by Corey Ostman
“Nutter,” he said, careful with each syllable, “keep us steady. The instant that Gusev lifts that speed restriction, punch it.”
“Aye.”
Quint sat in the captain’s chair. That wasn’t so bad, he thought. I can control it.
• • •
Tim Trouncer rose through what he liked to call dreaming. The definition, in the context of his never-sleeping, omni-cognitive state, was a new one. Infodocs would have to add a fourteenth entry for ‘dream,’ he mused, thinking of the disembodied sensation when his PodPooch chassis disconnected from his mind. He could still see with his lids closed, and the colors registered more vividly than what he sensed as reality.
Regardless of its odd variation, it was a relief to know that he could still dream in some way. To know that the back and forth of computer system probing, the endless manual probing by humans and human groups, a decatrillion ‘yes’ and an equal number of ‘no’ per second, didn’t do the type of damage Raj warned was possible when he was born an AI. It wasn’t automatic, nor subconscious. Tim simply had the processing power to dream, so he dreamed.
But because dreaming was a choice, Tim also felt it when the ship moved. Without Grace, Richard, and Wragg aboard. The ship shouldn’t be going anywhere. What had he missed?
“Where are you, Raj?” He pinged his friend.
“Tim! Finally. I’m stuck in the lower forward locker with Chief Engineer Hobbs. Quint’s loose.”
“What…?” Tim wondered, briefly, if he were still dreaming, and if he’d conjured a nightmare.
“Why didn’t you notice? What’ve you been doing?”
“I went to Wonderland,” Tim said, rising onto his paws.
Chapter 18
Anna listened intently, but there were no further sounds from the hallway. She looked at Yvette, and saw her fear mirrored back at her. Quint was gone. They had to do something. But what? The ship was moving. There was no way out. Yet Anna wanted to run. She wanted to take the little girl by the hand and run. Run, and by sheer physical force, put this demon behind her.
Anna felt like she’d always been running.
She was nine when she first ran, fleeing the farm after her mother died from perchlorate exposure. Her father had deposited a load of untreated soil in the greenhouse and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. It was an accident, but at the time, she thought he was a monster. How could he have been so careless? Authority had found Anna three days later and brought her back to the farm. Without her mother, it didn’t feel like home.
Anna learned to fly when she was twelve. First the small craft they used inside the greenhouse for nutrient spraying, then a tiny, derelict cruiser her father kept running for weekly soil collection. When she was sixteen, Louie let her fly his cruiser and remarked that they needed more pilots at Albor.
Her father wouldn’t hear of it, of course. He wanted her to run the cyano farm with him. But Anna figured out a way to leave. She offered to help her father distribute his bacteria beyond the local precincts. He had agreed, and Anna left the farm.
She apprenticed with the daily ferry between Albor and Elysium. She learned the pilot’s trade, supplementing her mechanical knowledge with engineering classes when she had the chance. When she had enough contacts and laurels to go into business for herself, she used her saved-up credits to buy her own cruiser, the Red Ridge. She’d used it to deliver her father’s engineered bacteria throughout the northern hemisphere. Still tied to the farm, but at least she could fly. She never tired of riding the dunes, seeing the sun blaze on the empty horizon.
Six months ago, Quint showed up on her father’s farm. She met him during one of her deliveries: a young lad, interested in the engineering underlying her father’s bacteria. At some point, however, Quint started to cause trouble. He began to press her father for details of his research. Copies of his bacteria—even the failed batches. There were threatening messages from Quint’s father, to whom Quint denied talking. Or some minor damage would happen to the farm and her father was sure it was Quint.
When the twofer exodus began, Quint had come to her father with sugar in his voice, offering money for the bacterial designs. Anna was there that time. She remembered the look on Quint’s face when her father refused. Her father had two apprentices, Louie and Branford, and he intended to make the farm work without twofers. He threw the offer of credit back in Quint’s face. She was proud of her father that day, she remembered.
