Beacon 23

by Hugh Howey

  “Son of a raped pig, do you read?”

  “Fuck off, Vladimir.”

  I turn to look at Scarlett, who has pulled away from me at this intrusion by the HF.

  “It’s two of the bounty hunters,” I say.

  “No shit,” she says.

  “How many cats you have in bag right now?” Vlad asks.

  “Speak English,” O’Shea radios back.

  “Bounties. How many in ship? I find it hard to believe you make two bounty like this, but I’m going through ship scans, and I see three warm on ship of yours, and I know you have no friends, no girlfriend. So how you get so lucky, boy of bacon?”

  “That’s Vladimir,” I say. “Eastern European, I think.”

  “I know who he is,” Scarlett says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. What bounties? It’s just me and my warthen, Cricket, on this ship.”

  There’s a pause in the communications. My brain goes to where Vlad’s brain is going. Three signatures on O’Shea’s ship when he arrived, and now only two. Plus, I have the advantage of already knowing the answer. I’m standing beside the answer.

  “Shit,” Scarlett says. “You sent them all the scans?”

  “I had to,” I say.

  “Yeah, but of their ships as well?”

  I shrug. I can almost hear the rock hanging around my neck say: Dumbass.

  “I’m looking at the scans right now,” O’Shea radios to Vlad. “This don’t make no sense.”

  “Of course it does, you spawn of a molested sow. You brought her here.”

  “Fuck,” Scarlett says. She fishes into her bag.

  “Yeah, let’s read a paperback to them,” I say. I can already see the two of us in jail together. Unless she wants to say she had a blaster on me the entire time. She would do that for me. No point in both of us going to prison.

  Scarlett pulls something out of her bag. “I really don’t want to do this, but ending the war is worth more lives than have ever been spilled.”

  I see what’s in her hand. It’s a remote detonator. She already has the little clear guard flipped up to expose the silver switch.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask.

  She steps toward the porthole and peers out at the asteroid field. Her body has gone tense. Her shoulders are riding up around her neck. I step toward her, reach out my one good hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I hear a faint click. Out in the debris field, an orange cloud blooms like a flower on high-speed film.

  “What did you do?”

  I think of that animal in its cage. I think of the way it looked at me, water streaming from its jowls. It’s strange that I think of the animal before I think of O’Shea. Maybe it’s the cage. Maybe I have some affinity for helpless things.

  “Vlad was not a good guy,” Scarlett says. “He’s with the mob. Has done horrible things to decent people.”

  “Vlad?” I ask. “I thought you came here with O’Shea.”

  Scarlett crosses the room and stares at one of my screens. “I did. But I only had one bomb. And I kinda like Mitch. I mean, he’s a dick, and he’s dumb as a sack of sand, but he’s not evil.”

  “What about the kid?” I ask, thinking of the boy who looked at me through his bangs. “What about Vlad’s bounty?”

  Scarlett turns and looks at me. I can tell she never saw the boy. Probably placed the bomb on the ceiling of Vlad’s airlock, right inside the door while we were in the cockpit. It’s what I would’ve done. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask me about the kid, just swallows this information as she turns back to the monitors.

  “Now where’s that other ship?” she asks. “And Mitch is going to be on his way. We’ll have to get ready for that.”

  “Beacon 23, Sanity’s Edge. Come in.”

  “Shit,” I say. “I’ve got to get that.” I cross over to the HF. Scarlett grabs the mic before I can and squeezes the transmit button to talk to O’Shea. She must’ve already considered the ruse of commandeering the beacon and saving my ass.

  “You’ve got two minutes to spin up your drive and scoot,” she says. “In two minutes, I blow your ship.” Narrowing her eyes, she stares out a porthole. “And don’t come any closer, asshole.”

  I turn and follow her gaze; I see the bounty hunter’s ship heading our direction.

  “Bullshit,” O’Shea says. “You woulda already done it.”

  “I’ll kill this beacon operator, then.” She lifts an eyebrow at me. Smiles.

  “Fifty million in cold hard cash,” O’Shea says. “I’ll shoot him for you.”

  “Motherfucker,” I say. Scarlett cradles the mic. Is obviously thinking. “That blaster of yours is all we got,” I tell her. “There aren’t any weapons here. There are two of them out there. And my lifeboat can’t go hyper.”

