In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Send one of them toward the other ships,” Grant commanded. “And put the feed on screen.”

  “Has Thromberg responded?” Gail asked Tobo.

  “Not a word over regular channels. Unless the good commander has heard otherwise?” Tobo was unshakably convinced Grant’s experts could and did monitor every comm frequency shipside and out. Aware of how stretched the FDs were—especially after losing five of their own, Gail seriously doubted they were bothering with more than the emergency surveillance already in place.

  Grant’s lips twisted sardonically as he confirmed her thoughts. “Believe me, Captain, if we knew anything about this, I’d have told you both before now.”

  The ’bot’s feed was already showing on the screen—Grant must have kept them ready to relaunch despite her earlier disapproval. The assorted sounds on the bridge subsided as everyone’s attention was caught by the image.

  Thromberg’s curving side was presently black on black, punctuated by running lights marking the various docking ports and air locks. Most of these had gaps like missing teeth, as if replacing failed exterior lighting wasn’t a priority. Or, Gail realized, as if replacement parts were impossible to come by.

  The various docked ships splashed their own lights against the station, washing the darkness back in overlapping circles. Everything looked normal as the ’bot was taken closer in—

  “There! Veer left.” Krenshaw obeyed so quickly he must have already spotted what caught Grant’s eye.

  At first, all Gail saw was another work crew—there were several such. Business as usual, even-cycle day, Gail told herself. It was important to remember Thromberg never slept.

  Krenshaw dropped the ’bot closer.

  Not a work crew. They were looking down at a tight group of at least fifteen figures, in those patched suits Gail was beginning to find very familiar. They carried tools—tools that could be weapons.

  “A boarding party,” Tobo concluded unhappily, probably thinking of his own precious ship.

  Two of the figures looked up and pointed, one raising what appeared to be a grappler to aim at the ’bot. Just as Grant said: “Back it off,” Gail snapped: “Hold.”

  “Hold,” Grant confirmed, glancing at her.

  She’d recognized one of the suits. She was sure of it. Gail watched with the rest as the figure she thought might be Rosalind took a few steps away from the rest, staring up, then beckoned to the ’bot. Down, the gesture said.

  “Drop it down,” Grant said. “Slowly. We don’t have a limitless supply of these things.”

  Krenshaw brought the ’bot to hang directly in front of the figure’s helmet, but out of reach. The helmet, another museum piece but originally of higher quality than Pardell’s, reflected the ’bot rather than revealed anything, then the figure must have switched on the interior lights.

  The dim, blood-red glow shone over the cheekbones and brows of an unsmiling Rosalind Fournier. Gail released the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding.

  Rosalind mouthed some words, tapped her helmet, then pointed at the ’bot.

  “Krenshaw, scan and capture the local signal. Pipe it through.”

  It was Gail’s turn to look at the commander. How did the ’sider know something about the capabilities of Grant’s little spy satellites she didn’t?

  “—welcome to my world, Dr. Smith.” Slightly distorted, Rosalind’s voice remained exactly as Gail remembered it from their first meeting—calm and utterly sure of itself. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter 29

  MALLEY wasn’t good at waiting. Most things in his life moved when he’d wanted them to—usually right away. Even the daily ration line was something Malley couldn’t tolerate without a reader in his hand or a good argument underway. Aaron, always the more cautious, had long ago given up preaching the value of patience. But then Aaron would stand and count to a hundred and one just to be sure there wasn’t anyone watching him go home. A count he’d cheerfully restart at zero if Malley interrupted—and would continue to restart as many times as Malley chose to be a nuisance.

  Even Aaron’s patience might have been tested by now. The neurologist, Sazaad, gave every appearance of being hard at work, adjusting controls, muttering to himself, leaping up dramatically every so often to pace back and forth—with more muttering. All a great show of getting something done.

  With nothing to show for it.

  The metal seat of the stool felt as though it was growing attached to Malley’s behind, but he stayed in place. He wasn’t going to be the one to interrupt and restart this so-called genius.

