gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap

by Christine Pope

  “So would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Have gone back to Tucson?”

  Another one of those hesitations. Then his shoulders lifted slightly. “Possibly. It would have depended on whether I thought I was making a difference. Before Theo and I discovered what was really going on, I thought maybe I was. The air is, to put it simply, getting better. I’m not saying it’s going to be fit for people to live there permanently, not for at least another decade, but considering it’s been dead for more than three hundred years, a decade or so shouldn’t make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.”

  Cassidy tried to visualize being involved in an enterprise that required you to think in terms of decades, or even centuries, rather than the here and now. For most of her life, she’d trained herself to not look much further ahead than the next Titan run. But of course Derek’s line of work was very different from hers. “So you would have stayed, then.”

  “I don’t like to speculate on something that’s never going to happen now. If I’d continued to see progress, then yes, I probably would have continued with my work. It wasn’t as if I had anything much to bring me back to Tucson.”

  For some people, family might have been enough of a reason. She found that concept difficult to relate to, as it had only been her and her father for so long that she had no more idea of how a typical family was supposed to work than she did of what daily life was like for the reclusive cloaked and hooded Zhore. “Really?” she asked. “Nothing?” What she really wanted to ask was, No one?, but she wasn’t quite that brave.

  He seemed to pick up on her meaning, though, and his gaze sharpened on her. “Not really. I was always focused. My father taught me that, if nothing else.”

  Well, that and how to break someone’s arm with one kick, Cassidy thought, but she remained silent.

  “I did my undergraduate work in three years, got my doctorate in four. After that I did some traveling, training with some of the top minds in the atmospheric sciences, helping to fine-tune the atmospheric processors so they’d do the far more delicate work of cleaning the air rather than altering an alien atmosphere to Gaian standard.” Another lift of his shoulders. “It didn’t leave much room for a personal life.”

  “No, it doesn’t sound like it,” she agreed, in what she prayed would sound like convincingly casual tones. That was one good thing about this whole situation…at least it appeared as if Derek was blessedly free of any potentially messy connections with ex-wives or girlfriends. Or current wives or girlfriends, assuming any of them would’ve hung around after the false rumors of the gay love affair and subsequent murder made the rounds.

  And then Cassidy wanted to kick herself, because, beyond a few glances that could’ve been admiring or could’ve simply been her flattering herself, she had no reason to think Derek was interested in her at all beyond continuing to use her as his own personal interplanetary cab driver.

  He gave her one long, considering look before saying, “My parents were focused on their work — my father’s a fusion engineer. And my younger sister, maybe studying my example and deciding she didn’t want to be anything like me, got married before she was twenty-five and now has two children. I haven’t even seen the youngest one, aside from some pictures Naomi sent me.”

  “Wouldn’t that be reason enough to go back?”

  “For a short visit, sure. To stay? Not really. My sister and I were never that close. We don’t have much beyond genetics in common.”

  It sounded cold, put that way, but Cassidy thought she understood. After all, you really couldn’t choose your family…you were just supposed to love them, even if they were nothing like you. God knows if she could’ve picked out her father, he would’ve been nothing like Owen Evans.

  “So, after the Consortium accused you of Theo’s murder….” she began delicately, wanting to know what had gone wrong. Yes, Derek and his father had disagreed about his working on the GARP project, but that didn’t sound like enough to have caused a serious rift.

  This time Derek did push himself up out of his seat, as if he didn’t want to remain sitting down while he recounted this part of the story. Instead, he leaned against the metal lintel of the oval opening that led into the corridor beyond. “It wasn’t the murder,” he said, voice expressionless. “It’s that my father couldn’t bear the shame of me being exposed as a homosexual.”

  Cassidy blinked at him. “Wait — what? You mean there are people who still care about that sort of thing?” Marriage between members of the same sex had been legal for so many centuries that she couldn’t understand how anyone would still have an issue with it.

