Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  “Evening, doc.”

  “No luck with our minders?” Dauber asked.

  As May shook her head, Dauber slammed the open desk drawer. The sound reverberated through the lab. May came up behind him and rested her hand on his shoulder. Leaning forward, she spoke too quietly for Emma to hear.

  Emma stacked the last box on top of the others. So Dr. May had tried to intercede with command. Did that mean she was compromised, too? Shit. She hated covert crap. Give her a target and a weapon any day.

  Right now, her mission was Dauber. She had yet to decide if he was a target as well.

  “I know. We have to finish what we started.” Dauber sighed before pushing away from the desk and standing.

  “Chaz, are you sure her systems are fully isolated?”

  Dauber glanced over at the rack of computer components. “I’ve walled her off from the testing rig. She should be okay even if the program spills over the sandbox.” He glared toward where Emma stood by the stack of boxes. “Brent is an idiot. This whole project is a mistake. Moving it now?” He shook his head. His round face was red again, clear up to his hairline.

  Was his anger sufficient motivation for treason? Emma and her squad-mates bitched about command all the time. That didn’t make them traitors. And when it came time to carry out orders, there was no second guessing or hesitation. So what was Dauber going to do?

  Emma didn’t know enough about the tech they worked with to catch him in the act of sabotage. Communications were on lockdown, so there should have been no way to get the data out. At least not virtually. And not physically either, unless he had an accomplice here at the University. It would have to be someone with security clearance to get out of the lab building. Even she didn’t have that.

  Only officers did. And then only on a case by case basis. She wished she could get a list from Brent, but he had essentially forbidden her from contacting him. All Emma could do was keep Dauber under surveillance until they moved the lab. Once in orbit, it would be easier to make sure the two scientists were truly isolated.

  This was the mission’s most vulnerable time. They would need to bring in personnel to move the boxes and computer gear and any of them could be a conduit, even an unwitting one.

  She flexed her left hand and brushed it against her firearm—a habitual gesture that was nearly unconscious.

  * * *

  Choking, Emma scrabbled backwards until she reached the door and the blessedly cooler air of the corridor. She struggled to her feet, her chest heaving, her eyes streaming. Smoke engulfed the entire lab. Even if Dauber had been alive when she first found him, he was certainly dead now. “Keep moving,” she gasped. “Bring her.”

  Dr. May was still holding the food container in a white-knuckled grip. “Chaz?”

  Emma shook her head. “The transport.” She coughed and couldn’t catch her breath for a long moment. “We have to get her out of here.”

  Odachi narrowed his eyes and looked down the hallway. Then he nodded. He must have come to the same conclusion as she had: someone had blown up the lab, disabled fire suppression, and pulled security. It didn’t matter who that someone was. What mattered was they hadn’t gotten to May. Yet.

  And for now, the safest place for her was off planet and isolated.

  The three of them raced to the loading dock. They hadn’t passed a single soldier on the way. At the security scan, Odachi slipped free of Emma’s right side. She cried out as he jostled her injured arm. The fingerprint and retinal checks seemed to take forever. Had their clearance been revoked?

  Nothing made sense. Why kill Dauber and blow up the lab? It wasn’t what the rebels wanted and it wasn’t what the Commonwealth wanted, either, was it?

  The loading dock door swung open silently. They hustled a dazed Dr. May through the storage area and into the tiny cockpit of the small military transport.

  “I hope you can fly this thing solo.” Emma heard her own thin voice as if it were coming from very far away.

  “Strap her in!” That was Odachi.

  Gentle hands pressed her into one of the flight chairs and fumbled for the buckles. Emma wanted to apologize for not being able to help, but couldn’t find the words.

  “I have a pilot’s rating.” May’s voice cut in and out like a military radio on a faint frequency.

  “Go. Just go,” Emma said. Or tried to say. Or imagined she’d said.

  Then even the small sounds of the engines spinning faded down some distant corridor in her mind until everything was heavy and still.

  * * *

  Emma followed May to the woman’s quarters. Like her own small room, it had once been an office. There was barely room for the two women to squeeze in beside the single bed frame and a storage locker.

  “Everything I need is in there,” May said, gesturing to the trunk on the bed.

  Crouching over it, Emma tested the weight. Not too bad. She grabbed the handles, prepared to hoist it, when May interrupted.

  “I’m not useless,” she said.

  Emma tried to wrestle the side of the trunk from May, but the woman’s grip was steady. “Suit yourself.”

  They walked in silence carrying the trunk toward where the building’s loading dock had been converted into a makeshift hanger and launching pad. Normally, there would be a full shift on duty, but tonight the halls were silent. A ruse to see if Dauber would act? She was sure they were under surveillance, which meant command would know if anyone tried to access the transport. Or if May were to say anything incriminating.

  So far the woman had said little. Not just tonight, but for the entire six weeks Emma had been assigned here. Maybe it would help if she knew more about the scientist. Maybe she would reveal something about Dauber that would help Emma assess just how much of a threat he posed.

