by C. Gockel
The lift door slid closed and James was in absolute darkness. Everything was ready. He heard the door to the airlock slide just a fraction, and a muffled, “See anything?”
The comm in the wall cracked, and Oliver’s wail crackled through the air.
Another voice whispered, “See … told ya? Civvies, nuthin’ to this.”
The airlock door slid open with a swoosh that made James’s ears ache. His muscles tensed and his senses were assaulted by the smells of sweat, dirt, and grease. He could hear better, too. He counted eight pairs of footsteps. Gritting his teeth, he locked his arms, preparing for the right moment. Only a little longer …
“I dunno,” said another man. “I heard ‘em using a cipher.”
“Simple tech,” said the first, stepping into the hallway.
Someone spat. “Impossible to crack without knowing the source. Used by Fleet types a lot.”
There was a grunt. A man walked beneath James. James couldn’t see him, but his head was so close to James’s belly that James could feel the movement of air as he walked. And James could smell him, hear his heavy footsteps, slightly elevated heartbeat, and deep breathing. He thought he also heard the sound of something being jostled—a rifle maybe? Stunner, plasma, or projectile?
James held his breath, willed his heartbeat not to be as loud as theirs, and his left arm’s tremble not to grow worse.
“All’s clear,” said the man directly beneath James. “Should we try and call the lift or take the ladder?” James heard him step toward the other end of the hallway, the hatch to the ladder James knew Manuel had locked, and the lift where Noa and Gunny waited for James’s signal.
All but one of the men filed out of the airlock and into the hallway.
By the ladder door, a man said, “Damn, locked … might be needin’ the cutter.”
“Idiots,” someone snarled.
The man in the airlock still hadn’t moved. Did James wait … hope the man moved into the main hallway … or strike?
Oliver’s wail crackled over the intercom again, and one of the intruders hissed, “I wonder if that baby’s mommy is onboard.” Over the Ark’s public ethernet channel came an unfiltered image. James saw the man’s back. Every black hair on his head and wrinkle in the fabric of his garments was distinct, the way it could only be if it was a purchased avatar. The man’s virtual hips were plunging into a woman whose face was a blur; she was begging for mercy through sobs. It took a moment for James to realize he was seeing one of the scavenger’s projections. His jaw shifted. He felt every muscle in his body flood with heat.
“Jezuz, Kline!” one of them said. “Damn!”
The indistinct face became Noa’s in James’s mind. His arms and legs shook violently, and he knew that the phrase “trembling with rage” was not a metaphor. He imagined the back of that black head on the floor, blood pooling around the perfect hair.
“Awww … your dirty pictures are givin’ me a hard-on,” said the man in the airlock.
James’s mouth opened in a silent scream; over the ether, he screamed with his mind, “Now!” He dropped from the ceiling, spun in a crouch in the darkness, pulled his stunner and lunged at the stomach level of the man in the airlock. As he knocked the man backward into the wall, he felt body armor beneath his shoulder and inwardly cursed as he fired his stunner into the man’s protected side and didn’t get as much as a hiss. The man knocked the stunner from James’s hand with strength augmented as much as James’s own. Behind him, James heard more stunner fire, Manuel roar, the lift open, and then the click of the spotlight turning on. The black that surrounded him was replaced by white that was equally blinding.
Something stung the side of his body and made all the neurons and nanos there feel as though they were on fire, but it didn’t feel like pain—it felt like power. The sensation fanned out across his skin into his muscles and his very bones.
The man he had nearly pinned stammered, “You’re … you’re not wearing armor ...”