  The look he sent her seemed to be equal measures amusement at her disbelief and anger that the person who still harbored that kind of bigotry was his own father. “Oh, yes. Some care. They don’t broadcast it, because displaying that sort of genderism can have serious repercussions, both personally and professionally. My father probably would have stuck by me if all I’d been accused of was murder.”

  “So it’s okay to kill a person, but not to sleep with someone of the same sex?”

  “That about sums it up.” Derek shifted his weight from one leg to the other and crossed his arms. “He found it easy enough to believe. After all, I hadn’t really dated in high school, had one girlfriend my sophomore year in college, a few casual liaisons once I was done with my doctorate. Beyond that, there was no one in my life, which to my father seemed evidence enough that I wasn’t into women, not that I was simply too busy to get involved.”

  “That’s…ridiculous,” Cassidy managed, after a pause in which she wasn’t sure exactly what she should say. Her own father’s faults had been numerous, but bigotry wasn’t among them. No, he’d always taken everyone as they came, more or less, which was why, she supposed, that he’d never said a harsh word about her mother abandoning them both. Even when Cassidy had attempted to bring it up as a teenager, he’d brushed her questions aside, only saying that her mother had found herself in a place where she didn’t want to be a parent anymore, and that was the end of it.

  Derek tilted his head back against the cockpit wall, then shrugged. In the close-fitting jacket he wore, Cassidy could see just how broad those shoulders were, how they strained against the smooth fabric. She jerked her gaze back up to his face…not that that was any less distracting. Damn.

  “My mother said he was being ridiculous, that the whole story was a complete fabrication, but my father wouldn’t listen.” Derek’s dark eyes were far away, and Cassidy hoped he hadn’t noticed the way she’d been staring only a few seconds earlier. “You see, he felt he’d been publicly shamed. The only thing he could do was distance himself from me. And so, even though my mother tried to intervene by hiring a lawyer and attempting to get rid of the public defender I’d been assigned, it came to nothing in the end. They trumped up something about the lawyer she’d hired not being properly licensed for a criminal case, had him dismissed. In the end, all she got for her efforts was an ongoing rift with my father. They weren’t speaking when I was sent off to Titan, but of course I have no way of knowing what’s going on with them now. I’ve been a little out of touch.”

  This last was spoken with the first true bitterness she’d heard in Derek’s voice. God knows he had plenty of reasons to be bitter, but it seemed the one thing that had gotten to him most was not the time he’d lost on Titan, but the pain the false charges and subsequent imprisonment had caused his parents.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cassidy said, knowing even as the words left her lips that they were woefully inadequate. But what else was she supposed to do? She didn’t know him well enough to get up and give him a hug, or whether he’d even accept such a gesture at face value.

  He gave a lift of the shoulders that didn’t fool her at all. “I can’t change what happened. But if I go back to Gaia, attempt to track down the people who framed me — ”

  “Then you can prove to your father that everything they said was a
lie.”

  “Exactly.”

  Put that way, it sounded so simple. However, they didn’t have much to go on, not even the name of the man who’d shot Theo. Then she realized what she’d just been thinking. That pesky “they” again. It seemed part of her mind had made itself up already, even though she’d made no conscious decision to do so.

  “Do you have a plan?” she asked, wondering if she sounded as resigned to Derek as she did to herself.

  For a few seconds, he said nothing, only watched her carefully. Cassidy tried not to blink, although a flush she couldn’t quite control rose to her cheeks. Then he said, “Does that mean you’ll take me there?”

  “If that’s really what you want.”

  Another hesitation. “It’s not what I want, precisely, but more what I know I must do.”

  “Well, then,” she said, turning away from him so she could access the nav-computer. As she laid in the coordinates for Gaia, all she could feel was an overwhelming sense of inevitability. “That’s where we’re going. We should be there in approximately seventeen hours.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Even though she’d said she would do it, Derek couldn’t quite believe that she’d given in that easily. He stood there for a moment, the sharp edge of the lintel biting into his shoulder, watching as she started tapping away on the keyboard next to her. “You’re serious,” he said at last.