  The only problem with sitting quietly was that it encouraged thoughts. Noisy, irritating, hard-to-ignore thoughts. Malley wasn’t sure which ones bothered him more: not knowing what was happening in the rest of the ship and on the station, or thinking about being on a ship and not on the station.

  He firmly quelled any tendency of his thoughts to wander into the dangerous territory guarded by dimples and deep blue eyes. Gail Smith might be many things, but a romantic fantasy she wasn’t—not if he was going to save Aaron and—

  Malley shifted on the hard metal. The “and” part was another path to steer away from, since it led inevitably to heart-pounding, mouth-drying panic. Aaron knew all about ships and the nasty, cold, black places surrounding them. Once they were ready to return to Thromberg, Malley would be content to shoot himself with a trank or two and let Aaron drag him around for a change.

  Not the most helpful of plans, but it did make sitting and staring a hole into the back of Sazaad’s head seem like progress.

  Chapter 30

  PROGRESS, of a kind. Gail rose to her feet without conscious plan, feeling as if Rosalind could see her and it was important to stand her ground. She’d wanted to talk to this ’sider again. Rosalind might be her only chance of finding Pardell’s ship and records.

  Facing off with an ultimatum between them hadn’t been part of the plan.

  “Rosalind Fournier,” Gail said evenly, trusting Grant’s people had set up the necessary comm links. “We’ve received your message. I’m not sure I understand what it has to do with us.”

  Being lit from below gave all the wrong shadows and impressions to a face. Still, Gail thought, the menace in Rosalind’s slow smile was probably accurate. “Time’s passing, Earther. Bring me on your ship and I’ll explain.”

  Gail ignored Grant’s silent but vehement “no.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  Rosalind’s helmet returned to being a reflection of the ’bot’s lenses. She seemed to take Gail at her word, gesturing to the others, then beginning to walk with surprising speed. The ’bot followed, giving an unnecessary view of the Seeker ahead.

  Grant growled something and the ’bot returned to watching the remaining ‘siders. The screen split, giving two new views of Rosalind’s approach as Krenshaw picked her up on the ship’s exterior vids.

  “May I ask why we are immersing ourselves deeper into Thromberg’s woes?” Tobo asked with deceptive mildness. “When we could simply leave?”

  “I have my reasons,” Gail told him, hoping he’d take that as “not here, with so many ears.”

  Grant was in full officer mode, standing at attention as if in mute reproach at her violation of what he doubtless viewed as minimal safety protocols. Fine, Gail thought, unrepentant. If safety was the important thing, they’d be back orbiting Titan by now. “Look after the details,” she told him. “I’ll be waiting in my office.”

  It wasn’t neutral ground, but Gail wanted every advantage in an encounter with Rosalind.

  Unfortunately, being seated behind an imposing wooden desk hadn’t helped. Rosalind had taken one look, sniffed, and said: “Biogen maple. You’d think Titan would have sprung for the real thing,” before taking her seat with the elegant confidence of a queen.

  “The Seeker is a working ship, not a liner,” Tobo replied, sounding offended. Gail silenced him with a look.

  It was the three of them and
the ’sider—Grant leaving his people outside the door this time, but keeping a portable comm link in one ear. Gail had thought, briefly, of including Malley. But his relationship with this woman was too unknown. They didn’t need complications such as had arisen on Thromberg. She’d also considered getting Forester in here—in case this was what Tobo thought, a purely internal matter. But again, there was likely history there.

  Gail was interested in the future.

  So, it seemed, was the leader of the Outsiders. “I’ll come straight to the point, Dr. Smith, Captain, Commander,” Rosalind nodded graciously to each. “This ship is the signal from Sol System my people have been waiting for all these years. The time has come to leave our prison and reclaim our proper place.” From her, the words weren’t bombastic—they sounded like statements of fact.

  “A signal of what?” Gail asked curiously. “That Earth is taking an active role in restoring the terraformed worlds to the colonists? I agree, but it’s only—”

  “Worlds?” Rosalind’s lips twisted over the word as if it left a foul taste. “We are not interested in dirt, Dr. Smith. My people are spacers, have been and always will be. We were trapped here by mistake during the immigrants’ uprising—tarred by the same brush and left to rot with them on this hunk of metal.

