Outpost

by W. Michael Gear

  “What’s a portage?” she’d shouted back above the river’s roar.

  “Carry the canoe up those cliffs. And what’s upstream? More rapids?”

  She shifted uneasily, trying to remember. Truth was, she’d only flown over this country. Mostly she had watched the gauges, ever cognizant of the charge in her batteries.

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “How far to Briggs’?”

  “Maybe a day. Maybe more.” She gave him a shrug.

  “Go on foot?”

  “Might be the best bet.”

  Much to the quetzal’s relief, they clambered up a tenuous trail in the canyon wall to the top of the basalt.

  “What made the flat like this?” Cap asked as they crested the top.

  “Volcanic. Lots of volcanism rippling out from the impact zone that created the Gulf and the Wind Mountains.”

  He propped hands on his hips, pack resting high on his shoulders. Sweat had already begun to glisten on his face and neck. “Now I know why you all wear those big hats.”

  He’d lost his campaign hat that first day in the scramble through the forest.

  “Should have kept the hide off that crest and made you one,” she told him with a grin. “Made me one at the same time.”

  “Next critter we kill, we’ll do that. What do I watch for besides a handy crest popping its head out of the brush?”

  “See how the trees are smaller, more widely spaced and growing where fractures and low spots have allowed soil to accumulate?” she told him. “This is a lot better country for bems, brown caps, and skewers. Keep your eyes open, and if you smell vinegar, tell me. Immediately. And steer as wide as you can from any large rocks.”

  He looked around. “All I see are large rocks.”

  “Yeah, there’s always something, isn’t there?”

  “That’s Donovan for you.”

  “You’re learning, Max.”

  He followed as she led off along the rim overlooking the river. Following behind, it took all of his self-control to pay attention to his surroundings and not the sway of her hips. Not to imagine the soft curves that lay just under that worn fabric. How it felt to slip his fingertips along the gentle swell of her . . .

  “Got trouble here,” Talina said as she stopped and he almost ran into her.

  A dark chasm split the ash-gray bedrock. Peering down, its depths were inky with shadow.

  “Have to go around.”

  She was working her lips, squinting up at the sun and then north in the direction of the Briggs homestead. “Wonder how many more of these we’ve got between us and Briggs’?”

  “Not much choice, huh?” He gestured to the west. “If we can find a narrow gap, we can bridge it. Lots of trees to use.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound like you’re in any kind of hurry.”

  “I’m not.” Anything but. “Gives more time for Turalon to vanish into the hereafter. More time that I don’t have to share your company with others.”

  “It’s those others who drive me.” She lifted her water bottle from its holder and drank. “Cap, they think I’m dead. Donovan doesn’t give much hope for miracles.”

  “Yeah, I know. How about we get to Briggs’ and you call in and tell them that everything’s all right, and then after Madison has her baby, they can send an aircar after us in a couple of months or so?”

  “You’re truly smitten, aren’t you?”

  “Not a single regret, girl.” He gestured for her to proceed, then, forcing himself to pay attention, asked, “What about you?”

  “Still working through it. God, Max. The last thing I would have expected was . . . well, a relationship of any kind. I’d shut it out of my reality. I’m caught between that giddy hormone rush and wondering what happens when we get back. I mean, what then? If Turalon’s still in orbit, you can bet the Supervisor’s going to want you back. So how does that work? And if the ship’s gone, then what? Where do you go? What do you do? Do I move you into my place? And even so, we’re going to be under a damn microscope. Every eye in town is going to be on us.”

  “Work it out when we get there.”

  “What I’m saying is that everything’s going to be different when we get back. I . . . well, I’ll need time to sort it all out.”

  He nodded futilely at her back. “My guess? Your people are going to be swarming over you, asking questions you don’t want to answer. Like, what you’re doing sleeping with the man who was going to execute you? And what you see in a soft meat outsider, even if he is a marine? Mine—if they’re still there—are going to be doing the same to me.”

