by Tammy Salyer
We were on our way in, just passing near an Admin space station, when David had suggested to Rajcik that he and I divert from the operation. He convinced Rajcik that we weren’t needed in New Sweden and could take the opportunity to sweep around the station in the Temptation’s shuttle to look for potential targets for future ops. He hadn’t bothered to ask me what I thought of the plan, just assumed that I’d go along with whatever he proposed. We’d found nothing and rendezvoused with the Temptation six hours later. I was angry with David for pulling us off the op on a dangerous wild goose chase, but he’d been tight-lipped and unapologetic. Looking back now, I should have realized something else was going on. Maybe David knew Rajcik was going to go berserk and didn’t want us involved.
Two weeks later, I caught a news bulletin detailing what happened at New Sweden. Rajcik and the crew hadn’t just overpowered them; they’d killed every person there and blown the settlement off the map. The weapons cache had been paltry, barely worth the energy it took to fly out, and there didn’t seem to be a reason for such dire actions. The news had upset and disgusted me, and David had been furious with Rajcik, threatening to kill him if he ever did something like that again. Murdering non-cits for no reason wasn’t what we’d signed up for—we’d had enough of that back in the Corps. But it was done. Nothing would change that. By then, we had our sights set on bigger payoffs, and we hit Obal 3 eight days later.
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.” I’m shaken and I know it shows. For the first time since this whole mess began, I’m defending myself. “Neither did my brother. I don’t know exactly what happened in New Sweden, and maybe it wouldn’t have if we’d been there. But we weren’t.”
“Right.” Brady thinks I’m lying and doesn’t hide the fact. His smug expression shows that he’s satisfied that he’s won.
All the credibility I thought I had with this group is slipping away. If they already believed me capable of participating in that kind of ruthless slaughter, why bother trying to enlist my help at all? White-hot anger streaks through me. Have they just been toying with me all along, to get to Rajcik?
“Let me ask you something, Erikson. You know what kind of person Rajcik is. What makes you think his only interest in this Nova is profit? Hasn’t it occurred to you that he plans on using it? No? Well it has occurred to me.” Brady’s eyes are narrow, slitted like a snake’s, as he continues, “Which is why I think you’re either lying and you’re just as much of a low-life-scum-villain as he is, or you’re being stupid.”
I throw the table aside and lunge at Brady before his last word is out. I don’t care that I may be committing suicide; he’s gone too fucking far.
My fist flies toward his face and I register that he’s pulled a pistol out and is leveling it at my torso. Then my right shoulder shrieks in sudden, sharp pain as someone grabs my arm and forces it behind my back. With a grunt, I’m pulled backward and off balance, not dropping my eyes from Brady’s scarred, hate-contorted face. I jerk forward in another attempt, and a knee slams into the back of my legs, buckling them and dropping me face first into the floor. My shoulder protests alarmingly. If I don’t stop, it’ll be useless for weeks. A knee is planted in the middle of my back and I let myself go limp, knowing I’ve lost this fight.
“Fuck you, Brady! You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! If you don’t believe me, then fucking kill me!”
“Everyone calm down.” Vitruzzi’s voice is full of collected, icy reason.
Through the water leaking from my eyes, both from pain and rage, I see Desto’s coffee-black-no-cream-no-sugar hand pulling my Sinbad free from my side. Just in case.
Vitruzzi says, “Get her up.” He stands, pulling me to my feet. The look on his face is more amusement than anger, which frustrates me further. “Patrick, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you give it a rest?”
Brady scowls at her for a moment and slams his pistol back into its holster. Without giving me another look, he stomps out.
Venus has pushed her body tightly against the far wall, her face betraying her distress. The strain is palpable, everyone struggling to keep it under wraps. Strahan rests his hand on the butt of his pistol but doesn’t draw it.
