I am trying to get the last two crystals to align when a thought brings me up short. If Gren is the traitor, someone made him so.
That makes two traitors aboard.
“Shit,” I whisper, and work faster.
The thing I produce is a ridiculous bit of jury-rigging, but it works, slaved to a jack in my suit. “All stations, report,” I say into my mic, and instantly I get Ari’s voice back.
“Sarge! Somebody blew shit out of Miyoshi’s pod!”
“Who?”
“My pod’s frozen. I could only see Miyoshi’s pod go up, not who fired.”
Figures. “Ski? Keller. What have you got?”
Silence. “Ski! Report.”
Nothing. My skin starts to crawl.
“Nguyen.”
“Here.”
“Miyoshi.”
Static. I take that as a hopeful sign. “Hawk.”
Silence.
“Gren.”
I expect silence; the answer shocks me. “Alpha, Gren. Please open the airlocks. I must speak with you. Over.”
“In your dreams,” I mutter. “Do bags of spare parts dream, Gren?”
“Sergeant, I must come inside. I have—”
I slam the switch on my helmet comm. I have no desire to trade verbal shots with Gren. I know what it’s done. Listening to excuses is a waste of time.
I find myself staring at the transmitter, grinding my teeth in helpless rage. Who—is—doing—this? Despair washes over me, so bad it gives me the shakes. For an instant I hate all of them: Nguyen, Ari, Hawk, Ski—Which of them sold out? Which of them is talking to a Worlie cruiser right now on an encrypted channel, about to thumb a ride while we all go to hell? I shut my eyes tight against a vision of this outpost flaming like the Freedom, a lightshow for eyes on Earth to wonder who has lost this time. Voices echo in my head: screams of dying friends, underscored by Miyoshi’s voice yelling “Sergeant Keller!” It echoes through my mind like the distant fading thunder of a summer storm and rolls away into the depths of my head, leaving me dizzy and disoriented and caught in devastating déjà vu. For a moment I am not floating in the safe and enclosed control room of an outpost orbiting Earth, but in gut-wrenching infinity, dropping forever and ever through nothing, with not even the hope of a gravity well to catch my falling corpse. I cannot rid my mind of the sensation of falling, even knowing there is neither up nor down and nowhere to go, nothing to collide with. It hasn’t been this bad in years; I start to flail in panic, and my glove impacts something hard.
It snaps me back to the control room. I open my eyes, gut-shocked and panting. I’m so tired I’m losing it, and I just can’t. Not now.
Get serious, a voice tells me, my old sergeant from my recruit days. He’s been dead seven years but I can still hear him yelling at us to get serious, get it together, get our minds into our helmets and keep from becoming PatForce statistics.
I bite the inside of my cheek, the only thing that reliably gets my attention, and shove myself over to the access. I’ll take my chances outside.
Ahead is the observation window, the outpost’s only graceful feature. It was made for practical reasons rather than aesthetics, but the view of Earth is magnificent. Usually. Today the blue and white and green has a fly, a giant white one bumping forlornly against the tough transparency. I float in the corridor, face-to-face with it, my fists clenched so hard I’m surprised my nails are not ripping holes in the tough fabric. I look at the name tag, dreading to read Miyoshi, but it is Hawk. Terima Hawkins, what is left of her, for she has been crushed by something huge, probably the retractor arm jack-knifing into the pod. She trails a small wake of beaded blood droplets.
“Sorry,” I whisper for the second time today, because I doubted her. Because I failed her.
Miyoshi.
Grief twists through me again. I know there is no chance that he is alive. Not with Hawk out there as proof that somebody is gunning for us all. It’s a waiting game. The squad can’t remain outside forever. I must figure out how to get them in here before Gren picks them off one by one.
The hair starts to creep on my neck. Again. How is that I cannot seem to remember the second traitor, the real traitor, the one pulling Gren’s strings? With the vibration still rumbling through the deck plates, I have no way of knowing if someone were to crawl down a retractor arm and come stalking me as I am stalking Gren. Oh, cheery thought.
