He indicated his loop. “You know how to work one of these things?”
She smiled grimly. “I’m not a luddite.”
Colin nodded. “No, you’re not. I’ll get another at Micavery and call you as soon as I know anything.” He tapped it. “Lex, ask the next train from Darlith to pick me up. I’m reassigning this loop to Mestra Vaughn.”
“Affirmative. Please give it to her.”
She put it to her temple. “Hello, Lex.”
He squeezed her arm and then ran to catch his train.
DAVIAN SAT up, stretching as well as he was able in the confined space.
The temperature had risen again and was hovering around 102 degrees.
Davian closed his eyes, trying to convince himself this was better than the hotbox. At least here, he had some freedom of movement. He had water, warm though it was. He was on his way somewhere in a set timeframe, not trapped indefinitely, and it was quiet—no loud grating noises or Chinese heavy metal blasting all around him, keeping him from sleeping.
They hadn’t broken him then. This wouldn’t break him now.
He opened his eyes and glared at the gum “patch” Eddy had put in place to stop the leak.
Eddy was fast asleep next to him.
Davian tried to kick at the patch quietly with his boot, but it was frozen solid by the cold of the void on the other side, despite the heat in the cabin.
Damn you, he thought bitterly, glaring at Eddy’s sleeping form. Eddy knew too much about him. Knowledge was power. Knowledge was danger, a weapon that could be used against him later.
He could strangle the man, or try to, but Eddy was as strong as he was. Besides, marks like that on Eddy’s neck would be a clear indicator that Davian was to blame, if anyone bothered to look.
Better to leave things be, for now. He could deal with Eddy later, if need be.
He checked the chronometer. Three more hours until arrival.
Davian drank another bottle of water. He let go of his bladder and let the suit suck out the urine, a curiously satisfying and disconcerting feeling.
Then he closed his eyes and tried to sleep a little more before they arrived at their destination.
Chapter Eight: Blow
LEX CLOSED her eyes.
Ronan was gone. She had felt his death-cry across the void. He had sacrificed himself to save the humans under his care.
She would have done the same, but even so….
Jackson had helped her name this feeling. It was called pain.
Ronan had been the one other being in her little world who was like her. A bio-mind imbued with the ability to think and feel.
At the end, she had guarded her links to him, wary of infection by the same virus he fought so valiantly to destroy.
Now….
She wondered if she should have done more. If she could have.
And yet, doing so would have put her own charges at risk, something that she could never allow to happen.
Pain.
It was a human emotion, one that she was subject to now as well.
She decided she didn’t like it.
ANDY WAS getting tired.
She was taking her turn maintaining the station’s air systems and power, and opening doors and moving elevators as needed.
She had no idea how Ronan had managed all of this all day, every day.
“How are you doing in there, kiddo?” Her dad’s voice came to her through the ether.
“Good. Tired, but good. How’s the evacuation going?” She knew exactly how it was going, but she needed the distraction. The shuttles had made six trips so far, taking more than half of the station population down to Forever.
“We’re getting there. Everyone’s been remarkably calm. If we have time, we’ll try to evacuate some of the more important equipment.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” She checked on the incoming shuttlecraft and flipped open the air lock door for it. About a third of the wheel was entirely empty of people now. She shut down power and air to those sections—less to keep track of. “How are they handling the incoming population groundside?”
“Colin’s there. He’s making temporary arrangements.”
“Temporary? You really think we’re coming back?”
Her father sighed. “I don’t know. I hope we are.”
There was a blockage in the air circulation system. Something had likely gotten corrupted in the attack, and a valve in the D Zone wasn’t responding properly. She checked the schematics and routed around it. At the very least, the station would need a complete systems overhaul if they brought in a new station-mind.
She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of Ronan. She knew how frightened he’d been at the end. Just as she knew how unfair it was—the choice he’d been asked to make.
He hadn’t deserved to die for their sins.
Something flared red along her consciousness. She sent out scouts to see what was wrong.
After a moment, they flashed back to her, waving in distress.
“Dad, we’ve got a problem.” Like we needed another one.
“What is it?”
“The power core. I think it suffered some damage during the attack. The shields are breaking down.”
“Goddammit.”
She’d never heard her father curse. It sent a shiver down her spine.
This was bad. Really bad.
“We’re going to have to overload the shuttles. Do what you can to stop it or at least slow it down.”
“Got it. Things may get a little wonky while I zip over there.” She let the shuttle in through the inner air lock door and then let go of the stream, diving into it and swimming up toward the power core.
In seconds, she was at the core.
The situation was worse, far worse than she had expected.
Half the shields had fallen below 50 percent strength. The rest weren’t much better.
With a heavy sigh, she set about doing what she could to shore them up.
