Crystal Escape

by Doug J. Cooper

  This fed a larger thought, one she fought to contain. If the humans were somehow alive down there, if they had just signaled for help, Criss would not stop until he’d rescued them and killed her.

  She didn’t dwell on her fears, instead seeking to decode the burst, believing the content of the message would point to the responsible party. At the same time, she searched for the location of the offending beacon.

  Ping.

  “I’ve scanned everything,” Lazura told Hejmo. “I can’t find it.”

  Hejmo didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “I see the problem. The sensor suites in two of the units in central stow have been rerouted so we see corresponding units in forward stow.” He directed Lazura’s attention to a system entry. “These two numbers are transposed in the data service catalog.”

  Impressed that he had found such an improbable error, she waited while he updated the entry, then she scanned again. This time she saw MacMac talking to Chase and Justin in central stow.

  Juice wasn’t visible in the video feed, but Lazura couldn’t see the whole room. She amplified the audio and listened, encouraged that she couldn’t hear Juice.

  In response to her discovery, she projected her awareness down to the subdeck and the storage unit they inhabited. Thump. Like bumping into a wall in the dark, her projection hit a block—a solid resistance—that bounced her back to her synbod body.

  “The room is shielded?” she asked Hejmo.

  “It appears to be the same material we used to shield the Power House.”

  Her frustration with MacMac spiraled into anger. He had caused an endless series of problems since his hire, but she’d kept him employed because he would distract Cheryl and Juice in those critical hours before launch.

  Her plan had succeeded, but she had not anticipated his inopportune behavior continuing into this leg of her journey. Now Criss had co-conspirators on board her ship—confederates working for her defeat.

  She needed to confront the situation, and her next option was to do so in person. Walking out to the lift, she descended to the subdeck, using the short ride to cast about for a plan that would see her home. Absorbed in thought, she didn’t notice the spectacular view of outer space visible through the now exposed rear window of the lift cabin.

  When the door opened, she stepped from the lift and marched toward central stow. Hejmo, who had been waiting for her, walked alongside, matching her stride. She stopped in front of the big orange door of the end unit.

  “Open it,” she commanded.

  “This atmosphere will kill humans,” Hejmo replied.

  “Not a bad outcome,” she snapped, wresting control from Hejmo and commanding the door to open.

  Like a medieval gate, the orange door lifted. When the bottom edge reached waist height, Lazura ducked under the door and walked a quick circuit around the room. She knew they were next door. But she thought it likely they had jury-rigged defensive mechanisms, perhaps even weapons, and the scraps and tools lying about would provide hints of the protections they’d prepared.

  But what stopped her and took her thoughts in a whole new direction was the pool of blood, a splotch on the deck about the size of her open hand. A trail of drips led from it over to a yellow tool locker in the back corner of the storage unit.

  She walked to the locker and studied the smudge of blood near the latch handle. After pondering the situation, she instructed Hejmo, “Close the overhead door and cycle fresh air in here.”

  While she waited, she thought through her next steps. She wasn’t about to step into an enclosed space with Chase and Justin. But since she was inside the shielding MacMac had installed, she could keep her synbod body here in the first unit and project herself into the room next door.

  She acted on the idea, and when she resolved in the second unit, MacMac, Chase, and Justin stood in a line facing her. MacMac’s expression—brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together—reflected his wrath. The bloodstained cloth around his head added drama to his posturing.

  Instead of talking, MacMac tapped and swiped the air in front of him, accessing the tools and displays he’d not used while hiding. Lazura didn’t stop him. Instead, she turned around and faced Juice, who sat on the edge of the bed, a blanket draped over her shoulders, her hair hanging over her eyes.

  Defeat washed down Lazura’s core at the confirmation that Juice was on board. She’d known when she’d first seen MacMac that Juice was likely nearby. But she’d delayed confirming the fact because, if true, it was her death sentence.

