by V. M. Law
“I found it—” he searched for the words: “Enlightening.”
A smile had spread across his face. He was unable to contain his mirth as the relinquishing of pressure that had accompanied the disconnected communication between him and whatever that beast invading his thought was, and the smile helped him maintain a look of friendly disconnection that he assumed the man saw in most of his clients: lonely old men who sought to see what the new generation would enjoy after they croaked.
“Well, anyway,” Archie continued, stammering and rubbing the nape of his neck, “I hope you enjoyed your tour, and I hope you’d consider our service again. Stellar Space flight does value your patronage.”
“Yes, I value your service. Won’t you join me for a toast? To celebrate the culmination of my life’s dream?”
The man sighed. “I’m not supposed to take—libations. Got to fly, you know?”
Eugene Farrow didn’t let the man rest, he continued to bore through him with his gaze and asked again, adding that it would be a shame to make an old man drink alone.
“Well, why not,” said Archie Buchanan. “I guess it won’t kill me. Or you. Not like I’ll crash.”
“Good. Good,” Eugene said, and pulled a bottle of wine from his bag, watching the man’s fascination at the vintage goods. “Have you ever had any?”
Archie sat down at the other seat. “Me? God, no. Not that I wouldn’t. I just never really had the access. It’s so rare, now, you know?”
“Yes, the grapes haven’t grown like they did in the past for some time.” Eugene Farrow scored the neck of the bottle with a blade, watching the man watch his hands as he did so. He removed the cork and poured a glass for his drinking partner. One for himself. He waited. The man waited as well, and for a moment, Eugene thought that the man suspected him of poisoning the wine. He raised his own glass. “To adventure.”
Archie looked into his client’s eyes and nodded, saying nothing, but emitting a small croak from the depths of his throat. He could see the man growing uncomfortable. He winced at the wine’s acidity and nearly coughed, and Eugene took only the smallest nips from his own glass as the man tried again to be polite.
“Do you enjoy it?” Eugene asked.
“Yes, sir. Yes, I do.” But he still winced. His eyes fell again on Eugene’s hands, which still held the knife, dragging its blade across his fingerprint as if testing its sharpness. Archie downed the rest of his glass. Eugene offered another, but he refused and gave up an excuse about monitoring charts, checking for communications. Work to do, he said, to ensure that the slingshot maneuver did not go awry. He stood and turned to leave, exposing his back to his guest.
Now, Eugene thought. It has to be now.
He stood up with a speed that defied the age of his joints and lunged at the man, who had been waiting for the blow and had been feeling a growing suspicion of his client’s motives and intentions for the trip around the orbit of Saturn. Archie dodged the blow, aimed at the space between his shoulder blades, and threw a punch in the old man’s direction. He connected squarely with the man’s chest, and sent him flying back against the control panels. He didn’t expect him to stand up, looking at the feeble frame, and had to fight off the instinct to help the old man, for he appeared so pitiful.
But Eugene stood up, and lunged again with his knife, slashing at the air and driving one thrust into the bicep of the ship’s captain. He screamed in terror and pain, and in his anger he threw Eugene to the floor again, and strode with large steps to the place where Eugene was splayed out on the floor.
Eugene felt his head rocking back and forth as the man lifted him by the lapels of his coat and threw him against the wall. “Who are you?”
He laughed, unable to figure out why the man would ask such a question. “I am your death,” he said through his wicked grin. “I am here for you.”
With a strength that surprised Archie and left him staring at the rage in the man’s eyes with a blank expression, Eugene took his blade and drove it into the belly of the man who pinned him against the wall. He doubled over, gasping. He fell to his knees. Blood poured from the wound and spread in a sickening ring on the floor where it fell. When Archie removed the knife, the torrent intensified and Eugene kicked him over onto his back. He straddled the limp body and removed the knife from his hand, bringing it to Archie’s throat and dragging it along the arch of his neck, watching the seam split and run over with a blood that appeared black and gelatinous to Eugene.
