The Boundary Zone

by A. B. Keuser

  He glared down at his hand, still clamped around her leg.

  “Cable, you can dive in front of a bullet for me at the next opportunity, that’s your job. This is mine. Let me do it.” He didn’t let go immediately and she said, “If it was Aaron, would you have hesitated to let him do this? You don’t need to treat me with kid gloves. I’m a big girl, and I’ve been doing this forever.”

  She crawled back inside, and he paced the circle around the column. Time passed too slowly when he was surrounded by this much quiet.

  He glanced at his comm band.

  Only ten minutes had lapsed, but he was ready to crawl out of his skin.

  “I thought you said it was only three connections.”

  “It's not as easy as plugging in a super collider. Has your mom ever told you how to deal with gangrene?”

  His mother’s favorite subject was infectious diseases and their cures. It was one of the many reasons he avoided drawn out conversations with her. That one, however, was not one that had come up.

  “Pretty sure she’s never had a reason.”

  “Of course not, gangrene was all but eradicated forty two years ago. But the treatment applies here. A surgeon would debride the necrotic flesh. Cutting away the rot. I’ve got wires here that would have been decommissioned a decade or more ago if someone had bothered to update the hive’s systems. If I had a coil of clean wire, I’d have been done hours ago.”

  He kept himself from reminding her she hadn’t had hours.

  “Tell me again why we can’t just jump ship?”

  “Because you can’t breathe void and I’m not as immortal as some have painted me to be.”

  “Right, ‘third most popular poster boy’ does not come with void-breathing attachments or re-usable batteries.”

  “I always knew you thought of me as a toy.”

  “Not true. If I did, I’d have been using you for the last six months.” Her last words trailed off as though she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  He let them go and turned back to the four corridors he could see. For half a moment, his mind played tricks on him and he could have sworn he’d seen a human form in the far darkness.

  But the hive had been fully evacuated aside from Kenzie when he started down after her.

  Still….

  “Once you get this bypassed interface hooked up, we’ll be able to close off these blast hatches, right?”

  “Yep.” She said, wriggling out. “And we’ll be able to order takeout.”

  He took her outstretched hand and hefted her up off the decking. “The delivery time is not going to be worth it.”

  “Probably not.”

  Snatching her pad out of the bag by his feet, she reeled out a line of optic cable and hard jacked the two systems together, forcing the connection through a paint encrusted data port.

  “Half of the external cams are gone… either scavenged or decommed. Though the equipment here is old enough it could simply have been malfunction do to old age.”

  “If you didn’t take them, I think we can rule out the first option.”

  “Hey!” she punched him in the shoulder. It was light enough he had to feign being pushed back by it.

  “Do we have control of anything else?”

  “We can’t fly the hive, if that’s what you mean… though that would be really cool.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of that air transfer you were talking about.”

  “Right.” She tapped and swiped through a dozen commands, and he heard the heavy clatter of hatches closing, sealing. “Working on the air processors….”

  Her eyes were bleached to gray by the illumination from her screen. They flit back and forth over lines of alphanumeric designations he couldn’t decipher, and her brows knit.

  “I can get the air out of the sections I’m closing down, but I’m going to have to keep this whole level open. Whoever built this place didn’t take the need to breathe into account when putting together the full lockdown sequence. We wrap this place up tight, and we’ve only got the air we started with.”

  “It’s a good thing I’ve got you around to keep us from dying then.”

  She smiled at him as she pressed in another command and the hive shuddered.

  At least the grav plating still worked. “What was that?”

  “Settling?” She stared into the darkness in the same direction he did, her brows high. “But it’s not… is it?”

  The decking tilted and Cable hit the hatch jamb that had been to his left, and was now underneath him, Kenzie landed atop him.

  Heavy air was still on, but directional sensors weren’t.

  A screeching groan echoed around them, and he grabbed a hold of her before the sudden lurch would have sent her falling down the corridor that had become a vertical shaft.

  And then, it was over.

  Grav Plating kicked back to normal, his boots hit the decking and he caught Kenzie before she fell flat on her back.

  A hail storm echoed in the distance, and cable knew what had happened.

  “That can’t be good.”

  “Let’s jack into those external cameras and see if any of them will work without jacking into the station’s main comp systems….”

  She flicked through a half dozen dead screens before they found one that showed them the dark blanket of space and something far worse.

  The twisted hull of what had once been Celesta station was broken in pieces. Three almost as large as the hive, and a debris field he couldn’t begin to count. Littered among them, the strobing beacons of escape pods.

  One of the freighters that had been docked floated among the wreckage, listing, split nearly in half and bent nose toward tail.

  “Holy….” She looked up at him, and he could only meet her gaze and hope that everyone had gotten off the station and that ship alive.

  Statistically, he knew what to expect.

  “We are definitely not going to be priority anymore.”

  Kenzie grimaced. “No, and we definitely shouldn’t be.”

