Immunity

by Erin Bowman

  It was a fair point. Every second would count. Coen nodded in agreement.

  “I’m gonna have to bail after the jump,” Nova said. “Security will freak when I blip into the station. How do you guys plan to get out?”

  “One thing at a time. Let’s just get there first.”

  “All right, but everyone’s wearing full enviro-suits.”

  Coen didn’t argue. After what Naree had told him about the radiation dispelled after a jump, it was a precaution he was more than willing to take. Together, they scrambled onto the battlecarrier and located the appropriate gear, changing quickly as Coen told Thea to locate a suit of her own. Then they were back on the PythonII, internalized comm gear linking their helmets.

  The cockpit was slightly bigger than a standard Python, allowing room for a copilot. Coen sat beside Nova, but Amber had to curl up like a ball behind their chairs, the newly updated flux drive and its AltCor reactor likely digging into her back.

  Coen gave Nova a thumbs-up, and she guided the fighter toward the exit. “Something’s wonky with the diagnostics on this one,” she told the hangar’s security guard. “I’m supposed to take it for a quick spin before liftoff, double-check some things.”

  “You better be quick. Schedule says the carrier takes off in twenty. Key card?”

  Nova held it up for the scanners. Coen heard the successful beep, then the hangar doors opening.

  “Hang on a sec, credentials on this card are for Solomon—”

  The engine roared as Nova shot them ahead. Coen swiveled in his seat. “He’s running after us!”

  “Let him try to catch me,” Nova gritted out.

  Flat desert earth blurred in the 360-degree window that enveloped the cockpit, but straight ahead, Coen could make out the fencing that corralled Paradox Technologies’ base. It grew larger at frightening speed.

  “Pull up, Nova,” he urged. “Pull up.”

  “It doesn’t work like that! These things usually drop out of a battleship into space, not launch from on-planet.”

  “Nova . . . ?” Amber said behind them.

  The fence was twenty meters away, fifteen, ten . . .

  Nova pulled back on the control stick, urging the ship up. The nose finally lifted.

  Five meters.

  The back wheels were airborne.

  One meter.

  They soared over the fencing, and Nova had them climbing. Coen suddenly felt like a truck was sitting on his chest. The pressure was everywhere, closing in on all sides, and then it was gone. The world was dark. Stars danced beyond the cockpit.

  Nova tapped coordinates into the dash. Coen tried not to think of all the ways the jump could go wrong. To land inside the station, Nova would have to take into account the station’s orbit around Eutheria, how each passing minute moved the station’s destination, how the destination within that station was a docking bay with walls on five sides and a deadly force field on the sixth.

  “GSA is going to catch us hovering around up here,” Amber worried over the linked helmet comms.

  “Sol arranged another launch for the battlecarrier,” Coen reminded her. “This section of airspace has an open travel window for an entire hour.”

  “All set,” Nova said. She leaned back in her seat, gaze still on the computer. The data entered there didn’t make any sense to Coen. It might as well be another language. Still, there was a spark of challenge in Nova’s eyes, a reminder of the confident, daring pilot he remembered from before her coma. “Here goes nothing.”

  She turned a lever on the dash, punched in a command, and the world collapsed around Coen like a dying star. For the briefest moment, he ceased to exist. He was weightless, bodiless, a million cells zipping through a vacuum. There was no light, no color, no sound.

  The connection with Thea even fell away. Being cut off from her—even for a window of time smaller than a fraction of a millisecond—was horrifying. He was alone again. The silence was like a knife, cutting away half of him, leaving him empty.

  Then his senses were overloaded.

  Gravity returned. Sound and light and heat.

  A wall appeared directly ahead and Nova yanked the control stick, spinning them away with only centimeters to spare. As the PythonII turned, Coen got his first view of the massive docking bay they’d jumped into. It sprawled out before him, filled with shuttles, ships, and refueling stations. Workers were buckled over, shocked by the sudden appearance of the fighter. At the far end of the bay was an open door framing the blue-green planet of Eutheria—no bigger than his fist at this distance—amid a sea of stars.

