Extremes: A Retrieval Artist Novel

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  She was grateful for the work. Otherwise she would be watching the crews assemble the decon units too, and wishing they would hurry.

  They got the second one together fairly quickly, and then a third, and a fourth. They were working on a fifth. The units were fairly close together, so that there had to be only one line. When the other units arrived, they would probably be spaced out along the wall.

  DeRicci got reports from various areas that the decon units already assembled seemed to be working. So far, the people who had gone through had a later stage of the virus, but they were still mobile.

  When they got out of the decon unit, the virus had left their systems—at least so far as the diagnostic wands and blood tests could tell. But everyone who had been exposed would remained isolated for the rest of the night, to make sure this virus didn’t hide in a person’s system and then return.

  The medical teams didn’t think it would, but DeRicci didn’t trust them. This virus had been sneaky so far, and she expected it to continue to be sneaky.

  Just like the person who had created it.

  Landres had disappeared between the plastic walls as the line moved forward. DeRicci stood near the bungalow and stared Outside. Vehicles were parked near the finish line, and a few volunteers still remained at the tables, apparently cleaning up.

  Those people probably hadn’t been affected. They’d been wearing environmental suits all day, for hours before Jane Zweig even showed up at the race site.

  They had agreed to wait Outside until the medical tent was cleared. Then they would go through that decon unit and join everyone else.

  DeRicci wondered what it was like out there—not much to do, just wait, and hope that they didn’t get ill like everyone else. They would be the last processed through the medical tent, which probably meant they’d go past bodies.

  At the moment, she had no idea how many people had died. No one was releasing the numbers and even though she could page the medical personnel and ask, she didn’t. They were busy enough, keeping people comfortable.

  She had a hunch a number of the medical team would die as well. They were on the front lines, and they weren’t leaving until their patients did.

  She wasn’t leaving either. So far everything had been orderly—surprisingly so—but she was afraid the order might not last.

  If the crews couldn’t get the remaining decon units running, then there wouldn’t be enough time to help everyone who’d been exposed to this virus. These runners and volunteers weren’t dumb. They’d figure it all out, that some of them might have to wait too long to be cured.

  And if that happened, DeRicci fully expected some kind of riot.

  She would do everything she could to prevent it.

  FORTY-THREE

  PALOMA? IT WAS A TRICK. It had to be.

  Tey must have read the registry on the Dove as Flint had approached this damaged ship. Then Tey would have discovered that the Dove was registered to someone named Paloma, and Tey would have decided to use the name to throw him off.

  He didn’t want to think about the fact that Frieda Tey might actually know Paloma. It raised more questions than he wanted right now, and it would distract him.

  He saw a movement through the small window. Tey was floating toward the outer doors. Something glinted in her hand.

  A knife. Of course. How else had she slit the pilot’s throat? Frieda Tey was going to try to open the doors the old-fashioned way, with a knife blade and a lot of physical strength.

  He didn’t want to leave the area, but he had to. He had to make certain she had no real escape route.

  Flint left the second airlock, headed through the inner doors, and hurried toward the cockpit. He stepped over the body of the first space cop and hurried to the pilot’s chair. Paloma would hate what he had to do, but he had no choice. He reached for the exterior laser controls, the ones that prevented another ship from boarding. He had never done this before, not in this manner. He had used the external lasers on half a dozen ships, but he aimed them at the grapplers as they came toward the ship, not once they were attached.

  He had no idea what severing the connection between the two ships would do to the space yacht. And he couldn’t worry about that—not now.

  His fingers slid across the blood-covered controls. He almost hit the wrong button. Fortunately, his environmental suit’s gloves gave him some leverage, and he managed at the last minute to get a good grip on the correct part of the panel.

  He hit the instructions for the lasers, then changed the viewscreen so that he could watch them work. The screen showed the edge of the hull. The lasers poked out of it, pointing toward the tunnel he had attached to the traffic ship.

  With clear, bright red beams of light, the lasers severed the tunnel between the yacht and the ship. The yacht spun away, out of control.

  The ship rocked. Flint grabbed the arms of the chair to keep his balance. He hadn’t thought to strap in. Then the attitude controls kicked in and he couldn’t feel the bucking any more.

  Flint hurried back toward the airlock doors. He wondered if Tey had gotten the main door open. If she had, she would be sucked into space the moment the tunnel separated from the ship. He peered through the windows, but couldn’t see anything.

  The exterior door seemed to be closed. He reached for the intercom when a scraping sound made him turn. Frieda Tey, so small she looked almost childlike, came at him from the passenger compartment, knife raised.

  He managed to dodge, but not completely. The blade punctured his environmental suit and slashed down the leg, narrowly missing his thigh.

  Flint grabbed Tey’s wrist and pulled her around, yanking her arm up her back so hard that he heard her shoulder dislocate. She screeched in pain. Then he pushed her toward the chairs, reaching for handcuffs—that he suddenly realized weren’t there.