  She flipped away from the mess outside their hull and sat against the control column, flipping through commands. For all he knew it was a game of binary Tetris.

  While he might have sat with her, he couldn’t stop from pacing. Something was wrong. The damage from the attack was going to tear the station apart, but what they’d just experienced… that was a shock wave, one with mild EM interference. And that didn’t make sense.

  “Kenz, when you were cataloging your possible scavenges, was there anything you nixed for its volatility?”

  She hummed, but didn’t take her eyes off her screen. “No? Celesta was old. Her generator components were all electromechanical. She didn’t have the cold fission turbines that the newer stations have. You know that, we didn’t have a modulation specialist on site.”

  “So what caused that….”

  Hissing laughter echoed off the walls and he pulled her off the floor, shoving her behind him, reaching for the gun he didn’t have.

  There hadn’t been a need for one on the station.

  “I thought everyone was evacuated.”

  “They were. This guy wasn’t on our locator board… I’m guessing he’s never been a resident of Celesta or the hive.”

  “It’s terribly easy to slip through security on a station that’s months away from decommission. Especially when the crews--already short on guards--are distracted by a harmless little… what did you call her? Mouse?”

  “So you blew up the station?” Cable, kept a hold on her arm, to keep her from darting out. “Were the attack ships another distraction?”

  “No, they’re what actually blew up the station. I may have set some fuel in the right places, but I wasn’t the trigger man.”

  He wore the same ragged clothes as the man on the vid feed claiming to be KaRapp, but he wasn’t. Even in the scrambled feed, the other man’s height had been clearly defined. This one bordered on giant status.

  And despite his
size and the strange shape of his face mask, Cable knew he was human.

  The gun was human manufacture too. Military issue, and its power pack was altered. A dead man had taught him how to tell the difference. The same dead man who had no doubt sold the shipment of modified weapons this one had come from.

  That gun waved through the air in a lazy arc as the man said, “The lady and I have business elsewhere.”

  “No.”

  The exasperated sigh that echoed from behind his facemask was punctuated by a wheezing bubble. The mask was modified too. Breather, bubbler. If his hands weren’t exposed, Cable would guess the man was expecting to take a walk outside.

  He’d be more than happy to give him the opportunity.

  “If I’d known you were coming for her, I’d have disconnected sooner, and dealt with the civilians caught up in the fall.”

  “We’re not falling.”

  “Sure we are. The station just exploded and the shock wave pushed us into the lunar gravitational pull. We are definitely falling.”

  He sounded far too happy about that.

  Kenzie turned back to her pad, clicking furiously through commands, fingers flying across the flat screen.

  “Shit.”

  “I may be many things, my dear, but I’m not a liar.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.” She tossed the pad back into her bag and the optic cord snapped. “I don’t generally trust people wearing masks and pointing guns at me.”

  “Oh, but I’m not aiming this at you.” He turned his face deliberately. “I’m aiming it at him.”

  Eleven

  Mack swallowed, hard. The guy in front of them was definitely a killer. Exactly what he had in mind, she couldn’t say, but if he wanted it, Cable was dead.

  She glanced down at the pad, hoping their captor wouldn’t notice.

  The status bar blinked, slowly filling. In another ten seconds the comm burst would be out and--hopefully--someone would know where they were. More importantly, they’d know they were in trouble.

  The man who hadn’t taken the time to give his name let out a long, gurgling sigh and Cable moved. Not much, not enough to spook the other man, but enough to make him uncomfortable.

  Kenzie wanted to push him back, step between them. If the man wasn’t going to shoot her, she could use that knowledge to shield Cable. If the stubborn ass would let her.

  He wouldn’t.

  And she’d told him he could take a bullet for her less than an hour ago, so….

  Cable shifted again and the other man dropped his shoulders, rolling his head to the side as though he was bored.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He adjusted his grip. “Sadly, I’m not allowed to kill you.”

  He shrugged and then shot.

  Cable crumpled to the decking, like a sack of bricks. His head hit with a sound that mimicked the same. Mack didn’t care about the man who’d shot. She could deal with him later.

  Dropping to her knees, she checked his pulse, his breathing. Then, she turned back to the man who’d tucked his gun away, seemingly waiting for her to finish.

  She wasn’t close enough to lunge and reach for him before he’d be able to redraw.

  “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, good. I’d hate for a fall to kill the immortal Commander Carr.” The derision in his voice was arch, his focus on Cable’s crumpled form. “Now, let’s go.”

  She didn’t move and he rested his hand on the stunner again. “Listen, I don’t want to incapacitate you. And I promise you, you’ll be happier if you come with me. They don’t understand what you are, and you’ll only suffer because of it.”

  “Is that your way of saying I’m less than human? Because of the two of us, I don’t think I’m the one who falls into that category.”

  “No,” he said, harshly, his words near a growl. “Not less. More. So much more.”

  He reached out for her and then stopped himself, drawing his hand back. Then he took a step back. “We need to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “It’s what your brother would want.”

