“What are you doing now?” Nora said from right beside me.
I flinched and closed the scroll screen. “Just some work.”
She reached out and touched Felicia’s canister. “What was she like?”
I tensed up. I hadn’t talked to anyone about Felicia since her death and sure never expected to start with a nine-year-old kid, but as I stared at Nora’s open and curious face, I realized I actually did want to talk about her.
“She was very brave and smart. She laughed a lot and loved jokes. And singing. I think she would have liked you.”
“You loved her a lot?”
I nodded, the lump in my throat preventing me from saying more.
“And you still talk to her?”
“Yeah,” I croaked.
Then she looked at me and squinted. “Does she ever talk back?”
“Sort of,” I said. “I can still hear her in my mind sometimes.”
“How did she die?”
I swallowed hard. I’d never had to say the truth out loud, in my own words. The helmet-cam video of the incident had told the story back on Phobos, so the was never an investigation. I was reprimanded and reassigned, but never once had to talk about it.
My stomach clenched tight and my pulse raced. I’d always hated the cold vacuum, but after Felicia’s death, I went to great extremes to avoid it. Herding robots from a warm, safe workstation had been as close to cold space as I intended to get. Until I formed my escape plan.
I blinked at Nora and took a deep breath.
“We lived on Phobos station. We were both surface equipment technicians. One day while we were outside I started goofing around. I jumped up on a big rock that gave way and rolled out from under me. I knew better. I knew to not step on boulders and still . . . Anyway, the big rock rolled down a slope and on top of Felicia. The gravity was low, but the rock had mass and momentum. It tore her suit and pinned her down. By the time I got the rock off of her and fixed her suit, it was too late.”
She touched the canister again.
“It was an accident,” she whispered. “But that didn’t stop you from feeling it was your fault?”
I nodded. How could a freaking nine-year-old kid understand those kinds of feelings?
Felicia was right. I couldn’t take Nora with me. It would be wrong to separate her from her mother, even for her own good. And of course I’d be instantly arrested at Mars for being a child abductor. I’d have to find a way to take them both.
“I think my mom would like you,” she said with an impish grin. “I asked her to invite you to our cabin for dinner, but she said that probably wasn’t a good idea. It might make Seth mad.”
“Is he your dad?”
“I think so, but my mom won’t admit it. He spends the night with mom sometimes and she says I have to be nice to him since he’s her boss.”
I swallowed and felt the panic rising in me again. I had to do something.
When her shift ended, Wendy came to collect Nora.
She hesitated, looking uncomfortable at first, then her gaze hardened. “You sent two payments of fifty credits each to Nora’s account. She cleaned for you?”
“Yeah, my cabin and then she cleaned up in here,” I said and motioned around my still cluttered work bay.
Nora looked momentarily surprised, then immediately hid it.
“If she wants to come back, I can teach her how to scrub down the robots. They have to be cleaned after every trip out and I hate doing it.”
Wendy stared at me, as if trying to read my mind, read my true motivations for being with her daughter.
“There are video recordings of each time she’s come to see me. I’ll give you access to them.”
Then her hard expression collapsed and she looked twice as tired as before. “Sorry, I just . . .”
“No need.”
After they left I floated in the middle of my suddenly very quiet and lonely work bay. I had made no friends and had no lovers since arriving on Arturo Station. It had made my planning easy. But not now.
I pulled Felicia’s canister from its mount and held it to my chest.
“I wasn’t really brave,” she said. “That was just an act to impress you.”
“Shut up. You’re the most amazing person I know.”
“Knew,” she said.
I shrugged. “I miss you.”
She didn’t answer and I floated around the bay for a long time, holding her and remembering. Finally I bumped against the wall that hid my escape pod and new I had to do something. There are the mistakes of our actions, like my stupidity that killed Felicia, but also mistakes of our inactions.
“How can I do this?” I whispered to the can.
“You already know,” she said. “You’ve already decided.”
She was right, as always, and the answer was quite simple.
But the execution would be a cast iron bitch.
I’d done it again. The gradual increase in gravity from nothing to Earth normal felt as if it would crush me and I could barely stay on my feet. I’d worked more than twenty hours getting everything ready and had almost finished, but with just a few small tasks left, I had to stop and sleep. Even with help from Canker, if I continued on this path I would forget something critical and it would all be wasted.
When the lift door opened I was nearly knocked down by a scowling man who actually growled at me before the door closed. I staggered down the corridor to my cabin, glad for once that it was late in the evening shift and Nora hadn’t been there to greet me. Before I could even cross the room to my bed, I heard a pounding on the door and the cabin computer announced Nora.
“Damn.” I couldn’t. Not now. I ignored her and lay down, but the pounding was insistent and the computer eventually informed me that she claimed it was an emergency.
I opened the door and my fatigue instantly vanished. Tears streaked Nora’s face and her hands were covered with dried blood. She grabbed my arm and dragged me down the hall.
“You have to help my mom! Seth beat her up. She’s hurt bad.”
I ran the last few steps to the still open door.
