“Better move quickly,” Bolero advised him. “My pal’s got an itchy trigger finger.” Then she cut the link.
Naturally, it was all a bluff. They had no explosive devices. If Corcoran didn’t blow the gates for them, Call would have to attempt to do so manually—though Bolero had no idea how she would obtain access to station operations.
Fortunately, they had already demonstrated an affinity for violence. With luck, Corcoran would buy what Bolero was selling.
Come on, she thought, her eyes on the ponderous, gray gates as she slowed the Betty’s descent. Open for me, baby.
She had just decided that Corcoran was playing her for a fool when a strip of starry space materialized in front of her observation port. As she watched, cheering inwardly, the strip widened, and then widened some more.
Did it! she thought.
And once they were out, they were out. Byzantium had no ships it could send after them, its security capabilities limited strictly to the station.
Just then, Ripley entered the cockpit. Bolero smiled back at her. “Looks like clear sailing, Captain.”
“Good,” said Ripley, taking the seat beside the pilot’s.
“By the way,” said Bolero, “we’ve got company.”
Ripley looked at her, uncharacteristically surprised. “A stowaway?”
“Never saw him before. Short, skinny, red hair, goofy hat. Obviously didn’t know what he was getting into.”
Ripley frowned. “Just get us out of here. We’ll deal with him afterward.”
“Whatever you say,” the pilot told her.
By then, the bay gates had parted enough to let them through. Bolero applied thrusters, sat back, and watched the opening grow closer in her observation port.
She was less than fifty meters from freedom when the gates started to close again. “What the hell … ?” she said out loud.
Two possibilities occurred to her. One was that Corcoran had changed his mind out of spite. The other was that he had been overridden by a higher authority.
Either way, it wouldn’t get her anywhere to reopen negotiations. She had only one option—to shoot the gap.
Pouring on maximum thrust, Bolero felt the Betty shiver as if she were was coming apart. Still, the pilot could see she wasn’t going to make it. Not at her present angle, anyway. The gates were closing too quickly, like the jaws of a great, dark leviathan, and she was already too wide to fit through them.
Her only chance was to rotate—and quickly. Punching in a command, she spun the Betty a hundred and eighty degrees to starboard, presenting her ship’s narrowest dimension to the diminishing aperture. Then she gritted her teeth and kept her eyes on the stars that were still visible.
Don’t be mean to me, she thought as she plunged ahead.
For a moment, Bolero was certain they were screwed. By far, the worst part was the feeling she had let Ripley down.
Then they were sailing through open space, a billion stars winking all around them. Somehow the leviathan’s jaws had missed them, chomping down on nothingness.
With a deep, earnest sigh of relief, Bolero established a heading and left Byzantium behind.
6
As the door to Simoni’s compartment opened, his eyes were blasted by an onslaught of light. But he could still make out the face that presented itself in the opening— a surprisingly boyish one, with pale blue eyes framed by straw-colored hair.
“Hi there,” said Simoni. “Allow me to—”
Before he could finish, a hand reached in and grabbed him by the front of his tunic. Then it dragged him out of the compartment and left him lying on the deck like a freshly caught fish.
Simoni looked around and saw that the blond kid wasn’t the only one sharing the cargo hold with him. There were several others—six of them altogether—frowning as they regarded him in the twisted shadows of the hanging chains.
Except for one guy—a fellow with a long jaw, an apelike brow ridge and a collection of scars decorating his face. He wasn’t frowning at all. In fact, he seemed amused.
Uncomfortably so.
But the face that caught Simoni’s eye and held it was Ripley’s. As he watched, spellbound, she separated herself from her companions and approached him, finally kneeling in front of him.
Ripley, he thought. Goddamn.
It was intoxicating to see her so close … so real. She was even more impressive than he had imagined, even more riveting.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice hard and without inflection.
He licked his lips. “I wanted to go along with you.”
Her nostrils flared. “Why?”
“Because you’re Ellen Ripley,” said Simoni. “The Ellen Ripley in Morse and the other banned histories, though I can’t explain how. And whatever you’re up to, it’s got to be something important.”
As she considered him, her head tilting slightly to one side, he had the strangest feeling that she was thinking about eating him. But that’s crazy—isn’t it?
“You’re holding something back,” she decided. “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me what it is, or you’re leaving.”
He was about to remind her that they were in space. If he left the ship, he would pop like an overripe zit. Then he realized that was exactly what she had in mind.
Simoni swallowed. She won’t do it. She’s bluffing.
He waited the ten seconds, watching her. Finally, she glanced at the ape man and said, “Get rid of him.”
“With pleasure,” he grated.
Simoni put a hand up to ward him off, but it didn’t do him any good. The bastard was too quick, too strong. He slammed Simoni into the bulkhead hard enough to bring the tang of blood to his mouth, then grabbed him by the collar and yanked him in the direction of a waste disposal hatch.
It wasn’t very big. But it was big enough to accommodate a human being if—like Simoni—he wasn’t too bulky. Or if he didn’t mind getting a layer of skin ripped off.
“Wait,” he yelped back at Ripley, “I’ll tell you!”