  At that moment, she butted her head backwards, her skull hitting his with such force that he lost part of his grip. She kicked upward, hitting him in the balls. His breath left his lungs, pain shooting through him, and somehow he found himself on his knees.

  He was having trouble catching his breath. He was seeing red—pink, actually—and then he realized what was going on. He heard the faint whir of a fan, and knew that the air was leaving this part of the compartment.

  She had looked at this ship’s specs while she was alone in it. She knew that one of the many failsafes on board was isolated environmental controls, and she had this one set up—probably before he or anyone else got on board.

  He looked up. She had vanished. The cockpit door was closed—she had taken advantage of his momentary weakness to go in there, and to regain control of the ship.

  He put his hood up, but the suit informed him that it couldn’t seal. The slash. She had planned this too. When he had turned on the lasers, she had reversed directions, using her knife to open the inner airlock door, and come inside the ship.

  She had taken those few seconds while he separated the Dove from this ship to set up a secondary plan.

  He cursed mentally, and made himself concentrate on his own problem. She had no idea who he was, so she didn’t know what kind of training he’d had.

  He ripped one of the belts off the passenger chair and tied it around his leg, sealing the suit as best he could. Then he overrode the environmental suit’s controls, the ones that blocked it from starting its protocol when the suit had a puncture. He put the hood back up, and took a deep breath.

  This wouldn’t hold him very long, but it would give him the extra few minutes that he needed.

  He went to the side panel that he had first used, punched in his code, and used the emergency code that had been valid when he was a traffic cop.

  The system beeped at him. It had rejected the emergency code, and it shouldn’t have, not since it took his other old codes.

  Tey had changed it. She hadn’t known about the individual codes, but she had known about the emergency override.

  Somehow, while she was waiting,
she had managed to find the code and delete it.

  He pressed his hood close to the panel so that he could see what he was doing. He would have to hack his way in, and hope that the system didn’t catch on to what he was doing. He also had to hope that Tey didn’t catch on either. If she did, she would stop him.

  No matter who stopped him, the result would be the same. A power surge, isolated to this panel, would go right into his fingers, which would burn through his suit, short-circuit it, and maybe injure or kill him as well.

  Did Tey know that? Probably. Just like she had known about the individual environments and everything else. Those traffic cops hadn’t had a chance. They hadn’t known who they were up against.

  Flint just hoped that he was stalling long enough for the reinforcements to arrive—and he hoped there were a lot of them. He had a hunch she’d take out at least two more space cops before someone brought her down.

  His fingers found the right combination, and he suddenly had control of this section. He turned the air back on, then jury-rigged a block so that she couldn’t access this part of the ship from the cockpit. That wouldn’t last long—and there were warning bells inside the cockpit that notified her of what he was doing, but he didn’t care.

  He had gotten his extra few minutes. Again.

  He hurried to the cockpit door. There was an override beside it, one that should respond to the same codes that had gotten him into the ship in the first place.

  He had his laser pistol out, just like he had before. He now knew better than to assume that she was in the cockpit just because it was logical for her to be there. She might have something brilliant and completely unpredictable in mind.

  That was what she had done all along.

  When he reached the controls, he kept the pistol in his right hand trained at the door. He opened the panel, built into the plastic wall in such a way that the only way anyone would find it was if they knew it was there.

  He started to type in his code when the cockpit door opened.

  Frieda Tey stood before him, her environmental suit helmet off. He grabbed his laser pistol with both hands, making certain it was trained on her.

  She had a pistol on him as well, probably the one that had killed the space cop near the door. Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Flint and he realized that, in any other circumstance, he would find her amazingly attractive. He found her attractive now, with her pixie-like intelligent face, her honey-colored hair, and a smile playing at her lips.

  “Stalemate.” Her voice was throaty and warm, its accent indeterminate. “The question is, can you shoot me faster than I can shoot you?”

  That wasn’t the question. The question was, Which one of them cared whether they got shot while killing the other? He figured he knew the answer to that, but he didn’t enlighten her. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.

  “You amaze me,” she said. “I was beginning to give up hope. I figured Armstrong was my last shot.”

  She caught him, finally. Maybe if he kept her talking, he could get the pistol from her.

  She had the pistol firmly in her hand. The other arm hung limp. But she was standing slightly sideways, so it would be difficult for him to get a good shot at her torso. Besides, the pink environmental suit she wore looked expensive. It probably had some reinforcements built in—the kind his suit didn’t have.

  “Your last shot at what?” he asked.

  “Finding a person who didn’t quit, no matter what was thrown at him. A lot of people have perseverance, but not combined with a working intelligence, one that allows them to solve any problem that comes their way, no matter what the threat to their life is.”

  She had the use of only one arm; she wouldn’t be able to defend herself well. If he could get her to the brig, then the space cops could deal with her when they arrived.

  “I think there are a lot of people like that,” Flint said.

  “Oh, no,” she said, and her eyes twinkled even more. “I’ve been searching for them, hoping they’d reveal themselves to me. And you’re the first one that I’ve found.”