James’s vision adjusted to the brightness, and he found himself staring through the other man’s night vision goggles at a pair of very wide eyes. It was only at that moment that James realized he’d been stunned … and he was still upright. Wrenching back his head, James drove his forehead into the other man’s nose, just below the eyewear. There was a crunch, a thunk as the man’s head hit the wall behind him, and then his opponent’s body went limp. Someone tried to slink an arm around James’s neck. He dropped his chin just in time and sank his teeth into the new foe's arm—and recognized the man by his scream. It was the man looking for “mommy.” James locked his hands around the man’s arm so he couldn’t get away, spun and rammed the man behind him into a wall. He felt spittle against his ear and a stunner at his side and almost laughed. The stunner went off, his side throbbed and pulsed with a heat that was almost pleasure, and he hauled the man over his shoulder onto the floor. James aimed with a foot and was rewarded with a crack and another scream.
“James!” someone shouted.
Rolling onto his stomach, the man struggled to pull himself to all fours. Dropping on top of him, pinning him with a knee, James grabbed one of his arms and wrenched it up. The man screamed, and James pulled his arm further back. The man howled.
“James, stop!”
It was Noa’s voice.
James’s hand tightened on the arm of the man beneath him. His anger felt as tangible and as electric as the stunner had—he felt charged. Where his sleeves were rolled up, his “tattoos” were completely black. Not releasing the man, he glared up at Noa. In the periphery of his vision he saw Gunny had a man pinned to the wall, stunner beneath his chin. Manuel had another man in a similar grip; four other bodies lay on the ground. Noa was standing over one, stunner out.
The order to stop replayed in his mind, but so did the images projected by the man he had pinned. His eyes slid to the other “scavengers.” They needed to die … but Noa apparently didn’t want them dead. He needed to convince her. Aloud he said, “They have cannons aboard their vessel. They are too dangerous to let go, and we don’t have a brig.”
“Don’t kill us! Don’t kill us!” said the man Gunny had pinned to the wall. “We were just … err … here to help …”
“Shut your mouth,” Gunny hissed.
The man’s mouth shut with an audible snap.
Voice cool and as calm as James had ever heard it, Manuel said, “I’m inclined to agree with Professor Sinclair.”
“Professor?” whined the man beneath James.
James gave his arm a twist, and the man sobbed.
“Their ship has cannons, Commander,” James said. Couldn’t she see these men had no utility?
“We do have to do something about the cannons,” Noa agreed. “Manuel, can you repurpose them?”
The engineer growled. “Yes. But we don’t have anywhere to keep these men.”
Noa’s eyes slid over the bodies on the floor. “Ticks always have a home base …” Over the cipher, she said, “Ghost, can you access their onboard computer? Find out where they’ve been?”
James swore he heard a sniff over the ether, and then Ghost said, “Of course I can.”
“How long—?”
Ghost’s response floated across the ether. “Already in. These boys are part of the Adam’s Belt Independent Miners Guild.”
Noa made a sound low in her throat.
Ghost’s thoughts wafted through the ether. “Oh, Commander, you need to see this.” He projected an image of what looked like a small planet, studded with rings of light, in the midst of asteroids and derelict ships.
“A scrap yard,” said Manuel, eyes glued to his captive.
“The planetoid is known as Adam’s Station,” Ghost replied. “It appears to be a way station for miners. This little tick has bought parts there on occasion. Commander, we might be able to get the refurbished time band and charge dispersers we need there … even more toilet goop to replace the goop I used for thrust during our escape.”
<
br /> “We’ll discuss it later,” Noa said over the ether and aloud. James could feel the tension in her voice like needles on his skin.
Manuel shook the man he held. “What do we do with these scum?”
“We weren’t going to hurt you,” said the man Gunny held. “Just lookin’ for scrap is all, to sell at Adam’s Station. My boy Kline, he gots some vivid imagination, but we would not have let him do no harm.”
Squirming, the man Manuel held said, “Really, we couldn’t hear your hails.”
“Shut up!” Gunny growled. “You’re lying through your bleeding gums.”
“Of course they’re lying,” Noa said, her lip curling in a snarl. “But we don’t want to upset the Guild.”
James opened his mouth, prepared to argue, but before he could utter a word, Manuel growled. “You saw what they wanted to do to Hisha! These men don’t deserve to live.”