COLIN WATCHED the shuttle lift off the landing pad once again, heading for the world’s air lock. The ships were staying only for as long as it took to deposit their passengers. They had to be running short on fuel.
Thank God it’s a short trip.
He turned to face the new arrivals. “Hello, everyone. I’m former station director Colin McAvery. Many of you know who I am and worked for me when I ran Transfer Station.”
There was a lot of murmuring and nodding.
“Thank you all for remaining calm. Devon Powell is here to help you all get settled. We’ll be taking you to one of the community mess halls for something to eat and drink, and for a basic orientation. If you have been down to Forever before, most of this information will be familiar to you. We ask that you please listen carefully anyhow. If this is your first time, this briefing will be helpful while you settle in here to await repairs to the station.”
Privately, he considered such repairs extremely unlikely. Their supply line to Earth of late had been tenuous at best, according to Aaron, and things were rapidly getting worse down there, from what he’d gathered from the refugees.
He was starting to realize the enormity of what they faced. They might have to go it alone up here, without any more help from Earth or the station.
“In any case,” he said, doing his best to project confidence, “after the briefing, each of you will be paired with someone who will provide you a place to stay until we can figure out what comes next.”
One of the scientists raised her hand. “When do you think we’ll be able to go back? I have experiments in progress.”
He shook his head. “We just don’t know yet. You may want to get comfortable down here.”
He turned away from the rumbling that statement set off.
“We’re going to start running out of food soon if this goes on,” Dania Thorpe said. She was in charge of provisions and material distribution in Micavery. “The refugees have already created a significant drag on our supplies.”
She nodded. “I’ll get it done.”
“I’d appreciate it.” It was easy enough to find places for all these people to sleep for a few days, but they weren’t ready for a large permanent influx of new colonists.
He tapped his loop. “Aaron, you there?”
There was a long pause. “Yeah.” His voice seemed strained. “What’s up?”
“Just checking in. We’ve got a good system going here to handle the influx. For now.”
“Glad to hear it. We’re up to our eyeballs up here. It looks like the power core is going to blow after all.”
“Holy shit.” So much for repairs. This was really it.
“Yeah. We’re gonna send the next couple shuttles down extra heavy.”
Colin nodded. “Take out the seats. That will gain you some capacity.”
“Good idea. Colin….”
“Yeah?”
“If I don’t see you again, it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
Colin frowned. “Don’t talk like that.”
Aaron had already cut the connection.
ANDY WAS worn down, more tired than she could ever remember being. She held up the shields around the power core through sheer force of will as her father, at her side, managed the station’s other essential functions.
The second to the last shuttle had taken off, loaded down as heavily as they could manage, seats and every other bit of excess weight removed.
The last one was coming in for rendezvous with the station, nosing toward the air lock.
“I’m going to siphon just a little power for the lock doors.”
Andy nodded. It was all she could manage.
One of the shields dropped dangerously low, and she reached for power from one of the others and shored it up. “Can’t do this much longer,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You won’t have to. One more door.”
A tiny part of her took note of the shuttle on final approach to the landing pad, where everyone remaining on Transfer Station awaited its landing.
Except the two of them.
“It’s down.”
She nodded and shored up another of the shields.
“We’re not going to make it out of here and down to the landing pad, much less have time to wait for another shuttle, kiddo.”
“I know.” Even saying that much cost her.
“We have to take a chance with one of the escape pods.”
Yes. She hoped he could feel her assent.
Little blips passed in and out of the corners of her vision, and her virtual eyes kept closing, but she knew what he was getting at. The escape pods had no navigation systems, just an emergency beacon to allow them to be found. But with no help likely from Earth, they chanced shooting off into deep space without anyone to rescue them. Once the power in the pod batteries went out, they’d be sealed in a frozen, floating tomb.
“The shuttle is off the ground. I’m opening the inner lock again.”
The power core was on the far side of the wheel from where their physical bodies sat. Andy had no idea how fast it would blow once she could no longer contain it, but they had at least a chance to reach the pod connected to the director’s office and push away from the station before Transfer went up in what was likely to be a catastrophic explosion.
“Almost there. When I say go, drop back into meatspace, and we make a run for the pod. Got it?”
She nodded again. “I….” Her hold slipped, just for a second, and one of the shields crashed down.
“Go!” he said at the same instant, and she let go of the rest, disengaging from the system and throwing herself backward into her own body.
Andy woke up feeling as if every muscle was bruised.
She forced herself to her feet. Her father was across the desk from her, slumped over.
She almost climbed over the desk, lifting him from the desktop and removing his hand from the interface pad.
There was an ominous rumble, and the ground under her feet shook.
“Come on. We have to go!”
