"He was one of us."
Us. And with that subtly accented word came the hint, the possibility of an invitation.
In all the years since the Fosterage agent had found him in the slums of D'al-Jarkata, Devlin had never considered the possibility of belonging to another family.
Cautiously, the crew was opening to him, as if he touched some need within them. It wasn't his medical expertise. Verity had paramed training and the emergency cryo served for anything serious. They didn't have to recruit another physician. But they had, and hoped.
Behind Shizuko's dark eyes, he sensed the question, Are you the one?
"Well, back to work.” Shizuko gathered up the containers, slid them into the recycling slot, and glided from the room.
For a long moment, Verity stared at the door. Her brows drew together, furrowing her pale skin. Even with odd body language of zero-gee, Devlin sensed she was gathering herself.
"There's something I want you to understand,” she said, “about the way Shizuko is with people, about how we all are. To begin with, Rhea and I were lovers our first year in Academy. Then she connected with Fidelio—"
She was talking too fast, her gaze everywhere but at him, her voice resonant with something strong and hot. “You think he's gorgeous now, you should have seen him then, with something to prove! He and Aimer had been buddies, then TerraBase assigned us Araceli as quartermaster at the last minute. Maybe they thought he was weird enough to handle us, I don't know. Our first flight, we did a lot of ... um, accommodating each other. I don't sleep with men and that was all right. Fidelio pretends he's after everyone's ass, but he isn't. He's actually a very private person that way."
"Oh.” Warmth prickled the back of Devlin's neck.
"Anyway, one day between missions, Fidelio came home with Shizuko. We needed an engineer. The one originally assigned to us didn't work out. It was as if—” her voice dropped in pitch, “—as if we'd all been waiting for her, as if she filled some place in our lives we hadn't even known was empty. She brought us together, catalyzed us into something more than our individual selves. Aimer left an absence. If Shizuko thinks you—” Verity stopped abruptly, her mouth tensing.
She looked at him, direct and hard. Devlin had seen people killed for less. “If you hurt Shizuko, I'll kill you."
"I would never—"
"Nuts to your intentions."
Devlin touched the back of her hand with his fingertips. The gesture shifted the energy between them, as he'd meant to. “You do care. That's what this conversation is about, isn't it? It's why you made sure I knew how much you love Shizuko and that you aren't interested in me sexually."
"It's possible,” Verity said, without lowering her eyes. Then she pushed herself free, through the portal.
A jumble of feelings surged up in Devlin. Three slow breaths, counting heartbeats, gave him the necessary calm to sort them through. Some he knew, the aching loneliness, the longing for intimacy. Others he couldn't put his finger on, even with the meditation-enforced stillness. He only knew that if he gave way to them, he would be swept away, never the same again.
* * * *
Moving with assuredness, Devlin paused at the entrance to the bridge. The approach to December had given him plenty of practice in zero-gee, although he would never achieve the balletic grace of the space crew. Red-haired Rhea, her micropores glimmering in shades of metallic green, looked up from the array of camera readouts, visible spectra, infrared.
"Ohé, Devlin."
Devlin settled beside Shizuko. Pleasure tingled through his body as he noticed the long graceful lines of her neck, her tapering fingers, the pale pink blossoms of her micropore skins.
"Approaching direct line of range,” Verity said crisply. Her hair, now freed from its tight braids, fanned out from her face like a halo of spun black glass. She, like Shizuko, seemed beautiful at that moment; how easy it would be to love her, to love them all.
"Still no contact?” said Fidelio. He was, Devlin admitted, an extraordinarily beautiful man, with a fine-boned, supple strength and a frosting of silver-gilt hair, gleaming platinum micropores.
"I've been hailing them on all the standard emergency frequencies,” Verity answered. “I get nothing from either the station or dirtside, just background static."
Shizuko muttered, mostly to herself, “Where are they?"
None of them clung to the hope that the problem might lie in Juno's receivers.
"We're getting data now.” Shizuko frowned. “There's a planet there, but it can't be December. Not with that albedo."
