by Rick Partlow
Behind the ruined door, shrouded in the absolute blackness of the elevator shaft between the electromagnetic rails, Telia Proctor towered like a statue, frozen in place by the magnetic soles of her boots, her bionic limbs locked straight. The glaring light from Priscilla’s headlamp splashed across her face, turning the thin coating of dust and grease into a polished sheen, but her eyes were closed and they didn’t even flicker at the harsh glow.
Priscilla hissed in a breath, and let go of the power spreader instinctively, letting it pinwheel away from her across the docking bay. Telia’s massive form seemed to take up the whole elevator shaft, swallowing the light from Priscilla’s headlamp, but in another half a second, she realized there were others in the shaft, floating behind Telia. She recognized Lt. Propanca and Ensign Belden the medic and…
“Mother of all,” she muttered, rushing forward, spurred from her shock by the sight of Sam Avalon, his skin beginning to turn blue from lack of oxygen.
The ventilators. She’d nearly forgotten about them, so stunned was she by the sight. She grabbed them from under her left arm and lurched forward, squeezing through the gap torn in the lift hatchway. She went to Sam first, knowing she was letting her emotions overcome her judgement and not caring. She strapped the mask in place over his nose and mouth, tightening it and then opening the valve to let the air through. His eyes were closed and he looked dead and she wished more than anything to touch his face, to see if there was any warmth left in him, but she could feel only the interior of her own gloves.
Fear and anger and desperation consumed her and she wanted to wait, to see if she’d gotten to him in time, if he would wake up. Instead she forced herself to move past him, first to Telia then the other three, slipping their ventilators in place with systematic efficiency, making sure each had good air flow before she allowed herself to give in to her feelings and rush back to Sam.
“Come on, Sam,” she whispered. She cursed under her breath and hit the exterior speakers and tried again. “Sam!’
Not enough air left to conduct the sound, she realized. Damn it!
She touched her helmet’s faceplate to his forehead and yelled the name.
“Sam! Come back to me, Sam!”
She was sobbing. Every time she’d cried, it had been with Sam. If he was gone, would she ever cry again? Would she go back to the way Mother had intended her, focused on her task, a missile sent for one target, expended and expendable?
Sam Avalon blinked. It was the most beautiful thing Priscilla had ever seen.
She could hear a moan conducting through him and through her faceplate, something that might have been “Pris.” She laughed, unable to stop it any more than she had the sobs.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
It was Sully, coming over her suit radio. Communications were up, which must mean the wormhole had closed.
“Sully,” she nearly babbled, “I have some survivors! Did you find an intact shuttle?”
“I’ve got a bird here, if you can get them to it. Bay twelve, at the far end, and it’s got a couple crew still on it, but they’ve graciously agreed to give us a ride.”
Priscilla caught movement from her peripheral vision and glanced upward. Telia Proctor was conscious, and wasn’t wasting any time. She grabbed Propanca and Belden by the arm and motioned for Priscilla to take charge of the other man, Patel she thought his name was, one of the sensor techs. Priscilla caught the tall, slender man by the scruff of his shirt and pushed him ahead of her out of the elevator shaft, waving for Sam to follow. He was shivering badly as the temperature plunged, with no air left inside the station for heat convection, but he nodded and affixed the magnetic plates in his ship-boots to the deck.
Patel was still unconscious and she couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but she didn’t stop to check; his best chance was to get to the shuttle. It seemed impossibly far away, through the maze of equipment and loose cargo containers knocked free of their magnetic restraints by the wormhole’s gravity fluctuations, spinning off through individual orbits of their own. A woman’s body drifted behind a plastic cargo container, her eyes wide, her head flopping loosely, obscenely. Frost glittered on her cheeks from frozen tears.
Sam began to falter about ten meters from the airlock hatch, so cold the shivering seemed to vibrate his face like a digital blur, unable to keep forcing his legs to move. She took a handful of his shirt and pulled him with her, just a few more meters. The outer lock was open and Sully was waiting there for her, still suited up, the emergency hand-crank ready.
There was barely room for them all in the airlock, but it was too damned cold to wait, so they squeezed in, and then squeezed some more to give Sully room to work the crank. After perhaps five seconds of watching him, Telia pushed the pilot aside and took over. Her arm moved with inhuman speed and the outer hatch closed with a vibration Priscilla could feel through the deck.
She couldn’t hear the air flowing in at first, not until enough of it had filled the lock for it to conduct the sound. Sam’s reaction gave it away long before that, as the frost that had formed in his short hair began to melt, the tension going out of his shoulders as the bitter cold began to fade. Priscilla saw the blinking green light signaling a safe pressure outside the suit and she began working the cantilever seals of her helmet, yanking and twisting it off before the inner hatch had the chance to open.
Her helmet lamp flickered off automatically as it disconnected from the suit yoke, but the overhead lights in the shuttle’s lock had snapped on when the outer hatch had sealed, and for the first time, she was able to get a good look at the lot of them. Propanca, Belden and Patel all seemed to be breathing on their own, and Belden was coming to, clawing the ventilator off of his face. The medic immediately began looking after his fellow crewmembers, but Priscilla was grabbing Sam, holding him despite the intervening bulk of the suit, clutching him as if he might slip away at any moment.