  She stopped herself from swinging at him. But she stood, fists clenched at her side.

  “He’s dead. What he wants isn’t high on my priorities right now.” She looked down at Cable. “Besides, if you were concerned about my brother, you never would have shot his best friend.”

  “If I wasn’t, he’d be the one who was dead.” He switch hands with his gun and motioned down the corridor behind him. “I’m not going to ask you again. You’re coming with me, and we’re not going to discuss it further.”

  “You’re right, we’re not going to discuss it further. The only way I’m leaving the hive with you is if you’re dragging me off it in a body bag.”

  Again, he switched hands with the gun, gripping it tightly. “Mackenzie.”

  He said her name the way her father had the first—and only—time she’d been caught adjusting power flow options that the local electric company hadn’t approved for their housing pod.

  She waited for him to raise the gun, to pull that trigger.

  He wouldn’t. The gun was a bluff.

  If he shot her, he’d have to carry her or drag her to whatever escape plan he had. And he wasn’t built for that kind of labor. Even under the oddly draped outfit, she could tell that.

  All she had to do was distract him long enough…

  Or distract him so she could get the upper hand.

  The current hummed behind her and her fingers itched to use it.

  “What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?”

  He threw his hands out to the side in frustration and when they dropped back down, something at his waist squelched. He’d popped the bag that hung there. He was leaking.

  The hard knock of metal on metal echoed overhead and they both looked up. Before he had a chance to reach for her again, she shuffled backward to the column and slid down to a crouch.

  Open beside her, the panel held a half dozen compromised wires.

  But her options were limited without touching him, and she didn’t want to get that close. Her best option was also her most dangerous. One she’d teased Cable with earlier.

  Arc flash… in the oxygen rich environment, it might kill them all. But cable was tucked around the side of the column, out of the way. Everything but his right boot was on the other side of a grounding ring. His chances for survival were high.

  Hers, not so much, but they were better than the guy standing in the puddle dripping from his hip flask.

  Without having to look, she knocked the old connectors, triggered the fault.

  Brightness seared her eyes, heat seared her back, and she turned at the last moment, throwing herself over Cable’s body.

  The flash was contained a moment later, decades old circuitry still doing its job.

  She waited a minute longer, breathing in the acrid air, listening for any sign the man was still alive. The lights were dead, the rest of the paneling too.

  She had to hope the sound she’d heard was the Dendratic docking with them, or else they were screwed.

  She fumbled with Cable’s belt in the dark, half expecting him to make a comment about getting handsy, but he was still out cold. It took three tries to find his flash lamp--he was laying on top of it, and when she flicked on the light, eerie tendrils of smoke curled around the beam.

  Cable was alive, breathing normally, and hadn’t been singed too badly.

  There was a hole in his boot, blackened, and scorched. She pulled the offending article off. The skin there was red, but it was barely a burn at all.

  “Thank the Goddess for grounding.”

  She struggled to prop him upright. If the sprinklers went off, she didn’t want him drowning in foam.

  Only then did she turn to the other body in the corridor.

  The man who’d tried to take her was dead.

  He lay on the floor, his still smolde
ring clothes melting the white foam that had doused the flames.

  And underneath that….

  If she never saw something that hideous again, she might be able to sleep again.

  Mangled, skin red, black, or missing. His face--she assumed it had once been human--was swollen well beyond its natural capacity the mask had seemingly vaporized.

  She sprayed him down with the foam again, this time, it stuck.

  She couldn’t get rid of the sickening, charred smell.

  Cable was crumpled against the bulkhead where she’d left him and someone else was coming down the corridor.

  Flash lamps bobbed along the dark metal tube, and she raised her hand to keep them out of her eyes. The boots--fleet issue--were the first thing she saw, and she let out a silent sigh of relief.

  The proverbial cavalry was there.

  Too bad the first voice she heard was too familiar.

  “Are you alright?” Bezzon dropped to his knees beside her, gloved hands reaching for her face. She pulled away.

  “I’m fine. He’s not.”

  “You do wind up in weird places, Mack.” In a full air mask, Mack didn’t recognize the other soldier. She kept her distance from them, arm held up, focus on her readout. “Air’s fine.”

  Mack recognized her as soon as she pulled the mask off, though she’d never met her. Raza Crioce.

  Aaron had liked her, and that was enough of a recommendation, even if she glared down the dark corridors like she was ready to kill anything that moved.

  Cable, of course, couldn’t answer her.

  “He was hit by a stunner. Pretty sure the worst he’ll wake up with is a headache. His head hit the decking.”

  “And the boot?” she asked.

  “Burnt through when we had an arc flash.” She wasn’t about to admit that she’d caused it.

  The hive might be on a collision course with the moon below them, but Mack knew an approximate value to the hive’s electrical systems, and she didn’t have anywhere near that many digits in her accounts.

  Bezzon stepped between them, flashing his light in her eyes. “Are you alright?”