Stars Beyond

by S. K. Dunstall

  No knowledge was ever wasted. Unfortunately. “I’m going to the other side of the shuttle.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “Trust me, I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t have to.” Nika found the next loophold to latch on to. “Keep talking.”

  “The Ort are green, except I see them as white. You’ll meet them soon.” He paused.

  “Keep talking.”

  “It’s amazingly difficult to talk to order, you know.”

  “If you were out here, you’d understand why I need you to.”

  “Let me think. I have a different range of vision. When I look at walls, I can see the wires because of the heat passing through. I can see the heat of a person from the other side of a thin wall or of plastiglass.”

  “Like infrared?”

  “I suppose so, yes. Ultraviolet too.”

  “Doesn’t that make it awkward?”

  “At times. But I wouldn’t want to lose it.”

  “I would love to see how you see.” Nika clung to the side of the ship while she looked around. It was worse than waking up early in the Dekker.

  “Are you still out there? Are you all right? You’re breathing heavily.”

  “So would you be if you were walking around the outside of a spaceship.”

  Snow’s vitals hadn’t increased when he’d gone out to help Josune or Roystan do repairs. How many times had he been outside a ship? When would a modder, or a doctor, ever have had the need?

  “Do you want—”

  “Just shut up and keep talking about something else.”

  Nika kept moving. Attach loop. Unattach. Attach. Unattach. Until finally she was at the top. Off to one side, no longer hidden by the bulk of the shuttle, was a planet.

  “I can see Zell.”

  “Are we heading toward it?”

  She had no idea. She looked around. There were several specks reflecting red from the sun, heading toward the planet. “We’re not going the same way as the other lifeboats.” She hoped they were lifeboats. “Can you see what I’m seeing?” She’d been pushing her camera feed through all the time.

  “Yes, and I don’t think I like it.”

  Neither did she.

  “I can’t steer this thing blind.”

  How did you steer a shuttle? By firing the rockets. Nika didn’t plan on staying outside while Alistair fired rockets around her, trying to get them back on course, but maybe that was what it took.

  “I’d also like you to know that while I have landed a shuttle on manual, I’ve only done it the once, and that was twenty years ago. Back when I did the training.”

  He was really inspiring confidence.

  “We can only pray the autopilot’s still fine and will land us, once we get back on course.”

  Nika looked around again. “How many suits do we have?” Josune liked a lot of suits. One for everyone, even on the small shuttle.

  “Six, counting yours.”

  There were four engine jets. Two on one end of the shuttle, two on the other. Coming in to land you fired the jets to slow you down, which said to Nika that you’d enter the atmosphere with one set of the jets facing forward, the other facing back. “I’m going to take two of the suits. Fix them to the ends of the shuttle. I’ll set the camera to transmit, then we’ll have a view from outside.”

  There was silence from inside. Eventually, “That might work.”

  If her logic was wrong, they wouldn’t be alive for her to regret it.

  She’d have to do it fast. They’d only been an hour from Zell when they’d started. “Prep two suits. I’m coming back in. Keep talking while I do.”

  He had the suits, sans oxygen, prepped and ready. “Thanks.” She clipped both suits to her own and went back into the airlock.

  It was worse going out the second time.

  “How did you start working for the Justice Department?” People who took contracts on places like Zell weren’t generally Justice Department material.

  “I was a career agent. I—” He checked himself. “You mean after Zell?”

  “Yes.” Although, she wouldn’t mind hearing the rest of the story one day.

  “We—Cam and I—went back looking for you. That’s what we’d promised the Ort. Initially I thought it would be easy. I thought we could do with any modder.”

  Of course he’d think that. Alistair Laughton had no appreciation of the body as art.

  “Cam knew where to find you, but there’d been the explosion at your studio and you’d disappeared. We were still looking for you when Paola, my old boss, sought me out. She was looking for you too.”

  Everyone seemed to be looking for her at one time or another. “Why?”

  “You killed an executive.”

  “I what? Me?” She missed a loop, had to scrabble for the rope. Yes, she’d killed people, from Alejandro and Wickmore’s henchmates on, but this? “When?”

  “Six months ago. You did it publicly, and you leered at the camera while you did it.”

  She knew where this was going.

  “Paola ran the stats. In every way, except for it being public, the killing matched the modus of a known assassin.”

  “Tamati Woden.”

  “Yes.”

  She’d kill him if he wasn’t already dead. “So he plastered my image all over the vids, and used my new body to do it.”

  “Yes.”

  Nika shivered.

  “Paola knew I was looking for you, and I had worked on the Woden case before I was suspended.”

  “You were looking for Tamati Woden, and you never caught him. In all that time.”

  Alistair ignored that. “She was worried Woden had found a way to steal bodies. I thought he’d taken on an apprentice. It turned out she was right.”

  At least he’d come to that conclusion.

