by Tammy Salyer
Standing a kilometer beneath the surface in a sealed and secured room on Spectra 6, the plan sounds deceptively feasible. Except…it all supposes we can first locate and then get inside the station, which is where we need magic, a miracle, or an army. Rajcik’s plan to gain access under the guise of a supply ship could work on two conditions: control of an Admin supply ship, or at least a similarly sized ship with replicable engine signatures, and the personnel call signs and identification numbers of a scheduled delivery run. I can only assume T’Kai packaged these details with the disc for Rajcik, but that doesn’t do us any good. If he has them, he didn’t include them with the copy he gave me. Besides, from what I’ve seen around here, there’s no ship in the settlement’s pool large enough to imitate a supply ship.
Once inside the Fortress we’ll have to rely on wits, reflexes, and the ability to adapt. We all know that; it doesn’t need to be discussed. It’s not knowing the two most important elements of the plan, namely where the station is and how we’re going to get in, that overstretches our nerves close to the breaking point, and the strain is beginning to show. Vitruzzi presses her palms to her temples in frustration again, yanking her thick hair, now shiny and lank from repeated handling, out of the way. The lines around Brady’s massive facial scar have deepened as his irritation at our lack of resources grows, leaving a dark, severe crevasse running down his face. Desto and Strahan are the only ones who don’t seem to be losing focus, their enthusiasm for cracking this problem actually increasing as the options seem to whittle down to almost nothing. Theirs is the kind of determination and intensity that you want for this kind of mission, even if it is a suicide attempt.
Finally, Vitruzzi slaps both her palms flat on the display table, causing the image over it to waver ghostlike for a second, and says, “That’s it. We’re not getting anywhere tonight. As much as I hate to say it,” she gives me an unreadable look, “I think we have to accept that Rajcik may have given us a janky disc. We can’t even tell from these where the Sky Serpent crew is being held. There’s no indication of a prison area or anything like it.”
From most people, this kind of speech would sound like an admission of defeat. But from her, it sounds like what it is: frustration, and a subtle but malicious seed of growing desperation. She’s not giving up. None of them look like the thought has even crossed their minds. In a strange way, it makes me feel better. We’ve barely scratched the surface tonight, but being among a group that’s willing to face the worst possible odds with total resolve gives me a reason to hope. Maybe I’m lying to myself about David’s chances, and about their friends’ chances, but if there’s any way of pulling this off, we’ll find it.
Brady straightens up from where he’s been focusing intensely on the sub docks around the station’s fore. “We need to take a break. Let’s reassemble in three hours. We’ve got to be missing something. Maybe with a fresh outlook…” He trails off.
With a collective nod, everyone agrees. It’s late, probably only a couple hours until sun-up. Sleep and some time to clear our heads can’t hurt anything. Yet I wait at the far end of the control room as everyone else leaves, their footsteps heavy. I’m just as exhausted and my jaw continues to throb from MacCready’s punch, but I can go on feeling like this indefinitely.
Everyone passes through the heavy doors except Vitruzzi. She turns to wait for me, refusing to leave me alone in the command room. “Are you coming?”
“I’d prefer to keep looking. Time is short.”
She pauses, considering whether fighting with me is worth the effort, and says, “No one is giving up, Erikson. And for this to work, we all have to be operating at full capacity. You look like shit. Maybe you should try and get some sleep.”
Blunt, but true. She’s made her point. It has been almost twenty hours since I left Agate Beach early this morning and what I need most right now is the ability to think straight. “Yeah, all right.” I follow her out and make my way to my bunk on the Sphynx.
* * *
It seems like only seconds have passed since I lay down when my wrist com beeps me back to awareness. Ghostly iridescent lines of the space station’s schematics crisscross the darkness, permanently drawn on my mind’s eye and I wearily sit up and strap on my boots. As I walk down the metal ramp to join the others in the control room, voices come to me from the front of the ship.
“He ran, just like we expected. Took one of the land crafts. Looks like he’s been in the com annex, too. If he convinced Rajcik that he knows what he says he does, he may have already been picked up.”