My teeth are gritted fiercely against the pain in my contorted shoulder and I have to suck air through my nostrils. After another second, Desto releases some of the pressure, giving me a chance to continue in a more reasonable tone. “I don’t care what you do, Vitruzzi. Those are the plans Rajcik gave me. Take them and use Vilbrandt, if you really think he’s going to help you, and storm the Fortress yourself. Good fucking luck. But bet on this. If you don’t play along with Rajcik, he’s going to do the same thing to your settlement that he did to New Sweden. Do you believe that?”
Well, maybe not so reasonable.
She blinks, tension spreading tightly over her already drawn features, and starts pacing across the room. “We’ve got our eye on Rajcik. He’s not going to get a chance to threaten Agate Beach.”
“How can you have your eye on him? I was on the Temptation, and I don’t even know where it is.”
The look she gives me is heavy with resolve. “We traced his location using a tracking chip we implanted on you. We have video emplacements watching his every move.”
I almost missed what she said, it was so matter-of-fact. Then realization hits me. “What? What do you mean a tracking chip?”
“We bugged you.”
If I’d been mad about being insulted by Brady before, I’m over-the-top, brace-for-the-storm, fucking furious now, but the sharp spike of pain in my shoulder and Desto’s unbreakable grip keeps me from letting loose again. I’m forced to stand still, giving my sense of reason time to work out that she’s probably bluffing. “Rajcik has the equipment to detect tracking devices,” I respond. “If I had one on me, he’d have found it and I’d be dead.”
“He couldn’t have found it if he tried.” She sounds utterly certain.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know what I did before becoming a transporter, Erikson. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have everything figured out. You’re smarter than that, and you have no idea what we’re capable of.”
There’s no bluff in her face. “So you’re saying I’m bugged. How?”
“The chip is tiny, bioengineered. It doesn’t show up through magnetic resonance, x-ray, or radio frequency scanning, both because it is so small, and because it’s masked by your own biochemistry. It hides from scans by cloaking itself in a genetically copied envelope of cells and integrating with the tissue around it. Its mechanical ability allows it to scramble scanners and make them see only normal biological structures. The only way to find it is by introducing viral catalysts in or near the physical instrument. It will copy viral cells, something like a cancer, but only affects the local area, thus creating a telltale lesion. It’s only detectable if you know what you’re looking for. I designed it peripheral to Admin research protocols, so its existence is unknown. Which makes it useful to us.”
I swallow, unable to think of a response.
“I wouldn’t have put you in a situation where I believed your life would be jeopardized without telling you, Erikson. I’m a doctor. My goal is to preserve life, not waste it.”
“You’re the one who told me I could leave if I chose to. Then you have me followed,” I shoot an accusatory glance at Strahan, “and you bug me. What about all that bullshit you gave me about trusting you?”
“Did you really think that we would just give up if you decided not to help us?” She stops pacing and stands in front of me, whipping me with her words. “We knew you’d find Rajcik, or he’d find you. And since he has the information we need, we had to take the necessary steps to get to him.”
“Do you have control of yourself, Erikson?” Desto asks softly in my ear.
I shrug noncommittally. Maybe I’m being touchy, but hearing my body’s been used as a homing beacon makes a little retaliation feel justi
fied. Desto releases my arm anyway and I take a slow step forward, wanting desperately to rub my aching shoulder, but refusing to give them the satisfaction.
“So where is it?”
“Your right shoulder, just under the scar. Scar tissue helps disguise the entry hole.”
I pull up my sleeve to look. The scar, a remnant from the flying debris of a badly timed ammo dump eradication, is the only thing visible.
“Don’t worry. It won’t cause any harm. Almost everyone in the settlement has one.”
Bodie and Venus begin picking up the toppled table and chairs. I remain standing, Desto’s bulk near me enough of a deterrent to any half-cocked attempt at retribution I may be planning.
Vitruzzi waves her hand at the chair I’d been using before, wanting me to sit. I don’t. Her eyebrows crease in anger, and she takes her own seat. After a moment, only Strahan, Desto, and I remain standing.
