by Patty Jansen
Of course it didn’t mean that the entire force was bad. There were many good people, but what had happened on Mars was despicable, and the fact that people in the Jupiter system, like Banparra, were covering it up was even more despicable.
Preston should face a court for what he had done. But back then, she’d not had the weight of evidence or the authority needed to start that process. Not just that, she didn’t have the resilience, nor the desire to spend the rest of her working life in court.
Now, accused of being a spy, framed for something she knew nothing of, she was at the end of the line.
Maybe sometime in her past she would have chosen to toe the line and look away from how an organisation was going to justify the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians for the sake of killing a competitor, but now that she was older and no longer trying to prove something, she wanted to stay true to what she had seen.
Heck, even Paul was true to his ideals. He must have spent years doggedly chasing after her, ferreting out possible places where she could be. For once, she should turn around and stop running, stop pretending that all was well with the force. The cancer could not be cut from within.
Alone in her cabin, in the depths of despair, she made the decision to run, and once that decision was made, it flowed into making a plan to carry it out.
She needed a truck, and once she got a truck, she could probably make it to Prometheus, where they were unaware of the situation, and if they were aware of it, if she brought the COF delegation as her shield, then no one would blatantly fire at them.
But first she needed to open her door.
That part was easy, because the locks inside the base were shockingly bad, even if living in an isolated community in itself was a type of security. If someone stole something, you knew it was on base, and you could gradually search out everyone until you found out who did it.
This was not going to be one of those situations, where everybody was mobilised in order to scour the base for the missing object or person. Because she was going to escape from the base using the truck up at the entry tube.
So she used her pad to open the door.
While her pad was turned on, a general message scrolled over the screen: Prisoner on the loose in main base. Fabio Velazquez, slight build, dark hair, last seen wearing unmarked Sarajevo fatigues, also seen wearing scrubs entering the hospital, also seen wearing overalls in the entry hall carrying a sheet of board, also seen performing fake maintenance on a wall panel.
Katarina grinned. He was certainly resourceful.
Do not engage in fight. Capture and return to command unharmed.
That was quite odd, because Banparra was not known for being lenient with deserters. Either this man carried protection from another authority or he had some information they wanted—which fit with the way they had tried to wipe him.
Damn, she should have seen that earlier. But now it was too late, and they couldn’t help each other.
She had maps. She had communication equipment, she had supplies from past field trips. When locking her in her room, Banparra had disabled her authorisation to carry a weapon, and to be honest most people in the base weren’t armed. Weapons did funny things to pressure domes.
The truck would have a weapon, although nothing too drastic.
Katarina packed a bag with all the things that would be useful and that she could carry. Her warm clothes, outside boots, her suit liner, her pad and PCD, even if neither had full connectivity right now. A full water bottle. Her personal breathing mask. First aid kit including radiation pills and protective cream.
Then she opened the door to her room, checked if any of the senior officers from the new troops were in the hallway—which they weren’t—and left the room.
She shut the door behind her, and ran towards the stairs.
Chapter 14
* * *
WELL, IT WAS KIND OF ANNOYING that Doric was Paul’s wife, and that he wouldn’t leave without her—which was understandable. Even if Fabio had considered clueing Doric in to his plan, he doubted they had the time to find and rescue her, and, if they did, her presence might set off all kinds of alarm bells, because of her rank, and would she even want to come?
“I’ve come here especially to get her out, and I’m not leaving without her, now that I know for certain that she’s on the base, and now that I know she’s in trouble.” Because Fabio had also told them of the scan and that she appeared to have nanometrics. But none of the delegation seemed to be surprised about this.
Sol said, “Mate, we may just have to leave without her, because things would be even worse if we’re caught.”
“You can go without me.”
But then Jun Hasegawa said, “I know where her room is.”
He held up his pad with the map. As it turned out, the accommodation quarters of the research base weren’t very big, and the officer rooms were just on the other side of another barrier across the corridor.
No time to argue. “All right, let’s go then.”
They ran along the corridor. Fabio checked over his shoulder, but no one had yet discovered Private Dickson locked in Fabio’s room.
The sliding barrier to the next section, though, was locked and remained so, even with Dickson’s card or Fabio’s pad.
Sol inspected the door.
“What sort of lock is it?” Paul asked.
Fabio said, “Never mind. I don’t think we have time for subtlety. Stand back.”
He hefted his air tank above his shoulder, and swung it into the door. The metal just bounced off, nearly knocking Fabio over.
“Let me do that,” Sol said, with the implied word midget.
But no matter how hard he swung the tank, Sol couldn’t open the door either.
Fabio’s mind raced. The man he had locked into the room hadn’t been carrying a weapon, had he? He was certain he would have noticed it. If he’d noticed it, he would not have left it.
But wait.
