by Elliott Kay
“We’ll give it a shot, but they’re probably halfway gone by now,” said Dylan. “We’ll never catch them. Best we’ll do now is stress out the whole neighborhood, maybe spark some other stupid stunt.”
“Good,” growled Brody. “Let them be upset. Let’s search and see what we find. Might not be the exact guys we’re looking for but we might find something.”
“We didn’t come here to shake down every random asshole, Brody,” Dylan replied. “We’ll look through whatever data we’ve got and see if that gives us a lead.”
“What, more kid gloves? How bad is this gonna get before we get tough on—?”
“That’s enough,” Dylan cut him off. Her eyes swept their surroundings again, including the streets below filled with people looking up at the crash on the rooftop. Her team was under watch now, and some of the observers would watch with more than the naked eye. “We’re not having this argument here.”
* * *
Chen stumbled backward onto the living room floor. The tiny dwelling offered no real cover, but it would break the sight lines for a moment or two. Ellen crawled in, practically laying over Quan’s feet, holding the smoking missile launcher tucked under one arm. “Is he okay?” she asked urgently. “Is he gonna be okay?”
A single glance answered her question. One burn in Quan’s chest had fully cauterized, but the other left an open hole through his back. Blood pooled on the floor beneath his body. Chen felt no pulse at Quan’s neck. Tugging away the mask over the young man’s face, he found only more blood.
“He’s dead,” said Chen. “Help me move him. We have to get out now.”
“Oh god,” blurted Robbie. “Oh god, oh god—”
“Robbie!” Chen snapped. “Get it together. We’re not leaving him here. Hook your arm under his again and let’s go. Ellen, you with us?”
She got to her feet. Robbie obeyed, still grunting and mumbling in disbelief. Chen ignored it. As long as he moved, he could say whatever he wanted.
They burst out into the hall together, staggering and shuffling as fast as they could. “That way,” Chen ordered, pulling his lifeless burden and the survivors toward a corner in the passage. He heard screams and crying from the other dwellings, leaving him to wonder if anyone else had been hit. He couldn’t do much for them now.
They followed the light. The one turn at the corner proved to be enough. An open gap full of daylight provided the rest. Someone had put up another jury-rigged safety rail at the end of the hall to mark the de facto fire escape. Chen and Robbie crashed through it, escaping out into open air and a rickety stairway of scaffolding and tape. The pair descended into a mess of repurposed cargo pods and makeshift shacks. Trash and runoff carpeted the little alley.
Chen looked to the sky and listened for anything he could make out over the sound of his own breath and the ringing in his ears. The streets held plenty of anxious voices, but he heard nothing in the air yet. No screams of warning. No further weapons fire.
“Oh god, Quan,” Robbie sobbed.
“Whose home was that?” Chen asked.
“Wh-what?” Ellen stammered.
“Whose apartment? Whose home did you use as a launch site?”
“It belonged to Quan’s cousin,” she answered. “He died last night. He’d been sick. Radiation or something. The hospital wouldn’t take him in.”
Chen winced. “Aw, for—you went into a home that could be contaminated? Shit. We could all be tagged now.”
“We weren’t thinking about that.”
“What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?” Chen snapped. He glared at Robbie, who looked up from cradling Quan’s head. “What the fuck was that?”
“We need to hit them,” Robbie protested. “They keep hurting us. Letting us die. Like you keep saying, we need to keep the pressure on them, only it’s not enough. We need to hurt them back harder!”
“Not by putting more people at risk! You fired a missile at an airvan over the slums! What if that thing had exploded? Where did you think it was going to come down? Did you think about that? What if it crashed through someone’s home? Or in a street?”
“Yeah, well it didn’t.” Robbie sniffed.
“Are you out of your mind? Precision is going to toss the whole neighborhood. All these people are going to be marked as potential sympathizers now.”
“Good! Maybe they’ll get on our side after that.”