  It was terrifying to take in—a seemingly open window to space. But of course there was no threat. Coen could make out a holographic label reading Bay 03 on the entryway, the only obvious sign that a force field kept the station’s docking bay pressurized.

  “I tried to get us in the middle of this damn thing,” Nova said, steering them away from the wall they’d nearly crashed into, “but I guess my plotting wasn’t perfect.”

  “It was good enough,” Coen said as she set the fighter down. They were alive. The ship hadn’t exploded when jumping into a pressurized area. Xenia Station wasn’t flashing warnings of radiation leaks. Maybe Naree had been wrong about the side effects.

  “You guys better bail,” Nova said. The security workers who had hunched over at the Python’s sudden appearance were now staggering upright and closing in on the fighter.

  Coen, Thea said in his mind. You’re here.

  It wasn’t a question—she knew it from his own thoughts—but there was still a note of awe to her voice. His heart beat wildly knowing she was nearby.

  The Paramount is in Docking Bay Four, she told him. There was more, too, the horror of what she’d started. It was out. It had spread. She couldn’t stop it.

  Dread coated Coen’s limbs. I’ll be right there. Stay calm. We’ll figure it out. He scanned the force field ahead. Additional holograms were visible on the far edges, labeling the way to bays two and four.

  “To the right,” he told Amber. “She’s in bay four.”

  “I gotta split and find my way to the summit chambers, remember? So that I’m ready to communicate with the hosts the second you two power down the logic unit.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to stick together for a minute,” Nova said. “These guys don’t seem too happy to see us.”

  The security details closing in on the Python were now yelling for credentials. Nova popped the cockpit open and Coen leapt out, Amber on his heels. Before his feet even hit the ground, Nova initiated her jump out. A wave of energy sent him reeling forward, barely able to keep his feet.

  When he looked back over his shoulder, the Python was gone.

  The instant one of the guards drew a stun gun and sent a sloppy shot her way, Amber knew things would be easy.

  She dodged the blast and dove straight at him, tackling him around the middle. By the time they hit the ground, the weapon was in her hand. She sent a blast of electricity into her attacker and pulled a shock rod from his belt, thrusting the active end into his side for good measure. She had every intention of keeping it engaged until the safety kicked on, but the guard fell unconscious almost immediately.

  Amber spun. Coen had just delivered a blow to another guard’s side. The man crumpled like a sack of grain. A blur of motion caught Amber’s eye—two guards closing in on her from the left. She leapt to action, working methodically with Coen, stun gun in one hand, shock rod in the other. By the time the guards were disarmed and slumped on the ground, unconscious, no one else in the massive bay was close enough to see what had transpired.

  I’m headed to bay four, Coen told Amber. I’ll be in touch through our comms.

  She grabbed a key card from the unconscious guard at her feet and tore across the docking bay. Coen’s retreating feet faded quickly—the enviro-suit had muted her senses—but she reminded herself that he was only a comm call away.

  She used the guard’s card to access the first air
lock door, then stepped through. Peering through the second, she could see Xenia Station’s pristine halls labeled with holographic signage. A pair of diplomats—one in a formal gown and the other in a sharp suit—were walking beneath a label pointing the way to Main Meeting Chambers.

  Amber’s heart sank. She wouldn’t get anywhere in her suit. It would attract too many eyes. Her outfit beneath—a T-shirt and leggings—wasn’t much better, but if someone stopped to question her, maybe she could pretend to be a diplomat’s aide. Someone who was supposed to wait on the ship but needed to bring something to her boss.

  “I’m gonna have to ditch this suit,” she said to Coen over the comms.

  Still on their shared channel, Nova hissed, “Don’t you dare. There’s no telling what sort of effects our jump had on that docking bay. The whole thing could be flooded with radiation.”

  “I’m leaving the docking bay,” she explained. “Through an air lock. Which I’m sure protects the internal rooms in case the force fields ever fail. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not worth the risk,” Nova insisted.

