by Rob Boffard
Suddenly, Corey remembers where he knows the man from. “You’re my mom’s boss.”
“Indeed I am.” The man’s accent is thick southern Texas. “Tom Daniels. It’s great to finally meet you, Corey. Your mommy’s told me a lot about you.”
Corey says nothing. Part of him is still convinced that he’s back on the Red Panda, that all of this is a dream.
“I’m glad you made it out,” the man says, clapping his hands on his knees and rising to his feet. He walks over to stand by Corey’s bed – he’s taller than Corey first thought, with the big shoulders of a football player. “Sounds like you had quite an adventure.”
“Um. Yeah. I mean …” Corey’s eyes suddenly go wide. “My mom. My dad! Are they—”
Daniels lifts his hands. “Fine. They’re fine. A little beat up, but no permanent damage. They’re here, too. I haven’t seen them yet, but the nurses tell me they’re all OK. That’s one hell of a landing you folks pulled off.”
“Can you call them?” Corey can’t believe the relief flowing through him. They made it. They made it.
“In a minute. Something we gotta hash out first.”
With a grunt, Daniels reaches behind him, pulling the chair across the floor. It makes a screeching sound that hurts Corey’s ears. The senator sits down in it, breathing a sigh of relief, as if being on his feet had tired him out. Corey watches him, suddenly wary.
“Now, Corey,” Daniels says. “You’ll probably have a lot of people wanting to talk to you about all this. Feed reporters. Your friends. Folks you meet at the grocery store. And my guess is you’ll want to tell them quite a story.”
He gives Corey another kindly smile. “But I wanted to ask you, as someone who knows your mommy pretty well, I wanted to ask you to keep things to yourself for now.”
“… Why?”
“Well, it’s a little complicated.” Daniels folds his hands in his lap. “A lot of people died out at Sigma. I’m sure you probably know that. We have to figure out who they all were, and tell their families. And we don’t know exactly what happened, either – why the station got attacked like it did.”
“But we do.” Corey tries to sit up higher, wincing as he finally feels a thin darning needle of pain wind its way up from his leg. “One of our own ships—”
“I know.” Daniels isn’t smiling any more. “We’re aware the ship you came in on was one of our … projects. We’re going to be looking closely at this whole situation to make sure it never happens again. But if you go telling everybody about it before we do, people will jump to conclusions. It’ll hold things up at our end, make it harder for us to figure out what’s what.”
He lowers his voice, and Corey has to strain to hear him. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“I …”
“I need you to be strong for me now, Corey.” Daniels leans in. “I need you to tell this to your mommy, and your daddy. And your friends Hannah and Jack, and your brother. I’ll be talking to them, too, but I need you to back me up on this. It’s really important. Can you do that for me? Can you—”
From the door, Anita Livingstone says, “Get away from our son.”
Corey’s head turns so fast that he almost strains a muscle in his neck. His mom and dad are striding into the room, his mom in the lead. She’s got a massive black eye, and there are stitches on her lower lip, but she’s OK. She’s OK.
His dad looks just as beat up, limping slightly. It makes Corey think of the story his mom told them, of how they met. Both of them, Corey sees, are wearing blue hospital gowns.
And behind them: Malik. And Hannah. And Jack. All of them.
Corey’s joy fades when he sees the expression on his mom’s face. He’s never seen her this angry. In seconds, she’s between Daniels and the bed, his dad, too. The senator steps back, giving them room. They’re all messed up. Jack’s arm is in a sleek white cast, and Hannah is wearing a thick neck brace. With a start, he realises Roman isn’t there. Did he make it? Is he in the hospital?
Malik appears on the other side of the bed, staring in horror at the shield over his brother’s leg. He seems OK, even if he looks a little lame in the thin gown he’s wearing. Before Corey can ask about Roman, he says, “They fix your leg? You gonna be OK?” His voice is breathless, almost panicked.