But she had already turned and started walking away. The others too. Only the blond kid stood there watching Johner drag Simoni away, and he wasn’t making a move to do anything about it.
“You hear me?” Simoni bellowed, his voice banging in the confines of the hold. “I said I’ll tell you!”
The ape man chuckled like evil incarnate. “Too late.”
It was insane. Simoni tried to loosen his tormentor’s grip, to twist free. It wasn’t helping. I can’t die like this, he insisted. Not after everything I’ve been through.
“Goddammit,” he said, his voice thinning to a scream, “I’m a net reporter! I just wanted a freakin’ story!”
The admission didn’t affect the ape man in the least. But Ripley halted in her tracks and turned around.
“You’re gonna like it out there,” the ape man said gleefully as he pulled Simoni along. “For a few seconds, anyway.”
Ripley stopped one of her comrades—the woman in the blue jumpsuit—and said something to her, but Simoni couldn’t make it out. He was grunting too loudly as he tried to pry his captor’s powerful fingers loose.
“Watch the pinky,” the ape man growled, jerking Simoni forward, “or I swear, you’ll be dead before you hit the black!”
Simoni focused on Ripley again. She was looking at him, exchanging comments with her comrade.
“Last stop,” said the ape man.
Still holding Simoni by the collar, he used his other hand to poke at the hatch controls. Swiveling so his feet were between him and his tormentor, Simoni lashed out with his heel and kicked his captor in the mouth.
It didn’t seem to faze the ugly bastard in the least. Finishing the hatch control sequence, he got the cover to swivel open. Beyond it was a dark, empty tube.
Without warning, the ape man slugged Simoni in the face. It took all the fight out of the reporter, left him a limp bag of bones. The next thing he knew, he was being jammed face first into the w
aste tube.
“Nooo!” Simoni screamed.
He tried to hook his feet around the hatch, but the ape man wasn’t having any of it. With one bone-jarring thrust after another, he stuffed the intruder through the opening.
“Nooo!” Simoni screamed again, his cries muffled by the closeness of the tube.
It was hard to breathe, so hard, and the ape man hadn’t even locked the door yet. And it would get even harder when the door by Simoni’s head swung open and he was puffed out into space.
He had heard what happened to people out there. The heat leached out of them in a matter of seconds. Their eyes bled. Their lungs burst like overripe fruit.
Simoni didn’t want that to happen to him.
“Please,” he shrieked, his pulse pounding in his ears so hard it hurt, “I’ll do anything! Just don’t make me go out there!”
But his cries fell on deaf ears. The ape man began forcing the hatch door closed, despite Simoni’s efforts to kick it open.
Oh god, he thought, it’s really happening …
Then he heard someone say, in a clear and distinct voice, “Let him go.”
The ape man stopped pushing the door closed and said, “Gotta clean my ears one of these days. For a second there, I thought you said to let him go.”
“I did,” came the answer, which Simoni now recognized was Ripley’s.
The ape man let the door to the tube swing open, allowing the reporter a glimpse of the cargo bay. “You cannot be serious,” he snarled. “You’re gonna let this sneaky scumbag live?”
Ripley didn’t say anything in response. But then, she had already given him an answer.
By then, Simoni had wriggled out of the tube and was pouring himself onto the deck. He looked at the ape man with trepidation, hoping he would listen to Ripley.
The ape man cursed to himself. Then he whirled and grabbed Simoni and pulled the reporter’s face close to his—so close that Simoni could smell the alcohol on his captor’s breath.
Then the ape man said, “Don’t let me catch you underfoot, scumbag. Not even once. Because I would like nothing better than to stomp on you till your head pops.”
“I understand,” said Simoni, too exhausted to think of anything else.
His tormentor glared at him a while longer. Finally, he thrust the reporter away and headed for the exit, muttering, “The crap I have to put up with … ”
Simoni watched him go. Then he looked to Ripley, meaning to thank her for her intervention.
But she no longer seemed interested in him. With a word to the woman in the blue jumpsuit, she followed the ape man out of the hold.
Swallowing, Simoni stared at the woman. To his surprise, she smiled, walked back across the hold, and gave him her hand.
“Come on,” she said, helping him to his feet. “I’ll try to find you a place to sleep.”
* * *
“Easy,” said Gogolac, watching the insertion margins represented by the bright red lines on her monitor. “We had some trouble with the in-box last time.”
“I hear you, ma’am,” said the pilot of the ungainly looking, brown supply ship, visible to Gogolac through a nearby observation port, “and I aim to please.”
At the same time, he slowed the progress of his vessel’s extender arm, which was moving the silver-blue cryo tube in its grasp closer to the maw of the colony’s cargo bay.
“Friendly,” observed Philipakos, “isn’t he?”
He was completing his environmental checks on the other side of the command center, but he had stopped to watch Gogolac accept the tube. Not that he doesn’t trust me, she thought. In all the years she had worked under him, she had never once given him cause for complaint.
On the other hand, the bay’s receiving unit had malfunctioned the last time—albeit on Seigo’s watch, not hers—and compromised a food shipment. And they didn’t get food shipments anywhere nearly as often as they used to, so it would be a while before anyone forgot the incident.
