by Ginger Booth
“Sass, I just spoke with him. For an hour. He’s not the saboteur. Trust me.”
“You spoke to an AI, Clay!” Tikki jogged past at that point, and looked at her, alarmed. She turned away and amended her volume. “Rocha, I’d bet on your read in any interrogation. Of a human. An AI? He can lie to you all day, and you’d never know. You can’t tell someone’s lying when they believe what they’re saying. Any AI can do that perfectly. Hell, you and I could.” Could they? Maybe not.
“Sass, listen. All I’m asking, is that you set it aside. Emotionally, in every way. And do not speak to Nico. This will crush him. Don’t make it worse!”
She kicked her toe into a railing upright a few times. “Fine. You’re right, you always are. Can I go now and save some burning people?”
“No! I’ve reached the platform. You lead the damned ship! Love you bye.”
Damn, she hated it when he was right. She dropped her head to her forearms on the railing. What else could she do with her ship? From the bridge. No, from the engineering podium, because Darren was outside, and the bio-locks needed detaching. No, her ship could withstand an acid bath until the burn victims –
“Captain?” Tikki Cook stood there. He offered her a glass of water and a sliced peach and cheese on a little disposable plate. She accepted them gratefully. At least this crewman she could trust. Sure, he was dead set against the Sylvan settlement, but he was upfront about it.
He continued, “Permission to take a pony keg of water to the fire victims. And our emergency tents.”
“Good idea, Tikki. Make it two. Thank you.” She squeezed his shoulder, and gave him a grim smile. It was the best she could do for now. Where was she? Ah, yes – she bounded down to the engineering podium.
36
Nico huddled in the shuttle’s back seat, helmet in his p-suit mitts. “No…”
“We’re sure,” Clay continued softly over his comms. “Star drive fuel set off the explosion. Floki’s tracker was at ground zero. His body couldn’t have survived that. I’m so sorry, Nico.”
The youth grasped at straws. “Anyone else?”
“Not at ground zero.” Clay’s voice grew more tentative. “I’d just talked to him. He was upset.” Clay told him briefly about his final conversation with Floki, out in the vog by the force field perimeter, upset about his terrible first meeting with the potent Loki.
“And… You have to understand how this looks, Nico.”
Nico’s heart ached for his sweet and childlike friend’s humiliation against Loki. And it really did suck to cry inside a helmet, with no way to wipe his eyes or blow his nose. “Huh?”
“You don’t think Floki would do this, do you?”
“What?! No!”
“Shh, it’s alright. I don’t think so either. But you know Sass, and your dad Ben, too. The captains are more leery of AIs than we are.”
Nico couldn’t help himself. He sobbed. “She thinks Floki did it! M-murdered people! Because what, Loki suborned him? In their first meeting? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Shh, just fair warning,” Clay gentled him. “We can’t worry about this now. People need our help. But if Floki didn’t do this, we need to figure out who did to clear his name. So… Should I have Zan drop you off at the ship?”
“With people’s lives on the line?” Nico coughed out one last sob, and got hold of himself. “No. I’m an Acosta-Copeland. I save lives. But then I will clear Floki’s name. Count on it!”
“Good man. I love you, Nico. So does the captain. And we are so sorry for your loss. I’m glad I got that chance to talk with Floki at the end. He was a fine bird.”
“He’ll remember,” Nico asserted. “He uploaded his key memories every ten minutes.”
But would anyone let him resuscitate his beloved friend, who blew up Sylvan One and killed innocent Denali scientists? That star drive fuel was on the wrong side of the compound. It didn’t get there by accident!
“Thank you, Clay, for treating him like a person. Floki had feelings, you know?”
“He certainly did. You created a miraculous person. Let’s go save lives, Mr. Acosta-Copeland. Clay out.”
Eli’s night was a nightmare, running triage with the Denali healers so Tikka Gena could focus on saving individual lives. He set up at the cafeteria, the only bio-locked shelter available, because the captain decided she needed to douse the fire. That meant Thrive took off to Melt Lake to grapple up a giant ball of water to dump on the academic end of the clearing.
