by Zach Winderl
“Solid.” Atom turned and continued on towards the crew quarters. “Let’s see if we can’t scrounge something for you.”
***
“Do you really trust her?” Kozue asked as Atom stepped inside the berth he shared with Margo and pulled his ratty brown coat off the hook just inside his hatch.
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
“Meaning?”
“I don’t think she would ever try to kill me.” Atom pulled his rail-pistol from a shelf and looked it over with his expert eye. “She’s already had more than enough chances to put me down and she’s passed each time.”
“But what if she’s kept you alive for the information in your head?”
“Death options predate that information.”
“I don’t trust her, Atom.”
“I don’t either, with the treasure.” Atom holstered his pistol and flipped his coat down to cover the firearm. “I’m pretty sure she would take an opportunity to walk away with the entirety of the treasure, but not at the cost of my life.”
“What do we do?”
“Float like a leaf on the wind.” Atom smiled at the reference and picked Margo up from where she sat on the bed.
“One step ahead of the rain,” Kozue continued the quote. “Statistically speaking, there’s a 68% chance she betrays you.”
“I hate it when you stop sounding like my wife.” Atom scowled up at the ceiling as Margo played with his collar, trying in vain to tuck it under the edge of his coat. “Kozue never spouted numbers at me.”
“No, but she studied them,” Kozue’s retort caught Atom off guard.
“And her tongue was quick,” said Atom with a laugh.
“Quick like a mongoose.” The AI shared his laughter. “I’ll keep eyes on Lilly, but recall that you trust her somewhat.”
“30%”
“32% for precision,” Kozue snarked back.
***
Atom looked over his motley crew with a touch of pride as they circled up at the hold’s side hatch. They had been fired in the crucible of his personal war and emerged stronger on the other side.
“How you see this goin’?” Shi drawled as she pulled the hood of her thermo-skin up over her head to cover all but her eyes and nose. She worked her jaw to settle the thin material. “Is there any intel on what we’re moseyin’ into?”
“We’re just aiming to chat.” Atom watched as she adjusted her familiar poncho. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just wear a jacket?”
“Sure, boss, but I fancy my poncho. This way I don’t look all crammed up like y’all. Plus, my ladies are handier when I ain’t a puffer.” She flipped her poncho back to reveal the deadly vipers strapped at her hips.
Atom nodded as he turned and slapped open the hatch. Icy wind swept into the hold, swirling about their legs like sinuous ice cats. The crew hunched into the gale with uniform pain as they stepped out into the fresh morning air. Atom led the way, pushing the bubble-insulated pram before him like an ice breaker.
“Be careful with your….” Atom started as Byron let out a yowl like a possessed beast. “Breath.”
Atom grimaced in understanding. “The cold will freeze your snot.”
A string of expletives lanced from Byron’s mouth as the boy clutched at his face.
Hither wrapped an arm around the boy and pulled him close, even as she grinned behind her thermo-skin shield. Turning into the wind, Atom squinted and pressed forward.
Behind them the hatch snapped shut.
“Lock her down, Koze,” said Atom. He shielded his eyes against the biting wind as he turned to Lilly. “You got a heading? I can’t see anything through the ice glare.’
Lilly squinted as she unfolded her holo-pad and pulled up terrain mapping. As she rotated, the map re-oriented. “Looks like the hab should be just over that ridge there.” She waved at an ice rill rising off to their right.
Atom turned, and with head bowed against the wind, led the way up the incline. The others fell in step behind him, crunching through ice rime into the shin deep powder beneath. They walked in single file, their shadows casting long fingers along the colorless landscape.
The trek proved easy enough, but the bitter cold stole breath, and made the going slower than Atom would have liked.
“There she is.” Lilly pointed to the low-slung habitation bubble that rose from the icy plain, a man-made blister on the face of the planet.
“Looks to be a single-family unit.” Atom halted and the others stepped up to form a line on the crest of the ridge. “How far from town are we? I couldn’t imagine living too far from other people on a planet like this.”
“Up the valley, in that cleft.” Lilly pointed to an ice ridge several miles across the open snow. “See that steam plume? That’s their powerplant borehole, just beyond the dome of their little town.”
“How’d we miss that coming in?” Daisy asked.
“It’s down the hole, below the surface. It’s easier to conserve heat down there out of the wind. And the town is under a bubble, kind of like this one.”
“Speaking of, let’s get out of this,” Atom cut in. “Do they know we’re coming?”
Hither replied, her voice muffled by a heavy scarf. “I sent a message to the coordinates Lilly gave me with an open introduction and greeting.”
“Any response?”
“Not before we left the ship,” Hither said and looked to Lilly. The baug glanced at her pad and shook her head.
“Well, I suppose we should just go knock on the door.” Atom powered up the pram and set out down the low ridge. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy dawdling in this breeze any longer than we have to.”
The others watched Atom stride forward, the pram running before him compressing a path with its suspensors until they joined a well packed track arrowing to the front hatch. He followed with one hand on the pram and the other shielding his eyes from the ripping wind as the flaps of his coat whipped about his legs beneath the puffy tuck of his thermal jacket. With his head turned from the wind, Atom pressed toward the hatch to the hab.
