She whirled and headed for the foreman's office. Behind her, he began giving instructions for relocation. She would wait for him in the office to deal with any questions he would bring, though Marette doubted he would be happy, or even satisfied, with any answers she would be able to give. For his sake, she hoped that they would be enough.
The AoA knew that they would have to deal with the miners when they originally influenced ESA to send them to the site. The miners' silence was imperative to their objective in the eyes of both groups. She prayed the money was enough.
"Are you ready for me?" Andora asked when he arrived a short while later. He hesitated in the doorway, despite the fact that it was his own office that he was about to enter. Marette nodded and waived him in.
"How are the preparations for relocation?" she asked.
"Smoothly so far. We know the drill."
"I need you to keep things that way."
The foreman nodded. "I will. We're a good crew and efficient."
Which is why you were chosen, Marette thought to herself.
"You're not catching us at our best, you know. I—we work better when we're following regular procedures and know more about what we're actually doing."
Marette was unsure if he was being defensive or fishing for an apology. She changed the subject slightly. "Does your crew have any questions?"
"Aside from the obvious of just what you think that is they found?"
Marette sat, waiting silently.
"Most seem content with the arrangement. The money, I mean. It's why most of them are here, after all. But some want to know when the communications lockdown will be lifted. Some have families who expect to hear from them more regularly. They won't violate the silence order, but they'd like to put some fears to rest."
"The Space Agency will send messages to your families assuring them that all is well, but nothing else will be allowed. This site will continue to be blacked out. The official explanation will be that there have been minor armed conflicts between mining companies. Pirating and so forth. If they must give a reason, that is it."
"There won't be a lockdown at the new site though, right?"
"No." It was a statement she knew to be only a half-truth. All transmissions would be monitored. The frequencies of sudden comm-system 'failures' would probably rise. Officially, however, there would be no lockdown.
"I also have three of the crew scheduled for leave. Off-moon."
"I'm afraid I cannot allow that. All of your crew will relocate to the new site."
"They aren't going to take that well."
"I do not expect so."
"One has his daughter's wedding to get to."
Marette shook her head. "Not even if he were scheduled to be crowed the king of France." Her tone was calm but firm. "Everyone goes to the new site. That is to be the arrangement."
"And after the relocation?"
"I cannot say," she lied, knowing full well that they would not be allowed to leave. Not at first. "The ESA liaison officer at the new site will have that answer for you."
"ESA liaison officer," Andora repeated through subtly clenched teeth. "So we still won't be operating independently?"
Marette shook her head. "You will have full control of your crew, to mine as normal. That will be standard and you will not be interfered with. All functions ranging off-site will require clearance from the liaison. ESA wishes to assure the agreement is followed. The liaison officer will acquaint you with the standard procedures."
Andora nodded, with the appearance of being reassured. "As long as it's spelled out. I don't want any surprises."
"The function of the officer is to make things as smooth as possible," she said.
"I don't know how smooth things will go if the crew doesn't get their leave at the new site. They might not take well to that."
"Even so, they would find it difficult to leave without the blessing of the Space Agency," Marette reminded him.
"But not impossible."
"The Chinese National Space Administration is nowhere in this hemisphere. Elements of the Western Space Consortium would be almost as difficult to reach. It is a long journey across the lunar surface." Especially given the new plot they were to be assigned, Marette thought. Even then, the joint space venture of the American companies had limited lunar resources and would not be inexpensively persuaded to take a few extra passengers.
"I'm just letting you know that you can't keep my crew bottled up for too long."
Marette clasped her hands and tapped them against her chin for a moment. It was a nervous habit that she caught herself doing a second later. "Mr. Andora, I would suggest, for all your sakes, that you keep your crew as cooperative as possible."
The foreman looked at her a moment, seeming to summon a bit of courage. "Is that a threat?"
"To call it a threat would imply it is something I have control over. It is a warning."
The two sat in silence for a moment before Andora spoke again. "The discovery," he said, not describing it further despite Marette's expectation that he had already guessed at what it might be, "we'll be told, well, more about it? Eventually?"
Marette nodded. "When the rest of the public is." It was technically not a lie. The public would not be told. Could not be told. It was vital that nothing be leaked.
"It's incredible to think about, really."
"I am afraid I cannot comment." Yet he was right. It was incredible. Marette only hoped that it would be what they were looking for, for the sake of the lives already lost, and the lives that were currently threatened. "If there is nothing more, you are dismissed."
Marette waited until the foreman had left before she took out the data disk she had kept in her pocket since returning from the site. It was the only record of events that officially had no record, even to ESA. The scanners carried by the team had their own recorders—recorders now lost beyond the memory of screams thick with pain and terror. Even the simple audio-visual records were gone, wiped somehow by the device that killed the team. Only the account of the data relayed by Alberto's transmitter remained.
Marette remembered.