Vitruzzi and Strahan. I stop walking, listening quietly.
“All right, we planned for this. Find Desto and Venus and get the Sphynx up in the air. I want you all locked on Rajcik’s shuttle within the hour. And check in with Bodie; he’s in the control room. Tell him to find out exactly where Vilbrandt is.”
That slippery bastard. Strahan said they were keeping an eye on him, but who was watching him when we’d all been at Brady’s after I met with Rajcik? Vilbrandt must have gotten impatient and risked contacting Rajcik on his own. Rajcik had been angry when he heard how many people knew about the operation to steal the Nova, but what I’d told him about Vilbrandt may be enough to tempt him to consider whatever scheme Vilbrandt proposes. If Vilbrandt knows what he says he knows…Rajcik is no fool. He won’t underestimate the value of Vilbrandt’s information and may take full advantage of insider knowledge to increase his own odds. Then what’ll happen to Vilbrandt? Not what he expects, I’m sure.
Vitruzzi’s decision to send the Sphynx up, presumably to intercept the Temptation’s shuttle, is interesting. What good will it do? The Sphynx may once have been weaponized, but now it’s just a decommissioned transport ship that the Nagasaki will easily turn into dust.
I emerge from the ramp, ready to jump into the middle of their plan and find out where I fit. Vitruzzi nods at me in a way that indicates she knows I overheard them. “Come with me. It’s time to call Rajcik.”
“Vitruzzi, there’s nothing stopping him at this point from wiping out Agate Beach. What are you going to do?”
Without answering, she walks toward the lift, assuming I’ll follow the way any captain assumes unquestioned authority. As if I’m just part of the crew.
On the ride up, Venus, Brady, and Strahan board the Sphynx below us and the lift cables begin thrumming in legato vibration as the ship’s engines cycle up. Vitruzzi grips the lift’s handrail hard enough to make the veins in her hands pop to the surface. It’s the grasp of an overboard sailor around a life preserver, which is ironically close to the truth.
Once inside, she quickly dials-in a frequency and sends her voice into the morning: “Agate Beach hailing the Temptation, over.”
Hardly a minute passes before the VDU lights up and the pinched, sour face of Ahsan Yadav looks out at us. “Yeah.”
“This is Captain Eleanor Vitruzzi. Get me Rajcik.”
He sneers. “Wait one.”
The screen blanks out briefly and then comes back on. Rajcik, sitting at the familiar flight deck console of the Temptation, leans back in his seat, relaxed, leveling his discomfiting shark grin at us.
“Captain Eleanor Vitruzzi. Not an unexpected transmission. Did you call to ask for your scientist back?” His eyes shift to me and hold there for an uncomfortable second before he continues, “Maybe to trade one defector for another?”
Realization hits me with the force of a rocketing meteor as it strikes the planet; Vilbrandt had overheard the conversation I’d had with Vitruzzi and Brady and spilled it all to Rajcik. If I ever see that sewer rat again, he’ll wish he’d died at birth.
Vitruzzi’s voice is all business, almost robotic. “You still have something we need. It’s not Vilbrandt.”
The tiny wrinkles that deepen around his eyes indicate a hint of annoyance. “Vitruzzi, there’s nothing stopping me from wiping you off the map right now. You should remember that. That’s right, Aly,” he focuses on me for the first time, “
Vilbrandt shared your little rebellion. I knew someday you’d turn on me.”
Vitruzzi cuts him off. “Rajcik, I just sent you a feed. It’s in your best interest to watch it. Right now.”
He gazes at her for a moment before reaching forward to his communication console and turning on a second monitor. Simultaneously, Vitruzzi switches on a display embedded below her main screen, letting us see what he’s seeing.
A live feed of the Temptation appears, docked in a deep ravine and surrounded by steep canyon walls on three sides. A rock cornice hangs over the ship, hiding most of it, but the light glinting off the rear thrusters leaves no doubt what it is.
He looks at his display calmly for a moment, then back at Vitruzzi. “That’s very clever, Captain. I don’t know how you found my ship, but I feel it necessary to warn you that there’s a—”
She cuts him off again, “Short-range shuttle equipped with a Nagasaki en route to Agate Beach. I know. It has been accounted for as well.”