Something else bubbled up from his memory of obsessively reading the safety instructions. During a pressure or air quality emergency, all the doors would shut, but if there was a military attack warning, the big connecting doors would open. How did one simulate a military attack warning? It probably needed to be given centrally through command. Could he find the code? Damn, there was no time for this.
He put his fingers against the door lock.
Sol, Paul and Thalia were checking out the door seals and whether they could trick the door into opening by sliding something underneath.
He could sense data streaming through the lock, but, lacking technology, he had nothing to feed it.
“Here.” Jun passed him a pad.
Fabio stared at lines of code on the screen.
“Passcodes,” Jun said. “Try them.”
Holy crap. Wherever had he gotten those?
Fabio went to the side panel. He punched the first code—it didn’t work. The second didn’t work either, nor did the third. But when he punched in the fourth one— All the lights went off.
“Fuck,” someone said in the darkness.
And then a small hiss and a rumbling sound.
Thalia said, “It’s opening. How did you do that?”
“Just random luck,” Jun said.
Fabio suspected there was more to it. He was beginning to like the quiet youngster.
When the door had moved up far enough, he ducked underneath into another dark corridor. An alarm was going off and a light flashed at the end.
He hoped someone figured out that a malfunction had triggered the external military attack alarm, because otherwise things would get nasty.
Everyone followed him. Doric’s room should be just inside this door.
But when they got there, no one answered.
“Try opening the door,” Thalia said.
Fabio did. It slid aside.
It was dark inside the room. The light filtering in from the corridor hit a bed with a messy covering and a cupboard with the
door open, the shelves almost empty. Katarina Doric was not in her room.
“I think our bird has flown,” Sol said.
“She’s not dumb,” Paul said, pride lacing his voice.
“That’s all very well, but now we really can’t wait any longer,” Fabio said.
“I’m not leaving Katarina.” Paul’s expression was haunted.
“She’s looked after herself for a long time,” Sol said. “I agree, we need to go, or there won’t be any escape attempt and nobody will ever find us again. Including Katarina.”
Paul was very unhappy, but he was smart enough to realise that Sol was right.
Sol held a light and led the group to the end of the corridor, up a flight of stairs. Into a corridor with rows of black-painted doors on either side. Up another flight of stairs. Another corridor, this one with poorly maintained walls and floors, where trails of rust ran from the ceiling and condensation had burnt rust-coloured patches into the linoleum. Fabio knew that inside these bases, rust was always the worst in places close to the airlocks. Which meant that they were close to the top floor.
The alarm was still ringing and it wouldn’t be long before people turned up. Already the sound of voices echoed from downstairs. Those would be the troops that were housed in the corridor with Fabio.
A woman’s voice called out, “Quick, this way.”
A narrow side passage split off to the left. A door at the end of this passage had opened, and a woman stood in the opening, backlit by blue-white light.
Thalia called out, “Kat!”
Paul ran into the passage first, followed by Thalia. Fabio followed Sol, having trouble keeping up while carrying his tank, duffel, suit and Jun’s pad.
At the end of the corridor they came to a kind of control room with many blinking lights. A soft green-white glow of light illuminated banks of control panels around the walls. The room held a single chair, empty. In the middle of that room a narrow winding staircase went up into the ceiling.
Fabio, Thalia, Sol and Jun went in, while Paul hugged Katarina at the door.
“I thought they’d killed you,” he said.
“They damn near did.”
Once in the room, different sounds drifted from downstairs: the sound of an engine, the whine of maintenance equipment. Cold air wafted from upstairs. There must be another way of getting to the surface.
Sol led the way up the stairs.
He stopped a few steps from the top. Beyond his broad back, Fabio glimpsed the side of a truck of the type Major Doric had used to pick him up.
Katarina pushed past him and under Sol’s arm. In a few quick steps, she crossed to the truck, climbed up on the step and opened the door. She gestured to him.
“Come. The rest of you, pick up a pressure suit over there.”
Fabio ducked under Sol’s arm and looked into the hall. The hall was much bigger than he had expected. Trucks and more trucks. Crates of newly arrived supplies. Not a living soul in sight.
Fabio ran.
At the door of the truck, Doric grabbed his arm to help him climb in. Her grip was strong and reminded him of something else. Hauling children into a vehicle. Mothers passing their offspring into his hands. Priya sat at the wheel yelling at him. Hurry up!
A big menacing cloud of dust on the horizon.
Some of the settlers had insisted on packing their tents and were still hauling everything into their vehicles. Fabio hoped they’d make it to safety in time. At training they always said, Space warfare is boring. Once you can see the threat, it’s much too late.
Where was safety? He had planned to take this convoy to the nearby dome of Johnson base.
He clambered into the truck next to Priya. The back seats in the cabin were full of women with children on their laps. Silent, watching him with big, frightened eyes.
He pulled the door shut.
Go, go, go.
Fabio sank into the first available seat while the others each grabbed a pressure suit and pulled on the bottom half, because that was the easiest way to carry the damn thing.