Bodie speaks for the first time. Leaning forward in his chair, eyes brimming with compassion, he says, “Imagine it from our perspective, Aly. We’ve all got friends who were on the Sky Serpent. We’re just trying to help them. You would do the same for your brother, wouldn’t you?”
What he says is 100 percent true, and everyone here knows it. I’ve already betrayed Rajcik, who had, despite our association with the Corps, given my brother and I an opportunity to escape that life and start a new one. You could argue that I owe him something. Or did. His decision to betray us and let David die changed that.
I take one last deep breath to rein in my temper and sit in the chair. “All right. Look. I can’t prove anything I’m telling you. But the fact is, Rajcik is willing and able to do whatever it takes to get that bomb. And he won’t share the profit or change the mission plan. Not even to try and rescue my brother. So fuck him. There’s a chance that David is still alive, and I’m going to find him. That’s the truth.” And I think Rajcik plans to kill me anyway, but I’ll keep that to myself.
Venus walks toward me and, surprisingly, grasps my hands between her own as if trying to reassure me. “We understand, Aly.”
Vitruzzi continues to glare at me stoically for a few more seconds. Then she says, “Everyone take twenty minutes then meet back in the command room. Let’s take a look at the disc and see what we have.”
FOURTEEN
The room empties. Without another word to me, Vitruzzi raises her hand in a halting gesture, motioning for me to stay and wait, and catches up with Brady outside. Their voices carry through the door, modulating between loud and fast and slow and quiet, and bits of the conversation filter in to me.
“…trust her.”
“When you’re responsible for the lives of one hundred and twenty people, Eleanor, you’ll think before bringing scum like them…”
“…no other chance to save Doug and Zeta! We’ve got Rajcik where we want him…”
When they return a few minutes later, Vitruzzi’s face is set in hard lines, angry but determined. Brady remains surly and won’t look at me. I’d overheard enough for it to be clear that he’d never agreed with Vitruzzi about bringing me to Spectra 6, and would probably prefer to have me dead and buried rather than be given any more opportunity to endanger the settlement. I didn’t hear what she said to persuade him, but his opinion of me, no matter how misguided it is, could be an obstacle to a smooth mission outcome. I’ll just have to keep as much distance between us as I can and hope that he listens to Vitruzzi. It complicates things, but right now he has to be considered hostile and potentially dangerous.
“Tell us what Rajcik plans to do and what he’s capable of,” Brady says.
There’s no hesitation in my response, betrayal or not. When Rajcik had called me loyal, he’d underestimated how far that loyalty is capable of extending, and there’s a subtle eagerness in my voice as I answer, “The Temptation isn’t your biggest concern. The ship is nothing more than an escape vehicle with a few smuggling holds that allow us to hide stolen goods. Our pilot—I mean Rajcik’s pilot—a man named Thompson, is good, but no match for Venus. The Sphynx is slower, but it’s more maneuverable and takes less time to get up to speed, so she may be able to catch up to Rajcik within atmosphere if she has to. It’s the Temptation’s shuttle that you need to be concerned about. It carries a retractable, fully auto orbital gun with nuke-tipped ammo.”
“You’re talking about a Nagasaki?”
“Yes. It stays on the shuttle in order to keep it hidden from Corps ship scanners. But it could tear up Agate Beach in seconds if it gets close enough.”
“How close?”
“Within twenty K.”
“Anything else?”
“Rajcik won’t try to assault the colony by land. I’m not sure how much he knows about the area or about the mine. But if he targets Agate Beach and hits the mine, it could cave in.”
The two of them share a long look and both stand. “All right, let’s get to the command room.”
In my mind, the issue of the tracking device is unresolved, but it’s moot at this point. I may hate the fact that I have a microscopic apparatus inside my skin that’s concealed by my own tissue, but I have to give Vitruzzi credit. It’s difficult to believe that the Admin would let someone with her medical talents slip through their fingers. What’s she doing here? Her empathy, compassion, and superlative medical skills don’t add up with her choice to live in the gutters of the Algol system and risk her life in a criminal enterprise that’s doomed to fail. It all contradicts what she must have come from. The only people who live on the outskirts are people with nothing to lose. The first time I saw her, wearing cross-draw holsters and an interrogator’s blank expression, she seemed no different than hundreds of others I’ve met out here—a small-time crook. By now, I’ve spent enough time around her and her crew to realize that’s not even close to who she really is, or was. I wonder if she has a hard time sleeping at night with the choices she’s made.