  Nika reached the first two jets. She pushed the feed from the other suit to her own camera so she could check it was positioned correctly, then lashed the suit to the outside of the shuttle and adjusted it until the camera faced forward.

  One done.

  “I took the job,” Alistair said. “Two people looking for a woman who’d gone to a lot of effort to disappear were never going to find her. But with the Justice Department behind us—”

  “So we have you to thank for putting Wickmore back on our trail.” Eaglehawk had used the Justice Department before. It made sense.

  Nika started across to the other end of the shuttle. This was easier somehow, as if she was getting the hang of it. Or maybe she was starting to panic, for Zell was looming so large in her visor—and off to one side—that it didn’t matter where she was on the shuttle, she could see it.

  “We didn’t know Wickmore was involved,” Laughton said. “Although, I must say, I certainly suspected him in the past. How did you manage to get both him and the Boost on your trail? And is it true that Arriola came from the Hassim?”

  She didn’t answer that. They didn’t need another treasure hunter on their heels.

  He continued after a few moments of silence. His voice sounded strained. “After I agreed to work temporarily for the Justice Department again—to find you—I looked up the report Cam and I had made about Zell.”

  She didn’t need him to tell her what had happened. “Case closed?”

  “There was no record of it.”

  Nika had been like that once. Naïve, believing that justice was justice and people were basically decent. Some people were, she supposed, just not the ones who were supposed to uphold decency.

  She couldn’t help Laughton with his demons.

  There. Last camera in place. “How does that look?”

  “Terrible,” Laughton said. “We’re way off course.”

  “I’m coming back in.”

  As soon as she was inside, Laug
hton fired the jets to correct their course. It took two tries, but eventually there was the bulk of a planet in front of them.

  “We did it,” she told Alistair as he set the autopilot.

  Just in time, for an alarm sounded. “We’re coming into atmosphere.”

  A moment later it seemed every alarm on the shuttle went off. Lights flashed amber, warnings screeched, and numbers scrolled across the screen in an energetic stream. The jets fired, front first, then back. The shuttle slowed.

  “Are you doing that?”

  Alistair shook his head.

  At least something was going to plan. Nika hoped it was, anyway.

  The flashing lights turned to red.

  Maybe not fully to plan. The cabin was getting hot. “Is it just me, or is it stifling in here?” Shuttles could take a reasonable amount of heat. They had to, on entry into the atmosphere.

  “It is stifling,” Alistair said. “We’re not slowing down fast enough. If this is a cheap shuttle, we’re done for.”

  Josune bought quality, but sometimes, like Nika, she had to buy what was available. They’d find out, Nika supposed. She went through the shuttle cupboards, found some fire blankets. “Help me wrap these around the Netanyu.”

  “Shouldn’t we use them for ourselves?”

  “We have the suits.” The suits would protect them better than a fire blanket. Besides, what did they have to offer the Ort if they didn’t have a genemod machine?

  She hoped Snow and Giwari’s Songyan were safe.

  “You’re crazy. You know that.”

  “That’s not exactly a new insult. Wrap this.”

  The jets fired again. From the front, this time. The pressure knocked them both to the floor.

  “At least it’s slowing us down,” Alistair said. “Provided it’s not too late.”

  “Are you always such a pessimist?”

  “Under the circumstances—” He struggled to his feet again, helped her pull the blanket over the Netanyu. Even lifted it so she could wrap it around. She used all four blankets. “Are you sure these wouldn’t be better around us?”

  “Yes.”

  Nika snatched up the fire extinguisher, waved it at him when he looked as if he would take the blankets off. “Our suits will protect us.”

  He picked up his own extinguisher.

  The alarms increased in frequency and volume.

  “Time to strap in,” Nika said. If they could, with their suits.

  They managed, although she wasn’t sure how. It was suffocating in the cabin. She sealed the helmet and hoped the oxygen tanks on the suit were safe.

  A speaker blared. “Crash positions.”

  The shuttle hit the ground, kept going.

  The cabin grew hotter.

  Nika blacked out.

  33

  ALISTAIR LAUGHTON

  For one awful minute when he came around, Alistair thought he was back with the Ort. Strapped to a bench. He couldn’t see, couldn’t move. He tore at the restraints, the thunder of his blood pounding through his body, deafening coherent thought.

  A blinking red light he hadn’t seen changed to green.

  He could see. He wasn’t blind.

  He fumbled at the release, his hands shaking so hard he could hardly feel them. The catch was jammed.

  Broken.

  Breathe.

  Finally he heard a click, and his body was released from the restraint. He pushed at the exit latch, forced it open, and fell out. Daylight. Blessed, blessed daylight under the cold Zell sun.

  He forced himself to calm and pushed himself upright. No one was near to witness his panic.

  Where was Nika?

  The shuttle had broken apart on crashing. One crumpled side settled farther into mud and water. Nika’s side. The mud on Zell was greedy. Once something got stuck, it was almost impossible to drag out. He ran—slid—toward it, careful to avoid the slick. He’d be no help if he got stuck.

