“Is transponder control board from TICS unit,” Rocky said. A thin wire extended from the board through the broken faceplate, and down into the fused regolith wall. “Wire appears to be power connection.”
As they watched, the wire wiggled.
“Dutch, can you grab the wire and see if it’s anchored to something?” Jeph said.
The pod extended a small manipulator arm and snagged the rim of the helmet. Dutch pulled the wire tight and it snapped loose, dragging a piece of spacesuit fabric through the wall. It looked like a pocket flap and as it twisted, the optic showed that there was blood smeared on it.
“That’s Chei’s writing,” Shona said.
“Come get me and bring helmet. Broke mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jakob Waltz: Orbiting L-4 Prime:
“This is unarguable. Chei wears a suit as he walks through the ship and until I can certify he’s not carrying some kind of alien microbe, he’s not leaving a sealed diagnostic chamber,” Anju said as she set up the protocols on her display to make sure she was ready.
“I’m not entirely convinced yet,” Jeph said. “But if it’s really some kind of alien structure, I should point out that Cori’s been inside too. Ian too for that matter. For years.”
“And if I had known it might be non-human, I’d have sterilized them. We got lucky twice and I refuse to rely on luck to keep favoring the foolish,” she said. She was physically shaking.
“Alright. He’ll be pissed, but I’ll back you on this,” he said. “Dutch, pass the word he doesn’t unsuit until he gets to the diagnostic chamber. Have him also decontaminate the outside of the suit before he clears the airlock. Just to be safe.”
“Acknowledged,” Dutch said. “They will be aboard in five minutes.”
“Thank you,” she said, settling down to her desk. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ve seen firsthand what the Burroughs Epidemic did, and that’s not a mistake I will let happen here.”
“You were a kid when that happened. Were you there?”
She nodded, her eyes suddenly taking on a hollow emptiness he’d never seen in them before. “My mother is a doctor and my father worked on the aquifer project that was the source of the outbreak.”
“I thought you were from Luna?” he said, sitting down and studying her.
“I went to school on Luna, but I grew up on Mars.” She looked down and closed her eyes for several seconds like she was praying.
“When the outbreak started, we evacuated to the Twin Cities like everyone else but it was impossible. Dad died early, so Mom and I tried to get a hardship visa to Luna. There was no room on the Aldrin Cycler when it came through and people were getting desperate. More people died in the first year from starvation than died in the outbreak. They just laid the bodies out in rows on the surface. It was horrible.”
“I’ve seen images,” he said.
“I’ve walked the rows. I was ten years old and ...” emotion clogged her voice and she shook her head. “Since Mom was a doctor, we both got double rations for the first year, but the food shortages just got worse. Rather than face starvation, we went back down. There were only a few hundred thousand that volunteered to return to the surface. The colonies could have supported ten times as many so there was plenty of food and recycled water to keep us all alive without having to use indigenous water. We were safe, but Mom said it was like living in a gilded cage. Pretty. But a prison.”
“The quarantine would have made that a one-way trip for you,” he said, leaning back.
She nodded. “My mother paid a lot of money to get my records altered when she sent me to Luna, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am a Redback.”
He sat in silence studying her face. Something else was still deeper under her confession, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to dig it out. “I always thought you were a little over the top on your isolation of the ice samples from our first few cargoes. Now I guess I know why.”
Challenger: Saturn Orbit Inside Hyperion:
“I want to be tanked and moving in two hours,” Captain Mei said. She floated above her command riser barking orders. “We’re about to get a buttload of ugly coming at us from both sides.”
“Aye Admiral,” Carter said, winking at her.
“Sorry, but this warrior shit is kinda fun,” she said. “It goes to your head.”
“I’m sure it does, as long as you’re on the winning side,” he said. “It looked like you took some hits before we saved you. Have you got damage?”
“Yah, long-range com is blown and we’ve got a couple small hull breaches. One of our guns took a direct hit too. We can’t tell how bad without an EVA, but we’ve got more serious junk on our plate to chew through first.”
“Nojo, was wondering if your com was down. You usually relay orders to me and we just got word from the admiral. He said he had not ordered a change of plans and that we should expect an ambush,” Carter said.
“That’s good to know,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Affirm. And I believe you will love this one,” he said. “If we survive the ambush, we’ve got to rendezvous with the Archer and bring food.”
“So what’s the rub?”
“Look at the course info I just sent you,” he said. “They’re cannon-balling through the system and heading deep.”
She opened the file and whistled. “This means we’ll need to bring the icebarges along. They won’t be fuzzy over that idea.”
“Probably not.”
“So we take everyone who isn’t FleetCom and shove them into the Roswell. It’s still airtight in the forward sections. When the bad guys get here, they can haul their sorry asses home.”
“That might leave the other three of them light-crewed,” he said.
“We have extra personnel we can shunt over,” she said, glancing at the chrono again. “Two hours will be tight, but unless we want to slug it out in another round, we’ve got no wiggle on this.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask where we’re going after we catch the Archer.”