Four times Clay ran into burning tents to pull people out, carrying two at a time. He leapt to the ground where other Denali tossed buckets of water on them to put out the flames. Then the bucket brigade carried victims to Eli at the bio-lock. Clay stripped his ruined p-suit on the field, only to don the next, and do it again.
Eli had just declared another academic dead on arrival, when Sass returned with the water. “Clay, get out of there!” he begged.
“One more load,” the first mate insisted.
“Sass, wait!” Eli told her.
“Eli, the cosmo platform is in danger,” Sass insisted. “Clay, hunker down! You can take it. All hands, retreat from the burning platform!”
“Aye, cap,” Clay said softly.
And an unthinkable amount of water unleashed on top of the platform. Eli and Nico started running toward it the moment the water fell. Other Denali standing by followed their lead. The operation succeeded – the flames snuffed out instantly.
Eli found Clay first, his helmet cracked, shielding an academic’s body. The academic was dead, no chance there. Clay was dead, too, of course. But that was reversible in Clay’s case. Except he’d done this crazy move too many times in a row. He wasn’t likely to come back quickly.
The botanist ignored the others sifting through the wreckage, expecting no further survivors. With a gravity assist, he carried Clay’s body to the bio-lock, and walked him through, lovingly stripping off his ruined p-suit. They’d run out of spares now, with every space-rated suit leaking from the vog. Eli washed him as best he could to protect the cafeteria interior, and carried him in.
The Denali had crammed in as many bunks as they could, but none were free. Eli had to settle Clay underneath one of them. He looked around to tell someone this man was a special case. But the patients nearby were drugged to the gills against the pain of their burns, fire or acid. The healers had moved on to another bank of bunks.
A note. With what? Eli shook his head. He couldn’t very well write on Clay’s burned skin, because it would shed off in sheets. Well, once the man started breathing again, anyway. His nanites had their work cut out for them, repairing damaged lungs before that would happen. So instead he got out some duct tape and fashioned it into an armlet, and wrote his note there. “Clay Rocha, 1st mate Thrive. He is Not Dead! Contact ship.”
Best he could do for Clay, for now. Most of the bodies he’d carried out were dead already. But three academics might make it. Or not.
Eli stood and blew out. Back to the vog. No one was out of danger yet. A dozen Denali pursued a hectic reinforcement campaign, duct-taping the cafeteria tent walls. That buys us time. Not much time.
“Darren? Eli,” he commed. “What do you think of foamcrete or resin outside the cafeteria tent?”
“I think we need to get the rego hell away from this vog. Is what I think,” the engineer replied.
Eli rubbed his helmet over his forehead. Not nearly as satisfying as touching his face, but he found himself doing it anyway when he needed to stop and think. “What are you up to?”
“Consolidating equipment into pressurized containers,” Darren replied. “Sass wants to stow the colonists into those, fill them with air, get us above the vog, at least.”
“OK, thanks. So you’ll board them here at the cafeteria?”
Darren sighed. “Somehow.”
Eli signed off and headed outside again through the bio-lock. The bucket brigade was at loose ends. He directed them through the bio-lock to clean of
f their suits and skin, then got on the public address. “All hands! If you are not working with Darren Markley, proceed immediately to nearest available shelter. Save your suits! Eli out.”
That reminded him, the bucket brigade had been filling their buckets from – yes! A second hose. He grabbed it up and hosed the vog acid off the next guy in line waiting to enter the bio-locks. Then he hosed his own suit for good measure. He was already beginning to feel the itch himself. He handed the hose to the next woman in line and waved his hand to suggest they continue on down the line. He counted heads, walking along the line because he couldn’t see many through the damned fog, now reinforced by billowing smoke and steam from the fire. At least it wasn’t pitch dark anymore. He waded through a radiant peachy cloud, lit by the raging forest fire. Thirty more people here, and probably a few more stragglers to come.