“Did…” Sam rasped, then closed his eyes, cleared his throat and tried again. “Did you find any others?”
“Just one,” she admitted, pulling back so she could look him in the eye. He seemed a hundred years older than he had just a few hours ago. “Johan, down in the docking bay.”
“Shit.” The Patrol officer seemed to deflate, and she was sure if there had been any gravity, he would have collapsed.
Telia still hadn’t moved, was standing anchored to the deck even as the inner lock slid aside and the others began moving into the interior of the shuttle. There was a lanky, hatchet-faced Belter in the utility bay within, his cheeks and shaven head covered in tattoos, guiding Belden and the others away, presumably to where they kept their emergency medical supplies. Telia ignored him, staring into nothingness, as if she were considering walking back out into the airless station.
Priscilla noticed the absent expression, the slack posture…and then noticed who wasn’t among the survivors.
“Oh, Mother of All,” she whispered, pain clenching deep inside her gut. She reached out a gloved hand and grasped Telia’s arm, unfeeling vacuum glove touching unfeeling metal. “I’m so sorry, my friend.”
“You should go into the shuttle,” the Earth-woman said, her voice flat, her face a mask as machine-like as her limbs. She was still looking at the outer airlock.
“He wouldn’t want you to give up,” Sam told her, stepping in front of her to make her look at him.
“And what,” Telia demanded, a flare of something, perhaps anger behind her biological eye, “do you think I have to live for?”
“Someone was behind this,” Priscilla pointed out, knowing the danger of the words she spoke, yet seeing no alternative. She waved at the lock, at the devastation on the other side of it. “Someone did this and killed not just Mawae Danabri, but perhaps even the chance to save your planet.” She snarled now, and it came naturally, not part of any calculated argument. “What do you have to live for?”
She stepped up next to Sam, shouldering him aside, looking Telia in the eye.
“Revenge.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Goddammit, I don’t have to sit here and listen to this shit!”
Goran Mestrovic was clearly not happy to be on Luna. He’d popped out of his chair with more grace and fluidity than Sam could ever have managed in the low gravity, and was pacing back and forth in front of the conference table. It was a very un-Belter-like display; they were more likely to sit stock-still and expressionless in negotiations, whether it was for an interstellar trade deal or buying a shuttle-load of soy paste. Even the other Belter representatives who’d come along from the other two major trade associations stared at Mestrovic in bemusement.
“We have not simply lost a single ore barge,” Mestrovic insisted, jabbing a finger toward John Gage and Jaime Tejado at the other end of the oval-shaped conference table. “We have lost a very lucrative contract and the prospects of a new trade partnership with the Consensus that would have made all of us,” he waved a hand around demonstratively, another very un-Belter-like motion, “insanely rich! Why the hell,” he bellowed, his long, horsey face turning red, “would we want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg? What possible motive would we have?”
He’s scared.
Sam’s eyes flickered toward Pris, but he didn’t turn his head, trying not to be obvious about her communicating with him via the neurolink. Normally, they wouldn’t have chanced using them here, in the closely-monitored halls of Harmony Base on Earth’s moon, but they weren’t the ones under scrutiny this time. The fact they’d been able to convince the Belter representatives to come to Luna instead of meeting out in the Jovians was proof enough of that.
He’s got reason to be, Sam answered. Someone’s going to take the hit for this, and Tejado wants to make sure it isn’t the Naturalists.
But Tejado wasn’t the one to answer Mestrovic’s question; to Sam’s surprise, Gage was.
“I can think of one very convincing motive,” the old man replied, leaning forward in his chair, hands flat on the table, eyes locked with the Belter. “With the Consensus out of the way, the resources of the inner system are yours for the taking. And don’t tell me one trade route is going to make your colleagues back on Ceres forget all the disputes you’ve had with Earth over the decades, both economic and military.”
Now Sam did risk a glance at Pris and they shared a slightly raised eyebrow. The statement seemed to hit Mestrovic square in the gut, a clear blindside coming from the Reformist Minister. He seemed to shrink in on himself and he stepped slowly back to his chair and settled into it.
“I know the barge was ours,” the Belter conceded, “but it isn’t as if we keep full military security on something like that. It was a routine ore shipment to us, nothing more. Goddammit, if we wanted to attack you, we could have just hit you with a fucking rock.”
“In point of fact,” Pris spoke up for the first time since the meeting had commenced, “no, you could not. The Gate Assembly and the station had energy shields to prevent any such long-distance strikes. Those were deactivated due to the antimatter delivery, and only someone with a knowledge of our construction schedule could have timed the attack this perfectly.”
Why are you jumping in? Sam demanded, eyes narrowing. Don’t we believe it was the Naturalists?
I trust Gage, she told him. He has a reason for this.
She’d changed these last few weeks since the…incident. That was what everyone was calling it, “the incident,” as if it had been some sort of natural disaster, or an industrial accident. He wanted to be more brutal, more honest about it, but he lacked the eloquence to describe the dead comrades, the lost opportunity. He was angry, bitter even, devastated by the loss of friends and comrades. But Pris, she seemed to be filled with a cold, calculating ruthlessness and it was starting to scare him.