  “Can we lock them out?” she asks.

  “They’ve got warrants. I know how to override the airlocks to open them in an emergency, but no way to keep them closed, not if they have marshal IDs. I mean, if I had a few hours to really dig into it I could figure something out.”

  “Then we get the jump on them,” she says. “We get down there and wait.”

  I stare at the radio. O’Shea hasn’t said a thing since offering to shoot me dead. I think about that animal on his boat; did he say it was a warthen? He could probably turn that thing loose on us and just smoke a cigar and wait for the screaming to stop. I pull out the bounty sheet and unfold it. Study the fine print. “Fifteen mil just for locating you,” I say. “He doesn’t even have to come in here. He’ll just call it in and wait for the cavalry. You shouldn’t have come for me. What were you thinking?”

  Scarlett ignores this last bit. Instead she says, “I know Mitch. For an extra thirty-five mil, he’s coming in. We should get down there.”

  She heads toward the ladder. I feel like pointing out that it might take him an extra fifteen minutes to dock. But I see out the porthole that he’s hauling ass our way. And we’ve got fifty-six rungs between us and the lock collars. Before I hurry after Scarlett, I de-energize the two free collars. He should be able to use his credentials for an override, but it’ll take a few moments before he figures out he needs to.

  Scarlett is down the first ladder and on to the second before I even get started. I barely feel my sprained ankle thanks to the rush of adrenaline, but the arm is still useless. I go down gingerly, remembering the time I slipped off a rung, caught my chin on the ladder, and nearly bit clear through my tongue. In my living quarters, I grab a blanket and a shirt and throw them down the next ladder. More rungs. I can feel O’Shea getting close. I can hear Scarlett below, calling for me to hurry. In the next module, I grab a roll of duct tape from where I was working on my project earlier that day. Was it just that day? Seems like forever ago. Time flies with company. I toss the blanket, shirt, and tape down the last ladder and start my last descent.

  “What’s this?” Scarlett calls out, as the items rain down.

  “Didn’t you see that thing on his ship? This is so it doesn’t chew us in half.” I reach the bottom of the ladder, grab the shirt, and try wrapping it around my forearm with my teeth. Scarlett sees what I’m after and does it for me, holstering the blaster. She uses the duct tape to secure the wrap, tearing the tape with her teeth. It’s strange, but I want to kiss her right then. Maybe just in case anything happens.

  “I was thinking maybe we could bag it with the blanket,” I say. “If I was him, I’d send it through the door first. Try and scare us shitless.”

  There’s a bang against the beacon. Fuck. He’s already here. I hear a screech and a scrape as he tries to get a lock. But without the electromagnets engaged, there’s no grab. It’s taking longer for him to figure that out than I thought.

  “You take the blaster,” Scarlett says, pushing the pistol into my left hand. “I’ve got two hands for the blanket. Besides, you’re a better shot.”

  “Not with this hand, I’m not.”

>   But she’s already got the blanket and is positioning herself beside airlock Bravo, which is where the scraping seems to be emanating from. I glance over at my walk suit, wishing I had time to put it on. I feel unprotected. Like a raw and open wound. And then I hear the collar buzz as O’Shea figures out he needs the override. I also see that I’m a criminal now. Without even considering the alternative, I’m sitting here, ready to blast away at a bounty hunter on legal marshal business. There’s a bounty sheet tucked in my waistband. It’s for a girl I had sex with a few times amid the fury of war, someone who just happened to be in my squad for half a tour, who is obviously batshit crazy, and who has probably done a lot of illegal stuff, like hacking into navy databases and tracking me down. And I’m just throwing my life and my career away for her? What the hell am I doing?

  I look down and realize I’m holding the blaster. Fifty mil. I could sit in miserable solitude on an island in sector one for the rest of my life. I could contemplate my black thoughts every day in paradise. Just need to slide the barrel to the right, away from the door, and onto a woman I once loved.