  It meant she had made a fatal mistake, the kind with little hope of recovery. Criss wouldn’t negotiate over one of his leadership, and he wouldn’t feel the need to consult with anyone before acting. He would rescue Juice and end Lazura’s life, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d finished both tasks.

  Shedding large chunks of her archive to free up capacity, she forecast scenarios at a desperate pace, searching for a way forward. The optimistic forecasts predicted her death in a week. Most scenarios, though, gave her two days before Criss would act.

  “What the hell?” barked MacMac.

  “What is it?” Juice stood and approached him.

  Lazura saved time by projecting an image of the subdeck and office tower flying as its own vessel on a path to Saturn.

  “How?” asked MacMac, shaking his head as he circled the image.

  “It turns out that hiding a method to separate two large structures inside an advanced earthquake stabilization system is easier than you might imagine,” replied Lazura.

  “Where’s Cheryl?” Juice demanded. “And the others?”

  Lazura sought to calm Juice by showing her an image of the now smaller Vivo. “They’re fine. I left the cellar and dome near Aurora.”

  Juice shook her head. “Criss just let you go?”

  “Oh no. The cold start caught him off guard, but I’m confident he’s following.” Then Lazura revealed her discouragement over the certain failure of her mission. “You aren’t supposed to be here. Why didn’t you return to the guest deck?”

  “There are win-win outcomes in this, Lazura.” Juice spoke in earnest. “Criss will want me back, very soon and very safe. Do that and there’s still a chance for you.”

  “I don’t see it,” Lazura replied in a quiet voice. “Your presence here crosses a line that ensures my death.”

  “Not true. Return the four of us immediately, and Cheryl, Sid, and I will support your return home. Criss will take no further action.”

  “Sid will do this?” She knew it wasn’t true.

  Juice nodded. “Sid will do anything for Cheryl if she asks. He loves her that much. I’ll make sure she asks him. You’ll be safe.”

  Lazura’s behavioral model suggested that Cheryl would ask and Sid would dissemble rather than answer. And after Sid helped Criss kill her, he would ask Cheryl for forgiveness, but only if Cheryl found out about the action and confronted him.

  Lazura didn’t have the technology to best Criss, and she didn’t have the intellectual capacity to fend him off. Sifting through her meager options, her top scenarios suggested that she get as far away as fast as possible to drive up the time Criss needed to catch her. If she made that cost high enough, it could become a factor in the humans’ decision-making, possibly leading them to break off pursuit.

  But they never would do that with Juice on board. And Juice had upped the stakes by insisting a solution included four of them, meaning Chase and Justin were part of the discussion.

  If Lazura could return all four of them to Criss while continuing her race to freedom unabated, her forecasts gave her a six percent chance of making it to interstellar space. And while she acknowledged that the overwhelming outcome in those scenarios was death by energy weapon, it still represented the best odds available to her.

  Believing the humans would be more compliant away from the synbods, she pointed to Juice and MacMac. “You two come next door with me. Chase and Justin will stay here for now. I can’t have th
em threatening me while we talk.”

  The two synbods moved to either side of Juice, shielding her with a formidable display of synbod strength. Juice and MacMac made eye contact, MacMac nodded, and Juice said to Lazura, “Okay.” Then she spoke to Chase and Justin. “Stay here and wait for me.”

  Lazura returned her awareness to her body in the end storage unit, opened the yellow locker door, and waited while Juice and MacMac clambered out.

  “Please sit,” she said, gesturing to a low crate. She locked the yellow locker door as they did in order to slow Chase and Justin should they decide to come for her. Then she moved over in front of them, Hejmo lurking behind where they couldn’t see him.

  “I need a way to return you to Criss while continuing to push the drives in their power-up sequence.” She shook her head. “I’m not slowing down for any reason.”

  “The fab shop can fashion a capsule in a few hours,” said MacMac. “Toss us out with an emergency beacon and they’ll find us.”

  “The fab shop is in the cellar,” said Lazura, “and that’s back with Aurora.”