Louie and Branford. I found their bodies on the other side of the greenhouse. They’d been executed where they stood, tending the cyano vats. She ran. She remembered the terrified dash across the farm to grab her father, the rush to the Red Ridge, and the flight to safety at Albor.
But she did not stay with her father. She was afraid. She wanted to run. So she dumped her father at the university with his colleagues and headed south on her ship. Even though Mars was in chaos. Even though she knew the danger. The instinct to run had been too strong.
And now her beautiful ship was trapped under the slide of bitter orange sand, a monument to her fear. Not two days out of Albor and she collided with another vessel, then went down in a sandstorm. If it hadn’t been for Grace, for the Archdales and their cruiser, she’d be dead now.
Yet she wanted to run again.
Yvette stared at her, waiting. Anna listened to her own ragged breath and got her respiration under control.
“I’ve tried to comm. It’s not working. Can you make it work?” The little girl frowned at her ptenda and handed it to Anna.
Anna looked at the child-sized ptenda, covered in cheerful green dinosaurs with a turquoise wrist strap. Its display blinked the same message as the one on her own ptenda: BLOCKED.
“I’m sorry, dear,” said Anna, handing back the ptenda. “It says the same thing as mine. Our signals are jammed.”
Yvette folded her arms. “We’ve got to send a message to Poppy.”
“Yvette,” Anna said, taking her gently by the shoulders, “there’s nothing we can do from here.”
“Then we gotta get to the bridge.”
Anna looked at the child. Did Yvette know what she was saying? They couldn’t just march to the bridge. It had only been moments since Quint was pounding at their door. And after all she’d been through, all of the traps from which she’d worked free, she reached deep into herself and found she didn’t have the courage. She couldn’t open that door. She wouldn’t.
“The door—” Anna began.
“I know a way.” Yvette stepped back and looked at her. Scanned was more like it. What was this diminutive drill sergeant looking for?
“You look skinny enough,” said Yvette.
“Doctor Chanho told us to stay put,” Anna said. She hated to think of what might have happened to him. If Quint was at the door, what did it mean for Raj?
But the girl wasn’t listening. She had started rifling through storage cabinets and drawers, throwing a small satchel over her shoulder. It looked like it was filled with toys. Anna sighed. She supposed it was better this way. A panicking child would have been harder to handle.
“Help me move that,” Yvette said suddenly.
“Move what?”
Yvette grabbed the handles of a container near the airlock and tugged. No movement. She stamped her foot.
“I really need your help!” Yvette pleaded.
Anna shrugged. She walked over, grabbed the handles, and pulled. The container began to move. Take it easy, she thought. It reminded her of the bacterial shipping vats she used to wrangle with her father.
“A little more, Anna,” announced Yvette brightly.
Pull, pull, strain. The container moved about a meter from the wall.
“There!” Yvette rocked on her feet, proudly pointing at a vent.
Anna kneeled down, inspecting the grate. It was loose.
“You have a ptenda stashed in there?” she asked.
“No, no. We’re going in! Together,” Yvette said. “Empty your pockets if you have anything in
‘em, and put the stuff in my bag.”
Anna looked at the vent. It would be a very tight squeeze. Still, she thought, looking around the room, it’s better than being airlocked. Quint will do it, eventually.
Anna closed her eyes and gathered her will. Then she emptied her pockets and handed the contents to Yvette. One dehydrated ration bar, a DNA disc from her father’s farm. The emergency beacon handle from her ship.
Yvette didn’t linger over these things. She stowed Anna’s stuff and bent down to remove the grate. It came off easily. Anna raised a brow. She suspected Yvette had done this before.
The girl wiggled into the ventilator shaft. Soon only her feet were visible.
“C’mon!” Yvette whispered. Her voice echoed.
The feet disappeared.
Courage, Anna reminded herself. She sat down and lifted her legs into the shaft, shuffling in feet first. She got up to her waist, but no. This wouldn’t work. She needed to see where she was going.
She drew her legs out and knelt at the shaft. One, two, three… Anna took a deep breath and put her head inside. She climbed in, working her shoulders and gradually moving forward. The shaft was clean, but small. She barely fit. Empty your pockets. Some kid.