Chen slapped the younger man hard. Robbie looked at him in shock, saying nothing more, but Chen had to fight down the urge to hit him again. The notion of doing far worse crossed his mind, too, but he banished that with the same concern that had him so angry in the first place. He had to be ruthless. He also had to draw lines.
“That’s how Precision and Minos operate,” Chen seethed. “We don’t treat our own people as expendables. That’s why we’re fighting in the first place. Now pull your head out of your ass. We have to get out of here. Tell me you at least had an escape plan?”
“Shawn is waiting around the block for us in a dumper,” said Ellen. “We’re supposed to meet him there.”
“He’ll have to come here. We can’t carry Quan in the open and we can’t leave the launcher behind, either. I’ll get him to back the dumper up to the end of the alley. It’s risky but at least it’ll look natural.” He took off running.
“What do we do?” Robbie called after him.
“Find someplace to cover up,” Chen replied. “They’ll be doing flyovers fast. Hopefully we’ll be gone before they bring any troops out to search.”
* * *
“We have to make the argument,” said Antonio. “It’s right there on the rubric.”
“I understand that.” Gina swirled her food together on her cafeteria tray, mixing rice with peas and butter. “I know it’s required. I still say it’s a waste of time. This is intro level stuff, anyway. We had this discussion five times in that class.”
“An archaeologist can wind up having this debate throughout their career. How is it a waste of time here?” Antonio countered.
“Because it’s asking us to debate the ethics of something we plan on doing anyway,” Gina replied. “We know we’re going to take any artifacts we find. Even if they’re part of a grave, even if they seem to have religious significance or whatever, we know we’re gonna take the artifacts. So why are we supposed to pontificate on whether or not it’s ethical?”
“You don’t care if we’re grave-robbers?” Antonio scoffed.
“Not if we already take for granted we’re going to rob graves,” she laughed.
“It’s not—we’re not doing that.”
“Oh, we’re not calling it that, no,” said Tanner. “We’re only taking stuff from graves without permission. It’s totally different.”
Heads turned and laughter stopped. The silence at the table brought Tanner’s head up from his own plate, too. He hadn’t expected to be heard. Apart from Gina, he figured his five-person team would keep him at arm’s length like everyone else at the university.
Most of his teammates were seniors. He’d only completed the intro class. Still, Gina had only taken the intro class, too. If she was going to speak up, why shouldn’t he?
“It’s not grave robbery,” Antonio maintained. “If we don’t examine this stuff, how else are we supposed to understand the past? Or how things became the way they are in the present? You can’t get all the answers from scans and computer images. Sometimes you have to dig things up and look at them in daylight.”
“I agree.” Tanner shrugged. “That’s not a change in definition, though. That’s a justification.”
“So you think it’s grave robbery, but it’s justified grave robbery?” asked Olivia.
“I think motive makes a difference,” he conceded. “We need to recognize that’s the distinction, though. Motive matters, but the harm is still done.”
“What, like the difference between killing and murder?” Olivia asked.
Everything stopped once again. Tanner found everyone looking
at him, this time with wide eyes, only to suddenly look away awkwardly.
That, Tanner considered, was the other reason he hadn’t said much. Apart from completing only the intro class, there was the little matter of drastic social alienation from his peers.
“We can go with that analogy, sure,” said Tanner. “If you want.”
“I didn’t mean…” Olivia began.
“It’s fine,” Tanner assured her, almost smiling in amusement. “I’ve thought about that one myself. Anyway, I get what Gina is saying. The rubric for the paper wants us to ‘debate’ the ethics of opening up gravesites and taking things, but you’re expected to move on from there. Taking stuff out is a foregone conclusion. Seems like they want you to show you have some logic behind why you’re okay with it. Otherwise you say, ‘This is ethically wrong,’ and then you don’t go any farther. Which would flunk the assignment.