The audio feeds had shut off a second after the video. The only clues she had of activity inside the ship were the flashes of light reflected in the small windows of the airlock. She kept transmitting, calling instructions to the team, telling them she lost her link, asking for some sign that anyone was hearing her. She continued to call to them until the light faded. She kept trying while she attempted to reestablish her connection to them, asking for their conditions until her requests turned to pleas.
And then she stopped.
And then she sat.
She just. . . sat. Watching. Blankly staring at the stillness outside the airlock. Watching, as nothing continued to happen, and listening to silence cloaked in the sound of what became her own breathing. She sat, not moving, not daring to think, letting the constant flow of null stimuli wash steadily into her senses and pass unprocessed through her mind. She sat waiting, timeless and dead.
It was the waiting that finally shook her—the realization that she was allowing herself to do so. It was not in her nature to wait.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was in a suit outside the airlock, peering into the structure through the window at the darkness beyond. Her team lay still on the floor of the black room inside. There was no sign of the object. No sign of the door it had come through.
A moment later, she keyed in the sequence to close the far side of the airlock. Her blood pounded through her ears while she opened the outer door, stepped into the lock a moment later, and closed the door afterward. She waited, impatiently, keeping watch over the prostrate bodies of her team for any sign of movement as the airlock refilled. When it opened, she pushed herself through to them. Alberto was second from the back; she reached him first. The vital readout of his suit was dark. In a flash, Marette removed his helmet. His eyes were open and blank. His pulse was gone.
He was dead.
>
In a daze, Marette moved on to another of the team: Henley, a weapons tech. Dead. Siri, the team commander. Dead. Freitz, his helmet still gone. Dead.
At the time, she had been rushing—half from fear that the thing that had done this would return for her, half to block out her own grief enough to function. Yet now, as she sat remembering, the full force of that grief hit her. It twisted her insides out and nearly wrenched a cry of anguish from her. She forced her emotions back under control now as best she could.
And it was control then that had probably saved her.
It was only through a burst of movement in her peripheral vision that she noticed the soundless spillback of the black covering at the end of the chamber. She scrambled back into the airlock, shoved closed the door, and cursed her own foolishness with ragged breaths. Crouched behind the closed door, she hit the emergency decompress and then ran out of the airlock as quickly as she could in the bulky suit, not looking back.
In hindsight, Marette knew it had been foolish and risky to jeopardize the project by putting herself in such obvious danger. She also knew she would not be able to live with herself without trying to see if anyone was left alive.
She had waited in the vehicle for any sign that the thing was following, any show of movement or pursuit, though she had not been sure what she would have done if any came. She had waited five minutes, fighting as she did so to keep a grip on the fear and loss of her team. She waited five more just to be sure. When nothing had finally come, she opened up the comm-channel to the mining site and gave the foreman the plain-word code phrase to send to Alpha Station that indicated a request for reinforcements. Marette had tried to sound as cool and confident as she could. She wasn't sure how well she had succeeded.
It was another two hours until they had arrived, during which time Marette had spent in the rover at the tunnel entrance, alone with her thoughts. It wasn't a period she cared to recall anytime soon.
By the time the reinforcements had arrived, armed, she had regained a measure of control. She gave them the simple instructions to guard the tunnel entrance. Anyone seeking entrance, though unlikely, were to be turned away and reported. Anything coming out was to be fired upon.
Back in the foreman's office, Marette looked at the disk she had omitted in her report to ESA. She slid it into the computer and keyed in the sequence to upload the scan data to her AoA contact back at Alpha Station. Uncertain of exactly what the next steps would be, she watched the disk transmit and hoped it would be worth the lives of the team. The possibility that it would be was a belief that, at the moment, gave little relief from the memory of their screams.
XIX
Felix's knock sounded a moment before his head poked around the opening door. "Anything yet?"
Marc looked up from the image of the sky above the activity of the City Square Night Market and shook his head. "Not so far, but I can't go too quickly, you know. I have to break into each camera, I have to cover my tracks. It takes time."
Felix stepped into the room and closed the door. "Hope we're not putting you at risk." He held a glass of water from which he periodically sipped.
Marc shook his head at his friend. "Not so much. It's tedious, but it's more or less routine. And boring. The only real risk is my sanity after doing this all last night, too."
Felix moved behind him to watch the screen as Marc resumed the search. "So that's what kept you up."
"Yeah."
"Who were you looking for?"
"How do you know it was a 'who?' And, ah, you know better than to ask those kinds of questions anyway."
"No, I know better than to expect an answer." Felix chuckled. "But I always gotta ask. Especially when you practically beg me to. You didn't have to mention what you were doing last night."
Marc shut down the camera and began acquiring another. "Fine, so I can't keep a secret. What's your point?"
"Not the best trait to have in your line of work."
Marc shrugged. "Well, you're the only one I know who's not one of us that I can share this with. It's therapeutic, I guess. I'd go nuts otherwise."
Felix laughed.
"What?"
"Oh, I just find it amusing that the person you choose to vent those things to is a self-proclaimed information bounty hunter, even if that title doesn't exactly roll off the tongue."