  But the barrel doesn’t waver. Not a fraction of an inch. I don’t contemplate this thing so much as marvel over the fact that I’m not contemplating it. I marvel that I’m so quick to choose the wrong side. This is my legacy, choosing the wrong side. Scarlett knows. She knew before she got here. It’s why she came. She knows I didn’t set off that bomb on Yata because I couldn’t kill all those unborn Ryph. How did she know? How does she know I never killed the Lord who gutted me? Why is she here if she knows I’m a traitor? A traitor with medals and a big fat lie.

  The light over the airlock goes green. Holy hell, we’re taking on a bounty hunter. Maybe he’s as big an idiot as he seems. Or as bad a shot as he is a pilot. The inner door slides open. I crouch behind the ladder, for a little protection and to rest my forearm on a rung and steady my aim. Scarlett is coiled like a spring by the door. As soon as it opens, I see the animal. I can’t shoot. I yell instead for Scarlett to DO IT! and the blanket twirls in front of the warthen. There’s a mad shriek from the animal as it gets tangled up. Scarlett yells for me to shoot it, then something bounces into the room and there’s a blinding flash and a deafening roar.

  I lose my footing and stumble back from the blast, covering my eyes, but it’s too late. I can’t see. I fire a shot toward what I hope is the door, and the blaster kicks in my hand. I hear the sizzle of a bolt striking steel. A miss. The world is a red haze with black splotches. A form appears in front of me. Someone grabbing me. Taking the blaster away. It’s over.

  “Get down,” Scarlett says. She’s beside me. It’s her with the gun. My vision is clearing, and I hear a blaster go off—a bolt strikes the ladder near my hand, the metal sizzling against my palm. I dive to the side as another round hits nearby. I think Scarlett and Mitch are firing at each other. The animal’s muffled shrieks tell me it’s still tangled. When my vision clears, I see Scarlett holding her arm, smoke rising from a charred wound, Mitch using the airlock as cover and firing at her, and the animal getting free, shaking off the blanket, and crouching as it prepares to lunge.

  “Fifty mil alive or dead,” O’Shea yells around the corner. “Your choice which.”

  He sees me and narrows his eyes. He knows. Knows I’m on the wrong side. I can see the headline: Hero Betrays Federation; Abets Known Terrorist. Mitch raises his gun at me as the warthen uncoils with a growl and launches toward Scarlett.

  I don’t know why I think to do this, what part of my subconscious is yelling at me to jump, but it’s some part that knows Mitch O’Shea is not a good pilot and probably spends no time away from gravity, that he has a weak stomach. I’ve only got one good ankle and one free arm, but it’s enough. I leap. The blaster round misses. I hit the kill switch taped to the ceiling. The panels in the floor are shut off. Gravity goes away all at once.

  O’Shea lurches and retches as his organs spring up inside him. The warthen glances off Scarlett, and both go rebounding. The animal’s shriek turns into a confused whimper. O’Shea is turned around and cartwheeling in the airlock. I worry about him getting to his ship, where the grav panels are still on. Grabbing the ladder as I rebound from my jump, I brace my feet against one of the rungs and coil my legs. I’ve done this a thousand times down the weightless arm to the GWB, barely needing to course correct against the wall. I don’t have a gun, but I’m a bullet. Shoving both legs straight, I take off with terrible speed. O’Shea sees me. Tries to swing his blaster around, but it sends him spinning the other way. A bolt lances past me. I crash into him, knocking his air out. But I send us both toward his open ship and gravity.

  Mitch goes through first and is sucked to the deck, lands with a clatter and a clang. All that gear. I land on my shoulder and feel it pop back out. The world turns white for a moment, stars blooming and then receding in flashing streaks. Something rolls across the deck. Something round. O’Shea levels his blaster at me. I roll as far from him and the loose grenade as I can. There’s a blast, a flash of heat against my face, and I think for a second that I’ve been shot. But when I look his way, I see O’Shea is mangled. Killed by his own grenade knocked loose in the fall. His body reminds me of so many of my friends. The lifeless, confused gaze, staring off into the distance. They all look the same. Like there’s nothing to see there.

  • 17 •

  Back through the airlock, I embrace the weightlessness. I can’t imagine what Mitch felt when the gravity went off. Even when you’re used to it, when you feel it a dozen times a day, every time I go down to the GWB to get a buzz, there’s that odd sensation of every nerve in my body going from a downward tug to . . . nothing. Like cresting a hill in a speeding car. Or nosing down in atmo. The vertigo is intense if you’re not used to it. For poor Mitch O’Shea, it was his end.