Her mother lay curled into a fetal ball on the bed. Wet bloody towels lay on the floor beside her, but they hadn’t stopped any of the bleeding. Her face was still a bloody mess.
I knelt next to her. Fury and frustration pushed me to the edge of yelling, but I made my voice soft. “Wendy? This is Clarke. Can you hear me?”
She groaned and said something I couldn’t make out.
“Before you came, she said her stomach hurts and she can’t breathe.”
My fury turned to fear as I realized that probably meant internal injuries. “Did you call Security?”
“Twice. The first time while he was still hitting her. They still haven’t come.”
Security officers were supposed to respond immediately to all injuries and provide transport if needed. Bastards were probably trying to protect Seth since he was a manager.
“We’re going to have to take her to the Medical Unit ourselves,” I said. “But we’ll need some help. Stay with her and I’ll be right back.”
A minute later, with Nora’s help, we slid Wendy and her mattress onto the collapsible equipment dolly I had grabbed from my cabin. It wasn’t a good fit, but by positioning Wendy’s weight over the wheels and letting half of the mattress drag behind, we managed to roll her through the mostly abandoned corridors, halfway around the ring to the Medical Unit.
The soft yet insistent chiming from my wrist unit eventually made me open my eyes. At first confused by my surroundings, I then spotted Nora standing next to her mother’s regrowth tank and it all came back in a rush. If my alarm was sounding, it meant I had an hour before my automated units went active, and I wasn’t ready yet.
I stepped up beside Nora and looked down at her mom. Wendy floated in a tank filled with blue-tinted gel. A tube came from her mouth and tiny blinking monitoring units were attached to her in various locations. She was awake, and even th
ough buried in medical artifacts, already looked much better.
“How is she?”
“The medtechs say she’ll be okay, but she’ll have to stay here in the tank for a few days.”
The letters “TNK YU” appeared on a screen attached to the tank, and I realized Wendy had a small keypad attached to one hand.
I smiled, wishing I could say something cheerful and positive, but the Security officer who came to get statements from Nora and Wendy after we arrived just said they would “talk to” Seth. He was a manager. He was effectively immune to punishment. Of course, if my plan worked, things would get better soon enough, but I had to get to my hub workstation and prepare.
“I’m going to have to go,” I said. “I have something important to take care of, but I’ll be back later.”
I wasn’t sure if that last statement was true or not, but I would try.
“PPLS TAK CAR OF NORA.”
I stared at the message, wondering how to answer. I couldn’t take her. If my crazy attempt at seizing control of the station didn’t work, then I’d be in a lot of trouble. I didn’t want Nora with me if that happened. I’d assumed Nora would want to stay with her mom.
“Nora, would you rather stay here or come with me?”
She looked at me and screwed up her face. I could tell she didn’t know what to do and was on the verge of tears.
“GO,” appeared on the screen. “I NED SLEEEP. PLS TAK HER.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Okay, kiddo. Let’s go. We have a lot to do in the next hour.”
Everything was ready, with five minutes left on the clock. I looked up from my screen and saw Nora floating in the corner of my little workshop, quietly spinning a screwdriver in the air before her face. Her expression held not even a flicker of hope.
“Be careful with that screwdriver,” I said.
“I’d punch it through Seth’s head if I could,” she said with enough venom that it made me wince. “I hate him!”
“Things are going to get better,” I said.
She glanced at me, then away. “I don’t see how. He’ll keep beating my mom and Security won’t stop him.”
“Look at me.”
She looked up, a little startled at my tone. I wanted to tell her what was about to happen, but didn’t dare risk saying anything that could tip off Eisenhower’s watchers.
“This is a dangerous room. If anything unexpected happens, you have to do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”
Her eyes locked on mine and squinted slightly. She knew there was something unusual in my statement.
“Um . . . okay,” she said.
I nodded slowly, then picked up Felicia’s canister and held it tight as I watched the screen.
While building my escape pod, I’d already learned how to find and bypass control systems without alerting Security, but that had been on a very small scale and in a localized area. So I spent the majority of the previous day interrogating Arturo Station’s control and security systems. They had not only the standard triple-redundant, hard-wired arrangement, but also a fourth and fifth version running along the outside skin in armored cable troughs.
Using my unique method of programming that involved combinations of verbal code words, eye movements, keyboard entries and finger taps, I instructed my robotic accomplices to build fifteen wireless bypasses, inside and outside the hull. Then, when I seized control, my nano-robots would proceed to destroy the original lines. They would send their robots and technicians out to find the problem, but find only empty troughs.
When the timer hit zero, our world changed with a simple message.
EMERGENCY CONTROL CENTER ESTABLISHED.
A virtual control panel appeared on the screen and I started selecting options. The first thing I did was call up a crew status screen. In typical Eisenhower style, it showed the location of every person on the station. I applied a filter to just see managers, security officers, and control room employees. Once I had a good feel for their locations, I sent the emergency de-spin command.