  “One day at a time?”

  “Works for me. There. We can bridge that.” He stepped over, studying the narrowing in the chasm. Here it wasn’t more than four meters across.

  “You know how?”

  “Hey, woman, I’m more than just a giddy hormonal rush. Let me get my saw out and I’ll show you how to build a bridge.” And, by all the powers in the universe, help me bridge all the shit that’s going to lay between Tal and me when we get back to Port Authority.

  Even as he thought it, the long boom of a shuttle entering atmosphere came rolling down from the heavens.

  “Sounds like Turalon’s still here.”

  Cap took a deep breath. “Yeah, it does.”

  And that was just the first of the sonic booms they heard as they bridged the gap and headed north. This wasn’t just Turalon. It sounded more like the days just after the ship had arrived, like cargo being ferried.

  “That’s a lot of shuttle traffic. I think our world’s just changed,” Talina said, shading her eyes as she stared up at a vapor trail high overhead.

  “Yeah.” He wiped a hand over his sweaty brow. “But how?”

  47

  Kalico sat in an overplush chair in the astrogation dome and cradled a cup of coffee in her hands. The steam rose in slender fingers to tease her with its aroma. She had pulled her legs up under her, the posture almost defensive. She’d sat like this when she was a girl. Done so during those times when Father had done or said something to humiliate her, or Mother was on one of her binges.

  I goddamned saw myself step out of that temple of bones.

  Kalico thought she’d outgrown the need to sit thus. But at the sight of that apparition, the woman who had been Kalico Aguila had shattered. Had left Freelander shivering and almost stumbling.

  In the hours since, Kalico hadn’t gotten her old self back. Now here she was. Sitting with her legs tucked beneath her, staring across the narrow distance to where Freelander gleamed whitely against the inky void of space.

  “If you go back, you’ll die.” The words had been so clear.

  And none of the others present had seen so much as a flicker.

  She hadn’t been able to sleep since returning to Turalon. Nightmares had plagued her to the point that Kalico had turned to Dr. Tyler for a soporific. Still the images haunted her.

  She closed her eyes, the distant ship’s image ghostlike against her lids.

  A hollow desperation sent a tickle through her guts. Power, a seat on the Board, the wealth and status, all were slipping away. She was a Corporate creature, adept at the acquisition and manipulation of power. No one was better at the brutal inside politics of the Corporate Board. Played right, she could be the Chairperson. The most powerful woman in Solar System.

  What the hell has happened to me?

  Since she had landed at Donovan, her foundation had begun to crack and sunder. Seeing her phantom self emerging from that temple of bones? It had turned everything to shifting sand.

  “Who am I?” she whispered.

  She’d be dead before she’d be dressed in quetzal hide. The scars? Her subconscious was trying to tell her something. That’s all. The fucking ghost was an illusion. Had to be. Some fantasy conjured from st
ress and lack of sleep.

  Then why the hell was she on the verge of tears?

  “Supervisor?” Captain Abibi’s voice asked softly from the hatch.

  Kalico sighed and swallowed her bitter despair, forced herself to slip her legs out from under her and sit forward. To project that old air of competence. Fucking lie that it was. “Come in, Captain. Have a seat.”

  Abibi—looking rather grim herself—seated herself, laced her hands together, and stared distastefully through the transparency at Freelander. “More of the pieces are starting to fit together.”

  “The minds of the insane usually cleave to some sort of pattern.” Kalico ground her teeth to keep control. Who said she was seeing ghosts? Then added, “And what happened over there? That’s madness, Captain.”

  “Was it?” Abibi asked. “My people have most of the systems functioning again. The Freelander crew cut out the ship’s brain. Actually took cutting torches to the ship’s AI. What kind of nuts is that? But we’ve recovered some of the personal logs. They knew they were lost. That something had gone wrong, and they were going to spend the rest of their lives in that ship.”

