Outpost

by W. Michael Gear

  He saw mystification behind their forced smiles.

  “Do think about it, Captain.” Oman gave him a half-hearted salute as he stood and headed for the door. Paloduro walked doggedly at his heels, head forward, speaking rapidly and softly into his compatriot’s ear.

  “Social justice,” Cap whispered before tossing off the last of his beer. “The will of the people. Going to save them from themselves.”

  He made a face. “The miracle is that they can spout that shit despite millennia of death, murder, and misery. Worse, they can still tell those lies, and people still fall for them.”

  He walked over, tossed his cup to Inga, and emerged into the day. He glanced up and down the street, low-hanging rain clouds scudded above the domes and roofs. As he started down the street, he said, “So, Donovan, you’re going to see just how bloody foolish human beings really are.”

  59

  “Supervisor?” Astrogation Officer Nandi leaned into Kalico’s personal quarters doorway. “I’ve got a delegation from the planet. Three Donovanians. Rode up on the last shuttle. They say they’re here on Corporate business and are invoking the clauses in their contracts.”

  Kalico leaned back from the desk beside her bed. Her review of fuel stocks had been a distraction. Or perhaps she’d been going over them in the faint hope that the hydrogen tanks might be found to have insufficient fuel to justify risking a return to Solar System. That she had turned to such measures proved nothing more than the extent of her growing desperation.

  Had she really seen herself coming out of that temple of bones? The further she got from the moment, the crazier it seemed.

  As she studied Nandi, she saw again the woman’s deep-seated grief and pain. Ah, yes, it was her fiancée. One of the crew on Freelander. An officer. Astrogation. Kenji something. No wonder Nandi was torturing herself. The woman’s imagination had to be creating scenario after scenario of the conditions aboard Freelander, and in each, the man she loved was either complicit in mass murder, an acquiescent observer on the sidelines as the ghoulish death cult developed, or worse, an active accomplice.

  And if the latter, Nandi had to be asking herself if she’d ever really known the man she loved. If the monster had been there all the time, hidden behind his smile, his warm touch, and the supposed love reflected from his eyes.

  In the end, however, no matter what his role in the tragedy aboard Freelander, Nandi had to know that the femora that once supported him, the skull that had contained his brain and personality, the humeri, tibiae, phalanges, and ribs, all eventually found their place somewhere in that horrible building of bones.

  What was that like for her? To look at that intricately assembled mass of wretched osteology and wonder which of the garish bits and pieces were his?

  “Thank you, Astrogation Officer,” Kalico told the shattered woman. “If you would escort them to the briefing room I will be there shortly.”

  Three Donovanians? Shit. It surely couldn’t be Shig, Yvette, and that vile Perez. Shuttling up to see her? To demand what?

  “Should have ordered Spiro to slip in during the night and cut their throats.”

  Spiro? Just the thought of the woman made her wince. Deb Spiro was no Cap Taggart. She was hell on the execution of an order, but totally lacking in imagination or resourcefulness. Everything had to be spelled out. To the letter. Initiative wasn’t in the woman’s vocabulary.

  Kalico stood, arched her sore back, and paced across her opulent quarters. She was a Supervisor, after all. That exalted rank had earned her an incredible thirty-five square meters of the ship’s precious living space.

  She took a moment to consider it. If I order us to space, this could be the extent of my universe for the rest of my life.

  She tried to picture eternity packed into these selfsame quarters. The only image that surfaced as an alternative reeked of bones, cleaned of their flesh, all painstakingly and intricately wired into a hollow dome for the worship of the dead.

  She massaged her elbow, feeling the bony protrusions. Those very bones. Now warm and alive. Would they be treated any differently—having belonged to a Supervisor—as they were wired into the whole, interwoven with those of murdered transportees and dead crew?

  A second image flashed, of her, scarred, and dressed in quetzal hide, but alive. “If you go back . . .”

  “God, pus, and damnation, Kalico, get off of it, will you?”

  She reached for her official jacket and slung it around her shoulders, sealing it tightly to accent her narrow waist, full bust, and wide shoulders. Then she combed and fluffed her hair, having added shine to it the night before to increase its luster.

  She checked her reflection. Definitely not the image she’d adopt for the Boardroom. But impressive enough for Donovanians.

  Kalico stepped out, sealed her hatch, and rode down a deck to the conference room.

  The Donovanians were standing just inside the door, staring around uncomfortably. Not the triumvirate, but two men and a woman dressed in Donovan’s best: quetzal coats and boots, chamois pants. To Kalico’s relief, the holsters and scabbards on their belts hung empty. Not all of Nandi’s sense had been lost to grief.

  The older man had a leather hat in his cracked and callused hands and was gazing at her with gray eyes. A mane of silver-white hair hung to his shoulders, and stubble coarsened his cheeks. He might have been sixty, imposing in a wild sort of rough and tumble way.

  The second man was dark, and white threaded his long black hair where it hung in a ponytail. Broad of shoulder, and in late middle age, he had light brown eyes, a scar on his cheek, and an almost feral look.

  The woman, too, had to be close to fifty, shorter, with silver-streaked red hair and a complexion of sun-damaged wrinkles.