Can this day please be over?
Get serious.
Beyond Hawk’s body I can see Ski’s pod. If he’s in there, he is keeping himself below the ports, his boots on the deck and his hand on the firing panel. Or he is not there, but out cavorting with Gren. For about the thousandth time I contemplate the folly of integrating machines into PatForce, as capricious as their programming, as fallible as—
Us.
Where are you, Ski?
I need to know.
I never actually saw him climb into the pod, did I? I just ran for my own when the alarm went off. I have never had cause to question Vronski’s loyalty; I assumed he had followed orders like everyone else. Now I wonder.
The ops access is still open. I make my way back through the ruins to the inner door into the living section beyond the bulkhead bisecting the inner pod. The hatch slides open on the gym slash rec facility with its beat-up equipment and huge monitor that doubles for vid screen and briefing board. It seems haunted now. Hoyt’s cable weights stand ready in their niches; I can almost see him, his boots locked to the floor, his corded arms straining against resistance set to maximum, pulling the weights from the wall in endless rhythm. Left, right, left, right, grin through the sweat when skinny Ari tells him to just drink the damned bone boosters. Hawk’s collection of trashy vids peers from their transparent cabinet beside the monitor, a fistful of memories centered on her insatiable appetite for sex. And there is Miyoshi’s banzai tree, his experiment in space that has occupied his spare time since the Freedom blew up with his last attempt. A gentle man, Miyoshi, a survivor who can gracefully begin again whenever life pulls the rug out from under him. I wish I had half his courage, for I look at these things and want to weep and throw things like a scared little girl instead of a master sergeant in Patriot Force. Maybe I have reached my quota of gruff and tough; maybe the courage has been leaking out since I first left Earth, quaking and puking in the strangeness of space and the white terror of ships firing at my transport. I have been living on dumb luck for seven years.
Something clangs softly. I spin around, zooming uncontrolled toward the ceiling. I correct and brace myself with one hand on the garishly-painted wall, gift of some psychotic designer who thought diagonal slashes of bright colors make great therapy for combat vets. My helmet receptors pick up the whirr and hiss of a door opening. After six months we can all identify every door in the place.
That one is mine.
Rage stabs red fingers through my brain. I am tired of screwing around with silence and echoes and missing squad members. I am tired of chasing emptiness. I am just—plain—tired!
My pulse gun is in my hand. I don’t remember drawing it, or has it always been there? I can’t remember. I make for the door and turn left toward the miniscule quarters that contain the sum total of my worldly possessions: three books and two spare uniforms. Unlike Miyoshi, I see no point in replacing what was lost with the Freedom. My life is about patrols and standing watch and controlling my unbearable longing for the planet turning in lazy beauty below us, as distant as a daydream.
The door to my quarters stands open. “Who’s there?” I yell, because even through the helmet my voice will carry in the outpost’s atmosphere. “Come out of there!”
“Sarge? Don’t be mad, ’kay?”
Disillusion falls like lead onto my shoulders. “Now why would I be mad, Ski? Just because you killed Hawk and Hoyt and Miyoshi?”
“No, no, no, no!” His voice rips the silence, shocked and aggrieved and thick with the accent of his native Poland. “I came to help you! Sarge, you h
ave to listen! Here, I’m coming out!”
Good, I think, and fire at the first gleam of white in the dimness beyond the open door.
“SARGE!”
Damn, I missed. I flatten myself to the ceiling, the oldest trick of all but the best I have in this confined corridor. For a mad moment I find myself wishing for a popgun instead of the piddling pulse gun, something that will burn and rip air and flesh and reinforced titanium, but then sense returns and I find I am not eager to spend the next few days huddled in the rec room conserving air while PatForce detaches a cruiser to come patch up their holed outpost. I wait, my brain cool, clearer than it has been in days, or is it weeks? I cannot remember; I can barely remember this morning. For some reason I decided we needed to be in the pods, and thus Hawk and Miyoshi died. What was it? Oh, yes. Malfunctions. Alarms.
