“Oooh, Dad?” Walters popped up over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the sticker before Rosalyn could jerk it out of his view. “Whoa. Maximillien Belrose? He’s your dad? What the hell are you doing working this crappy gig?”
“It’s a long story,” she said softly. And I wouldn’t share it with you, anyway.
The courier held out a digital pad to take Rosalyn’s signature and confirm delivery. She waited until the courier had disappeared back out the bay doors before turning her head toward Walters. Her father had certainly gone to a lot of trouble tracking her down. Apparently, cutting him off from all social media and communications wasn’t enough.
“It’s complicated. Family stuff. Can I have a minute? I’ll be right behind you.”
To his credit, he nodded and backed off, then shook his head from side to side. “Damn. Devar’s got a famous daddy. You just get more interesting by the second, don’t you?”
I certainly hope not.
“I’ll be right there,” she reiterated with a thin smile.
Walters whistled his way back down the tube, and she could hear him chuckling to himself. There was a good reason she used her mother’s maiden name on her application, and why nobody on base except for her boss knew about her family. It was the last name on that delivery sticker—Belrose—that had gotten it pushed through almost straight to the ship itself. That name opened all kinds of doors.
The return address made her hands go numb. The thought of that place, of her father and her old job, flooded her with so much rage that her system simply shut it out. It was too much to process, especially five minutes out from a mission. Better to go cold all over, to let the force of it bounce off her, as if she could harden herself into a little ball of steel.
Had she been warm once? She couldn’t remember. Now she felt like ice all over.
She ripped open the silver packet and found a single ear chip inside. Steel, she told herself. And she would have to be, to listen to her father’s voice again. It had been almost an entire year since they last had contact of any kind. Deep breaths. Closed eyes. She stuck the rubbery earpiece and its square, reloadable chip piece into her ear and tapped the little button on the chip.
Silence. Crackling. Rosalyn curled her fingers into fists and braced.
“Roz? Rosalyn . . . It’s your father.”
Obviously, Dad, thanks.
“I wanted you to know that I miss you.”
On the message he cleared his throat, and Rosalyn ripped the earpiece out and shoved it in her pocket. Fuck him. She didn’t need to hear him when she already had so much on her mind. Maybe it was an apology, she thought, or an explanation. Her father was never good at apologizing, something she had inherited.
“Everything okay here?”
She snapped her eyes up to find Josh Girdy watching her from down the corridor, hands in pockets, his outfit identical to his own from earlier in the week, except for the slightly darker tie. Nodding, Rosalyn cleared her throat, just as her father had done on the message, and gave a thumbs-up.
“Forget the thumbs-up,” she said with an uneasy laugh. “Everything is okay. But it’s all right to be nervous, mm? Always get a bit jittery before launch.”
“Hate space travel myself,” Girdy agreed. His shoulders eased back and he took a few languid steps toward her, peering over her shoulder to check for Walters. “I know our last interaction was, um, tense, but on behalf of the entire Merchantia staff, good luck. Have a safe voyage, Devar.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And I appreciate this chance. I won’t let you down.”
He took another step toward her, and another. Going rigid, she tried not to roll her eyes. He was trying to get a whiff of her breath.
“I can take a Breathalyzer,” Rosalyn chirped, too chipper. “If you like?”
“Not necessary, not at all.” Girdy waved her off, but she saw the little flicker of panic in his eyes. “Trust, am I right? That’s what this is all about. The company, our mission here, all of it. Trust.”
Rosalyn watched him internally meander around for a moment. Clearly, he wasn’t finished, and he kept fishing in his pockets but never bringing anything out. His eyes darted up to hers, oddly blank and sharklike, almost black. She felt those drums in her head again, the pounding nerves, the sense that something bad was coming and she was powerless to stop it.
“Your reports really are good,” he finally said, reaching to scratch nervously at his Adam’s apple. “Thorough. Exacting. It’s why, you know, we noticed, when things started to dip. But I listened to your report from this week. The Reevey case.”
Captain Reevey. The killer. Not Captain Murder Ship, as Owen had so descriptively called him. Rosalyn nodded, still feeling as if she were somehow in trouble. Girdy kept rocking on his heels, never settling, never going still.
“It was solid work, Devar. That’s partially why you’re even here and not on a transport back to Tokyo Bliss Station. I’m interested to see how this goes. There’s been, um, a string of this kind of thing lately, and to be completely honest, upper management is getting fidgety. First Reevey, then the Quant-7 . . .”
The Quant-7 had been Alexia’s last gig, the one that had driven her to babbling about talking trees. Something was off. Two completely liquefied crews in one week? That was odd by any metric.
“This is a full code blue, and that doesn’t look good for us, so please, if you see anything weird, anything that strikes you as unusual, make a note of it, all right? Maybe bring it to me first.”
Rosalyn lifted a brow at that. What Girdy was suggesting wasn’t procedure, and he knew it, blowing out a nervous breath and rocking faster on his feet.
“It was me, you know, that got you this last assignment,” he reminded her, focusing those shark eyes directly into hers. “Favor for a favor?”