Gunny and Noa were silent. For a moment James didn’t understand Manuel’s outburst. The man hadn’t thought of Manuel’s wife. And then he realized Manuel had done exactly what he’d done with the indistinct face of the rape victim in Kline’s mind. James glanced up at Manuel. The engineer’s face was livid, there was spittle on his lower lip, his bangs that had fallen in front of his eyes were wet with sweat. He looked crazed, half-mad, and James had never felt so much connection to him.
Face pressed to the floor, Kline, the man under James, snickered. “Guess we know who daddy is.”
The man Manuel held whined and wiggled. Manuel stunned him in the side of the neck. As he slid to the floor, Manuel spun in place looking for all the world like he was about to drive a foot into Kline’s head.
“Stand down, Officer,” Noa said, her voice hushed.
Manuel’s head whipped to her.
Over the ether she said, “The Guild … we can’t take them all.”
Manuel’s nostrils flared. But he took a step back.
Gunny, eyes focused on the man he had pinned, drawled, “Commander’s right.”
Kline snickered again. Noa turned to Kline, and James hated the light in Kline’s eyes when he looked at her.
Unfazed, Noa smiled wider than James had ever seen. “Think that’s funny?” Her head tilted. “I’m going to give you something to really laugh about.” The smile stretched wider still, and her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared slightly.
The hungry, mocking look on Kline’s face evaporated, even though James hadn't exerted any pressure on his arm.
“Strip them,” Noa said to Gunny. “I want all their weapons.” She tapped her chin. “And just to be sure they don’t have anything really special, don’t give them their clothes back.”
The man under Gunny’s stunner whimpered.
To Manuel she said, “Lieutenant, I don’t believe we have proper hand restraints.”
“No, Commander, we don’t,” Manuel said, scowling down at Kline.
“Huh …” Noa rubbed her chin. “Duct tape will have to do, won’t it?”
Manuel’s eyes met hers. “Yes, Commander, I believe a sufficient quantity might suffice.” A thin smile touched his lips.
“Stun them all,” Noa said. “I don’t want accidents.”
As Gunny and James stunned the men they’d captured, her eyes went to the first man James had knocked unconscious—the one with the “hard-on.” He was now slouched against the wall, a bloody smear behind his head, though the faint whisper of a heartbeat told James he wasn’t dead.
Her jaw hardened. “Manuel, you’re with me,” she said, even as her eyes fell to James. James tried to gauge her mood. Was she angry at him for so violently containing the man? Did she think him psychotic? Her lips parted, and he saw the glint of her teeth clenched tight, and then over the ether, he felt the buzz of her consciousness. But she said and thought nothing as she spun on her heel and exited.
The unthought words in that buzz were a wall between them, a muffled silence, and he suddenly felt cold. He couldn’t speak to her across the ether; it might be overheard. He couldn’t beg her to let him dispatch their foes, or beg forgiveness if that was what was required. He looked down at the now unconscious Kline. The chill seeping along his spine made James feel heavy, like killing Kline would be too much effort … he jerked away from the unconscious man, but couldn’t take his eyes away from him.
His mind began replaying a 20th century argument against the death penalty: when a foe could be adequately subdued, the death penalty was murder. He’d agreed wholeheartedly with that assessment. Or the other him had. Every person might be a culture unto themselves, but his internal culture had changed—was changing—radically. He was an alien to himself.
* * *
Noa stood beside the pilot chair, too keyed up to sit down. Above her head asteroids hung in silent suspension; they looked like an avalanche in slow motion. Occasionally, one in a faster orbit would tumble by, catching Noa’s eye and making her head jerk from the monitor screens spread out before her.