Yeah, the life support gas exchange would carry that. Barely. For a couple hours anyway. The lack of latrines would render it unfit for use as a cafeteria again without a major bath. Moot point. It’s going to dissolve in acid right here.
He told Zan to bring the shuttle around. They hosed that off, too, to slow the inexorable acid damage to its hull. The third officer reported the shuttle stuffed to the gills, straining life support. Eli directed him to go ahead and rendezvous with Thrive, and deposit his passengers. Nico appeared at his elbow, and reported he didn’t itch. So he hosed off the youth and forwarded him to Darren’s project.
“All hands. If anyone is still outside, not at cafeteria and not at the container project, please tell me now! Where you are, and what you’re doing.” No answer.
Eli nodded and pushed his way back into the bio-locks. Nothing left to do except see to people’s acid damage. He proceeded to the lock stage where he could at last strip off his own suit, and salve his own acid burns before tending others.
He sniffed at the salve. He tried one swipe of it on his fire-red arm. Lard, not burn salve. Dammit. He paused to study its effect with a medical sensor. Well, better than nothing. He checked three more tubes before finding one that contained the painkiller he’d expected, though. “This one is for serious burns!” he called out, holding it high. A hunter grabbed it from him and self-appointed to dispense the real medication.
They were good in a crisis, these Denali. Eli respected the hell out of them.
He completed his own ablutions, and sorted the medications he had stowed in this lock stage. Only two tubes of the good salve. So far everyone who needed the nebulizer breath treatment, administered by one of the healers, seemed to improve with treatment.
He stood still again, studying his domain, this tiny room, stage three of four in the bio-lock sequence. He’d exhausted his can-do’s here.
“Tikka Gena, need a hand?”
“Hell, yes!”
So he continued into the cafeteria again to play medic. “Captain, triage operation complete. Switching to treatment in cafeteria. Clay, Tikka Gena, and Zelda are with me.”
“Bless you, Eli,” Sass purred back. “Well done.”
“How would you know?”
“I know you. We’ve got the ES shield up now, until Darren is ready to lock on some containers. Won’t be long. Hang in there.”
“Aye, cap. Eli out.” He hadn’t told her Clay was temporarily dead, he realized. But that was probably for the best.
He lost himself in irrigating and bandaging bad burns under the physiologist’s direction. She’d run out of generic skin repair nanites to inject. They’d need to make more. But that machine was in med-bay. Too bad Floki couldn’t run them up a batch. But if he’d just murdered a few dozen academics, and made this nightmarish night a hundred times worse, that was just as well.
He rose from his latest patient and found a number of anxious Denali standing around desperate to contribute, but not sure how. So he invented tasks for them on the fly.
37
Ben Acosta sighed, and sat with his cup of coffee in the dining room on Merchant Thrive. In theory, this flight went straight through from Sanctuary to Schuyler Spaceport on Mahina. In practice, he preferred an overnight breather between takeoff and running the gauntlet – warp transit for three ships, then gunship screen for the two transports dodging through the rings to his home moon orbiting the gas giant Pono.
But the accommodations on those transports were miserable with 500 on each. So the captain allowed himself to unwind with a cup of coffee before taking up the helm again.
His husband wandered in, his usually loping cowboy step halting and unsure. Ben froze and tipped his head, furrowing his brow. The others in the galley on break stared warily as well. “Problem, chief?”
Cope pulled out the chair beside him and slid down. “I could use a hug.” He gulped.
“Any time.” The couple tended to avoid public displays of affection on duty. But Ben offered hugs to anyone on his vessel who needed one. He drew Cope in and stroked his back. “What’s up?”
Cope sighed and rested his forehead against Ben’s. “Message light blinking on the moose-bot. Checked it. Sylvan’s in trouble.”
Ben pulled away and stood abruptly, staring into his eyes. “Tarana cried uncle?”
“Not yet. She should. Sass thinks she should. But no.” He swallowed.