The shaft went straight ahead. Shuffling along, Anna eventually made out Yvette’s form, surrounded in the luminescent halo of a small light. When the shaft made a ninety-degree turn to the right, Anna watched Yvette turn on her side and make the bend. Anna duplicated the maneuver and nearly got stuck.
“You’re bigger than you look,” Yvette whispered. “Maybe it’ll help you climb.”
Oh joy, she just said ‘climb,’ Anna thought.
“Begin turning over now, so that in a few meters you’ll be on your back,” Yvette said.
With no other choice, Anna moved forward behind Yvette, slowly doing a flip. The movement increased her feeling of claustrophobia. On her back, she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly. If she freaked out in here, the sound would travel everywhere. She prayed that going vertical would help.
Anna wriggled along with her eyes closed, stopping when her head bumped the shaft. She opened her eyes. Another ninety-degree turn straight upward. The shaft had recessed grips, presumably for repair work. Anna squirmed her shoulders and took hold, lifting herself into the shaft. Standing, she let herself exhale. Much better than lying on her back.
Anna climbed. She watched as Yvette reached the end and then bent forward, pulling herself out of the shaft. The corner looked tight to Anna. She hoped she wouldn’t be entombed here.
Five meters later, Anna was relieved to see that the shaft opened on a larger plenum space.
“We’re above the bridge,” Yvette said. “I hid up here a couple of months ago.”
The girl skittered across the vast surface of white.
Anna disgorged herself from the shaft behind her and tumbled inside. She sat and looked around, blinking in the light. They’d made it. No longer trapped. She felt a momentary elation. Try to airlock me now, you bastard, Anna thought.
She crawled along the open area. Most of the surface was white, but Anna could see patches of a darker color, with a different texture. Yvette paused near one such area and motioned for Anna to join her.
Anna crawled over. It was a grate. She looked down through it and saw the top of a man’s head.
Yvette made a zipping motion across her closed lips.
Thanks, kid, Anna thought wryly. She was grateful Yvette knew enough to keep silent.
They watched as the man fiddled with the controls, apparently alone. When he turned his head, Anna recognized him. Crewman Nutter. Anna hadn’t seen him much since she’d come aboard. But she knew Raj and Grace hadn’t trusted him with Quint. An enemy, then.
Click. Click.
Anna looked down to see Yvette opening the grate’s latches. They seemed overly loud to Anna, but Nutter’s head didn’t move. Yvette’s small fingers flicked one by one. A small red tab twinkled across the grate.
“Um, Yvette—”
Anna was getting a bad feeling about this. She reached out to stop Yvette, but the girl had already climbed on the grate and pulled the red tab.
One snap, and the grate was free.
Anna lunged forward but just missed Yvette’s feet. The girl, riding an impromptu flying carpet of grate, disappeared from view.
Alan Nutter made no sound when the grate struck, piloted by bombardier Yvette. All Anna heard was the resounding thud as his body slumped to the deck, and an ‘oof’ from the girl as she made contact.
Anna looked over the lip of the opening and saw Yvette scramble off the grate and behold the unconscious lump. The child beamed back at her.
Is the kid that good, or just lucky? Anna wondered.
Anna lowered herself down beside Yvette. She glanced around the bridge. Empty. She knelt and examined Nutter. He was breathing, but barely. Anna couldn’t imagine him waking up soon, if at all, without medical attention.
Yvette approached the controls.
“Is there a way to lock the bridge?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know all the controls yet,” Yvette said apologetically. “But I can send a message. Poppy showed me how. I used to practice with the controllers at Elysium.”
Anna watched as Yvette navigated through the displays. A tactical display appeared, showing their location and the approach vectors for Gusev, which had become much smaller on the map as the Scout moved away.
“Can you stop us?” Anna asked.
“No,” Yvette said, “and I can’t reach Poppy directly. But I think I can contact the controllers.”
Yvette selected the central icon of Gusev. A red circle appeared and rotated around the base symbol. Yvette began typing her message.