Exactly how many cards does she have up her sleeve? Rajcik has revealed something useful: he doesn’t know how she found his ship. That means either Vilbrandt hadn’t stuck around long enough to learn about the tracking device, or he’d hidden that information from Rajcik. Is he bugged, too? He’s smart enough to realize the liability he’d instantly become if Rajcik knew they could track the Temptation through him, plenty of incentive to keep it a secret if he is. Even if Vitruzzi had homed in on my tracking device yesterday, how and when they had an opportunity to set up surveillance is a mystery.
She continues, “Now that I have your attention, I want you to listen very carefully. This is what’s going to happen. In addition to the disc you’ve already handed over, you’re going to give us the coordinates to the Fortress. Because we’re reasonable people, we’ll give you ten kilos of solar seeds for them. I’m giving you a chance to be reasonable and take us up on our offer.”
The black bullet tattooed on Rajcik’s Adam’s apple ripples as he swallows, and the muscles in his jaw twitch spasmodically. “And why would I do any of this?”
“If you don’t, I’ll give the command to detonate seismic blasting charges loaded throughout the canyon around you and bury you under so much rock the Algols will burn out before anyone finds you. Then we’ll blow your shuttle from the sky.” She leans forward a little, her intensity holding his attention like a magnet. “If you don’t believe me, Rajcik, I can give you a demonstration.”
We’re both staring at her, me in surprise, Rajcik in something like demonic hate. Finally he says, “Captain Vitruzzi,” putting a sneering emphasis on the word ‘captain,’ “I have exactly zero tolerance for games.” The fact that he doesn’t say what he wants to say—prove it—makes it clear that he’s close enough to believing her that he’s not taking the chance.
She clicks a switch next to a microphone and, without taking her eyes from the screen, says, “Bodie.”
“Yeah.” Bodie’s voice comes back over the speaker, loud enough for Rajcik to hear at his end.
“Give the crew in the canyon a mild shake along the north wall.”
“Roger.”
Vitruzzi doesn’t say anything, but within a few moments small pebbles begin to jump and cascade down the side of canyon, dust blooming like desert ghosts from the walls in all directions.
Rajcik’s image vibrates just slightly as the earth around him shakes. His upper lip curls in a wicked sneer that makes my blood run cold. “All right, Vitruzzi. Now what?”
“Call off your shuttle. Meet me in two hours where your crewmember found Erikson in Hell’s Gate. I’ll bring your seeds. You bring us the coordinates. If your ship’s engines start to cycle, I won’t hesitate to bury it. Am I clear?”
Rajcik looks off to his left and gives the order: “Ortiz, tell Fedchenko and Thompson to get back here immediately.” Dropping his dark gaze back on Vitruzzi, he threatens, “See you then,” and closes the connection.
Vitruzzi sighs deeply and looks at me. The surprise must still be stamped on my face because she says, “You didn’t really think all the equipment we have in the control room was just for analyzing dirt, did you?”
“I’m starting to not know what to think.”
“We stay prepared, and we stay safe. Let’s get moving.”
FIFTEEN
Twenty minutes later we’re in the Sphynx’s shuttle flying low over the canyon system headed back to Hell’s Gate. We’ll get there early, giving us enough time to scope the surrounding area and see if Rajcik’s managed to set up an ambush. Given that up to this point he’s had absolutely no idea what Vitruzzi and her crew have been capable of, it’s doubtful he could have come up with anything unexpected, but with him, there’s never enough margin of safety.
Two rows of crew seats are packed against opposing walls inside the narrow shuttle, filling the fuselage from the cockpit to the engine compartment. Strahan flies with Vitruzzi as copilot, and Desto sits across the aisle from me. I’m focused on the brown dirt speeding by outside the window screens when I catch Vitruzzi glance over her shoulder at Desto. Something in the look puts me on instant alert.
Desto turns to me, his left hand held out. His right rests on the butt of his pistol. “Hand over your weapons, Erikson.”