“If we have to give them this whole rationale, let’s own it,” he went on. “We’re desecrating the graves of people who can no longer speak for themselves. So let’s explain how we plan to spend the rest of our lives atoning for the sins this class compelled us to commit.”
“It’s only a paper about a hypothetical dig,” said Antonio.
“I know. It’ll make our hypothetical guilt easier to carry. Hypothetically.”
“You’re not exactly showing you’re serious about your guilt when you joke about it,” said Nigel.
“I’m joking about it because it’s only a paper.” He knew Nigel’s comment wasn’t really about the assignment. Rather than staring him down or shouting, Tanner reached for the salt. “If I joke about guilt for real things, it’s because I have to move on with my life somehow. I already tried crying until I didn’t have any tears left.” He turned his attention back to his plate, but even out of the corner of his eye he could see Nigel turning red.
“We need to stay on track,” Antonio suggested. “We’re talking about an extinct species, remember? The whole premise of the project is for a civilization that no longer exists.”
“Yeah, but they practiced ceremonial burial,” said Tanner, perfectly happy to keep things academic. “They buried their dead for whatever reason. As far as we know, they planned on the dead staying buried. We’re disrespecting that by digging them up.”
“None of them are around anymore to be offended. It’s a victimless crime.”
“But it’s still a crime, right? Maybe we’re here on this dig for science and understanding and all that, but the remains we take away to some other planet were probably laid to rest with the intent they stay there. It’s not only about what the dead would think of us if they were here to judge. We should consider what it says about ourselves.”
“You said you were joking a second ago,” said Olivia. “Now you want to be serious again?”
“I’m saying we can do both,” Tanner replied. “Look, you brought up the difference between murder and killing, right? Pretty sure the person losing their life is going to take the dimmer view of it. We can at least acknowledge that.”
Antonio sighed. “We still need to write up an excavation plan. The ethical piece isn’t meant to be the whole focus of the paper.”
“I know,” Tanner relented. “Listen, I’ll write up my suggestion. I’ll write up something more conventional, too. ‘We’re here doing this for science, honoring the dead by learning about them so they aren’t forgotten,’ stuff like that. We can go with whichever one the team likes best. Is that cool?”
“You’re supposed to cover the artifact custody plan,” said Gina.
“I know. I’ll do this, too. The ethics issue flows into how we handle artifacts to begin with.”
“You’re taking on a lot,” said Antonio.
“It’s fine. I’m ahead on my other classes, anyway. This part isn’t even that hard.”
“You want to do my artifact dating assignment, too?” asked Olivia. “Chemistry always kicks my ass and that’s all this one is. It’s taking forever.”
“Is it the Palenzuela method?” Tanner asked.
“Yes,” she groaned.
“I’d be happy to help,” he offered. “I took chemistry last semester so it’s all still fresh.”
“That’s, ah, nice of you to offer,” she stammered through conflicting reactions. “I mean, if it’s not a lot of trouble?”
“I’m flexible. Haven’t had a lot to do since we left port. Whenever you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
His offer set off another round of glances at the table. “It would save me a lot of time,” Olivia said, looking at Antonio. The meaning of it became clear when the older student spoke. He gave a slight nod of consent. Nigel shrugged.
“We’ve got a late study session going with a couple other programs in the forward lounge every couple nights,” said Olivia. “Studying and beer, really. And pool. If you want to come. Open door policy.”
That made it Tanner’s turn to be surprised. He didn’t know whether the invitation came out of some sense of grace, or if they’d started seeing past the propaganda and hype. He didn’t much care, either. Even an invitation to an open-door party was a leap forward. “What time?”
Chapter Eight:
Travel Hazards
“Three kinds of traffic get protection in Minos: freighters carrying computer chips out, freighters carrying supplies in, and corporate executive travel. Everybody else gets to roll the dice. The Union Fleet has a base less than two light years away in Qin Kai, but a light year is a long way when you’re in trouble.”