Thalia pushed Jun up the ladder into the truck cabin. They both went to the back of the cabin.
The next one in was Paul. He already had his helmet on and promptly tripped over the bar just inside the door and almost went sprawling over Fabio’s knees. He sat right behind Katarina, and put his hand on her shoulder.
Sol came in last. He ran from the stairs and simply jumped into the truck as if there was no height difference, carrying a bunch of equipment. Holy crap.
He shut the door behind him. First the outer door and then the inner door of the airlock.
Kat was going through the warming-up procedure for the truck’s engine.
She shouted while not looking over her shoulder, “All of you, find a seat and sit down, in case things get nasty.”
Fabio looked over his shoulder. Jun’s face was pale.
“Hang on, where are we going?” Thalia asked.
“There is a shack about a third of the way to Prometheus. It’s a safe spot for surface crews in trouble or for pilots to land safely in case of engine trouble. It’s well supplied with food and water and long-range communication equipment that I’m going to use to call for help.”
“That’s not going to be much use when they shoot us,” Jun said, his eyes still wide.
“I’m banking on the very good chance that they won’t shoot us.”
“Why not? Any news we get out will look very bad for them.”
“Even if they don’t care about the bad publicity it would bring—and I think they do care—I also think we have something they want.”
And they all looked at Fabio.
The Watcher
* * *
“THERE IS ACTION,” VEGA SAID.
She looked at the circle of women standing around the projection table in the control centre of Juno Station. The room was shrouded in semidarkness, as the station was just about to come out of the shadow side of the planet. Outside the window, the misty horizon lit up in a pale blue haze.
“What do you mean?” asked Taura. “Can you see that the mindshards have moved?”
“They’re still at the base, but I can feel their distress. We have to act now, rather than later.”
“Any idea what happened?” asked Ybella, who was the operations manager of the station and as such hadn’t been intimately involved with the planning as some of the others had. Although she grasped the concept of mindshards much better than Taura did, and possibly she could feel Vega’s horror at waking up in the middle of her sleep cycle with all of her brain screaming at her, I don’t know anything about this. I haven’t been treated. Why would I have nanometrics?
“They’ve discovered the nanometrics.”
“In all three women?”
“No, just the two of them on Io. Probably in the prisoner as well, but whatever strains of dendromers he’s got, it’s nothing to do with us.”
“What are they going to do to the women?”
“Anything that comes into their dumb brains. ISF really has no comprehension of mindshard technology. They might try to wipe them or read them. They probably think they’re spies and will try to read data that the women don’t have.”
“Can they?”
“If they know how, yes.”
“Then they might discover us.”
“The chance is very small, because these women don’t know anything about us either. But eventually, ISF will discover us anyway. Once they really start looking. The only reason they haven’t done so is that we’ve given them few reasons to look. But we’re ready. We have a scenario for the inevitable discovery.”
Which, as Vega remembered with a shudder, involved evacuating the base, which would be a huge risky operation, especially since they had few places to move fifteen thousand people to, and the two ships available to do evacuations could only carry a hundred at a time.
“I’m more concerned about the prisoner. We can’t risk losing him. We must send people imm
ediately.”
“I’ve been saying so all along.” Taura sounded almost relieved. “Can I assemble a crew now? The Thor IV is in dock and all charged up. We only need to load two moths and we’re underway.”
“Yes. Take pilots. Take marksmen. Take Olek and his crew.” Those were the best and toughest aggregates.
“Explosives?”
“Yes, take them, too.”
“Does this mean that you are now finished with the mindshard stuff?”
“Yes, because the three are in the position we want. We just need to wait until they leave the base and pick them up. And no, because we still have the third mindshard. She’s in an interesting position, because she has a very close relationship with Governor Law. She is highly likely to create a distraction.”
Vega touched the surface of the table and a three-dimensional projection of Calico Base sprang into the air. “I’m sending everyone the details about where they are and where we are likely to be able to pick them up. Remember that there will be no revealing of who we are. We have one chance to rescue the whole of Allion. This is it.”
Everyone dispersed, leaving Vega alone at the table. She stared at the projection, willing with all her mind to talk to the three women she had never met. All three would be feeling her distress now, and because of the Table of Prioritised Emotions, they would be looking for something to do to help. Because that was what you did when a close friend was in trouble. You fought; you asked questions.
Yes, do you hear that, pampered rich girl with the influential aunt? Ask questions. Many of them. I know you want to, because you have heard nothing from your friends, and because you probably have seen things that make you wonder.
Yola had been one of her mentors, almost like a mother. When she was stranded on Ganymede after the purge of Allion, she had continued to work under her assumed identity while keeping in contact with Juno Station. That in itself carried a high degree of risk.
“Dr Laura Crawford” had told Vega of the three women who were all in the hospital as a result of an accident and the amazing opportunity to connect the four of them with nanometrics.