  Kalico paced to the head of the table, turned on her heel, and perched herself behind the chair, hands on the back. “Good day. I am Supervisor Aguila. I am told that you are a delegation come to discuss contract obligations. Would you please state your names and specific concerns under contract?”

  The gray-eyed wolf rolled his hat as he said, “I’m Lee Marston. Mining engineer. This feller to my left is Sahlie Shankara.”

  “And I’m Mollie Meyers,” the woman stated firmly. “We’re here because we want to go home. There’s talk that Turalon’s being abandoned. That most of its crew is deserting, and that it’s going to stay in orbit forever.”

  “That’s news to me,” Kalico said carefully. “As to desertions, we’ve had a few. They will be dealt with, I assure you. But Turalon remains spaceworthy.”

  What the hell was their agenda?

  The men looked at each other, raising eyebrows. The woman, however, remained laser-fixed on Kalico. That trait, so common among Donovanians, still bothered her. Just like their declarations. Throw it out there—a statement of fact rather than a question. And here they were, just common labor, but they dared to address her as an equal. Didn’t the damn fools understand the nuances of class and authority?

  Marston said, “Well, that’s a relief. We’re holding you to the contract, Supervisor. We want to go home. We’ve done our share for The Corporation. Held up our end. More than. The three of us here, we worked long past term. We’re owed.”

  “We’ve got family we want to take home to meet kin.” Shankara stated, the words crisp. “People back there we want to see. I’ve got children who’ve grown into adults. I don’t know if my parents are alive or dead. Friends I haven’t seen since I spaced. I’ve got a life back there.” He indicated his companions. “We all do.”

  Mollie Meyers had nodded aggressively as Shankara spoke. Now she added, “We need to hear it from your own lips. Turalon’s going home, right? She’s gonna space for Solar System like the contract says.”

  Kalico bristled at the tones in their voices. “While I’m not used to being pinned to the wall for an immediate answer, I’ll tell you that it re
mains the operative plan. Yes. That is my intention.”

  Was it? Or had their insolent tone forced her into it?

  “Well, good,” Marston almost growled. “There’s a lot of stories going around down there. Word was that with the arrival of the ghost ship, you all had lost your nerve.”

  Kalico dug her fingers into the chair back, oddly curious. “You do know that there have been problems, correct? Freelander’s arrival is disturbing. I can imagine the kind of stories you’ve heard, but I will tell you this: Yes, they were all dead. Something went terribly wrong. The number of missing ships is concerning. There’s no guarantee that Turalon will make it home. That said, why are you so adamant to make this journey?”

  Shankara laughed, actually amused. “Like we said, we all got family back in Solar System. That, and some of us hate Donovan. Look at me. I’m fourth ship. I made it. Lost friends and my wife to that damned planet. More than once it come close to killing me, too. And all that time, I sweat blood and cried tears making The Corporation money. If you leave me on Donovan, it’ll get me in the end. Maybe a cave-in, maybe a slug when I’m not looking. Poison water. A sidewinder. There’s a thousand ways to die on Donovan.”

  “You think we’re afraid of a little risk?” Mollie Meyers asked. “Life out here? It’s all risk. I’m second ship. Got two kids left. Donovan took four others and two husbands. Space on Turalon? Sure, maybe she won’t make it. Stay on Donovan?” She laughed. “What the hell makes you think I’ve got any damn chance of dying of old age on that damned rock?”

  “There’s a hundred and some of us,” Shankara told her. “Donovanians and soft meat both. We’ve had it with Donovan. We want out. We’re demanding you fulfill your contract obligations.”

  “Do not use that tone of voice with me.”

  Marston stuck out a knobby finger. “Word on the street is that you’re scared to space out of here. We don’t care. We want to go home. Honor your contract, and you’ll have no trouble with us.”

  Word on the street? That I’m scared? She ground her teeth and wondered if the source had been Taggart. She should have never confided in the man.

  “We want your word,” Mollie Meyers told her. “Don’t know that that means much to a Supervisor and Board mucky-muck like you, but it’s a bond among us. You promise us that Turalon is going home. We’re all packed. And since you told us the ship’s still able to space, we’re ready to go.”

  Kalico lifted her head, nostrils thinning. A violent rage rose like bile behind her tongue. How dare they speak to me as if I were some pissant lackey!

  It took all of her control, voice icy, to state, “Right now. At this moment, I cannot make that promise.” She raised a hand to still the protest. “I say that only because I have not received the captain’s final report on the ship’s systems. I cannot give you my word only to find out from her that there’s a problem with a generator or the reactors.”

  Which was the truth. Up to a point.

  “Fair enough,” Marston warily agreed. “How soon?”

  “A couple of days. It’s my understanding that the engineers are mostly finished with their inspection.”

  “Three days,” Mollie Meyers said with finality. “And if you don’t space, we’ll play hell down in Port Authority. You get that?”

  “Given my marines, you might want to reconsider—”

  “Supervisor.” Shankara’s eyes narrowed. “Bring ’em on. We got nothing left to lose.”

  Was the man out of his stark raving mind?

  “We’ll expect your answer in three days,” Mollie Meyers added. “Come on boys, we can find our own way back to the shuttle bay.”