  But Nova was already off the station, waiting at a distance for the rest of the Paradox crew to make their jump. There was nothing she could do to stop Amber, and the simple truth was that a suit would give her away too quickly. No one was wearing a suit—not the guards they’d encountered in Docking or the diplomats moving through the halls.

  “Look, the suit made sense when we planned things, but now that I’m standing here, I’m telling you I’ll be stopped in a matter of minutes. I have to ditch it.”

  “But Amber . . .”

  “Take whatever risks you need to,” Coen said. “This whole mission was a risk. Best we keep it going as long as possible.”

  Amber unlatched her helmet. She could still hear Nova arguing after the helmet hit the floor of the air lock, and even a bit longer still after stepping through the second air lock door and into Xenia’s gleaming halls, suit discarded behind her.

  Coen found Thea in Paramount’s engine room, sitting with her back to the reactor, a hand pressed to either side of her helmet.

  He’d known it was bad—he couldn’t block out her thoughts even if he’d wanted to—but he’d still prayed that she’d been overreacting. But on the way to her, he saw the signs. There’d been blood on the ship’s floors, evidence of physical struggles in the halls and common rooms. When he passed the medical bay, his worst fears were realized.

  The man Thea had claimed she’d secured there was missing. The doors were open.

  Thea, he said, rushing to her.

  She stared numbly at the floor, even when he grabbed her shoulders.

  Thea, look at me.

  She glanced up, eyes bloodshot behind her visor. She’d been crying. It was such a strange sight. He realized he’d never seen her cry. Even on Achlys, when everything fell apart around them, she’d appeared worried and angry and concerned, but never downright scared like this. Never broken.

  I hid, she said, the shame thick in her voice. I didn’t even try to stop it.

  He grabbed her helmet and forced her to look at him. He wished he could touch her face, her skin. They were always separated by glass. I hid once, too, he reminded her.

  You did that to survive. You didn’t know it was already in you, that you’d be safe. She shook her head, tears still streaming. Coen, I just let it happen. I was scared of my own hands—scared of infecting more people, but also scared of failing. I was still metabolizing that sedative. What if I couldn’t fight back? What if there were too many of them and they put me back in that hot cap, or the cell, or . . . I just hid. And I heard him get out of the medbay. The other guards rushed to help him. They opened the door, but he’d already turned. It’s out and it’s my fault.

  Coen hadn’t seen evidence of a struggle beyond the ship, but Paramount’s gangplank had been lowered, and the infected were smartest immediately following infection. If Docking Bay 4 had already been full of ships, Xenia’s security personnel would have moved on to other bays. The infected could have walked clear out of Docking and directly into the rest of the station, searching for fresh hosts.

  Thea, we have to turn off the logic unit.

  She could barely look at him. She was racked with guilt. She wanted to do it all over. She’d have fought back differently in the medbay, made sure she didn’t infect someone. And if it had gotten out, she’d have killed to keep it from spreading. She’d been weak.

  Her thoughts were heavy, nearly pulling Coen into misery alongside her. Not being able to kill someone isn’t a weakness, he said.

  You were able to do it on Achlys. You killed Cleaver before he could turn.

  Coen remembered the feel of the man’s head in his hands all too clearly. Cleaver had been asking for help, and death was the only kind Coen had been able to provide. He’d taken no joy in doing it, but it had been necessary.

  And I wasn’t able to do what was necessary here. Thea’s voice was feeble, so unlike her.

  Thea. He said her name sharply, like it was a whip that could inflict pain, like it was a name he didn’t like. He’d never spoken to her like that, and it was enough to make her raise her head and look him in the eye. He’d forgotten how big her eyes were, how brown and deep. What’s necessary now is the logic unit. With the rest of the hosts thinking freely, they could help us contain this. We still have a shot at saving lives. Do you understand?

  She nodded, lip trembling. She’d stopped crying, but she still didn’t look like herself. It was a lot of guilt to harbor. Coen understood all too well. It hadn’t been his fault that Psychrobacter achli spread on Achlys, but he’d nearly drowned in survivor’s guilt later. Why him? Why out of every life on that rock had he been the only one worthy of being spared?