"Still don't like 'private investigator,' huh?"
"I keep telling you, it just sounds wrong somehow. No oomph. Plus I think I'd need an office for that."
Marc chuckled. "Well, you may be a 'self-proclaimed information bounty hunter,' but you're a trustworthy self-proclaimed information bounty hunter," he said. "And you know, if you're trying to persuade me to say more, you have a strange way of doing it."
"Oh, I'm not trying to persuade you of anything. I'm sure you'll let it slip when you're ready. What's that?" he asked suddenly, pointing at a shadow that moved across the screen.
"Ah. . . MedEvac," Marc said when he saw the ambulance. "So who owns this floater anyway? What's Diomedes want with him?"
"Oh, I'm not sure Dio would like me sharing that."
Marc wasn't certain if he was being completely sincere or not. "Well, let me ask you this: does he have any connections to ESA?"
"ESA?" Felix gave an interested look.
It would probably be best to take that as a no and not risk giving away too much. "Never mind," Marc said. Then again, it was Felix he was talking to. "Well, does he?"
"Ah, not that I'm aware of. Are we talking European Space Agency or. . .?"
"Yeah."
"Just making sure," said Felix. "Like I said, not that I'm aware of. So you mean there's something going on with ESA?"
Marc watched the camera a moment and wondered exactly what to say. "Have you heard anything?"
Felix gave it a few moments' consideration. "Not as such, no. Anything I should know?"
"How about this? As a favor to me in payment for the search, you keep your ears open and let me know anything you happen to come across involving them."
"I think I can do that," Felix agreed. "Some sort of security issue?"
Marc turned from the screen to face him. "That obvious, is it?"
"Not too hard to guess, given the fact that they've got you searching for whoever it is with the cameras. That and where I figure ESA would fit into the whole agenda. Sounds like there's a leak."
"I don't know everything. Just keep your eye out is all I'm saying. By the way," started Marc, changing the subject as he turned back to the screen, "who was the redhead I saw you with last night?"
"My, you were busy last night. Where'd you see us?"
"I followed that floater you were in on a hunch." Marc panned a camera across the west end of the city. "I watched it until you got out at the justice tower. He got out first, then you."
"That was Brian," his friend replied. "He's a reporter we're working with. Part of the reason we know to find this floater."
"Nice guy?"
"Yeah, but a bit self-absorbed and paranoid. I think he's got a bit of tendency to jump to conclusions, too. Ambitious, though." Felix shrugged. "I figure he might be a useful guy to know."
"Uh huh."
"Plus he's fun to argue with," Felix added happily.
"Ah, so that's it. Where's he now?"
"Off checking on another lead. Running some names through a press database to see if it turns up anything. Diomedes didn't really want him around, anyway."
"Yeah, well do me a favor: if I meet him, you want to introduce me as Marc? The Lifesaver thing is getting old."
"Hey, not my fault you always have some. Besides, it makes for good mental shorthand. You know how hard it is for me to remember things."
Though Marc was focused on the screen, Felix's grin was clear in his tone. "Oh, yeah, and I guess you—"
And there it was. "Hang on, hang on, hang on," Marc said. He zoomed in the camera to confirm. "Right there." He pointed at the screen. "Black unmarked Boeing Ursa Major." He popped
a Lifesaver into his mouth. "Are you lucky or what?"
Felix leaned in over his shoulder. "Where?"
XX
Romulus had spent most of the three hours that passed at Lifesaver's place sleeping. Tired from his fitful sleep of the previous night, he hadn't felt much like talking after the first fifteen minutes. When Felix had left to check on Lifesaver for the first time, Romulus had quickly drifted off while Diomedes kept his vigil at the window.
It was Felix who woke him as Diomedes was grilling Lifesaver for details of where he'd found the floater. Romulus got himself together while Felix made a quick phone call, and then they were off, headed for a club called The Arena. Romulus had only heard enough of it before to know that it was dangerous, and during the flight he asked Felix for more details that the man was happy to provide.
"Gangers make up the largest percentage of people at The Arena on any given night," Felix said. "The rest are a mix of gang wannabes, gamblers, and the occasional freelancer or counterpart of my own looking to score an easy and dubious job. It's not a place I like to frequent."
"Gamblers?" Romulus asked. "What, is it part casino or something?"
Felix shook his head. "Oh, there are plenty of things there: alcohol, music, drugs. But the main draws are the death sports," he replied grimly. "The Arena is the closest thing to holy ground for most gangers, though that's really more of a guideline than a rule. They use The Arena to settle disputes or to just quench a little bloodlust—legally, but definitely not non-violently. There are a number of different games and contests, some one-on-one, some for a," he paused to scowl, "team. All have their own strict rules, and nearly all involving some variant of death as the objective or means to an end. There's always betting, and any agreement between opposing gangs or individual gangers based on the outcome is usually honored. How a place like that came into being would be a fascinating sociological study if it weren't so bloody."
A Shadow in the Flames (The New Aeneid Cycle) Page 17