Kuin, one of Manuel’s engineering students, was sitting in the copilot’s chair, tapping out a rhythm with his fingers, eyes warily scanning the view port. Noa’s brow furrowed. Manuel had only recruited augmented students for the trip. She didn’t actually know what Kuin’s augmentation was, or the augmentations of the other students: Kara, Bo, and Jun. She barely knew her crew. She exhaled, and a movement in the monitors caught her eyes. She gazed down at the scene just outside the Ark. Manuel and Ghost were in their space suits, awkwardly tethered to the Ark by long umbilicals of nylon, copper, and Kevlar. They were pulling the time band from its casing. From her vantage point, the alloy of rare metals looked like nothing so much as bright silver tape, a child’s toy. Manuel’s voice filtered through the cipher. “We’re almost done, Commander.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant, Ghost. Well done.”
Her eyes dropped to the monitor that showed the tick, still attached to the Ark. Squinting, she could make out Gunny and the engineering students bustling around the tick’s cabin.
She wanted to command her people back into the ship, order the tick’s computer to release its hold on the Ark’s airlock … and not to seal the small craft completely. She wanted to let the men, mummified in their duct tape cocoons, die slowly, in fear and pain, as their air was ripped slowly away. Her fingernails bit into her palms, Kline’s “imagination” replaying in her mind. The indistinct face disturbed her as much as the rape. She’d met plenty of men like Kline, knew she was less than human to them by virtue of being female. She believed strongly you couldn’t argue with crazy—which didn’t mean she didn’t want to see them burn.
There was a low purr behind and below her, and she turned to see the lift to the bridge blooming open. James was standing there. A delayed snarl, from her previous thoughts, escaped her lips.
His head drew back as though she’d struck him. She shook her head, caught sight of Kuin, neck craned around his seat, staring at her with wide eyes. With a jerk, the engineering student spun back around. She sighed and gave James a shrug. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Can’t talk about it, remained unsaid.
James’s expression remained flat. Was he angry at her? A Luddeccean man would be—for her not well-disguised reluctance to see him part of the “greeting party” and then her dismissal of his plan. His plan that in hindsight worked brilliantly; no one on the Ark seriously wounded, and only one of the invaders grievously hurt. The one James had attacked had gotten the worst of it … she blinked. She swore she’d heard one of the invaders exclaim that a stunner hadn’t worked. Her jaw got tight. A misfire? She’d thought she’d seen a brief burst of light shimmering along James’s side … it reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite place what. She must have misheard. She felt a prickle along her spine anyway.
Climbing the staircase, James stopped on the step just below her, putting him at eye level. He lifted his hand, fist closed, palm down. Her eyes went to it, almost reluctantly; she was still trying to get a read on him. He turned his fist up and opened his finge
rs. The iridescent shimmer of a data chip caught her eye. If they weren’t being eavesdropped on, she would have said, You shouldn’t have. At the same time, part of her wanted to make jests. Her mother’s words rang in her mind, Don’t take data chips from strangers. Her eyes met James’s, and for a moment she hesitated. She couldn’t say why. They’d hard-linked before; this should be nothing. Irritated by her indecision, she whisked the chip from his palm, plugged it into one of her ports, and blinked as an indicator light went on in her mind.
Mentally, reaching for the chip was like trying to think about a particular square centimeter of her head. She found the chip and James’s professor avatar burst into her visual cortex, looking oddly formal in his high-necked tunic, fitted trousers, and gleamingly polished shoes. The James in front of her wore a perfectly bland expression, but his avatar smiled tightly. “I have a cipher no one will ever guess.”
Noa let her mind explore the chip and found The Tale of Genji — a 21st Century Annotated Translation.
“A little light reading?” she said aloud.
“That is not in the ship’s database,” James said.
Her eyes widened as she found her visual cortex filled with scanned yellowed pages of an actual book. Numbers started firing rapidly into her mind as her apps converted all the photographed pages from images to digitized words that could be rapidly searched.
“Absolute privacy,” James’s avatar said. “This version was never added to the public ethernet archives.”
His avatar flashed away and she was staring at the real James. “It was something I planned to do before the accident.” He looked at a point on the floor. “I’m not sure why I didn’t … it was an easy thing … I put it in my personal time capsule and then …” He shook his head.
He didn’t seem angry. She was relieved.