"I've got preliminary spectroscopic analysis of atmospheric content.” Rhea cleared her throat. “Captain, these ... they're all wrong."
Captain? Devlin remembered Fidelio saying that no one onboard called him anything but his name.
"Nothing matches!” Rhea continued. “I'm reading water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, all right, but way too much monoxide ... methane ... sulfuric compounds."
Devlin held his breath as images appeared on the screens, compiled and enhanced by the computers. He'd expected to see a planet very like Terra, vast blue oceans and a tracery of white over the tan and dark green outlines of land masses. Instead, swirling brown and yellow clouds obliterated any traces of the surface. The entire planet seemed to glow, to pulsate with the atmospheric turbulence.
"What the hell happened down there?” Shizuko's voice sounded husky, breathless. “A cometary strike?” December's system had a particularly rich Oort belt.
The bridge fell silent for a moment before Fidelio said, “Deploy probes. Set the data feedback at maximum capture rate."
"Probes calibrated,” Verity said. “Calculating optimal trajectory. Launching now."
Devlin's screen showed the elongated teardrop shape of the probes, chemical rockets firing on a curved path down to the planet. They shrank to pinpoint size and then disappeared.
No one now expected to hear from the planetside colony. Hours passed as the probes sped toward their target. Everyone was trying to keep busy, to not think about what lay ahead. About the December colonists.
* * * *
When the first data from the probes began coming in, Devlin rushed to the bridge. Archaimbault March was already there, a black-clad shadow, eyes restless.
"The probes have penetrated the lower atmospheric strata,” said Verity.
"Anything visual yet?” Fidelio said. “Radar scans?"
"Hold on."
Grainy images revealed lightning flashes through the torrential rains. Winds battered the probe, blotting out images from the visible-spectrum lenses.
"Surface infrared coming in.” Rhea rattled off a stream of technical phrases Devlin didn't understand. “Carbon dioxide with significant particulate fractions of carbon and aerosolized sulfuric acid."
"And the temperature?"
She looked up, hazel eyes glassy. “250 degrees."
Celsius, Devlin reminded himself. That's close to five hundred Fahrenheit. It wasn't hot enough to melt rock, but nothing living could survive. Water could not exist in liquid form at that temperature, only in the upper atmosphere. Rain from those storms would turn to steam, then shoot upward in immense geysers, only to liquefy at the cooler altitudes.
Devlin thought of primitive Terra, artists’ renditions based on scientific speculation. Its eternal gloom had been broken by lightning storms and the lurid red of molten lava, crawling across an ever-shifting landscape.
"Fidelio, this is very strange.” Shizuko flicked the readout screens to display a color-enhanced thermal pattern. A line of fiery red pinpoints ran through the center of the continent.
"Overlay!” Fidelio said.
A topographic grid appeared over the thermal readout.
Shizuko's fingers danced over the computer touchpads. “Looks like five, six hundred volcanic peaks. That many again on the Continent South Two. And that's only the big ones."
"How could this happen?” Rhea sounded dazed. “On Terra and half a dozen o
ther planets, we have records of maybe three or four adjacent volcanoes going active. Never an entire mountain range. It doesn't make sense. Each new eruption would progressively reduce the overall seismic stress—"
"What else?” Verity snapped. “Some idiot laying down a line of superbombs? Even if the colonists could do it, it wouldn't produce what's down there."
"Nor would any weapon in the human arsenal,” Fidelio said, his gaze flickering to the security officer. “Isn't that right?"
Devlin turned to stare. Archaimbault March's features were as impassive as ever, but his skin had gone chalky. The man might hold himself rigid, might clamp down on any expression of horror, but his body betrayed him. Whatever his mission, whatever he had hoped—or feared—to find on December now lay beyond his reach, and in its place a literal hell.
Devlin sensed, tasted, a shift in the atmosphere of the bridge. Shizuko, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears, glanced from Verity to Fidelio. The captain's jaw muscles clenched, muscle hard against the clean, elegant lines of bone.