It was her turn to check that Walters wasn’t around. She quashed the urge to squirm and shrugged. “You sound like you’re expecting us to find something weird.”
“It is weird,” Girdy replied with a grunt. “People are dropping like flies around here, Devar. I think maybe one of us should try to find out why, and without all the, you know, stupid bullshit red tape upper management likes to toss up.”
The drums in her head thundered louder. Weird. That was an upsettingly soft word to describe the total annihilation of three entire crews. It was strange enough that Girdy showed up personally to the launch, but his behavior made her even more suspicious. A slick guy like him would usually jump at the chance to impress upper management, but now he wanted to circumvent them? She smelled a rat, but whether that rat was Girdy or his bosses, she couldn’t yet say.
He had her full attention. Rosalyn nodded, doing just like Girdy, putting her hands in her pockets to hide her suddenly sweating palms. She felt the message from her father there and squeezed it. Last chance. For this job, or for her to pull out. Maybe she ought to just tell Girdy to fuck off and she would find another way to run from her problems.
“Do this,” he said, lowering his voice further and leaning in toward her. “Because it isn’t just about second chances. It’s the right thing to do. Three separate expeditions go dark, almost at the same time? That’s a lot of dead people. That’s a lot of questions that need answering.”
Altruism or angling for a promotion? Rosalyn studied him but couldn’t quite decide. Her coworkers deserved justice, that was true, but if this was all simply a series of unfortunate accidents, then there wouldn’t be much justice at all, only funerals and filling vacancies at Merchantia.
“I get it,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do. What I can find.”
“Good. That’s good. Because, look, we’ve signed on to a lot of new tech partnerships lately—ISS, Belrose Industries, Beta Tech . . . It would be better if these deaths weren’t ours, right? We do good work here; I would hate to think we were responsible in any way.” Hi
s shark eyes glinted, and he said it with an oddly straight smile.
Definitely angling for a promotion. The more he talked, the more she became convinced Merchantia had done something wrong. Of course Girdy would want a slipup pinned on someone else. All of their jobs would evaporate if Merchantia had purposely caused multiple crew deaths. She had suspected negligence, but Girdy’s black eyes suggested something worse. But there was more there, a name that made Rosalyn’s ears burn. Belrose Industries. When she quit her job and left Earth, that partnership had just been a whisper among the board members. It hadn’t mattered much to her then, only the science really interested her, but it certainly intrigued her now. Did her family business—her father’s tech—have something to do with these catastrophes?
“So you’re trying to pull a cover job,” she said.
“No, no, no, just the truth, that’s all I’m interested in. The truth! And if it’s truth that exonerates MSC, then that’s just great.” Girdy chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Cover job. Ha. No, no, not necessary, just do your job,” he said, and then added with another tight smile, “thoughtfully.”
Girdy laughed again and pointed a finger at her, still smiling, as if to verify they were old friends just joking around, as if he hadn’t just all but told her to cover up for Merchantia’s likely negligence. Pals! And he was just speaking candidly, like friends did. He stuck out his hand toward her, and Rosalyn reached out slowly to take it. The ready sequence had begun, blaring through the corridor, a red light flashing over them.
“What’s going to happen to Reevey?” she asked, realizing he would feel how damp her palm had become. Reevey, of course, had quite clearly murdered his entire crew. No cover-up job possible there. “Will there be a trial?”
The handshake was quick, and in a flash Girdy was spinning away, striding down the hall, waving off her question just as he had waved off her desperation in his office.
“Dead. Hanged himself in his cell. Good riddance, right? One less mess for us to clean up.”
His voice echoed down the corridor, and then he was gone. Rosalyn worried the message chip in her pocket and felt her head go suddenly quiet. No more drums, no more panic, just a strange emptiness.
A murderer. A mess. Just like his victims, no longer visibly human. An icy finger ran down her spine as she rubbed her thumb harder over the message. She no longer felt certain she wanted this last chance. But the thought of losing . . . of going back . . . that was as good as admitting defeat. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to go, that the mention of her family business was no coincidence. She couldn’t imagine how Belrose Industries could be involved, but if they were, it seemed right that she, a Belrose, should be the one to get to the bottom of it.
Walters was shouting at her from inside the ship. It was time to go. Rosalyn yanked the message out of her pocket, considered dropping it on the floor and smashing it with her boot. But she kept it, sliding it back into its safe little place.
5
“Feeling better?”
Rosalyn was hoping they could sustain an awkward yet steady silence. She was wrong, of course, because people like Dave Walters loved, loved, loved the sound of their own voices. He was staring at her intently. The Salvager 6 buzzed with familiar energy, almost comforting, like the subtle back-and-forth rocking of a hammock in the breeze. But this was no beach trip, and Rosalyn’s palms had not yet stopped sweating.
“Yes, definitely, I feel much better, just nerves,” she said. It was oddly true. She didn’t feel good, not at all, but she felt focused. As soon as they launched, she could put even more miles between her and her father, and Josh Girdy with his creepy shark eyes. “But it passed.”
“I hope you mean that metaphorically.”
Rosalyn managed a smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know . . .”
“Was that an actual joke? Fuck. You are feeling better. Girdy doesn’t usually have that effect on people. That guy makes me nervous. Something about his beady little eyes . . .”