  “As a black hole,” she replied, not looking up at him.

  Her hair had fallen forward, obscuring most of her face, so he couldn’t get a good read on her expression. “Just like that.”

  She still didn’t glance up. “Just like what?”

  “No more arguments? No telling me it’s suicide to go back to Gaia?”

  At that question she did turn around, expression clearly annoyed. “Why? Are you trying to change my mind?”

  “No,” he said at once. That was the last thing he wanted. But she’d been so adamantly opposed to the scheme up until now, he couldn’t quite figure out what had caused this sudden shift in her attitude. Was it the sob story he’d told her about his parents? Not that it was really a sob story, just the simple truth, but it seemed the havoc the Consortium’s lies had caused in his family had affected her more than some notion of getting the truth out there for the greater good.

  Whatever it was, he knew he wouldn’t offer any further arguments. Seventeen hours. That would give him some time to plan. His benefactor hadn’t been very forthcoming about offering further help, but Derek suspected he’d reach out once again. Just a little information, such as the name of the man who’d headed the strike team back in Hunan Province…the man who’d shot Theo between the eyes with as little concern as someone putting down a diseased animal. That would be a good place to start. If they could track him down, manage to wring a confession out of him….

  “If you can, you should sleep,” Cassidy offered. “Better to do it early in the flight, rather than when we get closer to Gaia. As far as I can tell, this ship has been scrubbed pretty well — registry looks legit, all licenses up to date — so we shouldn’t encounter any difficulties. But you never know.”

  No, you never did. Your life could be humming along more or less smoothly, and then you could hit the mother of all solar storms.

  Her mention of the ship’s registry jogged his memory, and he realized he’d left the packet containing their new documentation sitting on the bed in Cassidy’s cabin. “One minute,” he said, then straightened up and headed aft, where he scooped up the envelope and undid the magnetic closure. Several pieces of plastic fell into his hands — Consortium I.D.s, one with Cassidy’s photo, the other with an image he knew had come from his identification card back at the university in Tucson. He didn’t bother to speculate where their benefactor had gotten the photos, since all digital images had to be stored in some database or another, and clearly their sponsor didn’t have a problem with hacking in and getting whatever he wanted.

  Derek’s new name was Philip Chung, and Cassidy’s Bethany Whitcomb. A smile touched his lips as he thought what his father’s reaction might be to his son passing himself off as being of Chinese extraction, but it faded quickly enough. These days, anything Derek might do was probably beyond the pale.

  Ident cards clutched in his hand, he went back up to the cabin and handed the “Bethany Whitcomb” one to Cassidy. She took it from him, gave it a quick once-over, then slipped it into her pocket. “They thought of everything, didn’t they?”

  “Looks like it. But this means we should be able to move about a little more easily, although we’ll still have to avoid anything with a biometric scanner. I know one drop of my DNA would send up red flags all over the system, and after that stunt at Europa, I have a feeling yours will, too.”

  Resignation settled on her delicate features like a cloud. “Well, that’s a cheery thought, if not entirely unexpected.” She leaned forward and inspected a reading on the console, then nodded, as if satisfied, before settling back into her seat. “Anyway, I meant what I said about getting some sleep. God only knows what kind of crap we’re going to be wading into once we get to Gaia.”

  Yes, he would try to sleep…after attempting to make contact with their benefactor first. “What about you? Does this thing have an autopilot?”

  “It does, but I’m feeling antsy. I want to stay up here and keep an eye on things. I’ll probably nap a bit, but at least this way if something does go wrong, I’ll be right here to take care of it.”

  She said this casually, as if it was of no great importance, but Derek couldn’t help frowning as he said, “You mean you’re just going to sleep here in the cockpit?”