“What?” I look to Vitruzzi sharply, not believing this is happening.
Desto keeps his voice pitched low, trying to keep the situation calm. “Don’t make this hard, we just want to make sure everyone stays safe. Give them here, slowly.”
Any ideas of resistance melt away at the implacability of his face, as if they are so much useless ice under a burning sun. “Everyone safe? What about me?” I spit the words as I pull out my Sinbad and hand it to him stock first, followed by the Mini-Derg. “I thought we were on the same side.”
“We’ll watch out for you, Erikson. But we can’t take any chances,” Vitruzzi responds, deflecting my unbelieving fury with impassivity, and turns back to the front.
I still have my body armor, that’s something. But my AK-80 is hung up in the rack at the rear next to the barrel of solar seeds for Rajcik, and it looks as if that’s where it will stay. Desto wedges my Sinbad under the belt of his equipment vest near his left hip and deposits the Derg in a pocket.
Sinking back into my seat, I wait for intermission to end and let this bad dream continue.
Soon, Strahan is passing the shuttle over Hell’s Gate, taking a couple of low turns while he and Vitruzzi scan the streets, on the lookout for anything suspicious. I’ve ceased paying attention as I brace for the meeting but catch Strahan point out something to Vitruzzi on the first pass. She nods. My guess is that they’ve spotted the Temptation’s shuttle. Rajcik would have used it to get to the rendezvous.
When they’re satisfied that nothing looks out of the ordinary, she turns and faces Desto and I. “This is how it will go down. Bodie is our eyes and ears from the control room back at the Beach, watching Rajcik’s ship. Patrick and Venus are on the Sphynx, in position to deal with any other contingency.” She turns to Strahan. “Once we land, get back in the air and be ready for a quick extraction. The three of us will meet with Rajcik. If you don’t hear from me within the hour, tell Patrick. If Rajcik pulls any shit, make sure his ship never leaves that canyon.”
As she finishes speaking, Strahan brings the shuttle to a static hover at the town’s edge. Desto and Vitruzzi unsnap their harnesses and prepare to dismount.
Pulling my own harness off my shoulders, I ask, “So what exactly do you want me to do?”
She unlocks the shuttle’s hatch and pushes it out to serve as our exit ramp. “Whatever comes naturally, Erikson.” What the hell does that mean? “Let’s move,” she finishes.
The bar’s atmosphere is like an ancient, primitive cave with danger crouching in every shadow. Rajcik sits with his back to the wall of the dingy room like the deity of cannibals, ready to receive prayers and pleas for mercy. No other customers are present, which I know from my previous visit is unusual. Either the pa
trons of this particular dive are savvy enough to know when there’s too much danger to risk a drink, or Rajcik simply threatened to kill anyone who didn’t leave. The only person left is the bar pilot, the same haggard woman who’d been here a couple of days ago, ready to serve.
None of this is interesting or even important to me. At the moment, my full focus is on the smuggler, looking as relaxed as an overfed snake, and the two compatriots he brought with him. It’s no surprise to see MacCready’s disfigured face to Rajcik’s right, and Ortiz sits a short distance off to his left. I can too easily imagine a variety of possible outcomes to this situation, and few of them are good.
An electrical fizz from a broken sign hanging behind the bar suffuses the air, and the clinking of glasses being wiped off by the bar pilot with all the enthusiasm of a condemned criminal adds to the noise. The two sounds combine in a muted nerve-jangling racket, as if part of a symphony played on thousand-year-old instruments that have long since decayed into relics and dust, making my teeth want to grind.
Let’s get this over with. As I cross the empty room and sit without pretense, Rajcik’s relaxed posture doesn’t change. Using more caution, Vitruzzi’s dark eyes, their impenetrable blackness exactly the same as Rajcik’s, scan the room, pausing briefly when they come to Ortiz and MacCready. She approaches nonchalantly, but her pistols are unhooked, ready for action. Desto remains standing next to the door, guarding against unwelcome intruders and keeping some distance in case of close-quarter firing.
Without waiting for an introduction, she jumps right into it. “Did you bring what we agreed on?”