He glanced back and spurred the others into motion without a word.
A few minutes more brought Atom to the entrance and into a short tunnel that protected him from most of the wind, if not the bitter cold. “I can’t tell if I can feel my toes,” he muttered to Kozue before the others joined him.
He reached out to hit the door chimes, but hesitated.
“Byron, take a look at that.” He gestured to the wiring hanging from the bottom of the door controls.
Stepping to the side, he hiked up his thermal puff and drew his rail-pistol. Following suit, the others pressed themselves to the wall, their eyes alert even as the howling wind deadened their ears.
Only Byron remained unarmed as he scowled at the controls.
“Rough bypass,” he yelled, playing with the wiring. “They ripped fer speed, not finesse.”
“Who is they?” Atom asked.
Byron shrugged. “Guts splayed.” He shifted his hood to scratch his head. “Could be anykin aimin’ fer a quick in an’ out. They din kill the controls, so that means they wanted this ‘ere door to keep workin’.”
“Get us inside,” Atom snapped.
“On it.” Byron twisted several wires together and the door slid open.
Atom ignored the wall of warmth that caressed his face as he slipped through the hatch. Just inside the door, he shed his puffy jacket and dropped it where he stood. The others unlimbered as well, and pressed to the walls as they edged forward.
Byron, last in, closed the doors with a whisper that locked out the howling of the wind. Silence settled over them.
A thud reverberated through the floor as the circulator cycled on to combat the heat loss at the hatch. It completed the cycle and fell silent.
Atom slapped the inner hatch open and maneuvered the pram over the threshold into a lush garden, fifty paces across. Rising in tiers of hydroponic life, the garden housed enough food
stuff to feed a family of ten with left-overs.
“Blood.” Shi scented the air like a hound.
They moved.
“Clear.” Atom stalked through the orderly rows of plants to the far side of the hab as the others fanned out and combed through the gardens.
“It’s empty,” Hither called out from the left flank.
“Same,” Daisy replied from the opposite side.
“Then we go down,” Atom said as he approached a ramp descending into the soil along the curved wall of the hab.
Without waiting for the others, he pushed the pram down the ramp. He kept his pistol drawn in his hand. Dropping the insulating bubble on the pram, he instead flicked up the shields as he stole around the curve into the first level of habitation. The ramp opened into a broad living area comprised of an open kitchen, dining table, and recreation area. The outer wall stood lined with open doors that appeared to house the family storage.
The family sat around the table.
Atom drifted to a stop when he saw them. The others, flowing down the ramp, halted when they caught sight of Atom standing motionless.
“What’s wrong?” Hither hissed.
Lilly stole down to Atom and shed a soft curse.
“They’re all dead,” Atom grunted and continued his downward spiral.
At the base of the ramp he positioned the pram to guard their escape route. Margo looked to him, then returned her attention to folding and unfolding her blanket. With his pistol ready, Atom made a quick circuit of the room, checking each of the storage lockers before spiraling his way in toward the table.
The rest of the crew stood around the dead family in silent reverence.
“Shi, Daisy, sweep the lower levels.” Atom holstered his gun. “I don’t want any surprises.”
Without a word, the pair trotted away.
Atom circled the table, examining the scene with his expert eye.
“I’m guessing this is Mr. Blonde.” He came to stand behind the seat at the head of the table where a grizzled man with long grey hair slumped. Blood wept from a gaping hole in place of the man’s jaw.
Resting a hand on the back of the man’s neck, Atom looked at Hither. “He still has some heat. This can’t have happened too long ago.”
“Then they could still be here?” Lilly asked.
“Doubtful.” Atom looked around the corpse table. “I’m guessing they got what they came for.”
“Or they didn’t.”
“Then why kill them all?” Hither asked.
“No witness, or maybe they were leverage.” Lilly tapped at her temples and studied the scene. “Their temperature is on a scale.”
“What?” Atom gave her a quizzical look.
“Ocular implants.” She spread her fingers as if to display her eyes. “I can cycle through the full spectrum as well as thermal and a few other trickier visual aids. I can see that their temperatures run in a circle around the table. They are only a degree or two different, not enough to tell an individual story, but I can look at the whole picture. It would appear that whoever was looking for information moved through the family from oldest to youngest.
“They killed the little girl last, right before her father.” Lilly blinked her eyes back to normal and dropped her head. “I don’t think he gave them what they wanted.”
“Why do you think that?” Atom asked.
“The kills were spaced out.” Lilly took time to look over each of the victims. “It looks like he was given time to think things over.
“If he had given them the information, they would have executed the family in a shorter time span.” Lilly scowled at the table and walked closer to Blonde. She bent over and studied the remnants of his face. “I don’t think he knew anything. There’s nothing in any of his files to indicate he could withstand torture. Especially for information that meant nothing to him.
“He was just a farmer caught up in something bigger than he knew,” she said with a sigh.
Daisy and Shi returned.
“Empty,” Daisy said with a shake of his head. “What are we finding up here?”
