Extremes: A Retrieval Artist Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  He was doing that. He had scanned the area, found no suspicious vessels, and saw no evidence of other ships nearby.

  The next step, then, would be to see if anyone survived, and to offer assistance that might be able to help any injured parties survive until the rescue vehicles arrived.

  As a civilian, he didn’t have to do any of that. He could sit here and wait—or he could fly off, trying to find Tey. But he had no idea what direction to go in: the only energy signatures in the area had come from the two ships in front of him, his own ship, and the ship that had been destroyed.

  The trail ended here, whether he liked it or not.

  He couldn’t in good conscience stay on board the Dove. He checked the area near the airlock of the yacht and found some standard-issue environmental suits—he had been in such a hurry, he hadn’t brought his—and he studied them for a moment.

  They were in rough shape. Obviously Paloma hadn’t used them much. She probably kept them on hand for emergencies among any passengers she might have.

  He found one that had been police-issue when he started on the force. He ran the diagnostic, saw that the parts worked, then put the suit on, leaving the hood down.

  Then he went into the cockpit to start the difficult task of boarding the revolving traffic ship.

  Fortunately, the ship was turning slowly. He could get the yacht close to it and hook them up before the ship moved out of his way too far. It would be a difficult maneuver, but he’d done similar ones before.

  The only difference was that he had had other traffic cops as backup, people who waited in the undamaged ship to handle any problems that might arise.

  Flint sighed and sent another message back to Armstrong. He got a message in return: more traffic ships were on their way. Stabilize the situation; they would arrive soon.

  Soon probably wasn’t soon enough, especially if there were survivors. Pods could have drifted quite a distance already. If the pods hadn’t been launched, then he might find badly injured people on board.

  He slipped into the pilot seat. He programmed the computer to help him with the more difficult maneuvers—sending grapplers from his yacht to the ship, to hold it stationary before he sent down the automatic tunnel that would link his yacht to the traffic ship’s main entrance.

  The maneuver took him nearly fifteen minutes, less time than he would have expected, considering the fact that he was doing it alone.

  He set the ship on automatic, so that it would compensate for any problems that arose while he was gone.

  Then he put his hood up, ran the environmental suit’s diagnostic again, and headed to the disabled ship.

  FORTY

  THUMPS AND BANGS came from outside the wall. The air trucks were lowering the parts of the various decontamination units. DeRicci had already spoken to the man in charge outside, and asked him to assemble a complete unit before starting on the next.

  “We have a lot of sick people in here,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t pin her to a number, since she didn’t have one. “The quicker we have a second working unit, the better.”

  He had agreed, and as she watched, several of the maintenance workers gathered around one of the units, talking and gesturing and arguing.

  She hoped that was part of their work method. Each moment that clicked away could mean the loss of another life.

  The volunteers had set up the plastic barriers, with doors to the various decontamination units. Only one of the barriers was operational now, and someone—she though maybe it was Tokagawa—was funneling people through from the medical tent.

  DeRicci couldn’t see them come out the other side, although she knew from her discussions with the city that they’d still be isolated until upgraded diagnostic wands—and a precautionary blood test—gave them the all-clear.

  She stood near the wall for a few moments, watching the workers set up the second decontamination unit. For the first time in years, she felt useless. She couldn’t do much except wait.

  She supposed she could continue the investigation, but they pretty much knew what was going on. Tey had killed Mayoux, probably in the airlock near the maintenance bay, put the pink suit on the body, then stashed it in the bay until the morning of the race. Once Tey had registered and gotten her singlet and her finger circled for the panic button, she had gone, removed the body, and driven it to mile five, leaving it behind the boulder.

  She had deactivated the cameras—or set them up to be activated by a remote that she controlled—and then had taken the vehicle back to the race site, careful to stay out of sight.

  When she returned to the staging area, she made a show of greeting friends and prancing for the cameras. She took off quickly and kept a good distance between herself and everyone else. When she reached mile five, she shut down the camera momentarily (mile six’s was still off), carried the body to its final resting place, put her singlet on it, and circled the finger.

  Then she turned the cameras back on and left.

  How she got back to the dome was, at the moment, a matter for speculation. She might have run back, careful to stay parallel to the course, or she might have stashed another vehicle.

  DeRicci figured Tey ran back, judging by how much time it took her to finish her escape.

  DeRicci would have to do a lot of the work later to build a case for trial, but she had that investigation mapped out. It would be relatively easy once she was out of here.

  If she got out of here.

  She shivered once and walked toward the dressing area. It looked small and cramped. Landres was talking to van der Ketting.

  “What’s so interesting about this place?” DeRicci asked as she approached.

  “Landres thinks this is the source of the virus,” van der Ketting said. His tone held some resentment. Poor guy. He obviously didn’t like to be outthought by someone who wasn’t a detective.

  “What did you find?” DeRicci asked.

  “We haven’t gone inside,” Landres said. “I figure we save that for HazMat once they start working on this area. They’ll be here, right?”