“I think so,” Corey says. Malik wavers for a second, then all but throws himself on top of his brother, pulling into a huge, rough hug. Corey wants to ask about Roman, but Malik is hugging him so hard that he can’t speak.
“They took my holo,” Malik says, his words muffled by Corey’s shoulder. “I don’t know where it is.”
For some reason, that scares Corey more than anything. And there’s so much he wants to know. Not just about Roman – what happened to the other two attack ships? Where’s Brendan? What’s going to happen to him? Thinking of him and Seema makes Corey think of Lorinda, and Volkova, and he feels a knife twisting in his gut.
He’s brought back when he hears his dad’s angry voice. “Don’t you ever talk to our kids,” Everett says. “Not ever. Understand me?”
“Anita,” Daniels says, smiling broadly. “Mr Livingstone. And this must be Malik.” He looks over at the other two. “And let me see … Ms Elliott and Mr Tennant, right? I’m Tom Daniels. It’s a pleasure to—”
“We know who you are,” Hannah says. There’s no warmth in her voice. She walks around to stand next to Everett, forming a protective wall between Corey and the senator. Jack starts to fold his arms, forgetting that one is immobilised. He does it anyway, jamming the free arm in awkwardly.
“Well, that’s good.” Daniels doesn’t seem bothered by Hannah’s tone. “And I’m glad you’re all here. I was just talking to Corey about the need for discretion.”
“Discretion?” Jack says the word like it tastes bad.
“Indeed.” The senator rocks on his heels, clasping his hands behind his back. “There needs to be a full Senate inquiry, and, until that’s been completed, I want to be sure we’re all on the same page regarding speaking to the feeds.” He turns to Jack. “I’m afraid that includes you, Mr Tennant. You’ll need to—”
“Cut the shit,” Jack says.
The room falls silent.
“You ordered the attack on the Sigma Station,” Anita says. “You wanted to dissolve the treaty. Everything that happened … it was you.”
Chapter 70
Anita reaches back for Corey, not looking at him, but finding his hand anyway. He grips it tight.
“Anita.” Daniels sounds wounded. “That’s a very serious accusation. And as you’re still one of my employees—”
“Not any more. I quit. As of ten minutes ago.”
Daniels sighs, as if he knew that was coming. “I’m sorry to hear that, and I hope you’ll reconsider once you’re less emotional.”
“Excuse me?” says Hannah.
The senator ignores her. “As it is, I’m not going to stand for you accusing me like that, without any evidence.”
“See, that’s the thing,” Anita says.
She lets go of Corey’s hand, taking a step towards the senator, who still doesn’t move. His expression is grave, but there’s a look in his eyes that wasn’t there before. A wariness.
“The whole time we were out there, I kept thinking. Who would want to overturn the treaty? Who had the most to gain?” She jabs a finger at Daniels’ chest. “And then I realised. It took me a long damn time, but I figured it out.”
“Careful,” says Daniels.
Anita ignores him. “How many times have you talked about how you’d like to change the treaty? How many times did you tell us that we weren’t working hard enough? That we needed to find loopholes in the wording? You fought harder than anyone to get it changed so we’d have more territory. It just took me a little while to figure it out.”
“Anita, listen to yourself.” Daniels reaches out to her, and Everett knocks his arm away. The senator looks at him in mild astonishment.
“I should have
seen it a lot sooner,” Anita says, shaking her head. Her voice is strained, as if she’s about to start crying. “How could you do that? All those people …”
“This is absurd,” Daniels says. “You’re jumping to conclusions based on … what, me doing my job? As a Frontier senator? Looking after our interests? Now, I know you’ve been through a lot, and you’re probably in shock. I’m willing to forgive this outburst, but I should warn you that—”
“Commander Richard Hayes,” Jack says.
Daniels glances at him, irritated. “I beg your pardon?”
“He was in charge of the rescue mission for your boys on the Resolute. Came in on, what was it, the Victory?” He shrugs. “Didn’t say much, but I caught his name. Even then, I didn’t think much of it until I told Anita here.”