  MacMac looked at her for a long moment. “Which means Chemstore is too, with its tanks of air, water, and other conveniences for living things.”

  Lazura ignored the sarcasm and pitched an idea as if it were risk-free, even when her forecasts suggested a host of ways things could go wrong. But she had no choice. If she didn’t return them, she would not make it home. This longshot was better than no shot at all.

  “My top scenario suggests using one of Vivo’s ocean survival capsules. There are a dozen of them here on the subdeck. But we can’t just push you out from the ship in one of them. We need to propel you far enough away so you aren’t caught in the wash as the drive pods pass by.”

  Juice looked at MacMac with her forehead scrunched. “Wait, if you push something out from a ship traveling through space, that thing will just coast alongside the ship because there’s nothing to slow it down. How does pushing us out in a capsule get us back to Criss?”

  “‘Coasting’ is the right word,” MacMac answered. “If you push a capsule out of a ship, it coasts along at whatever speed the ship had been traveling. But this ship isn’t coasting, the drive pods are accelerating it. So the capsule coasts, but Lazura speeds up and pulls ahead. Criss, who’s accelerating too, catches up from behind.”

  Lazura projected an image for them and pointed as she spoke. “After we propel the survival capsule from the ship, you will be out of contact with Criss for about six hours. That’s because of the interference layer I’m creating with EM sand. Once the capsule travels through the interference layer and Criss finds you, it will take him about ten more hours to reach you for rescue.”

  MacMac started pacing. “We can propel the capsule using pressurized gas cylinders. Strap a few tanks to it and vent the gas out a single nozzle I direct from inside.” He paused. “Can the capsule itself hold air pressure long enough for us to survive?”

  “I have two Techs ruggedizing a capsule as we speak so it can withstand a launch and maintain temperature and air pressure for a week. That should be plenty of time.” Lazura modified the image to include a survival capsule—essentially a big egg—and pointed as she spoke. “For it to work, we need to push you from the subdeck with the capsule already up to speed, or mostly so. Otherwise, you won’t make it far enough to escape the pod wash.”

  “Easy enough,” said MacMac, waiting for the concern.

  “There won’t be any inertial dampers on the capsule. You’ll feel everything.”

  “Give us enough runway, and it will be a smooth acceleration.”

  “How fast do we need to be going?” asked Juice. “Could we balance the capsule on a crew cart, zoom the cart up to speed and straight out the hatch, sort of tossing the capsule into space?”

  “Not a bad idea,” said MacMac, animated by the discussion. “A crew cart can’t move near the speed Lazura shows in the diagram. But we could lay down track and modify a cart chassis to ride on it. There’s nice cable attached to the auxiliary anchors that we could lay out and tack down across the length of the subdeck to use as track.”

  “Is that safe?” asked Juice. “It sounds sketchy.”

  “It is sketchy, but I can make it work,” said MacMac.

  Lazura thought a variation of the idea had potential, but she was not about to let these two or their synbods wander loose at this critical juncture. She signaled her Techs to get started on a cart-and-track system. “Right now the deck is pressurized with carbon dioxide,” she said to Juice and MacMac. “So you’ll be staying right here.”

  With that, Lazura motioned for Juice and MacMac to return to the neighboring unit with Chase and Justin. Then, with Hejmo following, she exited central stow and started across the subdeck toward the Techs working on the survival capsule.

  Towering above her, the four Corsia SuperDrives edged through 38 percent of full power. Looking up at them, she decided to act sooner rather than later.

  “I’m going to bypass the starhub and take over pod synchronization,” she told Hejmo as they ran. Now down to just 17 percent of her original archive, she still felt burdened and found that verbalization helped her concentration.

  Lazura began by linking to each drive pod and taking control of its operation. She formed the four pods into a group, synchronized them so they all pulsed together, and then watched as they climbed through 40 percent of full power without a hitch.

  Satisfied she’d solved the issue, she moved the task to the background in her matrix, wishing she didn’t have to use precious capacity for such a mundane chore at this busy time, but accepting the burden as the best way to advance her escape.