  It had nothing to do with worth, he’d realized later. His age had spared him, his body able to coexist with the contagion. It was nothing but dumb luck.

  Even still, the guilt lingered, and he felt Thea’s now as heavily as he had his own. It made Coen want to drop to his knees and quit, to hide in this engine room with her and pretend nothing had happened, to go down with the station when Galactic Disease Control inevitably blew it to stardust.

  We can still right it, he said, desperate to believe his own words.

  Maybe, she answered. Most likely not.

  But we have to try. Thea, I want to try.

  I want what you want, she said firmly. There was an edge to her voice, pain and doubt.

  And I want what you want, he reminded her. Even if it’s something as wrong as giving up.

  Thea’s features steeled with understanding. She stood and offered him her hand. The logic unit is this way.

  Amber followed the set of diplomats to an elevator. After they disappeared, she took a solo trip of her own. Inside the car, displays advertised that all summit meetings would take place on Level 26, but even when the doors slid open at that level, Amber found the hallways shockingly quiet.

  The annual UPC trade summit welcomed leaders from numerous countries on every planet in both the Trios and Cradle. But here Amber stood, barely an hour before the meetings were slated to begin, and the hall was completely empty. Even the smaller meeting rooms, used for local trade discussions between just two or three officials, were barren.

  A sharp gasp sounded down the hall. Amber froze, her senses locking on to it. She could hear a flurry of heartbeats from that direction, too. Not several, but hundreds. Growing faster, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Amber padded down the hall and to a set of double doors, left slightly ajar. She peered through the crack and into a high-tech lecture hall. Rows of seats descended toward a stage in the front of the room where twenty of the Union’s most influential leaders sat facing the packed hall. The lights were dimmed and a giant screen was illuminated above the stage.

  One look at the visuals playing there and Amber understood why every heartbeat in the room was currently elevated. Footage of a drilling technician attacking medics—Psych
robacter achli at work in its most dangerous form—filled the screen. Metadata in the corner declared that the footage was taken during an operation known as Black Quarry. The project Nova and Thea had been sent to investigate. The operation from which Coen had been the only survivor.

  Even her own heart beat faster. Breathless, Amber squeezed through the doors and into the hall, where she took a vacant seat in the last row. No one heard her enter. Everyone was too focused on the screen, which was cycling through more visuals now—bloody noses and hemorrhaged eyes and humans that had no control over themselves. The rats her own father had tested on Kanna7. And a shot of Coen that stilled Amber’s blood. He wore an orange backpack like the one she’d seen in her father’s lab and was fighting a small army of infected people in a narrow hallway. His movements were fluid and precise, his accuracy deadly. Blood sprayed as he twisted and thrust. He fought with a simple blade, one boy against nearly twenty. When his attackers lay dead around him, he leapt upward with inhuman speed and disappeared from the frame.

  The screen faded and the lights queued up within the hall.

  “Now that you’ve seen the consequences—and the benefits—of this contagion, I’m sure you’ll all see fit to cooperate,” Lieutenant Burke said from center stage. He was seated behind a placard that read Sylvi Meadows, Union Commander and Chief. The real commander, Amber assumed, was either dead or being held against her will within Xenia.

  Burke’s small army of hosts stood to his rear, lined up before the digital screen like dutiful soldiers. Each teen was dressed in plain white clothes, and though their eyes moved over the crowd, they all looked distant, almost detached from the situation. It sent a shiver down Amber’s limbs. When she tried to reach out to the hosts, a soft static was the only response.

  Which meant Coen and Thea still hadn’t turned off the logic unit. Then again, they weren’t exactly running late. This meeting had started early. Perhaps it had even been moved up to a new time, one Paradox’s and Casey’s forces had never been privy to.

  Amber wished for her suit and the intercom she’d left behind. She needed to update Nova so the pilot could tell the others that they were already late. The jump needed to happen immediately.