“That’s what sold it for me,” Anita says. Everett grabs her free hand, and she holds on tight. “You and Hayes go way back, don’t you? All the way to the Frontier Officer’s Academy. Spoken at some of your fundraisers, from what I recall. And I’ve seen him around the office plenty of times. My guess is that you two cooked this up together – after all, if we went back to war, you’d both get your piece. So when the Resolute didn’t come back on schedule, Hayes himself went to check it out. He’d want to make sure it was done right.”
Daniels is smiling to himself, slowly shaking his head.
“You forget,” Anita says. “I’ve worked with you a long time, Tom. I know when you’re lying.”
In the silence that follows, Corey could swear the temperature of the room drops ten degrees. He’s still trying to process everything that’s just happened. But what he focuses on is his mom and dad. Standing together, holding hands. Both wanting the same thing.
“It’s still just conjecture,” Daniels says. “You don’t exactly have a smoking gun, do you?”
“Maybe not,” Jack says. “But we plan to tell everyone what we know.”
Hannah gives him a sharp look. He ignores her.
“They’ll join the dots we can’t,” Everett tells Daniels. “Dig up some more evidence – because, believe me, it’s out there. Hope you got a good lawyer, Senator.”
“Damn right,” Malik says.
Daniels sighs a second time. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
He reaches in the pocket of his jacket, and pulls out a folded sheet of paper, handing it to Anita. She takes it reluctantly, like it’s poisoned, unfolding it.
“Copies have been forwarded to your individual inboxes,” Daniels says. “I suggest you read it closely.”
“What is it?” Jack cranes forward to look.
The senator smiles that kindly smile again. “Gag order. Effective in all known territories. Got it signed off this morning, and believe me when I say you don’t want to mess with this one. Any statement made to any unauthorised individual lines you up for a treason charge. All records of your trip are now property of the Frontier.”
His eyes meet Anita’s. “As I said, I’d hoped we could avoid this. You’re an intelligent woman, Anita. You would have made an excellent senator yourself one day.”
Anita reads the paper, mouth moving silently, a look of dismay on her face. Hannah, Jack and Everett crowd around her. Only Malik stays where he is, fists bunched at his sides.
“I’ll leave you to talk it over,” Daniels said, giving Corey a friendly nod as he walks past the bed. “It’s good to have you all back. I hope you’ll cooperate fully with our investigation.”
“You can’t possibly think you can cover this up,” Jack says. “How many people saw us jump in out of nowhere?”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Daniels says, buttoning his suit jacket. “You think you made a big entrance, and it’ll be news, all right. For a time. But it’ll also be easy to explain away. A military scientific programme, unintended consequences, untested technology. The conspiracy theorists’ll have a field day, but nobody listens to them.
“Oh, I have no doubt they’ll do their damnedest to connect Sigma to what happened to you. Probably get pretty close, too. But, see …” He absently shoots a cuff, the sad smile still on his face. “By the time we’re done, the whole thing will be so drawn out and complicated and buried in legalities that nobody’ll know what happened. And I’m pretty sure none of you are willing to risk life in prison to tell them.”
His eyes land on Corey’s brother. “How about it, Malik? Ready to go to jail in LunarMax? That’s what’ll happen if you folks fuck with me.”
He walks away, leaving them huddled around the bed. Corey’s head falls back on the pillow. He’s never heard the phrase gag order, but he can figure it out. How could this happen? After everything they’d gone through, it’s going to be like it never happened.
“Huh,” Hannah says. “That’s funny.”
Daniels opens the door to the ward. “What is?” he says, not looking over his shoulder.
Corey watches Hannah take the piece of paper from Anita, lifting it to her face. “The date and time this was signed off. It’s only a couple of hours ago. You must have done it before you came to see us.”
Daniels fiddles with his watch – gold, with a big, chunky dial. “What about it?”
“Well, the thing is,” Hannah says, “Sigma Destination Tours provides its passengers with kind of an interesting service.”