“EMERGENCY DE-SPIN WILL COMMENCE IN TEN MINUTES. THE STATION WILL THEN BE IN A ZERO-GRAVITY SITUATION. PLEASE FIND A SECURE LOCATION.”
“Holy crap! What’re you doing?” Nora said.
“Buckle in, kid,” I said.
“Nora!” she said as she pulled her way along the wall and started to slip her arms into straps.
“Not there. On that wall over there,” I said and pointed to the aft wall.
She did as told, then said, “This must be the unexpected situation you expected.”
I smiled and nodded, but kept my gaze on the personnel screen. As I hoped, all of the control employees and managers were racing for their duty stations or secure cabins in Ring Four. Security, however, was a different matter. They were scattered around the station and seemed to be running in circles. Two were still in Ring One. I cursed under my breath.
“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered.
“Stop cursing,” I said.
“Fine. But what are you doing?”
“I’m stealing the station. I’m going to fly it to Mars orbit.”
She said nothing, and when I looked up, she was staring at me with her mouth hanging open.
“How? I mean your robots are cool, but they can’t push this huge station!”
“Sure they can. It would just take a long time to build up speed. But there’s no need. How do you think they got the station out here? The fusion reactor that gives us electricity can also power the engine they use to move the station. Luckily, we have enough fuel to accelerate up to speed and slow us down at Mars.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “But what about security? Even if you control the station, they’ll come get you.”
“I have a plan for that too,” I said as the warning sounded the two-minute mark. Except for five security officers, all the station’s key personnel, a total of ninety-seven, had scurried to Ring Four as I hoped.
The klaxon sounded and green lights appeared all over my screen’s station diagram, indicating each section and ring had been sealed off. When the last hatch lock engaged, the station’s hull shuddered and groaned.
“Nothing’s happening!” Nora squealed.
“Sure it is. The station takes about ten minutes to stop spinning.”
“But . . .” she stopped and looked around the workshop. Some stuff along the walls shifted around, but there was little change in the hub. “Oh right. We were already in zero gravity.”
“Microgravity.”
“Wait! What about my mom? Will she be okay?”
“She’s suspended in a tank of gel. She’ll be even safer than we are.”
When the control status showed we had come to a complete halt, I engaged the drive at ten percent thrust. The station creaked and moaned again; this time anything not locked down started sliding aft. Felicia’s canister rolled toward the edge of my bench, but I grabbed it in mid-air as it launched.
“I wonder what you would have thought of this,” I muttered, but she didn’t answer.
Just before I touched the icon to disengage Ring Four, the screen turned to static.
“Damn it!” I said and slapped the bench.
“Don’t curse,” Nora said, with a smug voice. I nearly yelled at her to shut up, but instead clenched my teeth. She had earlier hit on my plan’s biggest weakness. The station was essentially four equally-sized rings attached to a tubular central core. Since the only way to travel between rings was to take elevators up the spokes to the core, sealing each ring in times of emergency was quite easy. But given enough time, Eisenhower and his goons would get out of their locked sections and come after me. To prevent that, I had planned to disconnect Ring Four from the rest of the station and leave it behind for the authorities to come and collect after we’d told our story on Mars. That now looked doubtful. I wondered briefly how I would hold up under torture.
“What happened?” Nora asked.
One glance at her and I realized they wouldn’
t need torture. They could make me do anything if they could get to Nora.
“I think they’re jamming my wireless communications. I’m crippled without it.”
“Damn,” she muttered. I glared at her for a second, then grabbed a MOM unit from the rack and powered it up. Using her directional antenna, I confirmed my suspicion. The signal was strong from the aft direction, where Ring Four was located.
I closed my eyes and cradled the MOM in my lap for a few minutes. How had Eisenhower figured it out so fast? Felicia’s voice answered the question.
“It doesn’t matter. You know what you have to do now.”
I took a deep breath and pulled along the wall to the emergency locker, where I yanked out two balloon suits.
“Put this on. It’s an adult small, but may still be big on you, so cinch it up around the waist, wrists and neck. Just not tight enough to cut off the blood flow.”
She took the clear plastic compressed suit. “I know how. We have emergency drills, remember?”
I struggled into mine as the dread continued to build. First the rapid breathing, then the shakes and vomit rising in my throat. I hadn’t been in any kind of pressure suit or vacuum since Felicia’s death. I didn’t want to do this.
I started to explain the entire situation to Nora, then stopped. I didn’t think Security could still hear me since I’d seized the control system, but I wasn’t sure. I grabbed a piece of paper and quickly wrote it down.
I have a secret space pod attached to the other side of the outer wall. I have my nanobots programmed to automatically open and then close a hole in the hull to let me get to the pod. Just in case they are slow and some air leaks out, your suit will inflate automatically and protect you until you can get out through the hatch.
I handed the sheet of paper to her and and waited for her to read it.
“Understand?” I asked.
“You’re leaving? No!”
“I have to. I’ll be right back.”
“Send a robot!”
“No radio communications. I have to keep my hands on the MOM to talk to it.”
Her lip quivered, but she didn’t cry.
The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera Page 31