  “But we were patient. We knew Sol would reopen deep-space exploration, that the universities would again look beyond Earth’s petty interests in creating replicas of itself. This ship—your ship—is proof of that. And we are ready.”

  Gail recognized the rhetoric. She knew many former pilots and explorers who felt abandoned by Earth’s turtlelike approach to expansion, as promoted by the Reductionist movement. It shouldn’t have surprised her from Rosalind—but it did. She supposed it was because the survival of the ’siders and the station itself was so remarkable, she hadn’t expected the older dream to survive as well. Then, as she looked into those cold, almost fanatical eyes, she knew her mistake.

  A dream could be a reason to survive.

  “You say you are ready,” Gail said, careful of every word. “For what? To steal three freighters from Thromberg?”

  Rosalind clicked the two wide paddles forming her right hand together. An irritated sound, Gail thought. “Theft? Merely a request for transportation. One Thromberg has agreed to—my people are replacing their crews as we speak. Feel free to ask the commander to check with one of your spy bots if you doubt me.”

  “So you no longer threaten the station,” Tobo said in a relieved voice.

  “Our deadline stands. It is your contribution on the line now.”

  Gail narrowed her eyes. “Ours? And what might that be, Outsider?”

  “You will arrange for our ships to be welcomed at the Callisto Spaceport.”

  Callisto. Sol System’s largest starship construction facility. Of course, Gail thought. For over a hundred years, eager young pilots and would-be explorers had marked its orbit around Jupiter, hoping to attend its schools—while retiring spacers who couldn’t bear to be grounded drifted home to it and filled its bars and lounges with stories. If ever humanity surged outward again in earnest, Callisto would be its launching pad.

  “Earth hasn’t opened the blockade,” Grant said bluntly. “No person or ship originating from a station will be allowed into Sol System.”

  “Ah,” Rosalind said, shaking her head at him. “Times change. Now we have a spokesperson to open that doorway. Do we not, Dr. Smith?”

  Gail stiffened. “I have nothing to do with Earth policy, whatever you may imagine. I’m a scientist. This is a research vessel.” She stole a look at the wall chrono. Ten minutes left. “You’ve threatened the station. How?”

  The ’sider smiled thinly. “You look at our equipment, at our dead ships, and judge us harmless, don’t you?”

  “No,” Gail said quite sincerely. “I don’t consider you harmless in the least.”

  “Good,” Rosalind replied. “Because the hearts of our ships still beat. And you should appreciate what power that puts in our hands.” She lifted hers in emphasis, probably very aware of the contrast between their grotesque replacements and her long, graceful arms.

  The translight drives. Gail didn’t need Tobo’s gasp or Grant’s step forward to tell her the stakes had just risen. Even if their fuel cones were essentially spent, there would be enough power remaining in the initiation matrix of any of those derelicts to put a substantial hole in the station.

  If they all went at once—Gail didn’t need to do the math to know the resulting force would send Thromberg wobbling, jarring the station from its orbit. A choice of deaths: starvation if the station was pushed too far from the sun to collect sufficient energy to sustain it, or radiation poisoning, if the station moved too close. Both of those endings assumed the hull of the abused station remained intact—otherwise, a moot point, since everyone would already be dead.

  Evacuate? Gail thought desperately. Even if there were enough ships, where could they take the people? No wonder Thromberg was silent. Their fate was in her hands. They had nothing left to bargain with and every reason to fear.

  “You want the impossible. Thromberg may have given you ships,” Gail said, “but I can’t open the blockade to any ship—anyone—from a station. Sol System—Earth—fears the Quill.”

  “The Quill.” Pure scorn. “That old, tired song.”

  Had she found an opening? Gail spoke cautiously: “Yes, the Quill. And if our mission is successful, which I believe it will be, it won’t be much longer before the terraformed worlds are—”

  “Show me a Quill,” Rosalind interrupted coolly.

  Gail blinked.