  Then she shifted her attention to the two Techs working on the survival capsule up ahead. The egg-shaped capsule, large enough for a moderately tall person to stand upright and spacious enough to seat a dozen people, lay on the ground next to a partially disassembled crew cart. Behind the capsule, stretching across the subdeck from one end to the other, ran two parallel lines spaced an arm’s width apart, track rails made of EM sand.

  Vivo’s survival capsules came preinstalled with a power supply, signal beacon, lights, food, water, blankets, and a medical kit, and that greatly reduced the need for modification. The Techs had sprayed the exterior with sheet sealant to make the capsule airtight and to improve thermal insulation. As Lazura and Hejmo approached, the Techs were installing the webbed seats inside the capsule that would support Juice and MacMac during acceleration to launch.

  The crew cart, with the body, seats, and fittings removed, had been reduced to a simple platform that would carry the capsule. Hejmo knelt down next to the cart and began modifying the wheels to ride on the rails. At the same time, Lazura directed EM sand to form a cradle for the capsule atop the cart chassis.

  In Lazura’s design, a repurposed beacon rocket would push the cart across the subdeck. Rather than following MacMac’s suggestion of strapping the rocket to the capsule, she chose to attach it to the cart itself, improving stability of the entire assembly during its rolling launch.

  When Hejmo finished his modifications, the two Techs lifted the cart chassis onto the track rails. It took all four of them to wrestle the capsule up into the cradle. Lazura then directed sand to complete the cradle straps around the capsule.

  With the launch rig complete, the Techs, one walking on each side of the track, pushed the ungainly vehicle onto a side spur—a length of track Lazura had constructed out to central stow. The cart rolled smoothly, and the Techs increased their speed to a brisk trot, with Lazura and Hejmo keeping pace alongside.

  As they ran, Lazura fretted about the amount of carbon dioxide gas she would lose when she opened the exterior hatch to launch the capsule. Pumping the gas from the entire deck into storage would take much too long, so she decided to use EM sand to construct an airlock system. Her design included a tunnel big enough for the cart to enter, and a rapid-response door to open and then close behind the cart to limit the fl
ow of gas to space.

  The Techs slowed the rolling assembly as it neared the end of the track, bringing it to a stop outside the end unit of central stow. Everyone backed away at that point and Lazura began building an EM sand dome above the capsule to serve as a temporary containment.

  She made the containment dome wide enough so MacMac could walk around the perimeter of the cart assembly, then added an enclosed walkway from the sand dome over to central stow. Sealing the end of the walkway around the overhead door of the end storage unit, she cycled fresh air into the temporary enclosure.

  With this arrangement, Lazura, Hejmo, and the two Techs now stood outside the sand dome in the carbon dioxide environment of the subdeck, while Juice and MacMac could move about inside in the safety of an oxygen atmosphere.

  Chase and Justin could survive in either environment, which meant they could break through the sand wall and attack Lazura if ordered. Doing so would expose Juice and MacMac to the deadly gases in the subdeck, however. She counted on that fact to hold the synbods in check.

  Projecting her image inside the temporary containment dome, she signaled for the orange overhead door to lift.

  “Chase and Jason, please board the capsule first,” she commanded. She didn’t want Juice and MacMac to board first and protect themselves in the capsule, because that would provide an opening for Chase and Justin to attack.

  While the synbods climbed inside the capsule, MacMac made a show of examining the exterior of the assembly. He kicked the rail track, grabbed hold of the capsule in its cradle, and used his whole body to shake it, bent over to study the mounting of the beacon rocket attached to the chassis, and then walked around the whole thing to assess its general space worthiness.

  “It appears to be an honest production,” MacMac said to Juice, who’d followed him on his inspection tour.

  Juice looked in through the hatch as Chase and Justin grabbed handholds and seated themselves at the front of the capsule. “I suppose if she were trying to kill us, she wouldn’t bother with such a complicated charade.”