  Kalico stood as if paralyzed, stunned, as they turned and paraded out of the room. She could have them shot. Could order them arrested, shoved out a lock.

  Donovan. Fucking Donovan. What the hell did it do to people?

  “Bloody fools,” Kalico whispered from between clenched teeth. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  The panicked laughter caught her by surprise, choked out of her own tight throat. Hot tears began to leak down her face.

  60

  Soft rain made a hissing sound on the roof of Talina’s dome. Through the square of her bedroom window she could see distant strobing bolts of lightning. They illuminated the interiors of clouds—creating great soft-white lanterns that flickered silently. Patterns, torn tufts of cloud, marbled their surfaces as though some mystical artist had begun a composition and left it half-rendered.

  The flickers of light strobed to highlight her hung uniform, her vanity, and storage trunk. For brief moments, scattered and crumpled clothing, free-flung boots, and two pistol belts hung from the headboard were illuminated and vanished.

  She was looking in Cap’s direction when the next white flash bathed his naked body. The thickness of muscled shoulders, his back like a V, the twin curves of his buttocks, backs of his thighs, and calves all ghostly white in an instant.

  Then gone.

  She reached up, placing her hands over his where it cupped her left breast. She pressed it down, compressing her breast, feeling the hard warmth of him, how the bones lay beneath his strong fingers.

  Something about his touch—especially when so intimate—reassured her. Reminded her that she was still a woman—that no matter how the rest of the world saw her, her self-identity as a fully human female remained.

  And why do I care?

  The quetzal stirred down inside her, as if mildly interested. Mostly the thing was quiet during sex. As though the novelty and intrigue had passed.

  So, how do quetzals do it?

  “You know.”

  “If I did, why would I ask?”

  Silence.

  “Ask what?” Cap murmured.

  “Never mind.”

  He shifted, turned his head on the pillow to look at her. A couple of seconds later, the soft white of distant lightning illuminated his face for an instant as he asked, “You given any thought to Paloduro and Oman? You saw them in the cafeteria. They’re drawing a crowd with their speeches. In the business, we call that recruiting followers.”

  “Shig and Yvette say to leave them alone. People should be free to associate with whom they please. Even if it’s not in their ultimate benefit.”

  “Paloduro and Oman don’t share your philosophy. Sometimes I think you people have lost touch with just what kind of self-deluded idiots the rest of humanity can really be.”

  “So? What do you think they’re after?”

  “A world of their own making.”

  “That’s nothing new for Donovan. We’ve been trying that for a generation now.”

  “The way they were talking about Turalon? I’m thinking they’re planning to take the ship. They haven’t a clue as to how. Yet. But if I know them, and if I remember the backgrounds from most of their followers, they’re station people.”

  “Donovan must be a shock to their systems.”

  “You ask me, their ultimate goal is to turn Turalon into a station. They can live up in the sky, accessing Donovan’s resources as needed. Stations aren’t free places. Everything’s ordered, right down to who lives where, does what, and when. It’s a closed system.”

  “What if Turalon spaces first?”

  “Then they move on Freelander.”

  “More power to ’em. From what I’ve heard, it’s a ghost ship. Haunted, and still filthy and unreliable.”

  “You know that Marston and two of his bunch had a meeting with Kalico? Told her in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t space them home, they’d raise hell down here.”

  Talina rolled onto her side, probing the darkness in an attempt to see his expression. “Seriously? How’d you hear this?”

  “Katsuro Miso, one of the marines, still talks to me. Marston and his people didn’t want you, Shig, and the rest to drop any obstacl
es in their way.”

  “Yeah, they’ve got all their belongings and plunder stacked in crates by the gate. Got a twenty-four hour guard on them. Just waiting for word that they can load and shuttle up to Turalon. Why would they think we’d want to stop them?”

  “How do I know how these things get started? Katsuro said he overheard them saying that Kalico would give them her answer in a couple of days.”

  Talina frowned into the darkness as she considered Marston. Must have been Shankara and Meyers with him if there were only three. Tough people. Honorable people. They didn’t give a shit about the odds. They’d wanted to go home for years.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “Because you ripped my clothes off when I stepped in the door. Somehow that seemed imminently more important.”

  She frowned. “Okay, so Marston’s folk want to leave. They’ll do anything to force Aguila into spacing. You know Paloduro and Oman, what will they do when they hear this?”

  “Not that I know them, per se, but I know their type. They’re selling themselves to desperate and hopeless people who want to get the hell off Donovan and back to some sense of normalcy. They want to be leaders, form the new order. They promised me a third if I’d join them.”

  “Might have been a good deal. Maybe you should have taken it.”

  He shifted onto his elbow and glanced around her bedroom with its curving outer wall. “So, what if they march on Marston’s group? Try and dissuade them from leaving. I know Kalico’s scared down to her bones about spacing. She’d do anything to put that decision off.”

  “They march on Marston’s people? Marston’s bunch will leave their bleeding bodies to pave the streets. They’re not the kind of people you want to try and push around. Donovan pushed them, and they’re still standing.”

  “There’s always the marines to keep things civil.”