Words echoed in Devlin's mind. No weapon in the human arsenal....
Sweet heaven, what had the December colonists stumbled across, on a planet studded with alien ruins?
In an almost inhumanly cool voice Fidelio said, “We are going to assume that whatever is going on down there is of natural origin."
"How many people were in the colony?” Devlin asked, dry-mouthed.
"Between four and five thousand,” said Fidelio.
Shizuko covered her face with her hands.
A vision flickered behind Devlin's eyes, the twisted, shriveled corpses of children baking in that oven heat, of scattered groups of survivors huddled in the far reaches of caverns, praying for help that never came, suffocating....
Suffocating in the night....
Memories rose up in the darkness of Devlin's mind—the smothering heat, the cries that tore their way through ragged flesh, the stench of sulfur or was it burning tires? Terror molten in his veins, every muscle strung to the breaking point, the pressure of his heart leaping in his throat....
Devlin closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the center of his body, deep in his belly. Drawing his breath into the point, he imagined it cooling and cleansing everything it touched. The smells and cries receded into the safety of the past. His stomach unclenched.
"...commit these departed souls to Thy care...,” Fidelio murmured.
For a long moment—a breath, a heartbeat—no one said anything.
"Let's get to work.” Fidelio broke the silence. “Rhea, keep the probe going as long as you can. I want every scrap of data funneled into a climatology analysis. If there's any chance that,” with a minute tilt of his head toward December, true direction, not the view screen, “is a Venusian scenario at great acceleration, we'd better find out everything we can.
"Meanwhile, let's see what the station computers can tell us. Verity, you and Shizuko take Devlin over in the shuttle.” His voice roughened for an instant. “I don't want anyone taking chances out there."
Fidelio's gaze flickered to Devlin. “If, by heaven's grace, there are any survivors on the station...."
"Captain.” Archaimbault March had been so silent before, his words, although spoken softly, split the air like the crack of a whip. “As of now, I'm taking over this investigation."
Fidelio stared at him. “You have no authority—"
"Don't force me to relieve you of command. I can and will do so if you refuse to cooperate.” Archaimbault March hesitated, shock still edging his voice. “I believe ... it would be best to work together."
Fidelio's eyes hardened. “This is my ship, run by my crew. As long as we are in space, I give the orders. If you don't like it, get out and walk."
"With all due respect, you have no idea what you're sending your people into."
"Do you?"
Archaimbault March paused, but only for a moment. “Point taken. But if there is any record whatsoever of what and how that came about—” His chin jerked minutely toward the screen displaying the images, the tortured, lightning-laced landscape. “Captain, can I put this any plainer? My training is the best chance any of us have of solving this terrible mystery."
"In that case,” Fidelio said, “you have permission to observe.” Archaimbault March's features shifted, a flicker of triumph. “From the bridge."
The man in black went still, and Devlin thought of a panther, eyes focused on its prey, but then he dipped his head.
He's biding his time. Devlin went cold inside.
* * * *
Sometimes, during his sleeping periods, Devlin lay in the dark in his webbing, ears straining for the faint, almost inaudible sounds of the ship. Always there was silence. Vast, impenetrable, unyielding silence. Once or twice, he imagined what he would do if this silent dark never ended, if in his sleep the crew disappeared, Shizuko, Fidelio, the others, dead or gone, the ship speeding through the void, and he trapped here, alone except for the beating of his own heart.
It was the kind of fear a child might have, to be soothed by a parent's voice and touch. Devlin recognized the fear. He knew where it came from, why it was so universal, what it represented, how to respond to it. His own worst memories had faded, the ones of waking in the back alleys of D'al-Jarkata, the unrelenting metallic taste of fear.
But that had been years ago, a decade and more. He knew how to take those memories and temper them, how to transmute despair into compassion. What surprised him now, even adult and educated, was the strength of the aloneness.
Why should those memories return now, like an omen?
"Devlin?"