Mestrovic was staring at Pris, mouth working but no sound coming out, as if he’d expected her attack even less than Gage’s. Sam remembered how small this chamber had seemed to him the first time they’d visited it, and felt sympathy for the man. Tejado was smiling thinly and without one bit of sympathy, and Sam wanted more than anything to wipe the satisfied expression off his smarmy face.
“This is the situation, Mr. Mestrovic,” Tejado said definitively, as if he were the senior minister present and the final authority. “The Belter trade associations made certain assurances to the Consensus at the start of all this. Without those assurances, I am fairly certain our Prime Minister would never have agreed to this whole…” His lip curled in distaste. “…arrangement. Not only are you telling us you can no longer uphold your end of this bargain, but you’re responsible for a physical assault on an installation within established Consensus borders!”
“We are not…” Mestrovic began, but Tejado cut him off.
“The barge was yours!” he snapped, his smile disappearing. He pushed himself up in his seat and loomed over the table at the Belter. “You are responsible for its security, for every millimeter of its passage from your territory to ours! You’re either pleading guilt by conspiracy or guilt by incompetence! Take your pick!”
“Minister Tejado,” the woman seated to Mestrovic’s right interjected, her frown seeming to drag down every muscle in her face, “we did not come all the way to Luna to be insulted or accused of treachery. We came here in good faith…”
“You came to Luna,” Gage told her, his rumbling, gravelly voice cold and harsh, “because you did not want to alienate the Resolution government, since they are your biggest customers. Do not insult our intelligence by claiming you’re here out of the goodness of your hearts.”
Why the hell isn’t Peterman at this meeting? Sam asked Pris, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. Didn’t that last message from Aphrodite say they’d get back to you?
That’s what it said, she confirmed, the carefully neutral tone of her “voice” translated well by the neurolink connection. And that was nearly ten days ago.
It had also conveyed deepest condolences along with their “complete trust and confidence in any actions you might have to take in the absence of further instructions,” for all either of those were worth. It all gave Sam the distinct impression they were being hung out to dry.
“What do you want from us?” Mestrovic asked, his voice and demeanor more subdued now, less confrontational. “I…” He seemed to be swallowing something distasteful. “I acknowledge that the destruction was at least partly our responsibility due to our lack of security measures. How can we make this right?”
“We need the material to rebuild,” Pris told the man, her interruption earning a dirty look from Tejado. “And we need it immediately. I don’t care where else you have to steal the barges or the processed minerals from, we need it within the month or there won’t be any hope of finishing the Gate in time.”
If there is now, she added to Sam, echoing his own dismal thoughts. It wasn’t just the raw material they’d need, it was replacement engineering crews and, more importantly, antimatter fuel, both of which had to come from the Resolution. And the Resolution had been singularly uncommunicative.
“And we,” Gage added, “will require full navigational control of the barges from the second they leave Belter space. That is non-negotiable.”
Mestrovic was nodding, slowly, unwillingly, but nodding all the same; the other Belter reps didn’t object.
“I will have to communicate this to the boards of the trade associations,” he clarified. “But I will certainly recommend they approve it.”
Gage sat back, hands clasped across his lap. He looked, Sam thought, every centimeter the professional in his business wear, and Sam wondered which was closer to the real man, the robes of judgement or the suit of negotiation. Tejado seemed less satisfied, as if he wished the Belters would have taken offense and left. But he said nothing and let Gage take the lead.
“Very well, then. We will recess this meeting and allow you to contact your people. Shall we reconvene in, say, forty-eight hours?”
The last could have been ground out between his teeth, Sam wasn’t sure.
Gage came to his feet and Tejado moved just the slightest slice of an instant behind, as if he wanted them to think it was his idea. Everyone else stood and followed the two men and their attendant Guardians out of the small chamber. Sam hissed out a breath as he passed through the doorway, just happy to be outside, even if “outside” simply meant a slightly-broader corridor junction in this damned cave of a city.
Lt. Propanca had been leaning against a wall outside the doors; when she saw them, she straightened and stepped up to them, cutting them away from the rest of the group. Her dark eyes were slitted, her face grim.
“What?” Pris demanded. “You’ve heard something?”
“There’s a cutter in from Aphrodite,” the young officer reported. “It’s waiting out at Ganymede orbit because they don’t want to chance coming into Consensus territory.”
“Waiting for what?” Sam asked her, a sinking feeling in his gut warning him he wouldn’t like the answer.
“For us,” Propanca confirmed his fears. “We’re all being recalled to Aphrodite for an official debrief.” Her mouth twisted downward and she looked around as if wondering if she could speak freely. There was no one else left in the corridor, but that didn’t mean no one was listening. “The Captain of the cutter knows you, Sam. Her name’s Devon something.”
“The Raven?” he asked, eyes wide. A surge of longing warmed his chest, feelings he thought he’d put behind him. “She’s here?”
“Yeah, that’s the ship,” Propanca confirmed. “She told me to let you know she’d heard scuttlebutt this wasn’t just a debriefing, that they’re pulling you two out of this permanently.”