  “Sure. I did it all the time on the Avalon.” A quick flash of a grin, one that lit up her hazel eyes, and he couldn’t quite prevent the sudden heat he felt in his gut as he looked down at her. “And actually, this chair is a lot more comfortable. It’s not a problem.”

  Still, he hesitated, although he thought that diffidence stemmed more from a desire to stay in her company than because he truly doubted her ability to sleep in the captain’s chair, whether that was on board the Avalon or on this newer, much more modern ship.

  “Go,” she went on, making a flapping motion with her hands. “Get some sleep. I’m fine.”

  Since he knew arguing the matter further would only irritate her, he replied, “Okay,” then headed on back to his cabin. Once there, he pushed the button to shut the door, and sat down on the bed. He fished the handheld out of his pocket, activating the text-to-speech function. “This is Derek Tagawa,” he said, hoping it wasn’t the middle of the night wherever their benefactor was located.

  If it was, they were either a night owl or extremely quick on the trigger. Pale blue words appeared on the screen. What is it, Dr. Tagawa?

  He paused, then told himself, Nothing ventured…. “I wanted to ask if you could locate someone for me.”

  Do you think I haven’t done enough for you already, Dr. Tagawa?

  Oh, hell. “That’s not it at all. But the only way for me to clear my name is to find the man who shot Theo Karras.”

  The screen remained blank for a few seconds, and Derek began to wonder if their sponsor had signed off in disgust, both at his demands and the obvious fact that he was headed back to Gaia. Then, This would have been in March 2463, correct?

  He let out a breath. “Yes.”

  I’ll look into and get back to you.

  “Thank you,” Derek said, but there was no reply, and he didn’t dare ask for anything else.

  But their benefactor was apparently on the case, which meant he thought he might finally be able to relax enough to get that sleep Cassidy had urged on him. He went to the small but rather elegant little bathroom, scrubbed his teeth and face, then returned to his cabin.

  Now if he could just make himself stop thinking about her alone in the cockpit, curled up in that chair….

  * * *

  Every second took them closer to Gaia, and every nerve ending in Cassidy
’s body was screaming at her to turn the ship around, to head into the null space between gravity wells so she could engage the subspace engines and get them the hell out of here. Someplace safe, someplace that didn’t have an extradition agreement with Gaia, like Eridani….

  She knew she’d never do that, though. Once she gave her word, she didn’t take it back, and that included ferrying Derek Tagawa to Gaia, even if doing so meant the two of them most likely ending up dead.

  Shifting in her chair, she attempted to find the position most conducive to falling asleep. Yes, she’d gotten a good chunk of it back on Triton, but, as she’d told Derek, they had no idea what they’d be facing on Gaia. Better to do it as rested as possible.

  So she adjusted her position again, took a final glance at the displays on the console, then shut her eyes. Everything was fine…for now. The ship wouldn’t falter, would take them straight on to Gaia without her help if necessary. Not that she planned to sleep that long. Just a few hours. Just enough for her to get her edge back.

  Taking a breath, she let her thoughts drift, let herself sink down into a blackness as deep as that which surrounded the ship. Relax…breathe….

  She seemed to float in the dark for a long time, feeling it like a soothing warmth against her skin, welcoming and soft as the blanket she’d loved to death as a child. Gradually, however, the air touching her grew colder and colder, until it was like ice, like the absolute zero of outer space. Her eyes fluttered open, but she couldn’t see anything. Only black, pressing like a weight against her eyeballs.

  And then something seemed to hold her by the wrist, and she swung around, trying to see what it was that had grabbed her, and she saw that it was a corpse wearing the dark gray uniform of the GDF, face pale and bloated, eyes staring sightlessly at her. She tried to yank her arm away, but even though it was dead, it continued to hold on, was pulling her closer, drawing her toward the gaping maw of its mouth, its tongue black and swollen, somehow reaching out to her….