  “So they went insane? Killed the transportees? Orten and Sakihara weld themselves into astrogation, and then kill themselves?”

  “They were hoping the ship would eventually do what it did. That whatever dimension, universe, or flux they were in wasn’t eternal. Supervisor, for all the effects relativity has in our own universe, who knows how it functions in others?”

  Abibi frowned across space at Freelander. “It’s long been postulated that each time a ship inverts symmetry, it slips into another universe, but not necessarily the same universe each time. The multiverse is postulated to be infinite.”

  “I’ve also heard that some theorists hypothesize that each inversion of symmetry creates a universe.”

  “Could be.” Abibi gestured to Freelander. “But wherever that ship went, Orten was right. The mathematics worked, the statistical projections were correct, and when the generators ceased inverting, she ended up right where she was supposed to.”

  “But not when she was supposed to,” Kalico reminded. “She was months late getting back to our universe. And she spent more than a century in some other dimension.”

  Abibi stared uneasily through the transparency. “It was a death cult. Tyler’s showing a curious streak to her personality. She’s fascinated. Been reading the logs, studying that script they wrote all over the corridors and mess floor. Me, I figure it was the guilt. They knew they were spending their lives in the same ship where they’d killed and vacuum-frozen five hundred and some people.”

  “That would spook me, too, I suppose.”

  “Remember, they were feeding the corpses one by one into the hydroponics as the chemistry broke down. Living off the dead. And each time they did, they recovered the bones. It started as a means of showing respect. Over the years, it grew. Became ritualized.”

  “And the building of bones?” The image replayed of Kalico’s alter self ducking out of that door.

  “The temple of life, they called it.” Abibi frowned. “Tyler says they went there to commune with the dead. And then, when the crew started to die, they were tossed into the hydroponics, too. Their bones were added to the temple. Tyler says they used all the bones. Skulls, leg and arm bones, those were wired together for the structural elements. Vertebrae, phalanges, scapulas, ribs, and such for the decorations on the outside. All intricately constructed with safety wire.”

  “Madness.”

  “Perhaps.” Abibi shrugged. “Tyler says that she’s found examples all through human history. Lots of people make ossuaries, and some, like Catholicism’s Capuchin order, actually made constructions out of their dead similar to Freelander’s.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Correct. Salvation. At least in the case of the Capuchins.”

  Across the distance, Freelander looked deceptively pacific, its exterior bathed in Capella’s light. Only on the inside, with its temple of bones and scrawled lunacy, did the horror become manifest.

  “Has anyone solved the mystery of the missing shuttle?”

  “We have. Schism among the crew. A small group decided they were going to chance leaving. Fly through the inversion. In their minds, they figured that instant death was better than living out hopeless lives in Freelander. On the other hand, it was a step into the unknown. For all they knew, they might come out the other side, or pop back into our universe.”

  “And what if they did?” Kalico asked. “Popped back into interstellar space? Somewhere light-years between planets? Instead of the rest of their lives in Freelander, they’re locked in a tiny little shuttle.”

  “Well, that’s hope for you, ma’am. Sometimes it’s better to do something—even if it’s potentially disastrous—than wait around faced with boring certainty.”

  “I detect a grim humor in your voice, Captain.”

  “You’ve got the grim part right, ma’am.” Abibi’s gaze had narrowed.

  “What about the cargo?”

  “We’ve started shipping it dirtside. My load specialists are still checking, but most of the machinery and spare parts seem to have made it. The Freelander crew raided the food stores, of course.”

  “Continue shipping it down, Captain.”

  Abibi hesitated, the corners of her mouth twitching.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “About Freelander. Ma’am, my crew say they’re starting to see things. Some are saying that they hear voices. One woman even saw herself walk past in one of the corridors. I had Willa check her into hospital for a scan. They’re afraid that what happened to Freelander is going to happen to Turalon.” Abibi paused. “It’s just a few, but it’s going to spread the longer they work in that derelict.”