“Not a thing.” Atom tapped his pistol against his thigh and then holstered the weapon. “It appears the boke didn’t know anything. Maybe this is a clear sign we are in over our heads and should cut our losses.”
“Maybe,” Hither replied as he looked around at the downcast crew. “But the least we could do is clean things up and set the family presentable for the townsfolk.”
Daisy nodded in agreement.
“Any chance this is the wrong Blonde?” Shi asked, pulling her hood back and roughing up her spiky blonde hair.
Atom cocked an eyebrow at her and then glanced to Lilly.
“I don’t think so.” Lilly frowned, her eyes moving as if tracing unseen pathways. “His was the highest probability, by far.”
She dipped her fingers in the man’s blood. Rubbing her fingers together, she stood for a silent moment, focused inward. “DNA matches perfectly. This is the man we were looking for. As to whether he is the man we needed, that’s a touch less certain.”
“But he didn’t know anything?” Hither pondered.
Atom wandered to the family rec area and dropped onto a plush seat. He scratched his stubbled jaw, willing a solution to manifest itself.
Margo grew tired of her blanket and looked out over the scene.
“Dead, dada?” she asked as she monkeyed down from the pram.
“Yes, Margo.” Atom flashed a sad smile that overrode his frustration.
The others sidled over and took seats in the rec area. They began speaking in hushed tones, firing through ideas and thoughts, both about the location and the attackers.
As they discoursed, Margo made her way to the table to wander in slow a circle. She took time to look up at each of the dead as if to memorize their faces. Stopping at the youngest daughter, she stole out a hand and caressed the dead hand with a heartbroken look of sorrow. As she turned to continue around the table, something caught her eye.
The sound of a scooting chair caught Atom’s attention and with a quick jerk of his hand, the conversation fell. He turned and watched as Margo pushed aside the little girl’s chair with all the care a two-year-old could muster. The dead child slipped, but Margo laid a gentle, steady hand on the body and settled the corpse.
“What are you doing, Margo?” Atom leaned forward, trying to match her height and see what had caught her eye.
“Picture, dada.” Margo crouched down and crab-walked under the edge of the table.
“Where?”
“Bottom the table,” she said, pointing up as she looked back at Atom with a proud smile.
Like a dart, Atom hopped over the back of his seat and covered the distance to the table in two long strides. Dropping to his knees besides Margo, he craned his neck to see the underside of the long table.
“What is it?” Lilly demanded as she led the others and followed him to the table.
“It’s a ship’s insignia,” he said in wonderment. “We’re definitely in the right place. This is the captain’s table from the Ave Maria. Kozue just confirmed.”
Daisy clasped his hands behind his head as he circled to the far side of the table. “I don’t get it. If the ship’s going down, why would you toss a table on the skiff? Just three people and a table?” He crouched down and tucked his head between two of the bodies to peer at the carving on the underside of the table. “Why not save as many people as possible?”
“Could be a trust issue. Or could be they didn’t want to be saved. Or maybe they weren’t in as much trouble as the stories would have us believe.” Atom rose and gestured for Shi to lend a hand as he pulled one of the chairs out and grabbed the body under the arms. Together they carried a middling child and laid him with care on the open floor beside the ramp. “Whatever they were carrying aboard that ship was too valuable to let it fall into just anyone’s hands. I’m guessing there was a kill order on the crew and they all knew it.
�
��The cap made a judgement call.” He knelt and crossed the child’s arms upon his chest. “They went down with the ship … unless the ship didn’t go down,” he said, pondering the possibilities.
“Either way, the ship is lost for the moment,” Daisy said as he scooped the smallest child and held her against his chest. “But why the table? Was the cap planning some galactic-scale treasure hunt from the beginning? We going to find a treasure egg at the end of this trail? There has to be some overlaying plan to have all these scattered bits coming together.” He laid the girl beside her brother with reverence.
“I don’t know,” Atom said, casting a glance to Lilly, who shrugged back.
The others followed suit and the dead soon lay in a long line, from oldest to youngest. Hither found blankets in a heavy wooden chest and draped them over the bodies.
Then, as if it weighed nothing, Daisy flipped the table, taking care not to damage any part of the heavy wooden puzzle piece.
Atom ran his hands over the lower surface. “It’s smooth,” he muttered as he leaned close to examine the curves of the insignia. “Nebulous hand, sword and gun wreathed by the thorny rose of the emperor.
“She wasn’t Afkin….” He looked up at the other, puzzled. “The Ave Maria was imperial?”
“Then the story is wrong?” Daisy looked to Lilly.
“Intentionally?” she countered.
“I don’t know that it changes anything.” Atom rapped at the table, listening for any unique sound. “This reinforces that the ship is out there. Whether it’s imp or Afkin, we’ll find out when we find it.
“Now, listen for any hollow spots.” He bent his ear closer to the table.
Without hesitation, the others joined in. Even Margo followed suit.
After the crew had covered the table twice over, Kozue chipped in. “You look like a crew of fools,” she laughed. “I’m detecting a slight irregularity in the insignia. Run your hand over the Hand, especially towards the Fingers.”
The crew sat back with sheepish grins at their exuberance.