by James Wilks
I stared at my dead squad mates for a full ten seconds before I really became aware of the pain. I looked down and saw that part of our ship, the one that had kept me safe from the cold vacuum of space, had completely crushed my left leg at the shin. The armor was keeping me alive; but I was losing air through the breach in my leg. I was lying flat, though I floated lightly, and this three or four metric ton of ship hull had crushed my leg and pinned me there. The more I looked at it, the more it hurt. Looking away didn’t help. I finally did something I had said I never would; I trigged the morphine injection built into the suit. There was a morbid joke among the squads that when the morphine came, the end wasn’t far behind.
And really, I knew I was dead. My leg still throbbed, but it was distant, and though the drugs made my head fuzzy, it wasn’t too hard to puzzle things out. Someone had wanted the facility gone, and whoever it was also wanted us gone, probably because they didn’t want anyone knowing it existed or had ever existed. So we were sent in to clean it out, then the bomb that they had planted on our ship went off. I didn’t know if the orders came from SSPOD or just some corrupt CO who had taken a bribe. I didn’t think the USSO had anything to do with it; ninety-nine percent of them didn’t even know SSPOD even existed.
It didn’t really matter. Whether we had been hung out to dry by official channels or not, I was just as dead. It was really so much a cliché I couldn’t stand it, and it made me feel like even more of a fool, which was pretty stupid considering my situation.
I stared at the remains of my squad for a long time. Cook was a nerdy sort, quiet and really into his tech. I think he might have been an engineer or mechanic before he got tapped for K Squad.
Gingerich had a wife and a son. They had gotten married in the Black Forest of Germany, she had told me once. They had both worn white dresses, one slinky and one busty and hippy, and Taylor had been born just over a year later. Gingerich had loved to fly, but she got home to her family whenever she could.
Cameron was one of those street kids who got busted for something stupid when he was young, then turned it all around and joined the military. He was single and single-minded, dedicated to the military. More than me, maybe more than any of us, he had believed in what we did and the righteousness of the USSO, and they had used him and killed him.
And Njubigbo had been my best friend. She was from Rhodesia, and she had a dark and rich sense of humor. She loved a sick joke. Some of them were just in bad taste, like dead-baby jokes, but others were more elaborate. Once she put a fake horse’s head in the CO’s bed; I don’t even know why. She and Teller slept together sometimes. They thought we didn’t know, or maybe they pretended we didn’t, but we all knew. She and I got drunk together, cleared rooms together, shot people together. It sounds sick, and maybe it is, but a bond forms with someone when you go through that side by side.
I couldn’t get the picture of her being torn apart by those things out of my head. I closed my eyes and I saw her like that. I opened them and the rest of my squad was floating dead in front of me. Finally I decided that it was time to go. It only took a few minutes of work to get free of my leg, though I did have to use my knife. The suit auto-sealed the breach with self-hardening foam once the leg was gone altogether, and I pushed off through the ruin of the skylight and into space.
The compressed air in my armor would hold me for maybe two or three days, depending on my breathing, but it would be a bad time. I was already thirsty as hell, a side effect of the shock, and there was nothing to do about it. I considered ending it by just popping my helmet off, but I didn’t feel like it, at least not yet. As I drifted away from the asteroid and out into the belt, I looked down on the wreckage of the ship and the facility. Pieces of the vessel were everywhere, floating in all directions. I slept some, I think, and as the pain in my leg receded, my non-existent toes began to itch.
About a day later, as I was dozing and dreaming about tall cool glasses of water, it suddenly got very bright. At first I thought that I was hallucinating, but when I focused my eyes, I saw that there was a ship in front of me. I didn’t know when it had arrived or how long it had been there, but it looked a rock hopper, a mining survey ship. The crew, a family of four, brought me on board and patched me up the best they could. They had been scanning for mineral deposits a quarter AU away and their scanner happened to pick up the flash of the explosion. They came to investigate. I guess I was lucky. Depends on how you define luck.