  The words sent a tremor through Kalico’s soul. “And your point?”

  “They don’t want to end up like Freelander’s crew. Trapped for the rest of their lives on the other side. Only to pop out as long-dead corpses. There’s a great big planet down below that’s full of wealth and opportunity. That’s a mighty tempting draw. My point is that if you want to space for Solar System, you might want to go now. As soon as possible. Before the crew has time to think about it.”

  Kalico didn’t mean to sound sharp when she said, “Discipline is your problem, Captain.”

  “It is. And I can maintain it . . . up to a point.” Abibi worked her jaws, before continuing. “Some damned idiot accessed the historical files. You ever hear of a ship called the Bounty?”

  “No. A Corporate vessel? If so, she wasn’t important enough to come to my attention.”

  “English. Old sailing ship. She was exploring the Pacific Ocean. Had a rather nasty captain by the name of Bligh. When she made land at a delightful tropical island, the crew mutinied. And that’s where they stayed.”

  “Donovan isn’t a delightful tropical island.”

  “No, ma’am. But it beats knowing that your bones are going to be wired in as structural elements in some macabre temple in the crew’s mess.”

  48

  Talina panted, every muscle straining, as she and Cap levered the thin chabacho trunk over and watched it fall with a crash on top of three of its previous mates. They were all young trees, slim. More poles than logs.

  This was the last length added to yet another bridge they were building to span one of the innumerable cracks in the basalt. Tal took another swig from her water bottle and wiped the perspiration from her forehead before it could drip into her eyes.

  The sting of it ate into her blistered and cracked hands. They’d taken turns sawing with Cap’s handheld chainsaw. All told it took a couple of hours each time they had to bridge a gap—and sometimes more. First the narrowest span had to be located. Then the right-sized trees felled and stripped before they were dragged to the crevasse. Muscling them up, getting th
em to fall just right was more luck than art.

  As she paused to drink, she took a moment to glance around at the turquoise leaves of the aquajades and the more emerald chabachos. Puffy white clouds were building in the east over the Gulf, indicating that they’d have another chance for rain in the afternoon. Hot as the day was, and as sweaty as they were, it would be a welcome relief.

  The chime seemed to agree as the sound of the invertebrates rose and fell in tremolo.

  “When have I ever worked this hard?” she wondered, rolling her shoulders and feeling the hot looseness that would settle into a stiff pain by morning. Since that night when they’d first made love, she and Cap had made a habit of waking to a coital tryst to start the day. It more than made up for the stiff muscles.

  Cap stood with his hands propped on his waist, head back as he stared at the scarlet fliers that passed overhead. “This was survival training. Never thought I’d really have to use these kind of skills.”

  “Yeah, comes in real handy when you’re breaching a station, I’ll bet.”

  “Not in the slightest, Tal. Here. Give me a hand. Let’s see if we can scoot these ends closer together. It’ll be springy, but I think I can make it across.”

  She let Cap take the lead. He minced his way across the four logs they’d laid over the drop, reached the other side, and turned. It took but a moment for him to snug the ends of the poles together and lash them. His face lit with a grin, as though to encourage her as she started to pick her way over the tricky footing.

  The breeze at her back, she had no warning. No chance to smell the threat. All she saw was a flash of color with her alien-enhanced eyes.

  The skewer shot up from behind one of the tumbled basalt boulders; its stalk-mounted eyes fixed on Cap’s back. The beast’s whiplike arms shot out. Even as Tal screamed a warning, the thing had jabbed its long black thorn into Cap’s upper left arm. The skewer’s arms slapped onto his body and sank their spines into his jacket to deny any escape.

  Danger forgotten, she charged across the bridge. Dragging Cap to the side, she pulled her pistol and shot the skewer through its globular body. The thing convulsed, tightening its stalklike arms, and contorted as it pulled Cap over backward on top of itself.