“I’m not going to like this am I?” she asked, grabbing the lip of her console and pulling herself into her seat.
“We’re supposed to meet up with an exploratory ship by the name of the Jakob Waltz. It’s in the Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster.”
“You are shitting me right?”
Jakob Waltz: Orbiting L-4 Prime:
“Well, the good news is, I found the missing TICS,” Chei said.
“With your face by the looks of it,” the captain said. They were talking across a video com while the doctor worked on the cuts on his cheek and forehead with a robot tender. His nose was huge and both eyes were purple. He flinched as the mechanical hands pinched the skin closed and applied dermabond to the largest gouge above his eye.
“True beans. When I got sucked through the wall, I fell sidewise a couple meters and my helmet exploded,” he said. “I remember thinking I was foobed bad.”
“So you knocked yourself stupid?”
“Yah. Hit bottom hard. Full earth gravity too. I was out for a while I think. When I woke up my suit lights were out, but I could see a red glow. It wasn’t very bright, but turned out to be a low battery indicator on the TICS.”
“The TICS don’t run on batteries,” the captain said.
“Da,” he said, making another face as the robot poked at a puffy spot on his cheek. “But the pile on this one is dead as dirt. It’s not producing anything, so the backup power was all there was.”
“The reactor is dead?”
“Completely cold,” he said.
“I’m not the expert on this stuff, but how’s that possible?” Jeph asked.
“Isn’t,” he said, shaking his head and causing the bot to beep in protest.
“Hold still or I might glue your eye closed,” Anju said, her voice over the comlink coming back a millisecond after he heard her real voice. Jeph glanced over at her and grinned.
&nb
sp; “Yes mum,” Chei said. “Anyway. The core should be hot regardless, but something sucked the damn thing dry. The electronics were running on backup. I thought my com was dead too, but I don’t know if it was that or the wall wouldn’t let radio frequencies through.”
“So what is this wall?”
“Not a fragging clue. It must stop RF, and somehow it holds the atmosphere in, but solid matter passes through it. There’s this strange sensation when you go through it though. A little like being wrapped in a PSE suit liner, but inside your body too. It’s just … odd.”
“Is it an energy field?”
“Probably, but I don’t know.” He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “When I pushed my hand back through it down where I was, it went through with no resistance, but ran into the ice on the other side. I felt the cold through my suit glove and when I pulled it back, there was frost on it. I had to climb on top of the TICS to reach where I could get my hand back into the tunnel.”
“So tell me about this room you were in.”
“It’s about five meters on a side and almost that high. The walls are flat gray and featureless, pretty much like the outside of the barrier wall. There’s a spot on the opposite wall maybe three meters high and two wide and shiny black. It looked like a screen of some kind and when I walked up to it, some of Ian’s hieroglyphics appeared. Three of them. Each time one appeared, it said a word.”
“Oola ahn wath,” Ian said, startling Jeph.
“Ya, that’s what it said,” Chei said. “I guess it meant open the door, or turn on the lights or something because both happened.”
“What happened next?”
“I crapped myself,” he said, his face showing he might be serious.
“What?”
“Yah. The wall disappeared and I saw the inside of this … this thing,” he said. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like a huge chamber full of clear spheres. They’re interconnected by thin transparent catwalks.” He shook his head and looked at his hands.
“Tacra Un, trana nu che,” Ian said, nodding.
“What he said.” Chei nodded, cleared his throat, and gave a weak smile. “If you can imagine what it would feel like being microscopic and looking at a crystal from the inside … that’s close. It went on as far as I could see. It was … amazing, and humbling at the same time, and … and I can’t even find words … to tell you why.”
“I’m sure it was amazing,” the captain said. “You should try to rest. I’ll have someone bring you some food and I’ll come back later so we can talk more.”
Jeph looked over at the doctor who was staring at him with her mouth hanging open. He nodded toward the door and she followed him out.
“Still skeptical?” she asked as soon as they reached her office.
“I have to be,” he said. “His speech patterns are strange. It’s like he’s having trouble finding words to describe something. That makes me wonder if he’s not suffering from a light dose of whatever screwed up Ian’s brain. I think it might be prudent for you to check for a brain injury. He did a serious faceplant so that could be possible.”
“Not likely, he only broke his nose,” she said.
“Seems to me you said Ian had no head trauma too,” he said.
“Maybe he’s awestruck,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said. “If you certify he’s not got the same kind of TSD that Ian has, then maybe I’ll be willing to revisit the idea that it’s little green space slugs or whatever. For now I need you to be a scientist.”
“Yes sir,” she said, spinning back toward the quarantine room.
He could tell she was less than enthusiastic about his orders.
She wants to believe.
DoCartel Executive Offices: Galileo Station: Lunar Lagrange One:
“What do you think you are doing?” Prime Minister Ambrose roared as she barreled through his doorway like a one-person armored battalion. Derek Tomlinson had just received the news of the decisive failure over Hyperion and was pacing as he worked on a plan for how to make the best of it.