He opened one eye and stared at her. “Did I everh tell yoooo….” He sounded drunk. “That you’re my… favorite?”
She laughed in spite of their dire situation. “I’m your one and only. Now come on.” She hauled her father to the door to the escape pod and laid his palm on the pad.
It flashed green, and the door slid open.
She shoved him inside and climbed in after him, pulling the hatch closed manually behind her.
The whole wheel shook again, and she heard the explosion of the core through the metal of the ship. No time to belt in.
She slammed on the eject button and was thrown back against the wall of the pod.
The whirling stars are so beautiful. She spun past them into unconsciousness.
EDDY HAD been trying to hail the station on the emergency frequency of the x-band for half an hour with no success. “Transfer Station. Calling Transfer Station.”
There was radio silence. He was starting to panic.
“Maybe they have their hands full with refugees,” Davian suggested. It was the most he had said in three hours.
Eddy shrugged. Someone was always supposed to monitor the emergency band. That’s what it was for. If that basic task was going undone on Transfer Station, things must have gotten dire indeed.
He flipped the x-band back to one of the terrestrial broadcast stations, this one out of Fargo.
“—confirmed attacks in Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix. The presumed dead are into the millions, if not far higher. The President has authorized a retaliatory nuclear strike against the capitals of China and the African Bloc. It’s her last desperate hope to bring a halt to this devastating war before—”
The station dissolved into static.
“Holy fuck.” Eddy stared at Davian. “They’ve really gone and done it.” All his life the specter of global annihilation had been there in the background as tensions rose between nations in the fight to control whatever resources were left—food, water, even clean air.
He’d always assumed—or hoped—that things would somehow go back to normal. Whatever that was.
He’d believed that thinking people could find a way to come together and find a solution.
The only solution they’d managed to agree on was of a more terrible finality than he could ever have dreamed.
There would be no returning to Earth, even if they’d had the fuel for it.
Ahead of them, a bright explosion blossomed against the vast darkness of space, lighting up a wide ring that could only be Transfer Station.
The flames faded as fast as they had appeared as the fire was starved of oxygen.
“Oh shit.” Davian’s mouth hung open.
“Oh shit, indeed.” Eddy’s first thought was that a nuke had been launched against the station, but how would it have gotten up here from Earth so quickly? Maybe from a Chaf station?
He flipped back over to the emergency band. “Calling Transfer Station. Transfer Station.”
Nothing.
“What do we do now?” he asked Davian.
The hulk of Forever was drawing closer. Eddy could make it out now behind the debris of the station. It looked like a mushroom, a tube connected to the third, and likely final, asteroid that was slowly being consumed to build the new world.
The radio crackled to life. “This is an emergency transmission. I repeat, this is an emergency transmission. Is anyone within range?”
Someone was alive out there. Eddy grabbed the mic. “Yes, this is Eddy Tremaine, aboard an inbound Moonjumper. Who am I talking to?”
“Oh thank God,” the voice replied. “This is Director Aaron Hammond, formerly o
f Transfer Station. We’ve had a catastrophic station failure.”
“We can see that. Where are you?”
“We jettisoned an escape pod just before the explosion that destroyed the station, but we’re moving on momentum only. I have no navigational control. Can you pick up our homing beacon?”
Davian took Eddy’s hand off the talk button. “We can’t help them. We may only have enough fuel left for our own maneuvers.”
“Maneuvers to where? How are we going to get them to open the door and let us in? For all they know, we’re the ones who just attacked the station.”
“In a Moonjumper?”
“I’m not leaving him to die. We’re going after them.” Eddy checked the navigation system. “Locking in on your beacon now,” he said to Director Hammond. Gently, using his remaining fuel as sparingly as possible, he guided the Moonjumper onto a new course to intercept the little pod.
“How are we going to grab them?” Davian asked.
He had a point. The jumper had no arm to catch the pod with.
Eddy could get the Moonjumper ahead of the escape pod and try to nudge it to a halt, but that was risky too. A misjudgment could breach the hull of either or both ships.
His gaze fell on the x-drive. “You’ve worked on those before, right?” He pointed to the small quiescent sphere.
Davian’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“Can you flip the field? Create a gravitational tug instead of negating it?”
Davian considered it. “Maybe, but we’d be risking blowing the whole thing to kingdom come—”
“We’re already practically there. You got a better idea?”
Davian laughed bitterly. “Yeah, but you already vetoed it.” They locked eyes, and Davian looked away first. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
They were almost alongside the pod, and Eddy was using the thrusters to match its course and velocity. Forever was slowly falling behind them.
Davian had the sphere out of its casing and had flipped open the access panel.
With a synth wand from his pack, he began reconfiguring the circuits inside.
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