Boots, heavy-heeled, pounded on the deck, approaching the bridge. No. Please, no. Anna turned just as Quint Brown stepped through the bulkhead.
“What are you—?” Brown’s eyes darted from Anna to the man on the floor. “Nutter, you fool!” he hissed, raising his phasewave at Anna.
“Back away from the controls, both of you!”
Anna shook her head silently. She stepped in front of Yvette, holding Quint with her eyes, defiant. Not running now, am I?
“I’m warning you!” shouted Quint.
“Someone will come. You’ll see!” Yvette piped.
“Shhh…Yvette.” Anna backed toward Yvette, keeping her focus on Quint. If Yvette spoke, did that mean her message was sent?
“Pick up that brat.” Quint jabbed violently with his phasewave.
Anna knelt, pulling Yvette around front and hugging her. Brave little girl. And I, too, can be brave.
“Get up!” screamed Quint.
But Anna refused to get up. She knew where they were bound. The airlock. She would stall as long as she could, until someone found the ship. Or until…
She blinked, looking behind Quint, where a shape moved.
Was that a dog?
• • •
Tim Trouncer pivoted on his legs. He wanted to stay directly behind Quint at all times. The calculation didn’t require much computation, but at some level he was anxious nonetheless.
He rotated his head and opened his jaws. Even now, he couldn’t understand the inclusion of jaws and teeth in the PodPooch reference design. The machine wasn’t meant to eat. It could bark. Indeed, it could bark nearly fifty kilohertz above human hearing. And it could LEMP, which was much more dignified. At this point, though, Tim was just happy he had a mouth.
He rushed forward, clamping down on Quint’s right ankle.
Three hundred newtons unleashed.
The crunch, akin to a bear trap slicing through a wet bag of peanut brittle, was audible a second before the scream. Tim’s sensors registered the mimic fabric of Quint’s sock, a layer of dead human skin, surface resistance variance as his titanium row of teeth sunk through the layers. A deep memory stirred. Chicken marsala. Tim knew the PodPooch jaw sensors had no sense of taste. This was s
omething from his previous life. He stretched deep into his memory and realized the dish had been his favorite. Strange that it would be triggered by biting a man.
Quint spun around, dragging Tim behind him. The PodPooch looked at Anna and Yvette. Run! he willed them, but they didn’t move.
Chapter 19
“Tim!” Grace shouted into her dermal. “Tim! Raj! What’s going on?”
No answer. Richard lunged forward from the rear seat and grabbed for the emergency bar in the front of the mover, but he couldn’t reach it.
“Wragg! Stop the mover,” Richard yelled. “My God, Yvette!” Wragg reached out and grabbed Richard’s wrist.
“Hold on. There’s nothing we could do back at the airlock except watch our ship get smaller. We have to head back—go to Gusev Central Command. They might be able to help us.”
Richard struggled. “C-Central? Wait—Yvette!”
Grace watched as Wragg gently but firmly moved Richard back into his seat. The captain kept one calming hand on Richard’s arm, then turned and nodded to her. “Please set the destination to the Spire.”
Grace had been frantically trying to ping Tim and Raj on her ptenda. A jitter of adrenaline wriggled down her spine. “Central Command? Spire, you said?”
“Yes.” Wragg turned to look at Richard again. “We have to move forward,” the captain said. “We will get back to the Scout and Yvette will be safe. That is the only possibility we should entertain.”
Richard slumped into his seat. He mouthed Wragg’s words, Yvette will be safe, managing at least a visible semblance of control. Grace was impressed. He had helped Richard kick his anxiety down the road, essentially ordering his boss to calm down. Grace delayed her own panic as well. But whatever was going to happen over the next thirty minutes, it had better involve getting back to the Scout.
Why hadn’t Tim or Raj contacted her?
She tapped her ptenda. Tim’s link circuit showed up as active. Answer, dammit!
The mover sped forward, deeper into the tunnel. As they approached an intersection, it veered to the right and began to climb. Grace saw from the map that they were circling and climbing Gusev Spire, home to Central Command.