I spent two months on that ship earning my keep, and by the time they headed back to Earth with an improved drive coupling, I had decided what to do. I didn’t hide, exactly, but I didn’t advertise the fact that I was alive. I had the contacts to get a new social security number and new IDs, but I didn’t change my name. I knew I should have, but I figured if they found me, they found me. Part of me wanted them to. They hadn’t tried to kill us because they thought we’d balk at the job. If we’d really understood what they were up to, we would have volunteered. They’d killed my squad because they didn’t want us telling anyone what we’d seen, and there was only one way to read that: they didn’t want the technology eliminated. They had the tech, and they didn’t want anyone to know they had it, not even the people who built it. I figured I wouldn’t ever know who used my squad to wipe out that asteroid base.
Chapter 11
“But now you know,” Brutus said.
Dinah looked at him. “Yes, now I know,” she said. “And the things that killed my friend and tried to kill me, they looked a hell of a lot like you.”
“Wait a minute,” Staples said, staring at the floor and pressing her fingers against her temples. “This is insane. What are the odds that the only survivor of an attack on the facility where Victor was built would be on the ship that he himself hired to deliver Evelyn to Cronos Station?”
“Captain…” Brutus began.
Realization dawned on Staples. “There are no odds.” She looked at Dinah then at the automaton. “Dinah is the reason we were chosen for that job.”
Brutus nodded. “I can only assume you are correct.”
“You said Victor chose us because we’re a good commuter crew,” she objected.
“That is what I believed, and I don’t doubt that your reputation was a consideration, but I think that we must conclude that Ms. Hazra’s presence on this ship was a major factor, perhaps the major factor in his decision. Fascinating.” Brutus was looking at Dinah with what Staples thought might be awe. In a way, it made sense. Dinah had been involved in an early part of Victor’s life, a time before Brutus had even been created. She imagined it was like meeting someone who had known her father when he was a boy and could tell stories that she had never heard.
“But why?” Staples questioned rhetorically. “Why make the decision to hire us because Dinah was here? I mean, I get the connection, obviously, but why does Dinah’s exposure to Victor’s origin make her a good choice for our run to Cronos Station?”
“I’m not sure, Captain, but I can surmise. Victor is very tidy, and he is somewhat fascinated with human behavior. He seeks to understand people to the point where he can predict their behaviors with perfect accuracy. Many of his clandestine operations are attempts to test his predictive algorithms. Perhaps he wanted to learn more about Ms. Hazra. Perhaps he was preoccupied by her. It is quite possible that he did not know she had survived until he had cause to search for a charter crew that suited his plan. Either way, I think we can conclude that at some point he planned to do away with the crew of Gringolet.”
Staples grunted. “Can’t say I’m surprised, but I don’t love hearing it.” She was silent for a moment, then began reflecting. “So Victor was built, at least in part, at this asteroid facility. AR-559?” She looked at Brutus for confirmation, and he nodded. “Once he gained sentience, either there or elsewhere, Victor, or Owen Burr, paid or blackmailed someone in SSPOD to send Dinah’s squad there and to wipe everyone out. Or I suppose it’s possible they faked the intelligence reports to achieve the s
ame effect. All of this in order to…”
“Erase the record of and witnesses to his construction,” Brutus finished.
“That’s the way I make it, sir,” Dinah said. Her eyes narrowed, and she stared at the gymnasium floor.
Staples looked at Brutus. “But then, why were there still people there?” She turned to Dinah. “You said that there were still security and programmers working. On what?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Dinah replied. “I didn’t get a good look at what they were working on. It looked complex, obviously code, but I’m not a computer engineer.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know either, Captain, but perhaps we can find out.” Brutus took a halting step towards Dinah and cocked his head to the left. “Can you guide us there, Ms. Hazra?” His tone was tinged with hope.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Will you?” he asked, and took another step forward.