She folds the paper up. “Did you know that anybody who takes a Sigma tour can upload any photos or video they have to the Frontier Public History Archives? All they have to do is log on.”
“So what?” Now Daniels sounds annoyed. “Anything you got is Frontier property. Or did you not hear me?”
“As of two hours ago, sure. But we uploaded everything we had when we first arrived above Austin, so about—” She glances at Everett, who says, “Ten hours ago. Give or take.”
Daniels looks between them, that same sad smile back on his face. This time, at least to Corey, he looks a little worried.
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“You should see the video Malik here shot,” Jack says. “He did a really good job.”
“I had the Panda queue it for upload before we made the jump,” says Hannah. “It would have sent the files the second we came back into signal range. They’re on the public archives right now.” She nudges Jack. “Hey – how long do you think it’ll take before someone realises what they’re looking at?”
“Not long.” Anita’s eyes are shiny with tears, but her voice is steady and even.
Daniels doesn’t look friendly any more. He looks like he wants to kill them.
“It doesn’t change a damn thing,” he says. “That footage is still Frontier property. All of it. We’ll just delete it off the server. Any one of my people could handle that.”
Hannah purses her lips. “Delete it off the server. That’s cute. Senator, let me tell you something about historians. We don’t trust people like you. You’re not the first person to try change the records, and you definitely won’t be the last. The archives are publicly run. Always have been. They’re held across hundreds of thousands of different computers in this system. You’d have to issue an awful lot of gag orders.”
“You have no idea, the resources I have …”
“I’m sure you do. But it only takes one person to download it, and it’ll be out there. Not to mention Sigma Tours themselves. I’m pretty sure they have an office planet-side, and they’re probably freaking out trying to understand what happened. They might be scrolling through the archives right now.”
“Don’t forget the journalists,” Jack says.
“Oh yeah. Them, too. Who knows where they’ve been looking?”
“And other tourists, of course. Ones who don’t know what happened to Sigma yet.”
“It is a good idea to do plenty of research before a big trip,” Everett says.
Daniels has gone white. Hannah lifts her chin, her eyes meeting his. Despite the neck brace, she looks, to Corey, like she’s ten feet tall.
; “You’d better think of a good story,” she says. “You’re going to need it.”
Chapter 71
Titan, Hannah’s home moon, has several huge banks of artificial sunlights in its dome colony. Plenty of people complain about them, saying they’re too hot, or that the plants don’t grow quite right. Hannah’s never minded them much, but she has to admit: they’ll never beat the real thing.
She tilts her head back as far as her flexible brace will allow, reclining on the wooden bench in the hospital garden, eyes closed. The sunlight turns the inside of her lids a warm gold. No, the real thing is much, much better. Hannah basks in it, stretching her arms out.
Oh, yeah.
She’s in the central courtyard of the hospital wing: a small space with benches and a few hardy succulents, pushing up through soil in regimented flowerbeds. There’s a half-hearted fountain in the centre, its pool dry, the spout silent.
They’ve been in Austin City General for two days, and she can’t believe she only found this place an hour ago. Then again, it took an age to persuade the doctors and nurses that, yes, the nanomeds were working, and, yes, her neck felt better. They wouldn’t let her take the brace off, but at least they let her walk around outside the wards.
Hannah opens her eyes. A patient in a hoverchair – an older man, completely bald – passes her on the other side of the courtyard, a nurse keeping pace alongside him. He spots Hannah, and smiles.
She returns it, feeling kind of bad; for the past couple of days, the entire hospital has been locked down. Only patients, doctors and nurses were allowed – they only opened up the visitors’ lists this morning.
It’s not hard to see why. The streets outside the hospital are rammed with vehicles from what looks like every feed in existence. Hannah spent a few minutes watching some of them this morning, staring with bemused fascination as they showed endless shots of the front of the hospital, at their own photos superimposed on the footage.
There’s an airspace blackout around the building, so they haven’t got any drone cameras up above – just as well, or the nurses would never have let Hannah come outside – but that hasn’t stopped them from trying.