--Rough Times Getting Rougher: The Dangers of Travel
Union Relations Monthly, June 2280
She had perhaps three seconds before she was dismembered and eaten. Stuck at a dead end in the hallway, she had nowhere left to run. Her weapons had done her no good. Every point blank shot was simply ignored. She might as well have thrown pebbles.
The nightmare advanced, blocking the entire passageway. It almost scraped the ceiling with each step and took up even more space in width than height. Despite its size, the true terror came from the chitinous thing’s alien shape. It had no true front, nor back, but rather five equal sides, with each corner bearing a single baleful eye and a massive lobster-like claw, all carried along by a spread of insect-like legs.
The mouth would be at the center of those legs. She’d see that awful mouth soon enough as it closed in and ate her. She had no escape, no guns.
She never considered trying to talk. It didn’t matter that the Krokinthians had an interstellar society with advanced technology and culture and language. All that seemed like a lot of hype now. Nonsense. Bullshit. Who didn’t know that these things were monsters?
Mr. Duong had laughed at the idea of Krokinthians eating humans back in her biology class. The Kroks evolved in a different chemical environment, he’d said. They can’t digest humans. We would poison them, he said.
She hated him even more now. Like Mr. Duong had ever faced an alien in person? Like that old jackass knew anything about the real world?
The Krokinthian turned to bring two of its claws to bear. She heard a raspy, guttural noise from its mouth, steadily repeating as the thing closed in, broken only by the urgent tone of some distant alarm.
A hum at her wrist pulled Static the rest of the way out of the terrifying dream. She sat in her chair on the bridge, facing the ops screens with her feet up on the control panel.
Static didn’t look to her screens as her first reaction. Rather, she looked across the dimmed bridge to Brock, meeting her watch companion’s eyes for a quick confirmation. The heavily tattooed man seemed to be in the same frame of mind. He’d fallen asleep, too.
The answers caught up to them almost as soon as they caught one another’s gaze: the alarm was the ship’s lookout system, not the internal passageway monitors. The bridge was still dim. Nobody had come up to the bridge to bust them for dozing on watch.
Turning back to the screens, Static tried to shake
off the rest of her nightmare. Her heart still pounded and she thought she might be sweating, but nothing threatened her. There was no Krokinthian. She’d never even seen one in real life.
Static canceled the alarm and looked to her duties.
Nothing had changed for the ship itself since she last checked the displays. Stalker remained on its nice little moon, nestled inside a crater with a clear view of the Minos approach. Three contacts had appeared after she’d drifted off, though she disregarded two of them immediately. The big freighter would have been of interest if she’d come in closer, but Stalker would never catch her now. She’d see trouble coming and kick into high gear with a huge head start. The same could be said for the packet courier, with the added lack of appeal for such a small vessel on a routine job.
The third ship traveled along a path right through Stalker’s reach. Static had her a good twenty minutes out. Nothing suggested any impending course changes. She looked over all the stats she could gather through passive sensors, not wanting to tip the vessel off to Stalker’s presence or her interest. Then she reached for the internal communications relay to ping the ship’s leaders.
Ivan and Vince picked up the call simultaneously. From the haze of smoke and the overhead lights in the background, Static figured they were both in the same card game somewhere. “What’s going on?” asked Ivan.
“Think I might have spotted a good score,” said Static. “We’ve got a Mercury-class ship with one little light laser turret over the bow coming through on the way to Minos. She’s putting out ordinary active scan signals. I don’t recognize her markings and the computer doesn’t come up with a match, either. Gotta be a lower-tier carrier.”
“How close?”
“If we burn out right now, I figure we intercept in about twenty minutes. Maybe a little longer if she turns and runs but we’re in between her and Minos. She’d have to run away from help, not toward it.”
“What do the local patrols look like?” Vince asked.
Static grinned. “All pretty close to Minos. Should be at least half an hour before any of them see us lift off, assuming they’re even looking this way.”