Except it wasn’t malfunctions, was it? Sabotage, pure and simple. Who was the last one in there? Hoyt. But he’s dead, so he hadn’t done it. Gren, then. But somebody had to program it, and here’s Ski. But Ski put the transmitters back on line, and why do that if you’re going to let the Worlies come in and blow the whole place to hell on some predetermined schedule?
Oh, God, I’m tired.
“Sarge?”
His voice is a trickle in my ear. “Still here,” I say pleasantly. “I’ve got all day.”
“I saw the control room, Sarge.”
“I’ll bet you did.”
“You think I did that?” Again the outrage sounds genuine. I never knew our stolid refugee from the heart of One World territory was such a good actor.
“Who else? I sure didn’t.”
A long pause whispers in my ear. White noise, static, ghosts from a dead life—I don’t know what I hear, but suddenly a real sound breaks through, not from my quarters, but the outer hex, echoing down the spoke connecting our quarters to the outer ring.
Betrayal shocks up my nerves; I am caught between two fires, for there is a gleam of silver in the tunnel. I shove off hard, trying to outrun the pulse fire I know must come, and I have just enough courage left to dive toward that gleam, not away. Even as my eyes focus on Gren’s blank face, I see it reaching behind itself, pulling something forward, surely its sidearm. I fire but miss, a disgrace to my old sergeant, and then Gren’s metallic voice wails in my ear.
“Sergeant Keller! Stand down!”
God damn the Army. Drilled-in reflexes kick in for one critical instant. I catch at the wall before I realize I am doing it, altering my angle—just enough. I can’t reorient fast enough, and Gren is right there in the hatchway, a man-shaped horror with no face. But then I see a white-suited arm and shoulder behind it, and a screech of fury echoes in my helmet, for still another of my team has betrayed me and climbed down from the pods, another traitor stalking—
“Sarge!”
The second figure shoves Gren aside and dives recklessly through the hatch. It only just registers on me that it has no weapon in either hand; once again reflexes kick in and I manage not to fire. Then its helmeted head tilts up, and the face inside the transparent bubble is oh so dear, and the name tag on the chest reads Miyoshi.
“You’re dead,” I whisper, and then scream it. “You’re dead!”
Grief pulls me into a ball. If he is not dead then he is in on it, and I have nothing left to cling to but three books and an empty cabin.
“Gren saved me!” His voice comes distant and strange through my helmet. “When the pod malfunctioned Gren managed to snatch me into the well. I’d have been shredded otherwise.”
His hand closes, gently, on my upper arm. Wildly I try to pull away. “No! No! This is a trick! You and Ski—”
His faceplate touches mine, as intimate a gesture as you can make in a space suit. “Oh, Jordan-chan,” he says, so quietly. “It was not us.”
I hear sorrow in his voice. “Then who?” I choke. “Hoyt?”
He shakes his head. “Come. Please. Let us talk about this.”
“Talk!” I try to pull away but can’t break his grip. Ski looms up beside me, and I see that it’s a conspiracy, and I try to beat at Miyoshi, but that’s a pointless exercise in null gee. Ski’s hand shoves me back when I rebound from my own flailing. Raging, I try to wrestle my sidearm into position but Ski grabs my wrist, his other hand braced on the upper rim of the hatch where Gren has planted itself like an iron maiden waiting to swallow its next victim.
Hot tears of rage stream down my face, blurring my sight. “How could you?” I scream at Miyoshi. “I trusted you! I trusted you!”
“And Hoyt trusted you.” Gren’s voice booms through the two meters of dead air between us. “We all trusted—we still trust you. But you must be stopped, Sergeant Keller.”
Something moves beyond the hatch. I flinch, picturing Worlie raiders boring their pitiless way through the hull. It will happen again if I don’t stop it, betrayal from within, Freedom burning, falling...I run into Ski’s hand again, and the rage shrieks out.
“Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Another hour and the whole outpost would be just flaming debris raining toward Earth!”
“I have no doubt that is true,” Gren says. How can a machine voice sound so sad?