  They set the trunk down at the security lock that had been installed on the loading dock entrance. Emma had to input her fingerprints and submit to a retinal scan. When she stood up from the scanner, May was watching her, smiling.

  “What?”

  May shrugged.

  Emma paused, her hand hesitating at the enter screen. “Tell me.”

  “You really want to know?”

  After clearing both scans, Emma folded her arms across her chest.

  May sighed. “Fine. It’s not really secure.” She gestured at the control panel with its input screens and lights. “Chaz and I offered to upgrade the defenses but Brent turned us down. You’d think he didn’t trust us, or something.”

  “How do you know it’s not secure?”

  “You really don’t know anything about what we do, do you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Above my clearance.” And not the kind of problem she was trained to solve.

  The petite scientist sat down on the trunk. “We design and create Artificial Intelligences and the human interfaces that interact with them.” She pointed up at the lock device. “That’s an isolated system. A simple input device that cross checks the patterns in your fingerprints and retinal scan against a known database. If it were connected to a true AI, the security protocols and pattern recognition algorithms would be close to infallible. I can think of at least a dozen ways to defeat your system that Mnemosyne would not be susceptible to.”

  “Are we in any danger?”

  “From what?” May sprang up from the trunk and shoved it with her foot. “We’re in a building swarming with armed soldiers.”

  Emma brushed her left hand across the cool surface of her firearm.

  “I don’t think anyone wants my clothes and my kit bag, do you?”

  “The contents of your trunk aren’t classified.” It was the closest Emma could come to asking her about the work May and Dauber were doing.

  “No. It’s the contents of our minds that’s the problem.” May sighed again. “Lets get this stowed so I can help Chaz finish in the lab. Your commander has made it abundantly clear that what doesn’t make it on the transport doesn’t come with us.”

  With one
last glance at the scientist, Emma went through the security protocols again and waited for the doors to unlock. The transport’s storage bay was still mostly empty. She hoisted the trunk by herself and secured it against the wall in free-fall netting.

  The locks engaged as she stepped back into the building side of the loading dock. For as much good as they would do, if May were right.

  As they headed back to the lab, May paused at the entrance to the commissary. “I’d better bring up some food. He forgets to eat and then he gets cranky.”

  Emma smirked. How could you tell? “Fine. I’ll meet you there.” Her orders were clear: observe and assess Dauber. Besides, aside from the security restrictions, the scientists weren’t officially prisoners and she and Odachi weren’t technically jailers. Though, to be honest, the line between security and incarceration was a thin one. Especially now.

  “Can I bring you anything?” May asked.

  “No.” Emma was surprised by the offer. “No, thank you,” she said, softening her tone.

  Was Commander Brent just being especially paranoid? There wasn’t a lot of official news from the blockade, but she’d been a soldier long enough to be able to fill in the star chart. If Brent had had definitive proof, he would have acted instead of sending her on this close recon.

  * * *

  Emma woke to silence and the high shine of bright lights on stainless steel. Her right arm was a numb weight against her side. She turned her head, stared at her distant fingers, and willed them to move. They twitched slightly before stilling again.

  A chair scraped against the floor beside her.

  “Welcome back.” Dr. May’s voice echoed in the small room.

  “What happened?” Emma’s voice cracked.

  May handed her a sealed water container with a straw. She drank it down without stopping and immediately started coughing.

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.” Her piercing blue eyes seemed to concentrate and then reflect all the light in the room.

  She coughed up what tasted like smoke from the lab – metallic and oily. “I guess we made it to the orbital lab.”

  May nodded. “Odachi put us on communications blackout as soon as we got here.”

  “How long?” Her voice was hoarse and speaking hurt. She handed May back the cup and the woman refilled it without a word.

  “Not long. Just a few hours. I don’t think the staff Odachi herded off the station in the transport were very happy, but they left.” May’s lips twitched into a brief smile. “Of course, he did threaten to shoot them all.”

  Well, that was something. “So we’re alone up here.”

  Odachi stood in the doorway. “For now.”

  Emma nodded. “My arm?”

  “We pumped you full of fluids and pain meds. The good doctor removed a fifteen centimeter hunk of shrapnel from your shoulder and filled the wound with emergency glue.”

  “It’s just a temporary fix. You’re going to need to see a surgeon. Probably sooner rather than later.”

  The meds explained the vaguely floaty feeling she had. “I didn’t think you were that kind of doctor.”

  “I’m not.” She lowered her eyes and her hands trembled. “Chaz was. Biomedical engineering and cybernetics. Please. What happened in there?”

  “I don’t know.” Emma wiped her left hand on the sheet covering her, remembering the blood. It still stained the skin on her palms and around her nail beds. She looked up at May and winced at the pain in the woman’s face. “Any word from Brent?”

  “Command knows we’re here,” Odachi said, shrugging. “But there’s been nothing. No word on the condition of the research building or if there were any other casualties. No intelligence or forensics on the explosives used in the lab. Aside from the three of us and whoever the Commander has officially informed, I suspect no one knows that Dr. Dauber is dead.”

  “Now what?”