  He tried not to look at her hand. The eyes gave away movement before anything else did. Maybe a warning shot would startle her, force her to shoot, and if he jumped forward, hit her wounded shoulder, then that might throw her off balance—

  “You’ve redeemed it all,” she said, and her words caught him again. He was actually listening. So she had charisma too. No wonder she’d been hard to pin down. No one would believe that such a charming person would be so thoroughly evil.

  “Redeemed what?” He hit the last button on the code, just so that the door was in his control, not hers.

  “The experiments. I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake, but now I know I haven’t. You’ve made it all worthwhile. You’ve proven to me that I’m right. Given the proper circumstance, human beings will do great things.”

  His breath caught. He finally understood what she was saying, what she actually meant. He was not going to be the justification for all those deaths, not even for a minute.

  “You think fighting you is a great thing?” he asked.

  “It’s chess,” she said. “And you’re the first person who has ever made it this far. So I have to congratulate you, Mr.—?”

  “Flint,” he said. “Miles Flint.”

  And then he shot her.

  FORTY-FOUR

  DERICCI STOOD INSIDE the decon unit, her eyes closed. She leaned against the wall, the prickly heat of the various beams coating her entire body.

  Someone had taken her uniform and her environmental suit. They promised her some kind of garment on the other side, but she had no idea what kind, and she really didn’t care.

  The unit was small and cramped. It was also too hot, and smelled of sweat and rotted apples. The light show in these things always made her nauseous. Combined with the bad food she’d eaten, the beginnings of a fever (no one had to confirm that—she recognized the feeling), and the emotional ride she’d been on, it was everything she could do to keep the contents of her stomach down.

  So she shielded her eyes, and pretended she was somewhere else, somewhere better. What she really needed was a vacation, but she’d never get that—at least not to someplace interesting.

  When they had gotten the last decon unit up and running, Chaiken had demanded that she get in line. DeRicci had resisted, but Chaiken told her he had instructions from Gumiela. Apparently Gumiela had contacted him when she couldn’t reach DeRicci.

  DeRicci’s links had come back up only half an hour ago, sometime after the sixth decon unit started running.

  The problem was, shortly after the seventh decon unit started to work, the press found out about the entire mess. Even worse, they’d found out that DeRicci had been the detective involved. If she had thought her links were a mess before, they were unusable now—bells, whistles, red lights, scrolling text. She hadn’t just sent the messages back. She had sent them back with the same kind of annoying alerts they had come with.

  It wouldn’t have quite the same effect, she knew, but it made her feel better.

  Something had to.

  The last death count was forty-one. She’d made the mistake of asking about a few people and getting real answers. Most of the medical staff was either too ill to go through the decon units or dead, including the man who had been in charge, Mikhail Tokagawa.

  DeRicci felt bad about that, even though she’d never met any of these people. But the one that made her feel worse was the Tracker, Oliviari.

  Apparently someone found her in the office shortly after DeRicci had signed off with her. Even though Oliviari had looked ill, DeRicci hadn’t realized she was that ill. Somehow DeRicci had thought Oliviari would survive.

  Maybe it was the woman’s determination. Or maybe it was the aura of strength she’d had while she spoke.

  DeRicci now understood what that strength was. It was sheer willpower. Oliviari had managed to stay alive long enough to give out all the informatio
n she could to save all of the lives that she could.

  Oliviari had shown precisely the kind of courage that Tey had been looking for, the very thing Oliviari had been describing to DeRicci in the minutes before she died.

  How many others had died like Oliviari, doing everything they could to make certain that everyone else would live? Had the heroes of Tey’s first dome died first, like the heroes had here? They’d get posthumous recognition, those people who had stayed behind to make sure the ill got care, but that was all they’d get. They wouldn’t be able to live their lives, see their families again, run another stupid race, all because some crazy woman wanted to prove a point.

  Even van der Ketting, as much as DeRicci complained about him, rose above his own natural tendencies. He worked as hard as his limited imagination had allowed him too.

  She wasn’t going to recommend a demotion for him. She would work with him. She couldn’t give him any more imagination, but she could help him by letting him see hers.

  The decontamination process made her itch. Her skin prickled, but at least the alternating sweats and chills had stopped.

  So close. A few hours away from dying. And she was one of the lucky ones. She felt good about that—and she didn’t want to. It was almost as if she were gloating for being alive.

  She owed a lot to these people she was leaving behind in these tents. There was no way she would be able to give Tey the punishment she deserved.

  But DeRicci would do everything in her power to make certain Tey was punished. DeRicci wasn’t going to rest until that woman was caught.

  FORTY-FIVE

  THE SHOT HIT TEY squarely in the face and she stumbled backward, but not before her own pistol went off, hitting Flint in the arm. Pain whistled through him and he spun, slamming against the wall.

  He struggled to regain control of his body, but he couldn’t—not yet. He glanced at his arm, and saw that it was still there. The suit prevented some of the damage, just like it was supposed to. Hers would have prevented more. That was why he had no choice but to shoot her where he had.