Dinah didn’t answer immediately, and there was silence in the room for several seconds. Finally, she nodded.
“Then we’d better get going,” Staples said. She unbuckled herself from the machine and pushed off for the entrance and the elevator beyond. Brutus stepped aside to allow Dinah to push past him, and then followed her out of the room.
Either survey teams or astronomers had labeled most of the major asteroids in the belt at some point or another, and it took Charis only a minute to pull up the approximate location of AR-559. Dinah, looking over her shoulder, confirmed its location and a distant snapshot of it.
“Lucky us,” Templeton said. His hand gripped the back of the navigator’s seat as he floated behind her. He, Staples, and Dinah were crowded around the charts that Charis had pulled up at her station in the cockpit. “It’s actually not on the other side of the solar system right now.”
“Yeah, but it’s not right between us and Mars either,” Charis said. “Mars is about a billion and a half kilometers from us right now. We’ll have to detour,” she drew a line with her finger on the chart in front of her, and the line showed as a yellow streak on the surface. “Over here. Maybe add five hundred million kilometers to our trip. Call it an even two billion by the time we get to Mars.”
“Hey, who’s counting?” Templeton grinned.
“The stop will slow us down even more,” Charis continued, immune to Templeton’s humor at the moment, “because we have to speed up and slow down twice, once at this piece of rock,” she touched the screen, which left a yellow digital smudge on the asteroid belt, “and then when we reach Mars.” She traced her finger from the approximate position of AR-559 to the red planet.
“How long are we talking?” Staples asked.
“Normal cruising acceleration is point four G. If we push it to point six,” Charis flipped the page over to show the calculations she had made, “we’re looking at eight and a half days to the asteroid, then just over four to Mars.”
Staples wondered how many Nightshade vessels Victor had managed to get into space and asked, “And if we push it up to a full G?”
“Mmmm,” Charis hummed as she adjusted the numbers. “Looks like we trim two days off the first leg and another off the second. Call it six and a half to the rock, three point two to Mars.”
“How do you feel about that, Dinah?” Staples turned to her chief engineer.
“Faster is better, sir. The engines are in great shape, and we’re all fueled up.” She was focused on the yellow smudge that overlaid AR-559 on Charis’ display as she spoke.
“Then let’s do it.”
“Gwen won’t like it,” Charis warned.
“Yeah, but the Doc’ll be happy as houseplants,” Templeton responded.
Charis looked at him over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Is that even a thing?”
Templeton shrugged, wincing slightly, but Bethany said quietly from her station, “It should be.”
Day 1.
Staples took the elevator over to deck four and then climbed down the hallway ladder to the gymnasium. It felt odd to her to move about the ship under normal gravity, and she certainly felt it in her arms. Generally, the only time she was this heavy on Gringolet was when the ship was berthed on Earth, and when they were there, the ship was on its belly, not vertical. As she opened the hatch into the weight and calisthenics room, she heard grunting and the faint sour smell of sweat greeted her.
Yoli Trujillo, the ship’s remaining cargo roadie, was lying flat on a weight bench that had been clipped in place. She was repeatedly lifting a barbell with what Staples estimated to be forty-five kilos on it. Black spandex shorts and a black sports bra covered her muscular frame, and a light sheen of sweat glowed on her olive skin. Behind her in a spotting stance stood Kojo Jang. His grey tank revealed his large and darkly tattooed arms. Despite Staples’ intrusion, he remained focused on his partner, ready to grasp and lift the barbell should it become necessary.
Weightlifting equipment was tricky on a ship that regularly made shifts in vector and acceleration. It had to be carefully secured after each use lest a spare weight careen around the room and dent the walls when the ship was maneuvering. If Bethany or Charis had to accelerate rapidly, Yoli would find the barbell in her hands doubling or even tripling in weight. Jang clearly took his responsibility as her spotter very seriously, and again Staples wondered idly about the nature of their relationship. She waited for the woman to finish her reps and set the bar in its place. Immediately Jang fastened the securing mechanism over both ends of the bar to keep it safely anchored.