  “As soon as we’re out and cleared by the health guys,” DeRicci said.

  Landres nodded. “What we have is pretty simple. Actually, Leif found it.”

  “And I think it’s just conjecture.” Van der Ketting extended his handheld. “I’ve got security footage of Zweig taking her environmental suit in there, getting changed, and leaving. The next person inside was the first guy who died from the virus. It seems tenuous.”

  “Except when we spoke to one of the medical guys,” Landres said, “he thought it was odd that the guy got so very sick so fast when no one else did. He said maybe he got exposed to a more lethal dose.”

  “It’s a virus,” DeRicci said. “There’s no such thing as a more lethal dose. But you’re probably right. Have you kept watching the security vid?”

  “Not yet.” Van der Ketting looked through the wall. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

  DeRicci gave him a sympathetic smile. For all her irritation at him, she didn’t blame him for being distracted right now. “We all are. But here’s what I figure. I suspect everyone who got ill first went through this dressing area after Zweig got out. Did anyone collapse on the track from this?”

  “I don’t know.” Van der Ketting looked back at her. She could actually feel his struggle to concentrate on the case and not the slow progress of the decon units.

  “That’s something else we’ll have to find out,” DeRicci said. “When we get out of here, we’re going to have a lot of backtracking to do. The more stuff we gather now, the better off we’ll be. Who knows when HazMat’ll let anyone in here again.”

  “Good point,” Landres said.

  DeRicci smiled at him. “And I’d like you to stay on this case, even after we’ve gotten out of here. You’ve been a big help.”

  He gave her a surprised look. So did van der Ketting.

  “Thank you,” Landres said, and it was clear that she had given him on
e of his dreams. Good. Let him focus on the future. She wished she could.

  DeRicci glanced through the new wall again. The clump of workers seemed to have grown, but the air truck was gone. Did that mean all the parts had been lowered?

  She hoped so. She was beginning to feel restless, and she knew what that meant. It meant she needed to get out of here.

  And if she was feeling that way when she understood everything that was going on, she wondered how all the others felt, the people who had no real idea about the devastating illness around them, the way they’d all been targeted, the fact that they were in jeopardy just because they had chosen to live their lives in an unusual way.

  Time to take her own advice. Gather as much evidence as she could while she was still here. After all, she needed something to keep her busy. Something to keep her attention away from a tragedy she’d already done everything in her power to avert.

  FORTY-ONE

  FLINT CLIMBED INSIDE the tunnel between the two ships. His hood was on and the environmental suit’s air tasted stale. It wasn’t. He’d run the diagnostic so many times that he felt like he knew every inch of this suit, but he was being extremely cautious about everything.

  He’d never been in space alone. Not even after his training. Space cops always had partners, and often worked in groups of four or six. Then there were always ships as backups.

  And, although he’d seen a lot of action, he’d never wound up in a situation like this one—one ship destroyed, the other disabled.

  He had the suit’s outside monitors on so that he could hear his own movement and any others. He was also hooked up to the Dove’s communications system. He had done that partly so that he wouldn’t feel alone. But he also needed to cover his own back, and using all his senses was the only way he could figure out how to do it.

  His boots hit the outside of the traffic ship. The side was scored by weapons fire, and the fire had gone deep. He wondered how much damage he’d find inside. The ship that had hit this one had a lot more firepower than any ship he’d ever come across.

  He turned his body ninety degrees, and tucked his boots inside one of the rungs on the tunnel. Then he crouched, using the emergency override to open the traffic ship’s outside door.

  The airlock was dark, just like it was supposed to be, but the warning light was not flashing. That meant that the environmental systems were still working.

  He unhooked himself from the rung and floated inside, pulling the door closed. This was the first-stage airlock. There was a smaller, second stage that a lot of traffic cops used as a dressing room to remove their environmental suits.

  On a whim, he typed his old override code into the keypad beside the door, and wasn’t surprised when the door opened. No one changed all the codes on all the ships. It was simply too much work. The changes got inputted during a full overhaul, when the entire computer system change.

  It was a bad way to work, but so far the Port hadn’t had the money to change it.

  At the moment, he was grateful. He didn’t want to have to disable the access panel and try to pry the door open by hand.

  He slipped inside the airlock. The door closed behind him.

  His movements echoed in the small space. There was gravity in here. His feet found the floor. The gravity anchored him, making him feel safe.

  He had his suit run its external diagnostic. Not just gravity, but atmosphere. The lack of warning lights had been correct. The ship’s internal environmental systems were still working.

  Using his old code a second time, he opened the internal door. It slid sideways, and he stepped inside the ship.

  There weren’t any frills in traffic ships. No cushy seats, no comfortable carpets. Only plastic chairs bolted to the floor, with belts wrapped in them so that passengers wouldn’t get thrown around the cabin.

  The back of the ship had a large cargo hold for any items confiscated on long trips, and a small brig in case criminals were apprehended. Usually criminals were placed in these plastic chairs and handcuffed in, but every once in a while Traffic picked up people so violent that they needed to go into the brig.