Light broke the darkness of his cubicle, the dim, almost reticent glow from the lowest setting. A silhouetted form moved toward him. Shizuko.
"Did I wake you? You cried out in your sleep."
He felt her floating closer, the warmth of her skin, inhaled the faint spicy smell of her body cream. Light softened the curves of her face and throat, gleamed off the jet of her eyes. Her nostrils flared and he wondered if she could scent his loneliness.
"I couldn't sleep, either,” she said in her softly husky voice. “Better sometimes not to say anything at all."
Her mouth moved against his, an unspoken question. Do you belong to us? Do I belong to you?
He had no answer, only the pleasure of her touch. He freed himself from the webbing and put his arms around her. Beneath her micropores, her bare skin felt like sun-warmed silk. He traced the curves of her thighs and buttocks, the way zero-gee lifted and shaped her breasts, the long muscles of her torso. Her pubic hair was thick and crisp, parted by a slippery ribbon. She inhaled sharply as he ran his fingers over the long, luscious inner folds and valleys. A shudder passed through her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. With one quick movement, she brought her knees up and out. He felt the pressure of one heel behind his low back and then she was pulling him inside her body with exquisite slowness. Her internal muscles tightened, hard and sudden to send a jolt of almost electric arousal through him. He slid further in. She moved against him, relaxed rhythmically, holding him as he pushed.
When she climaxed, it was with an arching of her body, head thrown back so that he could not see her face. His own left him breathless and with a strange clarity of mind and enervation of body. He realized that for all the intimacy of their bodies, he really knew nothing about her. He knew only that he would trust her with his life.
* * * *
At first, December's space station shone like a mote of silver against the milky sweep of the galactic arm. It grew to megaton size, no mere relay, but a small world unto itself.
The station floated above Devlin like a celestial leviathan with its gently swelling sides and pale ceramometallic skin. Even though he had seen TerraBase, the size of a small city, Devlin felt a rush of awe. Human hands had built this thing, here in the vacuum, beyond the thinnest fringes of air, beyond the kiss of December's gravity.
Spiderweb antennae and solar membranes
shimmered against the darkness. An isolated storage unit was anchored alongside. Bright orange stripes covered its curved sides.
"What do the orange stripes mean?” Devlin asked.
"It's a storage unit for solid rocket propellant,” Verity said. “We're carrying the next shipment."
"Proximity alarms should be going off,” Fidelio's voice said. “Maximum caution now."
Verity piloted them in, slow and smooth, matching the station's rotation. The party prepared to board. Verity and Shizuko double-checked every safety measure, strapping on the power packs with redundant tethers.
As they propelled themselves across the gap, Devlin saw the grace in their movements, an eerie serenity, the coordination of their thruster jets as a dance. Shizuko's suit, like her micropores, shimmered under a fall of plum blossoms.
"You're off target a few degrees counterclockwise,” came Rhea's voice from the ship, comparing their position with the computer-generated schematics. “Adjust your trajectory by—” She rattled off a string of coordinates.
They found the airlock hatch just where Rhea indicated. Set in a corona of white and black lines, it looked undamaged.
Shizuko positioned herself beside the airlock and opened the cover. The manual controls were designed to be operated by even an inexperienced civilian in an emergency. The instructions were in both written and pictograph form. In a moment of fancy, Devlin wondered if they would make any sense to a creature with a structure radically different from the human norm. What would a being with sixfold radial symmetry or pseudopods think of the simplified drawings of a two-armed, two-legged human with a bulbous circle for a head?
The door release lever lay within an indentation, marked with large directional arrows. Shizuko grasped the flat, textured end. For a long moment, nothing moved. She braced herself, shifting slightly first one way and then another. Devlin heard her percussive exhale.
"It's well and truly stuck, to use precise technical jargon."
"Try another airlock in the same section,” said Fidelio. “We'll get you the coordinates."
The party returned to the shuttle and swung it around the station's curved side. A cloud of debris came into view, glittering like metallic snow.
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