saw that the wires had released automatically, allowing the boat to float away from the platform.
I’m free!
Dimly, she heard an alarm siren far above her on the platform, but she ignored it and sat down in the stern, taking hold of the boat’s tiller. She had little experience piloting boats before, but after a few false starts, Dasi found that the boat moved in the opposite direction that she pushed the tiller. She pointed the lifeboat at the island, shivering in the wind and spray.
But the lifeboat’s engine was painfully weak – with a sinking feeling, Dasi realized it was probably designed more to provide power to the lifeboat’s life support and communication systems than to propel the craft through the water. She made progress through the waves, the platform slowly receding behind her, but only barely. And before she knew it, she saw searchlights reaching out from the platform’s deck, and saw the air car lift off from its landing pad.
No!
She considered turning back, trying to hide herself amidst the huge pylons beneath the platform, but there was not enough time. She fumbled with the controls to the lifeboat, trying to increase the motor’s power, but she only succeeded in turning on a heater. The air car found her seconds later.
They hovered above the lifeboat, and a security guard jumped out, landing in the bow of the boat. He climbed back to where she sat, crying.
“Please let me go home,” she pleaded. “I just want to go home.”
Without a word, he pushed her roughly aside, taking the controls and pointing the craft back toward the platform. The air car followed them. Ten minutes later, they nosed up against a small pier at the base of one of the pylons.
“Get out,” the man told her. An older man in a security uniform was waiting on the pier – he escorted her up to her room. Bekka stood next to her desk.
“I’m so sorry about this, Captain,” Bekka told the man.
“Next time,” he warned Bekka. “I’m going to let her get to the island.”
“No, I understand,” Bekka told him. “It won’t happen again.”
He left, closing the door behind him. Dasi sat on her bed, her wet hair dripping down her back. She broke into tears again.
“I didn’t do anything,” she told Bekka. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Dasi, I need you to listen to me. You seem like a nice girl, but if you do something like that again, I won’t be able to protect you. The captain’s a hard man – he’ll take you to the island, he means it.”
“What’s on the island?” Dasi sniffed.
“Nothing but death.” She handed Dasi a towel.
Dasi took the towel and looked up at Bekka. “I can’t go on living like this, just not knowing what’s going to happen to me, ever.”
Bekka sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Did they tell you why I’m here?” Dasi asked. “My boyfriend found a—”
“Stop,” Bekka told her, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“I didn’t do anything, though. You can let me go, and I promise I won’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t even know what to tell! I don’t understand any of this – I don’t know what this place is, or what the island is for, or where we are.”
Bekka shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not the one who decides what happens to you.”
“Can I talk to someone else, someone who can tell me more?”
“I don’t think so.”
Dasi rubbed her forehead. “Well, can you get a message to Senator Lizelle for me?”
Bekka cocked her head to one side. “Perhaps.”
“Really?” Dasi asked.
“I can try. But not tonight. It’s late. Sleep, write your message, and bring it to me tomorrow.”
5
Beauceron’s scalp itched. Without thinking, he rubbed his hand over the bald skin for the twentieth time. He had suffered from a small bald patch for years, but had never fully shaved his head – he barely recognized himself in the bathroom mirror when Paisen finished with the razor.
“That’s the point,” she reminded him.
The glue under his facial prosthetics itched, too, but Paisen had been adamant on that front, as well. While she and Rath could change their appearance at will, doing so was pointless as long as they traveled with him – as long as he looked the same, security footage and facial recognition software would enable the Janus Group to track them easily.
“I thought prosthetics and makeup don’t work – surveillance software can defeat those measures?” he had asked.
“It can. But it will slow them down. They’ll have to rely more heavily on body type matching – more false positives, more margin of error.”
They all exited the spaceliner at different times, and rode different shuttles down to the surface of Aleppo, just to be safe. Beauceron stared out his window and watched the planet’s massive equatorial canyon open up as they descended into it. Tiered buildings lined the canyon’s walls, stacked vertically like a child’s bricks. Beauceron saw that some apartment buildings appeared to have balconies, but all were enclosed, sealed against the planet’s toxic atmosphere. Farther away down the deep canyon, an industrial plant belched gases into the air.
After leaving the spaceport, Beauceron caught a cab, which zoomed along the canyon’s rim in the air traffic pattern, finally descending near a cluster of buildings with a large enclosed stadium. The cab pulled into a sealed bay, and Beauceron paid, and then made his way inside the building’s entrance. He found Rath and Paisen waiting for him near a reception desk labeled Aleppo Technical College.
“No issues?” Rath asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Did you double back at the spaceport?” Paisen asked.
“Twice,” Beauceron confirmed. “I pretended to shop for a few minutes, left, and then went back to the shop again. I didn’t see anyone following me.”
Paisen picked up her Forge and slung it over a shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They had to wait nearly an hour, but eventually the class finished. When the room had emptied, Beauceron knocked on the door and leaned inside.
“Professor Entenari?”
A slim woman looked up from the datascroll she was reading. “Yes?”
“Hi.” Beauceron smiled. “May we come in?”
“And who are ‘we’?” she asked, frowning. “You’re not in one of my classes, are you?”
“Ah, no,” Beauceron said. “We’re not students here, actually – but we’re hoping you can help us.”
“Cryptic,” she said. “If this is some marketing research nonsense, you can see yourselves out right now.”
“No, nothing like that,” Beauceron reassured her. “It’s a bit of a strange situation. My father passed away recently, and he left me some money. But he had a bit of a sense of humor – to retrieve the money, I need to solve a riddle.”
Entenari g
ave a sharp bark of a laugh. “And you want my help in solving it?”
Beauceron gave her a wry smile. “Indeed.”
She indicated Rath and Paisen, who had taken seats in the front row of desks. “And your friends are …?”
“Friends,” Paisen replied, with a disarming smile. “Just tagging along out of curiosity.”
“We couldn’t help him solve it, but now we want to know the answer,” Rath explained.
“Mm.” The professor shot Rath an appraising look, and he suddenly felt self-conscious. “Okay, I’m intrigued. What’s the riddle?”
“It’s a twist on the old arithmetic equations – you know, a hyper-rail train leaves City A traveling X miles per hour, and another train leaves City B ….”
Entenari nodded. “I always found those questions singularly unimaginative, but I’m following you.”
“Okay. The question in this case involves two people leaving different planets. One left from Tarkis and traveled for approximately seven days. The other left Delta Copernica and traveled for approximately eleven days. They both arrived at the same destination, a new planet. The name of that planet is the answer to the riddle.”
“I assume they both traveled using conventional modern methods? Faster-than-light travel, and they took the shortest distance journey possible?”
Beauceron glanced at Rath and Paisen. “Yes,” he said, uncertainly. “The passengers flew in modern spacecraft traveling at FTL speeds.”