  “I have to go back to work.” May blinked back tears.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” May said. “Thank you. For trying to pull him out.”

  “I was doing my job.” Uncomfortable with the woman’s grief and gratitude, Emma turned away. If May only knew that her job included orders to kill Dauber if necessary, they would be having a very different conversation.

  “He was a good man.”

  A good man that command believed had turned traitor.

  May fell silent for several minutes. “Odachi. Can he be trusted?”

  Emma jerked her head to face the woman.

  “I need to know. Is he a good man?”

  The question troubled Emma more than she wanted to admit. Was Odachi a good man? Who was she to judge? “We’re soldiers, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Brent sent them no new orders. He did, however, send up the security detail that had been slated to fly with them to the station, before their precipitous departure. The first thing they did was lock down comms except for the progress reports May had to give twice a day.

  Over the next week, Emma quickly fell back into the rhythm of 12 hour shifts, supervising May. The woman never seemed to sleep. Odachi barely spoke with her other than to urge her to return planet-side to get her arm assessed. But it wasn’t an order and she insisted on staying. She wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Was Odachi a good man? Emma turned May’s question over and over in her mind. Did she trust him?

  Odachi sat on a tall stool opposite the table May was using as her desk. With each of them overlapping only twice a day and for just a few moments, it was hard for Emma to get a sense of the man. Certainly ever since the events in the lab at the university, he’d been keeping May under his close watch. And she knew he’d been practicing with the target sims, including under full battlefield conditions.

  “She’s all yours,” Odachi said, yawning.

  They could do twelves for a bit longer, but they were tough, especially when there wasn’t anyone to give them a shift off. They hadn’t spoken about it, but neither of them suggested adding any of Brent’s guards to their rotation.

  Emma watched him as he strode out of the lab. She turned back to May. “Can I get you anything?”

  The woman shook her head. Except for when May had changed Emma’s dressings, she had turned grimly silent since they had gotten here. It was different from the reserve that had always seemed to surround her. Sometimes, Emma would find her staring out one of the port windows blinking back tears. Then she would catch herself and work furiously, moving back and forth between precise handwritten notes and her tablet.

  She muttered something Emma didn’t catch. “Ma’am?”

  “I need Chaz.” Her voice cracked and she leaned back from the desk, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “He always checked my equations.” She lowered her hands and pressed them against the desk. “I’ve done the best I could. I can transmit this ground-side during the next comms window.”

  “And then?” Emma hadn’t meant to ask that aloud.

  May looked up at her. There was a terrible sadness in her gaze. “Does it matter?”

  * * *

  Emma woke to the emergency siren and bolted out of the narrow bunk. Grabbing her holster, she buckled it over the light pants and shirt she slept in and slid into her half-boots. Her right arm was at least functional enough that she didn’t need to keep it immobilized anymore, not that it was going to be useful for much in an emergency.

  She listened for the alarm’s pattern. If it had been a hull breach, the klaxons would have sounded in urgent, short bursts, but this one was for weapon’s fire.

  Shit. Emma raced from her quarters toward May’s lab and nearly stumbled on a body in the corridor. One of their new security contingent and he’d been neatly shot in the exact center of his forehead with a tight beam at close range. She drew her sidearm.

  The alarm continued to wail, accompanied by a red strobe. It would cover the sound of her approach, but also render her deaf to any enemies. A second body lay
crumpled on the floor, executed in exactly the same manner as her fellow soldier. Emma couldn’t tell which of them was shot first, but it didn’t matter.

  Was Odachi a good man? He was definitely a good shot.

  She ran faster.

  The lab was empty except for a third body and the smell of recent weapons fire. May’s notes and tablet were gone. There was no sign of Odachi.

  Emma tore through the station, heading to the docking bay. There was no other place they could be. May and Odachi. The only question was if May was a prisoner or a willing accomplice.

  Just outside the docking bay, she passed a fourth body. And a blood trail leading toward the door. That meant only two more guards, unless they were dead in their bunks. And either May or Odachi had been hit.

  Why was Emma alive? If Odachi was planning on going AWOL, he should have killed her, too. He had to have known she’d be honor bound to stop him.

  She burst into the docking bay, her weapon steady in her hand, the slight hum of its powerpack a comforting menace. The smell of burnt flesh hit her before she saw Odachi pulling a limping Dr. May toward the airlock. Her left ankle was wrapped in a clumsy bandage. The wound left a smear of blood across the room.

  “Stop!” Emma ordered. She aimed her sidearm in the center of Odachi’s chest. At this distance, there was little chance she could miss.

  He turned. The right side of his face was a ruin of blistered skin.

  “Let her go, Odachi!”

  May yanked him closer to the lock. It only took a fraction of a second for Emma to understand that she was not his prisoner.

  Odachi lifted his weapon.

  Emma tightened her finger on the trigger.

  “Enough!” May shoved Odachi hard and the two of them stumbled as the arc of Emma’s blast hit the wall behind them.

  “Corporal Gutierrez, please,” May said. “Just turn around and leave. We’ve all been betrayed and I’m trying to make things right.”