Ben reminded himself firmly that he’d run the numbers on this. He sank back to his seat and sipped his coffee. “We go through.” It took the same time and effort to offload 500 passengers per transport on Sanctuary as Mahina. And their fuel for any subsequent trip awaited them on Mahina Orbital. Aborting their planned and paid-for mission wouldn’t allow them to reach Sylvan any faster.
“Yeah, not much choice there.” Cope nodded, lost. Ben’s heart went out to him. Space was cold, and cruelly uncaring. And the light years lay vast between them and their beloved son.
“Tell me Nico isn’t dead.”
Cope’s eyes flew wide. “No! Nico’s OK. I mean…he’s safe.”
No, Ben decided not to ask about that quibble. He nodded. “Then I drink my coffee. And next proceed to Schuyler Spaceport.”
“There’s another message, Ben,” Cope said reluctantly. “Sora on Denali. Summer’s come. Heat wave like they’ve never seen before. Selectman Gorey decided to abandon Waterfalls. Began moving citizens to Denali Prime.”
“Rego –” Ben slowly shook his head in anguish. “In what? Tanks?”
“They have a couple skyships. Not enough.” Cope spoke it, but they both knew. Without enough air transport, the Denali were trying to evacuate a city of 70,000 across a mountain range. In heat so brutal their city couldn’t protect them indoors. In nothing more than armored truck caravans. Denali Prime wasn’t large enough to absorb that many newcomers, anyway.
“So we couldn’t evacuate Sylvan if we wanted to,” Ben concluded. “We clean the transports and head straight for Denali.”
Cope nodded in slow motion. “Until summer ends at the north pole.” Or until everyone in Waterfalls was dead, whichever came sooner. “There’s more. I shouldn’t have told you. Not right before –”
Ben caught him into a hug again. “We go through.”
“We go through,” his husband whispered back.
Even if it cost them their firstborn. They only had two transports. At maximum sardine-can desperation, with only the clothes on their backs, they could launch 2000 per trip direct from Waterfalls to Mahina. With a quick call to Kassidy, they could delegate finding emergency shelter for them. That would require 35 round trips to save Waterfalls. There wasn’t that much star drive fuel in the entire Aloha system. Not that it mattered, because summer would be over and Waterfalls perished before they could fly that many missions.
But a side trip to Sylvan could only net 300 Denali who volunteered to risk their lives. And it would take longer. Sylvan was off the table until autumn saved anyone left in Waterfalls.
“Nico can make it, Cope,” Ben insisted. “Because he’s smart and skilled, and he works for one hell of a team. Sass Collier will protect him. Trus
t her. Trust him. And I don’t need this coffee.” He stood to toss it out.
“I shouldn’t have told you. Not until Mahina,” Cope apologized.
“No, a problem shared is a problem halved. I’m glad you did. Saddle up, chief. We have two more children to meet in Schuyler.”
“One in Schuyler,” Cope quibbled. Their youngest, Socrates, studied at university in Mahina Actual, the urb city.
“Don’t underestimate Team Acosta!” Ben corrected him with raised fist. “Dad will deliver Sock to our airlock. Because you’ll ask him. Call him for me after transition?”
That won him a snicker. “Aye, cap.”
Two nights later, Nico paused at the threshold of the bridge, and gulped.
The dregs of Sylvan One society were unanimously, miserably, and desperately short on sleep. But further catastrophe had been averted this time. The colonists were getting the hang of using the mid-air latrines, literally. They were battened down for the evening, climbed to 300 meters altitude to hover overnight, after another grueling day felling trees for temporary platforms. Darren had no steel to make another sawmill. Only four axes made the trip.
At this rate, the expedition would be living out of four containers tacked onto the bottom of Thrive for a good long while. But after packing everyone into the boxes to take turns lying down, Sass flew south until no traces of vog remained, then added another 200 km margin. Sylvan Three lay not far from the same giant river as Sylvan One. Much of their naturalist learning still applied. But that included nosy smurfs and the dratted ‘bamboo aspen’ sprouts.
In other words, now was the soonest Nico dared broach his errand with the captain. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, captain? C-could I have a moment?”