Walters chuckled to himself. He sat to her left and a little behind, stationed at the front of the curved wall of monitors that fed them everything from cabin temperature, to speed, to distance to target and so on. Rosalyn understood how to read most of it, a requirement of training, one that had been a snap thanks to the complexity of her former job, but only a few core parts of information were really worth paying attention to at any given time. And as long as Walters stayed alive and vigilant, it wasn’t her job to worry about the details of their flight.
She was cleanup and cleanup only.
You’re leaving to be a fucking janitor?
It was a long leap from studying xenobiological samples against human biology to cleaning up corpses in space. When she left, her father’s disdain for the job only made it that much more appealing.
“Yikes. This isn’t much of a flight,” Walters muttered. The engines purred more insistently, launch window approaching. She swiveled in her seat, watching Walters read over the mission summation. “These poor bastards almost made it back. They’re on the edge of the system.”
“No, they had just fueled up recently,” Rosalyn replied. She had read the briefing the night before and once that morning. Leave it to her idiot pilot to do his homework six seconds before the test. “Whatever was left when they went dark the thrusters would automatically use to bring them back toward the campus. Speeds things up.”
“You want to take bets on the state of things in that ship?” he asked, still looking over the briefing on his personal VIT monitor.
“Not really.”
Walters sighed, leaning forward far enough to clack his helmet against the flickering green-and-black readout screens. “I thought a morbid sense of humor was required for this gig.”
“Only if you’re a dickhead.” Rosalyn double-checked the harness securing her to the flight chair. “Have a little respect, Walters. They had families, families that are waiting to hear about what happened to their loved ones. This is the third crew to go dark this quarter; we need to take this seriously.”
“Whatever.” He leaned back in the pilot’s seat and checked his own harness, then signaled mission control for launch permissions. “Me? I die out here, I would hope somebody makes a joke over my dead body. Life’s too short, can’t be uptight all the time.”
“Laugh at your dead body,” she mused softly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Ha. Ha. Now who needs to show some respect?”
Rosalyn tipped her head back and sighed hard enough to fog the glass of her helmet. The white mist of it bled slowly away as she stared impatiently up at the ceiling. “Get well soon, Alexia,” she whispered.
The automated voice of the mission control Servitor filled the cockpit, effectively silencing their conversation. Most critical roles were being overtaken by Servitors now, biped artificial intelligence units that were completely obedient, error-free and—most importantly—cheaper in the long run than human employees. It was only a matter of time before their jobs were completely automated, too. But maybe it was the right decision to let AI Servitors do what they did—it wouldn’t bother them to clean up the dead. There would be no more Alexias wandering the Merchantia campus mumbling about talking trees. Let the unliving handle the unliving, and see if doing it long enough drove even robots mad.
“All permissions in place,” Walters chimed in when the Servitor’s clear, slow voice cut out. “Monitors are green, engines green, and crew?”
“Ready on your signal,” Rosalyn replied at once.
“Then we’ll see you in a week, everyone,” Walters said with a sigh, leaning forward to switch the flight controls to automated. The salvage ships were more or less shot clear of the campus base, and then, safely clear of all incoming vessels and the space station itself, the ship’s controls would revert to manual. More than likely, Walters would just use the predetermined and charted course for
the wreck and let the ship fly itself, but he would need to take over for small adjustments once they approached the Brigantine.
They both keyed in their personal, private number codes into the VIT units on their wrists. This was the final indication to launch control that they were both conscious and consenting to the mission beginning. Rosalyn punched out 1-1-1-8 on hers, struggling to hit the right numbers with the stubby fingertips of her gloves.
“Seven days,” he added under his breath. “Then I’m taking a long holiday.”
The internal countdown began. The engines roared. Rail mechanisms surrounding the ship began to squeal, spinning at incredible speed before engaging with the Salvager 6 and flinging it straight into outer space and away from MSC.
“Time off is weird for me, but my birthday is always the worst.” Rosalyn frowned as the narrow windshield opened, showing an unbroken and twinkling field of stars. Her father had insisted that it was ridiculous to celebrate her birthday and Christmas separately when they were so close together. Efficiency, that was his thing. Better to just fold it all into one. This last chance at keeping her job wasn’t much of a gift either way.
“Not me. Got a calendar next to my bunk, been counting down the days to this trip for weeks. Second I get back, I rotate out and back to Earth. About time, too. Getting a little stir-crazy on base.”
“That’s good,” Rosalyn said, distracted. She stared out at the vastness of space and the stars. They looked like a flat, unbroken wall, so numerous it was impossible to contemplate what might be going on around each and every one of those stars. They could hold civilizations yet to be discovered or, if the pattern of history held, just more emptiness, more planets unconducive to intelligent life.
“You’ve got a big family?” she asked.
Walters shrugged and wriggled down into his seat, getting comfortable while they hurtled toward their destination. “Not really. Just a sister, but she’s got three kids and they like to hear my pilot stories. The oldest one? Alice? She eats up all the gory details. Shit, that kid is gonna turn out to be real weird one day.”
Salvaged Page 4