He watched the light fade from the man’s eyes and stood, panting. Exhausted. He dragged the body into the hall, and when he succeeded in removing it from the cockpit, he sat back at this seat and shifted the ship’s direction, altered its course to match the coordinates provided by Faulk, and repeated in his head the promise he offered to the Emissary. I will have the package.
I have the package.
Would he? When the being came through the wormhole seeking its treasure? Would he have it?
He knew it all rode on Faulk, and he knew that he didn’t know enough about the man to trust him. He seemed a man that took whatever side had the most likely chance of a positive outcome, and putting faith in a man of that sort was to gamble with one’s life. Still, he pressed on. Checking the oxygen tanks and food stores, he calculated the length of time they would last and figured that he could make it to the outer rim. He could make it. He sat back in his seat and watched the cosmos drift by.
Chapter 18
Caspar Faulk was awaiting the arrival of the eight survivors with his legs set at the stance he imagined a general would assume as he delivered a speech to battle weary veterans. His arms were locked behind his back to ensure no one would see his fidgeting fingers or the glistening film that had formed in the palm of each hand. They would surely fry him alive in a mutiny when they witnessed the splendor of the higher command echelons. They had their notions about him and nothing would stop them from doing it. But he couldn’t let them see it. If he were to survive, they needed to see him as a man worthy of being followed. His eyes, locked to the security monitors that showed him their progress, jumped from the doors through which they would emerge to the other banks.
Nothing there.
Only the scourge of the Ides in their lazy and insipid sleep, weary after their pillaging and hibernating until the vibrations of a passing object wakes them.
Out of the two hundred people living on this boat, he thought to himself as he counted the seconds passing, only nine survived. He couldn’t believe it. He had been told by the MarsForm rep that the Ides were a threat of the past. They rarely attacked human ships with efficacy, and the response time of the Terran Council’s soldiers had trebled since the Arrival.
But on every monitor his eyes jumped to, death. Death and the slumbering Ides. Would the ship’s byways remain hidden, when help arrived? Surely they would dock in the executive hangars, and those areas would be secure, but when the sequences initiated and the rumbling of titanic mechanisms in the bowels of the freighter began, would the flurry of Ides not find every single entranceway to the ship’s sanctums?
He hoped not.
The bridge was defensible, but to secure the escaped pod and safeguard it until the arrival of—who?
Jakob Hardmason?
Eugene?
The prospect of delivering Kasey Lee into the hands of Eugene Farrow made Caspar’s stomach swirl in discomfort and his face bent into a grimace at the thought of the man staring down his angular nose at him. He would wring his hands together and laugh, Caspar thought, when the time came to gaze upon the frozen half-corpse of the missing rebel.
He thought that Jakob Hardmason would do no better with her. A reckless man, finicky and on edge all of the time. Had the Ascendancy trusted him with the mission of retrieving Kasey Lee’s escape pod? Certainly, he was the closest agent. Nothing more.
But a flash of movement on one of his monitors interrupted his thoughts. The eight approached, running at a trotting pace down the corridor that ran from
the passages below the residential deck commissary and freezer, and the antechamber of the bridge’s secret entrances. A two-mile jog, he guessed. They would be panting and out of breath when they arrived, in about fifteen minutes judging by the speed of their steps and the vigor with which they all pumped their arms.
They would be hungry.
He ran to the lounge adjacent with the bridge floor proper and began rifling through the discarded possessions. The lunches, organized and left in pouches, where they would sit forever. He scarcely thought about it as he tore them from their lockers and threw the wrappers on the floor. Powdered soup.
Powdered coffee.
Powdered eggs.
He searched frantically for something that didn’t need heat and water to coagulate into an edible form, but the harder he searched, the more appealing his original finds seemed. With a shrug of his shoulder, he activated the flasher—swung its door open with own hand, caught it with the other, deposited his feast on the tray and swung the door shut with a flick of the wrist—and stared at the floor as the fans kicked on, the light tickling the back of his hand. Done. He ran back into the bridge floor and checked the monitors again, and found the survivors bearing down on him with surprising rapidity.