Behind it, I see that the corridor is now full of white-suited figures. They have all betrayed me, climbed down from their posts, given up the battle. The Worlies have won, and I am falling to eternity.
“Deserters,” I hiss at them. Gren answers.
“No. Northern Light is an hour out. There is no danger.”
“No danger!” I scream. “There’s a traitor among us!”
Miyoshi’s hand drifts up, as though he would stroke my hair as he used to do in the days before the world shrank to the stripes on my arm and the endless night inside my head.
“No,” he says, so softly. “No traitors. Just casualties.”
I strike his hand away—and freeze at sight of my own. Flashes of pulse fire and wreckage make it through the fog. My hand blowing hell out of ops on my casual way out toward my pod as the alarm begins to shriek.
Oh, God.
I hear a voice screaming and screaming inside my helmet, but even Miyoshi’s arms around me cannot erase the sense of falling.
Under Pressure
Lee C. Hillman
Major Brina Dennobar checked the flight plan and itinerary again. From her calculations, the most dangerous leg of the journey would be transferring the new Governor from his private transport to his diplomatic quarters on arrival at Loniro Prime. If anyone planned to attempt a power grab, it would likely come early, before she could whisk Governor Tarin Barala into the protection of his hand-picked staff, who would then remain with him constantly until he could be presented to the Viceroy for official investiture. Once he was confirmed, Brina could add Galactic protection forces to Tarin’s own officers for the duration of their return to Maiara.
She was fairly certain there would be an assassination attempt.
The threats had begun even before Tarin’s mother, Governor Rissa, had died. Three days after the galactic news agencies had scooped the story of her illness, one of Brina’s agents intercepted an encrypted signal feed to the Kenir sector. Within twenty hours they had scrubbed it clean and translated it: Wait and Watch.
Brina couldn’t pinpoint the traced signal, but she had three obvious leads. There was Prince Warnam, head of the Gorashan Dynasty. His family had had its eye on Maiara’s mineral-rich asteroids for generations, hoping to convince the Viceroy to name one of their scions to the Governorship. The other strong possibility was Lango Imholt, whose merchant ships would have a much easier time accessing central space if Maiara’s defense grid were under their direct control. Imholt was notorious for his willingness to go around galactic diplomacy when it suited his purposes. But the Gorashan family was not known for playing fair, either. Brina sent out feelers for more information and instructed her teams to broaden the spectrum to intercept further communiqués. Sadly, they received more to go on over the next two weeks, but
nothing conclusive.
The third option was one Tarin had dismissed out of hand, but it remained on Brina’s list. His own cousin, Sald Barol, was ineligible to inherit by ordinary means, but if Tarin were killed before he could be invested, the interplanetary council could be persuaded to throw their support to him through the course of the election that would follow. Brina couldn’t understand why Tarin insisted his cousin was incapable of that type of subterfuge.
“Major, we’re beginning our initial approach into Loniro’s space station,” the comm officer announced.
“Acknowledged. If they offer escort, take it,” Brina told him. She couldn’t afford to insult the Viceroy by refusing, although she’d have rather had plenty of free space all around Tarin’s ship until they made dock on the surface. She’d have asked them to clear the whole port, if she’d had a prayer of making it happen.
Knowing Tarin would want to pop onto the bridge, Brina tucked the itinerary readout into her tunic pocket and went to head him off. She moved swiftly through the gangways, her leg twinging the way it always did when she started moving again after a long sit. The synthetic cartilage tended to shrink at rest, but like real tendons and muscles, it stretched itself with use. By the time she reached the bridge, her gait had smoothed back to a steady, graceful lope.
Not that she was complaining. A cybersynth leg was a good deal better than no leg and mandatory retirement on disability. The galactic pension plan was good, but it wasn’t meant to support retiring at the age of thirty-five.
The bridge doors slid open at her approach.
“…been a pleasure, Captain,” Tarin was saying. He turned. “Thank you all,” he continued, and saw her. “Ah, Brina, good. I was just telling the captain it’s been a smooth journey.”
No Man's Land (Defending The Future) Page 18