  The warthen is twisting and howling in the zero-gee. I see Scarlett bracing in the corner of the room, a few feet off the floor, taking aim with her blaster.

  “Wait!” I shout.

  The blanket is hovering above the deck. I gather it on my trajectory toward the ladder. There’s all kinds of debris floating about. My walk suit. Tools. The roll of tape. I send the blanket floating toward Scarlett, and it moves like a wraith through the air. She gathers it. “We just need to get it through the airlock,” I tell her.

  She nods. Knows I need this. Knows me well enough. The blaster is holstered. I pull myself up the ladder with my free hand. The pain in my shoulder and ankle are distant, muffled like my hearing from the shock grenade and the explosive blast. The cat is whimpering. Doesn’t seem so ferocious now. Scarlett opens the blanket and kicks off toward the animal, manages to take it from the back. I push off and hit the switch on the ceiling, bracing myself for the fall. There’s a clang as the tools hit the deck, and then a series of oomphs as the three of us follow suit. If my ankle wasn’t broken before, it feels like it now.

  Scarlett looks to have landed on the animal, which is lying still. Barely moving. She drags it in a bundle of fabric to the airlock, wrestles it through. I limp over and key the door. Before it slides shut, I see the warthen extricate itself and dash off into the ship. The fight is out of her. Or maybe without a master to obey, she has no target. Either way, she’s trapped on the ship until I figure out what to do.

  I sag against the wall, exhausted. Scarlett tries to catch me. My shoulder screams out. My foot won’t take any weight. Her hands are on me, her face so close, her lips so familiar, my mind still stunned and racing. She starts to say something, starts to thank me, to tell me she loves me, that we can end all wars, that we can make life, have children, move to sector one, be heroes together—

  When her eyes widen in pain. And I see inside those windows into her soul, and I see that she is a good person, deep down, just as the life leaves her. Just before her body sags against mine, nothing left to animate it.

  Stepping through airlock Charlie is the bounty hunter in black. She has a whisper gun in her hand. It’s pointed right
at me. A woman I loved is in my arms, dead. I’m next. I know this with all the certainty of gravity planetside.

  The bounty hunter walks to within a pace of me. I’m half pinned under Scarlett’s weight and half pinned by my injuries. I can’t move. I can’t even resist. I’ve wanted to be dead for so long that I open my arms to the concept, to the idea of not existing. I want it. I feel my entire being open up to the cosmos, wanting all of it to pour inside me, for the emptiness to fill me up, to burst me back into the atoms I’m made of, to be the tinsel and debris of that cargo, all scattered through space, unknowing and unfeeling.

  The bounty hunter pulls the blaster from Scarlett’s holster and flings it across the module. She grabs Scarlett by the collar and pulls her off me. The woman in black is fiercely strong. She keeps the whisper gun aimed at my head as she drags Scarlett across the deck and through the airlock.

  The door closes.

  I never heard her come. I barely hear her leave. A light goes from green to red above the door. Scarlett is gone, and I haven’t been arrested, haven’t been killed, and I’m angry as hell. Depressed and angry as hell and full of conviction. Conviction. The missing ingredient. The energy to do it. To finally do it. And nearby, an animal that wants to kill me. So it’s not my weak-ass hands refusing to pull the trigger.

  I work my way shakily to my feet. Need to do this before I change my mind. Need to embrace my dark secret, the desire to be ended, the unwhisperable, or they’ll lock you away. I key open the airlock to O’Shea’s ship. “Come and get me!” I shout. The remains of the warthen’s owner are ten paces away. I stumble through the airlock, into the ship, hoping to be eaten. The animal turns the corner, and I brace for a world of searing pain, of claw and tooth, of white-hot mercy, but I just feel it brush against me. I open my eyes, didn’t realize I’d closed them, and turn to see a tail whisk around the corner. I stumble back into the module, confused. The warthen has a food pack in its mouth. It goes to my walk suit, which is back to a heap on the floor, turns twice in a circle on it, and lies down, chewing on the pack, protein paste going everywhere.