Back to the kitchenette.
He sprinted, not wanting them to enter an empty room, and pored through the cabinets for a loaf of bread, found one, soaked it in the sink and waited for it to float. He tapped his fingers as the loaf, smaller than his thumb when he popped it from its canister, engorged to the size of his forearm. He threw it in the flasher to, to crisp it, and ripped it into chunks and beat the air with his bare hands when the steam scorched his palms.
He found a tray and set up his feast—his peace offering to the embattled crew arriving from the hell of frontline warfare and death in trenches and endless hallways—hoping that the smell of the tomato bisque would calm them and hoping that no one would ask too many questions when he told them that they would be pressing forth, deeper beyond the outer rim of the solar system to the source of a rescue beacon flashing in the abyss. Where they would rendezvous with a notorious captain of another MarsForm freighter and leave the scene of the Ides’ attack without ever seeing a Damages Officer or a psychiatric evaluator. He thought of what he would say when they broached the subject of what to do next, where to go, and every idea he came up with left him wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to let the eleven of them die in the cafeteria.
He thought about the mailroom lady, and wondered what her name was.
Wondered if Jakob or any of the other operatives he had met would spare their lives. If they would watch on the monitors as the last survivors were torn to ribbons by the Ides, only for the purpose of knowing that the ship would be secure for its valuable cargo. The Ascendancy, Caspar thought, Wolves, every one.
And the voice from the back of his head, in muted response: But worse than Farrow?
Not hardly.
He awaited the arrival of the survivors with his feet set in an impressive stance and a table of soup and bread and coffee steaming before him, hoping that the feast would hide his nervous smiles and the wayward glances of his shifting eyes as he appraised them each in turn.
Chapter 19
“What the fuck do you mean, a rescue beacon?” Even through the wafting steam that rose from the man’s china mug, Caspar knew that he would not back down. It was written in his stiff jaw, the brutish way his fingers clutched at the curved sides of his container, his slurping and the narrowed, questioning eyes he wore about his face when Caspar Faulk told them that they would need to respond. “We aren’t in any shape for this. We need to turn on our own rescue beacon.”
The chatter at the table had subsided—completely died, in fact—as had Caspar’s hopes that his proposition to the group would be received lightly.
“Come now, Anton,” this was the woman from the mailroom, “don’t get into a fuss. If we can control the ship from here, what harm is there in a little adventure to the Kuiper Belt?”
“We can’t risk it, Sasha! We’re practically dead ourselves.” Sasha. “We should be turning back already, if this guy can pilot the boat!” Anton threw his arms in a wild gesture toward Caspar, who sat back in his seat and languished in the stairs of the men and women who held him in their collective gaze, waiting for a response.
He didn’t know what to tell them.
His mouth hung slightly agape and his synthetic coffee drew colder by the second as the heat slunk away from the rim of his mug in billowing clouds. Sasha saved him. “Caspar, you saved us already. If you need our help, I am willing to give you my trust.”
The words washed over him, sounding like a choir of school children radiating from a church on a frigid winter night. I am willing to give you my trust.
Anton pushed his chair away from the conference table and everyone’s bisque sloshed over the rims of their bowls and pooled on the table. He stood and paced, rubbing his face with his hand and letting out great, exasperated groans of exhaustion as he raised his voice to the ceiling. “Am I the only one with a brain? Or the only one with a life worth living still? Do you people want to die?”
They all rounded on him and the woman who called herself Tonya spat out at him. “You would’ve had us wait to die in the cafeteria! Why should we trust you now?”
And another person, Patrick or something else, stood and argued in defense of Anton. Caspar only looked at the floor, knowing that the decision had already been made, that the computers powering the ship would continue to run their course, because only he knew how to alter them, and he would simply not do that. They would have to kill him. Still, he queried the group. “Are you opposed to a vote?”