The three of us take the Rover back to the mine, cold silence our uneasy companion. The tension is thick, but I’m beyond caring. I just want to see some progress. Plans have been set in motion now, and all that’s left is to carry them out. To the end.
When we reach the mine’s interior chamber, Brady leads the way into what Vitruzzi had called their command room, a chamber carved out of the rock walls beneath the communications annex. It must have been used as the foreman’s office when the mining operations were still active. There’s a heavy steel door at the entrance that can’t be opened without inputting a key code. They keep it secure, and I see why once we get inside.
I don’t know what I expected, hadn’t even really thought about what kind of technology this rag-tag settlement might have collected, but when I get a look inside, it’s almost as if I’m back in the Corps.
The walls are lined with computers and VDUs, scanners, robotic devices, and, most importantly, a holodisc reader. The far corner of the room is stocked with lab machines unlike any I’ve seen, but they’re obviously expensive and highly specialized.
Everyone is standing around the disc reader. I walk up next to Bodie while Vitruzzi loads the disc and quietly ask, “Where does all this equipment come from?”
“This? It’s…on loan from the local fleet.” Meaning it’s stolen.
“Yeah, but why is it here? And what are all of those machines for over there?” I gesture toward the bank of computers lining the north wall.
He hesitates before answering long enough to give me the sense he’s hiding something. “Uh, those are for geologic analysis. Most of this stuff comes from Ministry of S&E excavation ships. That’s how I find replacements when something breaks.”
“And is this just a hobby, or is there a reason you’re so interested in the rock on this planet?”
He smiles at me indulgently. “Solar seeds are a geologic anomaly. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only things in the universe that has properties we couldn’t even conceive of until we found them. Maybe there’s more to find.” He pauses. “Besides, you can
take the scientist out of the lab, but you can’t take the lab out of the scientist.”
Whatever that means. Is that really all this stuff is? Or are they up to something else? The more time I spend with them, the more I realize that there is much, much more than meets the eye with these people. If I weren’t so concerned about my own problems, maybe I would pay more attention, but right now, I simply don’t have the time or energy to investigate.
Lights beam upward from the disc reader, quickly organizing themselves into the shape of the Fortress. With each layer of the full complex illuminated, the hovering display is a chaotic jumble of lines, rooms, walls, ducts, materials, and tunnels. By selecting from different options presented on screen readouts on both sides of the table, variable views can be chosen to see exactly, and only, what interests us at the moment. It’s a way to peel back the space station layer by layer and figure out what we’re dealing with.
Brady makes the first choice, a schematic showing the location of all security screens, checkpoints, and sensors, and all eyes turn toward the display.
* * *
Four hours pass like salt grains through a bullet hole, trickling thickly by, every suggestion congealing around one central barrier—we still don’t know where the station is. Every possible scenario to infiltrate the space station once we’re there has been discussed down to microscopic detail, and the crew’s ideas have been well-informed and precise, consistent with the behavior I’m getting more and more used to. Tactical planning isn’t a new vocation for them.
Once inside the station, movement should be fairly easy. Armed sentries are posted at the major sensitive areas: the weapons development labs at the station’s fore, each entry into the station’s command and control center, located in the belly, and the main entrances to the biochem labs at the lower-level stern and scattered around the docking bays. Collectively, the Corps units providing security on the station are a huge force, way too big for us to deal with. But if we can get in without being detected, we’ll only have to neutralize the immediate on-site personnel, who will mostly be composed of doctors and scientists. With enough deception, surprise, and luck—mostly luck—we could be in and out before the main security forces know we’re there.