  Wreckage bobbed on the water, including a rectangular box shape. That damned genemod machine.

  In the muddy water, barely visible, was a space-suit-shaped tinge. Heat signature. The suit was cooling, but it was still slightly warmer than the surrounding water.

  Alistair plunged in. No time to think about how stupid he was being, no time to think about what would happen if he got stuck.

  The suit was already three-quarters immersed in the mud. Don’t think about how heavy it is. He shoved his hands under one end. Heaved. Heaved again. And again.

  It was like trying to lift an aircar.

  He kept heaving. His muscles bulged. He thought he would burst.

  Slowly, slowly, the end of the suit came out of the mud, then, with a final sucking, the suit broke free.

  Alistair fell back into the water.

  He was up again immediately, turning the suit over, pushing at the emergency latches.

  The oxygen indicator was red.

  He tried to open the helmet. It stuck, glued by the mud. He grabbed a floating shard and prized the helmet apart from the suit.

  Nika lay lifeless and still.

  Not breathing.

  He was too late.

  She was still warm, and there was a faint gold glow under her skin. He couldn’t be too late. To have found her, to have come all this way, and now, this.

  Then Nika gasped, breathed in hard, and choked.

  He carried her across to dry ground, held her while she finished coughing.

  Their entry would have lit up the sky. The only question was, had it been anywhere near the settlement, and would anyone come to find them?

  He sighed at the sharp bladed grass around him. The northern marshes, not far from the lake. The worst place they could have landed except for the lake itself.

  They called it a lake, but it was really an inland sea. A sea that covered a thousand square kilometers. Their landfall could be worse, but not by much. If they went the wrong way, they would have a long, long walk, with the only food on them what they could scrounge from the shuttle.

  The marsh had softened their landing, probably saved them.

  “Get the Netanyu,” Nika croaked.

  She had to be kidding. But she wasn’t. When he didn’t move, she struggled to her feet and staggered toward it.

  “Wait.” She didn’t know the area like he did. Couldn’t see it like he could either.

  The marsh was treacherous, but the deeper, more dangerous areas were colder. Easy to see the warmer parts from the less warm when you could see into the infrared, so he knew where to step.

  And while the wildlife nearby would have run when the shuttle landed, the salynxes, with their double rows of sharp teeth, and the bovines, large two-headed cattle that had few natural enemies, would be back quickly.

  Alistair checked his blaster and looked at Nika’s empty holster. One blaster between two. It would have to do.

  “Stay there. If you hear anything, yell.” He waded out to get the Netanyu.

  Of course, she didn’t stay, but at least she followed exactly in his footsteps. She grabbed one end of the machine and backed away, retracing her footsteps.

  “This way.” Alistair spotted a drier piece of land.

  As soon as they were on dry land, Nika examined it. “It doesn’t look damaged.”

  Modders and their crazy priorities.

  She scanned the sky. If she was looking for a ship, Alistair could have told her there were none. He’d already checked.

  “I hope you’re not planning on us carrying this all the way to the settlement.”

  “Will it be safe here until we get transport?”

  “That depends.” They could come back to a swarm of salynxes making it their new home, or to it having been flattened, crushed by a bovine.

  “Then we should take it with us.”
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  “You’re kidding.” He hoped.

  She wasn’t. But she did scrabble around inside the broken shuttle shell and come out with an antigrav trolley.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” She smiled sweetly at him. “What’s a modder without her tools?”

  They pushed the Netanyu onto the trolley, then Alistair piled all the supplies they could find—not many—into the machine.

  “Limiting,” Nika muttered.

  “Let’s go.” They couldn’t waste any more time. The settlement was south. They had a full day’s walk ahead of them. And they’d have to stop for night. “We can’t eat much food from this world. Or drink the water without putting it through a purifier.”

  “It strikes me as that kind of place,” Nika said.

  “We’ll take the suits,” Alistair decided. His, anyway, and another one from the shuttle for Nika. “They’ll provide some protection at night.” They were too heavy to wear and walk, but it did solve some of the problem of being out at night on Zell, which was dangerous.

  They settled the suits on top of the genemod machine and set off. Nika guided the trolley while Alistair acted as guard.

  “I’d offer to swap,” Nika said as he blasted another salynx. “But half the time I don’t see what you’re firing at until it’s dead.”

  Alistair hoped the blaster would last. He wanted his fire-breather. “They’re certainly plentiful around here.” It made him nostalgic for the settlement, where the salynxes were controlled and it was safe to walk outside.

  It was getting on for twilight. They’d been walking for hours. Nika hadn’t complained, but he could see she was flagging. He wasn’t any better. He was about to suggest they stop for the night and put on their suits—the salynxes were more numerous just before dark—when they heard the wap-wap of an aircar. They both stopped and waved. Danced.

  The aircar passed over, heading toward the crash site.