“My job?” he said, glancing at his com to see if he’d missed a heads-up from his secretary. There was no blinking light on his desk.
“No, you’re starting a civil war,” she snarled, coming square at him and looking like she wanted blood. He took a step backward, thinking about his survival in a real way.
“Excuse me, I have no idea what you’re—”
“Don’t deny it. You know exactly what I’m talking about. That battle that just happened out near Saturn,” she said, stopping close enough he could feel her breath as she yelled in his face.
“Ah,” he said. “That just happened. I’m surprised you heard about it already. We were attempting to apprehend Chancellor Roja.”
“You were not. You attacked two multicruisers with a fleet of armed icebarges,” she said. “Icebarges that weren’t even your ships to start with. Who gave you the authority to arm those ships?”
“Since you’re familiar with what happened out there, you must realize that the multicruisers were armed as well,” he said, slipping around his desk and sitting down in his chair. “The multicruisers actually destroyed the Roswell and captured the three other ships at gunpoint. The ships were defending themselves.”
“Those ships were armed under orders from the Office of Special Investigations,” she said. She leaned over the front of his desk, looming above him in an uncomfortable way.
“The Challenger and the Galen? I did not authorize that,” he said.
“No, the icebarges you flatchwit.” She slapped her hand on the desk and pushed herself back. “You armed those icebarges at Iapetus and then sent them to ambush those ships.”
“Actually, they were training to capture the Armstrong,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter if you want to call it training. They attacked those multicruisers and FleetCartel is already screaming for blood,” she said. She threw herself down in the chair across from his desk and glared at him. “Within an hour of the fight, Fleet filed a formal complaint against you and your office for flagrant and reckless endangerment of ships, crews, and legally owned assets of FleetCartel.”
“That’s preposterous,” he said.
“That is how the legal system of the Union works or maybe you have forgotten that?” she hissed.
“Roja is an outlaw. She is a criminal. The Charter of the Union allows us to arm ourselves for public defense,” he said, seeing a way to push back against her outrage.
“Yes, but it doesn’t allow you to steal assets from one cartel to fight it out with another,” she said. “You attacked ships and crews that were not a factor in Roja’s apprehension. For what? Target practice?”
“Those ships were rendezvousing with the Armstrong at Mimas Station and are part of her rebellion.”
“You missed my point,” she said, shaking her head. “You have to prove that in court before you start cutting ships up in a shootout. We are a government of laws, not a frontier town in the old west of America.”
“I can prove it in court,” he said.
“You better hope so, because you have two cartels who have asked for a Sealed Docket Session against you. If you didn’t have some strong allies on the Executive Council, you’d already be in deep trouble.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, feeling his temporary sense of bravado flush under a wave of cold dread.
“I’d have granted them their SDS, if Paulson Lassiter hadn’t stalled them in a procedural bottleneck because we are still one chancellor short on the Council,” she said. “Once DevCartel installs their replacement for Markhas, Fleet will come for you. Honestly, if you haven’t pulled off a heroic save that justifies your actions, I will vote with them to divest your sorry ass.”
“You wouldn’t.” He said it as a statement of fact even if he didn’t feel any degree of certainty.
“Yes. I would. You’ve played things dangerously fast and loose,” she said, leaning forwa
rd and thumping her fingertip on his desk to punctuate her words. “But this screw up of yours will bring down the Union and I will not let you sit in this office and masturbate your ego with the power I gave you.”
She launched herself toward the door abruptly, almost trampling Lassiter on the way out. She shook her head and pushed past him without a word. He turned and stared as she disappeared through the outer office.
“Obviously she was here for the same reason I am,” he said, coming in and closing the door.
“I don’t need it from you too,” Derek snarled.
“Perhaps not,” he said, nodding. “But I have to ask, what the hell did you think you were doing?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Armstrong: Outbound at 2.4 AU: Beginning Transit of the Asteroid Belt:
Katryna floated across her private stateroom to serve tea for Admiral Nakamiru and a scotch for Captain Jeffers. Since they’d reached the upward limit of what they could safely cruise given their sensor range and reaction time, they were back in weightlessness. The drinking tubes that freefall forced them to use lacked the style of the crystal glasses she preferred, but it was the idea that mattered.
The three of them were the sum total of her acting war council. Although they were ten days since leaving Galileo, she’d not had a formal planning session yet. She had hoped to keep things casual for as long as she could, but it had reached the point where that was no longer possible.
Roja swung over and landed smoothly in her seat and grabbed the strap to anchor into place. Even after years living in Galileo, she still enjoyed the freedom of floating.
“If Tomlinson’s fleet is out there, we’re walking into a fight,” she said, jumping into the subject she wanted to cover.
“I agree,” the admiral said.
“We only have three multicruisers and three ice haulers.” She pulled a slow swallow from her tube and frowned.
“Plus the Armstrong,” Jeffers reminded her.
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 31