The heads swing in unison to gaze upon him once more, and he met all of their stares, one at a time.
“Yes,” Sasha said. “A vote.”
Anton screamed, “No! We aren’t voting! There is only one course of action, and that is to head back into range of a rescue mission.”
“Well, we know where Anton stands,” Caspar said. “How about the others?”
Sasha voted for approaching the beacon, and so did Tonya. Patrick went over to where Anton fumed, as did one other man who sat slumped in his chair and slurping soup, as if he could drown out the reality of the argument with the sounds of his sucking and blowing.
The others held out.
“The reason why the Vulcan was dispatched to this region of the star system was to find that pod!” Caspar reasoned. “We can stay safe in the bridge and we are already so close. It’ll take an extra day.”
“An extra day with hot food and beds,” Sasha added with a sideways glance in Caspar’s direction.
Everyone in the group cast nervous looks at each other, waiting for a decision to be made. They argued back and forth, their voices climbing over each other’s as their gesticulations grew more frenetic, more random, and more violent. Anton slammed his fists on the table and Sasha leaned back coolly in her seat with her arms crossed and a deviled grin on her face, as if she knew the outcome of the debate.
Only Caspar sat in silence.
He let them argue for a little longer and watched the tide of the verbal battle swing against him, briefly, before leaning in his direction again. Maybe they would work it out themselves, he thought as they screamed over one another, their soups forgotten. He hoped; the prospect of telling them that he wouldn’t turn the ship around even if they held him in unanimous opposition did not sit well on his mind. He didn’t know how they would take the news and didn’t want to find out, and thought that maybe he would avoid the entire situation, until Anton decided that they would use the SatComs to contact the nearest vessel and have the signal relayed to the nearest space station so that their rescue mission could begin right away. He walked off, searching through desks and kicking aside the rubble left behind when the bridge command marched off to fight the Ides.
“You don’t need to do that,” Caspar cried over the other arguing voices, and
repeated himself when Anton showed no signs of stopping his search.
“Why? Do you have a SatCom?” The unspoken accusation dripped from every word: Have you been holding out?
“I have a SatCom. I have already used it, however, I haven’t placed any calls to the Emergency response crews beholden to MarsForm, nor do I intend on letting you do so on my behalf.”
Anton jabbed his finger in Caspar’s direction, as if to stab him with it, and to judge by the fury written in his face and the scream barely containing itself beneath his wavering voice, Caspar thought he might try. “What do you mean, you ‘don’t intend to let me’?”
With every set of eyes following his every breath, analyzing every twitch of his every muscle, Caspar began with trepidation. “I have made contact with the closest vessel. A MarsForm schooner by the call phrase ‘Althaea,’ captained by one Jakob Hardmason. You may have heard of him?”
He let the words fall on them and gauged their reactions. Anton’s jaw fell open and some gasped. Patrick winced and whispered “Damn it” hoping nobody heard him, but Caspar picked up on the signal. Sasha didn’t make any response at all. He didn’t think so at least, unless he counted the minuscule flicker of her lips on one side as a reaction. It could just as easily have been an involuntary tic, like a sneeze, but he felt confident that the twitching in her lip meant something. That she knew the name.
A sympathizer?
She wouldn’t say it—couldn’t—though he felt she had all the same. He tried not to look at her as he continued his barbed speech, throwing it back at Anton before losing the little momentum that Jakob’s name had given him. He pulled the SatCom from the clip on his hip and held it out to the group. “This represents our only line of long range communication—” Except for the other one, he thought.
Better hide it well from here.
“It seems that the Ides have coordinated their attack rather well, this time.” Confusion washed over the survivors and they exchanged looks of worry, consternation. “They have entered our ship from the bottom, the lowest decks, even below the engine rooms and, in doing so, they tunneled through the cables that connect our Comm satellites with the bridge. It won’t function.”