Worse, they hadn’t had the right parts on hand to repair the unit. We never do, Gogolac reflected. So it had to be jerry-rigged, which was, no doubt, why Philipakos seemed so concerned.
“A lot more friendly than the last couple,” she said. “But he still has to put a round peg in a square hole.”
With my help, of course. It took two to perform the peculiar tango of supply insertion. And though she hadn’t been asked to dance since she was eleven, it was a step she was good at.
Unlike the one Gogolac had taken that time with Hamilton-Cross. But then, she hadn’t expected much to come of that relationship. Men liked women who looked nice, and she hardly fit that description.
“Rotate ten degrees clockwise,” she told the pilot.
“No sooner said than done,” he told her.
Gogolac couldn’t see the guy’s face from this angle, but she imagined he was a good ol’ boy with fresh-scrubbed cheeks and a brush haircut. Over the years, she had gotten good at imagining men—putting them together from a voice or just a written report.
Like Saturria, the guy in Domes Alpha. All she knew of him was what she heard in his updates. But she imagined him to be darkly complected, cheerful, and generous in his dealings with women.
A little generosity goes a long way, Gogolac thought, as she watched the pilot make the ten-degree adjustment.
A moment later, the tube slipped into the aperture Gogolac had prepared for it. Mission accomplished.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any extra food containers on that rig?” she asked hopefully.
“One,” said the pilot, releasing his hold on the tube. “Unfortunately, it’s earmarked for Delta. Sorry about that.”
“No need to be,” Gogolac told him. “It’s not your fault we haven’t seen meat in more than a year.”
“A year’s a long time,” he said, withdrawing his extender arm. “I’ll put in a good word for you with the brass. They listen to guys like me all the time.”
Gogolac found herself laughing—too rare an occurrence. “Yes, I’ll just bet they do.”
“See you around, ma’am.”
Reluctant to see the guy go, she watched as he pulled his ship back, wheeled, and then took off. With a sigh, she returned her attention to the cargo bay. Her monitors told her the tube was secure, awaiting human attention.
“Nice guy,” Philipakos observed.
“He was,” Gogolac allowed.
Usually, supply runs attracted peculiar people—even more peculiar than the ones who operated botanical colonies. But this one was different.
“I hope,” said Philipakos, “that my Angie meets someone like that one day.”
Not around here, she won’t, Gogolac reflected. None of us will.
Not that it mattered, really. She did better with men she could only dream about.
* * *
Call was lying on the top bunk in the quarters she shared with Ripley and Bolero, propped up on one elbow, when she heard the sound of someone coming down the corridor.
As slender as Ripley looked, her muscles alone weighed more than Johner’s whole body, and the sound of her boots striking the deck reflected the fact. Except, of course, when she wanted to move silently—but this wasn’t one of those times.
Call turned and laid the back of her head on her pillow, facing the image of a female bathing suit model she had downloaded and pasted on the ceiling. It was the most perfect example of feminine beauty she had ever seen— even more so than the picture of Betty Grable painted on the Betty’s hull.
Not that she could ever look that way. But I can dream, can’t I? Figuratively, at least.
Ripley’s shadow preceded her into the room. “So,” she said, taking the only chair in the place and turning it around so she could straddle it, “what did you get?”
Call glanced at her. “You really want to know?”
Ripley’s eyes narrowed. “Is that an actual question? Or are you just trying to piss me off?”
“Piss you off,” Call said with
out hesitation.
Ripley tilted her head a little, her mouth pulling almost imperceptibly at the corners. “Feeling taken for granted, are we?”
“A little, yes. No—make that a lot.”
“Sorry, but it’s not exactly balloons and birthday candles for any of us. Not in this business.”
Call knew Ripley wasn’t talking about hauling cargo. “Still. If you knew what it was like to go in there … ”
“Next time I’ll attempt to be more sympathetic. So what the hell did you get?”
The android sighed. With all Ripley could do, it was difficult to think of her in terms of limitations. But she had some big ones.
“I got it all,” Call said, suppressing an urge to pump her fists in the air.
Ripley’s brow furrowed. “All? As in everything?”
“As in we don’t have to sneak into data centers anymore. Which, come to think of it, is a good thing in a lot of ways, considering Byzantium will be spreading the word about us.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Pretty much,” said Call. “I’m still processing—there’s a lot to work on. But I ought to have coordinates within the hour.”
“And then we go to work,” said Ripley. She took on a faraway look. “Hard to believe, after all this time.”
It was a little hard to believe.
But Call was ready for it. Big time.
* * *
Simoni wasn’t the most popular soul on the Betty, but he managed to find one crewman who wasn’t put off by his company.
“In a way,” he said, continuing a monologue he had begun several minutes earlier, “I don’t mind your not talking much. It’s better than the muttered comments I hear from Johner. In case it’s escaped your attention, I’m not on his Christmas list.”
Krakke didn’t say anything in response. He just continued dismantling the shock rifle in his hands—one of a dozen he had earlier laid out on the metal table in front of him.
Ch-chunk.
Simoni wondered if the lighting in the ship’s armory was always this low. If he were the one taking guns apart and putting them back together, he would have turned the illumination up a little.
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