  Rosalind leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Go on. Show me one. You can’t, can you? That’s because they are all dead. You know the only thing dangerous about a Quill? What happens to anyone who owned one!”

  “Fournier.” Gail felt pieces dropping into place. “You’re Stuart Fournier’s daughter,” she breathed in amazement, remembering the incident. “The deep-space explorer who—”

  The ’sider sat erect again, knees together, shoulders back, and stared at Gail with cold, hard eyes. “Captain Fournier. The explorer thought missing, who brought his ship limping home after three long years. Only all hell had broken loose and he didn’t know why. Do your records also tell you that when he arrived home, with his Quill around his wrist as always, he was burned alive by a crazed mob?

  “You’d think we’d learn from the past,” Rosalind continued. “But it’s a human failing, isn’t it? As is wasting time.” The ’sider made a point of checking her wristchrono. “You have five minutes left, Dr. Smith, before my colleagues lift from Thromberg—safely, if the station has been diligent in undocking procedures. Fifteen minutes more we grant you, in which to guarantee their deserved welcome at our home port of Callisto.” She paused, then added: “Don’t think we’ll hesitate, Dr. Smith. We are dying—two a month, five, soon it will be more. Our time has already run out, Dr. Smith. We are not prepared to be patient.”

  Gail tilted back her head and regarded Rosalind Fournier. Brilliant, angry, full of purpose. She knew this woman—not her personality or history, of course, but what drove her. They might have taken different paths to this place and time, but they were uncannily alike. Like Gail, what mattered to Rosalind wasn’t power itself, it was achieving her goal. By whatever means.

  Gail was familiar with that trait as well.

  “I have a counterproposal, Rosalind,” she said almost cheerfully. “May I call you Rosalind?”

  Chapter 31

  “MR. MALLEY?”

  Malley started at the low voice in his ear. Damn. He’d dozed off on the stool, a useful skill when there wasn’t much streaming down the recycling floor, but hardly what he’d planned to do here.

  He looked around almost frantically. The voice was Benton’s. The lab tech stood a little distance away, as if his jump awake had surprised her, too. Otherwise, nothing in the lab seemed to have changed. Sazaad—

  Where w
as Sazaad?

  “Mr. Malley?”

  The stationer stood up and made himself stretch, leery of moving too quickly after being in one position for so long. “Yes, Benton. I’m awake,” he told the tech, still scanning the room.

  He should have looked at the tank first, instead of last. Sazaad was there, Philips at his side, busy with something at the far end. “What’s he doing?” Malley demanded, not bothering to keep his voice down.

  Benton raised her own voice. She sounded, and looked, angry. “Dr. Sazaad has taken it on himself to disconnect Mr. Pardell’s life support.”

  Malley was across the intervening space, with his new knife across Sazaad’s throat, before the Earther could do more than turn, wide-eyed. In the next instant, he’d wrapped his other arm under and around Sazaad’s so he could press the man’s head forward while pinning him against his chest.

  The Earther wisely chose not to struggle, since the hold gave him the option of severing his own neck or feeling Malley snap it, but he sputtered indignantly: “Get this lunatic off me! Guards! Guards!” The guards in question had moved closer, but showed no interest in interfering.

  Malley put his lips to Sazaad’s ear. “What are you doing to Aaron?”

  “The man’s dead. Dead! Dead! Dead! You are wasting my time—there’s nothing on the cog—nothing! Let go! Guar—”

  Malley flexed the arm providing leverage against Sazaad’s spine. There was a most satisfying creak.

  Philips was hurriedly reattaching tubes and cables to the exterior of the tank, Benton coming to help. Sazaad must have been pulling them free at random. “Is Aaron all right?” Malley asked the tech.

  “How can you ask if a corpse is all right?” shrieked Sazaad.

  “How can you keep talking if I cut your throat?” Malley thought it a reasonable question, but the man turned into a limp weight and slid bonelessly out of his grip. Getting the knife out of the way just in time, the stationer grabbed for a new hold, sure this was a trick, then realized the Earther had fainted. Malley let him drop.