Yoli sat up and looked at her, but said nothing. Staples wasn’t particularly surprised. She and Declan had been coworkers, if not friends. If her recent mistake in handling her former employee’s injury manifested bad feelings anywhere, she expected it to be with Yoli.
“How can I help you, Captain?” Jang asked, finally looking at her. The fact that he had not said “we” told her two things: Yoli was indeed angry with her, and Jang knew how she felt. She wondered how that affected his feelings towards her. Since she had hired him, Jang had always been quietly loyal. He had a flair for the dramatic, and he sometimes acted as if he were the only person who understood dangerous situations, but he was always professional. Even so, there had always been a distance with him. Putting people together on a ship as small as hers tended to form unlikely friendships, ones born of loneliness and a lack of options if nothing else, but Jang had remained apart for the most part. He certainly had done little to ingratiate himself with Quinn and Parsells, though in retrospect she considered that a boon.
The security personnel that predated those two had been a married couple that had travelled with them for only two months and had largely kept to themselves. They had not liked him either. In fact, she suspected that Jang was their cause for seeking other employment. More than once, she had considered speaking with Jang and asking him to lighten up, but she hadn’t hired her security chief to be lax. If there was anyone, Jabir aside, whom she needed to take his or her job as seriously as possible, it was Kojo Jang. And so she had left him alone to handle matters. Her theory had been that when the right people came along, they would mesh just fine with Jang because they would be taking the job as seriously as he wanted them to. Even so, he was a somewhat enigmatic figure on the ship, and certainly not much fun at parties. She glanced at Yoli and wondered what it must be like to be the man’s lover. She found that she couldn’t really imagine it.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to ask a favor of you.”
She had addressed Jang, but Yoli spoke. “I don’t think employers ask favors, do they Captain?” She stood up, grabbed a towel, and threw it over her shoulder. “They give orders.” She nodded briefly at Jang and then walked past Staples and out the door. Her comment about orders had obviously been a reference to Staples’ order to leave Declan in favor of helping Bethany. The temptation to play the offended boss rose up in her, and she almost ordered the cargo roadie to turn around and apologize for her passive-aggressive comment, but she stopped herself.
The mistake had been hers, and as Templeton had pointed out, she had brought the fallout from it on herself. Perhaps she’d catch up with the woman when she had calmed down.
Jang walked around the weight bench and stood a meter from her with his fists on his hips. He was an impressive figure, an odd mix of gaunt features and muscles. It was difficult not to be intimidated by him, especially as he stood nearly thirty centimeters taller than her. At times, she found his serious dramatics risible. This was not one of those times.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” If she had hoped that he would make an excuse or apologize for Yoli, she was disappointed.
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” she began awkwardly. “Things have been difficult lately.” Understatement of the year, she thought. “What I mean is, I don’t think that what happened in Atlas will be the last time someone fires a gun at us. I’d like to be a bit more useful in firing back. I’d like some firearms training from you.”
“I thought you knew how to fire a gun.” He said it as a statement, not a question. “Mr. Templeton told me that you were quite ready to bring a rifle to defend our passengers when the pirates attacked.”
“That’s true;” as she spoke she put her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance. “I took a course when I first bought Gringolet, but it was only the basics, and I wasn’t a very good shot. It’s probably for the best that I never did get down to B17. I might have shot my own toe off.” She offered a smile, hoping to lighten the mood, but Jang’s dour attitude was intractable.
“In that case, I’d be happy to provide a lesson. In fact,” he drew himself up, “I would like to suggest that all members of the crew go through mandatory firearms training and practice. We will be in considerable danger for the foreseeable future, and since we can’t hire new security personnel, we should make sure that everyone can defend themselves. I cannot order them to do so, but you can.”