  Flint glanced around. The main lighting was up, and everything seemed normal. Nothing had spilled along the floor; there were no audio messages warning him of hull breaches or containment problems.

  He reached to the side panel and double-checked the information his suit had given him. Yes, indeed, the environmental systems were working. The ship had sustained disastrous shots to the engines and to the weapons systems, but life support worked just fine.

  What bothered him was that no one greeted him. By rights, at least two cops should have been on this ship. Were they wounded? Or were they so preoccupied with trying to effect repairs that they hadn’t realized he’d come aboard?

  Flint brought his hood down so that he could see and hear better. The ship was chillier than regulation allowed for, but he’d worked with partners who liked a cooler environment, so that didn’t really disturb him.

  What disturbed him was the faint odor of copper in the air. Someone in this ship was injured, dying, or dead.

  He walked toward the cockpit. The hatch to the engines was shut and locked, the lights that indicated the lock was on revolving just like they were supposed to.

  The door to the small galley was closed, which was unusual, but the cockpit door was open.

  A hand stuck out of it, splayed and motionless. Flint grabbed his laser pistol and peered around the corner.

  One cop, dead, his face mashed into the floor, his arms above his head. Flint didn’t see any obvious blood, but he did see a big scorch wound in the man’s back.

  That wound didn’t come from an accident with the ship. He’d been shot, and at fairly close range.

  Flint brought his own pistol up, keeping it in front of him as he moved. He breathed shallowly, so that he could hear any door open or any boot thud against the plastic flooring.

  Another body huddled next to the pilot’s chair—a woman’s, also in a traffic cop uniform. The smell came from in here. Blood still dripped off the console. A lot of blood.

  Flint glanced at her as he moved closer to the controls. Her throat had been slit, and she’d bled out, unable to stop it.

  Flint swallowed hard. His heart was pounding. He wasn’t alone in here; that was becoming clear. Whoever was in here had killed either to survive or to take over the ship, apparently not realizing that the engines had been ruined in the firefight.

  Time for him to leave, let the professionals handle this. As curious as he was, he was alone. And if he was facing Frieda Tey, as he expected, he needed support.

  That much was clear.

  He scanned the room, making certain she wasn’t in here. He didn’t want to turn his back to leave only to give her an easy shot at him.

  No one hid behind the console, and no one sat in the nearby seats.

  The Dove was on the viewscreen, its perfect form outlined against the stars.

  She’d been watching him. She’d probably heard him, too.

  She had known what he would find.

  And, if she was smart, she would realize that she had an advantage. He had delivered to her the perfect escape vehicle: one with working engines and more speed than any ship in the Moon’s fleet.

  He cursed, grabbed his hood, and pulled it back up, automatically hitting the diagnostic to make sure there were no leaks in the environmental suit. Then he ran for the airlocks.

  He hadn’t heard her move, but she was cunning and she was swift. She would have known to be quiet. He hadn’t heard the doors, but she had only a few moments, and she wouldn’t know the override codes.

  The airlock would force her to stay inside for at least thirty seconds.

  He ran for the doors, noting as he did that the galley door was now open. Damn, damn, damn. He had been preoccupied by that hand sticking out of the cockpit door, just as she had known he would be, and she had used that to her advantage.

  The first airlock doo
r was closed, and the rotating lock indicated that it was twenty-nine seconds into the cycle. Then he heard the inner door clang open—a sound he would have heard no matter where he was—and through the small window, he saw a suited body climb into the first airlock.

  The door closed, and the second cycle started. Flint opened the inner door and stepped into the airlock. He could see her inside the other one, struggling with the panel.

  Now she was at a disadvantage. She could no longer control the ship from the pilot’s chair, resetting or opening controls at her whim. She might know the code she programmed, but not the overrides.

  He let the inner door close behind him, typed his code into the old panel, and overrode all commands, setting them to his code only. He jammed her door closed, making certain it would not open without three separate passwords from him.

  Then he used the intercom, hoping she had her suit set for external sounds.

  “You’re trapped in there,” he said. “I wouldn’t try shooting your way out. Anything you do in that small space will probably ricochet and kill you.”

  For a moment, he didn’t think she’d heard. Then he saw her move across the window, and touch the intercom.

  “What have you done with Paloma?” she asked.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE VOLUNTEERS WERE WANDERING through the crowd in this section of the shut-off dome, getting them to line up for the various decon units. DeRicci forced Landres to get into line. He hadn’t wanted to. He wanted to wait until she queued up before he did.

  Van der Ketting had lined up long ago, and she didn’t mind. She had actually given him permission. He had spent most of his time staring at the crews assembling the decon units rather than helping with the last-minute investigation.

  DeRicci had done a few more interviews, gathered the rest of the surveillance equipment, and sent several different packets of information down her link. She’d isolated the dressing area so that no one would go into it accidentally, and she’d marked several other areas for HazMat to visit first.