by Dan Moren
Set in the middle of the esplanade, nearly smack dab in the center of the ship, the plaza was the largest open-air space aboard the Queen Amina. An atrium had been carved out above it, with a mezzanine that overlooked the square. In the center of the plaza stood a small fountain that burbled amongst rocks, endlessly recycling its own water.
Even at this late hour, Kovalic saw a handful of folks scattered throughout, seated on benches or leaning against trees. Some were enjoying a drink, others were reading from tablets, and a couple were even tossing around a flying disc.
But his eyes went immediately to the figure sitting on the plasticrete wall around the fountain: the short, dark hair, and the military bearing.
Sayers.
He made a beeline for her, keeping an eye on the other denizens of the plaza, but none seemed to give him a second look. That unsettled feeling in his stomach, that something was just plain wrong, hadn’t dissipated, but he was chalking it up to feeling antsy about being out of the loop.
Kovalic forced himself to draw a deep breath: he’d built his team for this. He needed to trust them. Even Brody.
As he took a seat next to her, Addy Sayers looked up. Tension he hadn’t realized he was holding washed away in a tide of relief. Maybe things were starting to break their way.
“Gotta be honest, I was a little worried,” he said, with a grin. “I hope you got what we needed, otherwise this is all going to be for nothing.”
Before the specialist could open her mouth, another voice spoke from behind Kovalic. “Oh, I think you’ll find that this was all for nothing.”
He turned to find a dark-skinned woman in a flowing dress. Where she had come from, he wasn’t sure – he hadn’t seen her a moment ago. But he recognized her instantly and his stomach-sinking feeling returned with reinforcements.
Her dark eyes took him in at a glance. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”
“I get that a lot. Madam Xi, I presume?”
She bowed her head. “You presume correctly.”
Looking around, he was surprised to find that she seemed unaccompanied. Bold move.
Getting slowly to his feet, he spared a glance at Sayers. She was sharp; she’d pick up on any play that he might make. They’d make a break for the nearest lift. This was fine, totally fine. Completely salvageable.
“So,” said Kovalic. “What was it? Did we miss an alarm somewhere?”
“Oh, no. You’re asking the wrong question. It’s not what gave you up, Major Kovalic,” said Xi, taking a step back. “It’s who.”
From behind Kovalic, he heard the telltale sound of a knockout gun charging and he looked over his shoulder to see Sayers pointing the business end of a pistol in his direction. As if on cue, a pair of armed White Star security personnel emerged from concealment on either side of the plaza, weapons leveled at him.
Sayers, for her part, looked resigned but not particularly upset. “Sorry about all of this. I guess there really isn’t any honor among thieves.”
CHAPTER 23
This is it. All Eli could see through the visor was a swirl of blue-purple that was spinning faster than a carousel. Every once in a while, he caught sight of the giant gray mass that was the Queen Amina, but then it spun away too fast for him to focus. His stomach went from the ceiling to the floor and back again.
His HUD blinked red, red, red, with so many different icons that he couldn’t possibly focus on a single one. Alarms blared in a cacophony of tones and pitches.
“Gravitational lock system disengaged,” the suit’s robotic voice chimed. “Emergency tether not functional.” OK, that one’s on me. “Recommend re-establish lock immediately.”
“Yes, I know,” he shouted, trying to dismiss the alerts while also not throwing up. “Shut up!”
Something beeped and the alarms shrank into a smaller portion of the screen. But he was still spinning wildly. Training, remember your training. Spin was the enemy – that was the first thing you learned in piloting a ship.
A ship.
He swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. “Status of reaction control system?”
“RCS online.”
Now we’re talking. “Give me manual control.”
“Manual control engaged.”
He worked his fingers in his gloves, identifying pitch, roll, and yaw controls. I can work with this. Spreading his arms and legs as widely as possible to slow his spin, he started firing the opposing thrusters to counteract it. Even then, it took a while for him to slow to a stop.
But then all he was looking at was the inside of a wormhole, which was only marginally less undulating now that he wasn’t being spun around.
“Where the hell is the Queen Amina?” he asked.
A small holoscreen appeared in one corner of his display, showing an image of the ship from the suit’s rear-facing camera, and red blinking arrows appeared on his visor, pointing towards the right edge of his field of view. Using the RCS, he slowly rotated himself around until he faced the ship.
The good news was that he hadn’t lost the starliner entirely. The wormhole’s gravitational “current” was still propelling him in the same direction, and he was only about fifty meters off the ship’s flank.
But the bad news was that he’d been thrown backwards about a hundred meters from the access hatch, not far from the airlock where he’d first emerged.
“Oof,” he exhaled. All that ground, lost. He pulled up the mission clock on his sleeve. Forty minutes left. “How long is it going to take me to get there on RCS?”
The computer projected a path, but it wasn’t quick – the suit’s RCS was designed for short bursts of maneuvering thrust, not propulsion, and a glance at his HUD showed that he’d already burned through most of its limited fuel reserves by stopping his spin.
Getting to the access hatch was a different story. Even if he could reach the ship, from his present position it would mean another long, slow walk across the hull. That was going to take time they didn’t have: the rest of the team was already in motion, waiting on him.
OK, so figure a way out of it, Brody. Use that pilot brain of yours.
There had to be something else on the suit that would generate some form of pressure or energy. He reached back for the gear pack, and then remembered that he’d lost the plasma torch when he’d been blown off the hull. Not that it would have provided much in the way of thrust, unless he’d used it to combust something. But that would require oxygen, which he didn’t…
Oxygen.
“What’s my current air level?”
“Oxygen reserves at 75 percent.”
How much oxygen did he really need for this job, anyway? Plus, if he didn’t make it back to the Queen Amina, then all that air would be good for was letting him die more slowly, watching the ship slowly dwindle into a speck of nothingness as he was condemned to an eternity of floating though a wormhole.
He shivered.
Well, that settles that.
“Can we do a controlled vent of oxygen?”
“Venting oxygen not recommended. Oxygen is essential to life support systems.”
Stupid onboard systems. Never can think outside of the box.
“I know it’s not recommended. Can you do it?”
A red X blinked on the screen, along with a warning text in about a dozen different languages.
Goddamn it, this fucking safety system is going to kill me.
He reached behind himself, trying to grab at his oxygen pack, but his gloves scrabbled at it ineffectually. There weren’t any exposed hoses anymore; they’d internalized everything in hard packs to reduce the risk of damage or accident. But the suits were still modular systems; there ought to be a way to detach the pack. Glancing down at the front of his suit, he spotted a pair of yellow-and-black pull tabs labeled EMERGENCY ONLY.
I’d say this qualifies.
Yanking the tabs, he heard a hiss and a click in his helmet, and felt the pack come off in his hands. A warning flashed on the
screen: SWITCHING TO INTERNAL OXYGEN – SUPPLY LIMITED. Next to it, a clock started running down the amount of air left in the suit’s built-in reserve, which wasn’t at all anxiety-inducing. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he willed it not to drip into his eyes.
He pulled the oxygen pack around in front of him and started turning it over in his hands. The only connector he could find was the one that plugged into his suit; there was a mechanical valve that he could open by hand, but he wouldn’t be able to do that and have the pack on his back.
He was going to have to do this backwards.
Oh, it’s been so long since I had this bad of an idea. But it wasn’t like he had any other options, and the Queen Amina was getting further away with every passing second.
Shifting the pack in front of him, he enfolded it in a bear hug. Then he brought up the rear-facing camera again, and used the thrusters to put the Queen Amina behind him.
“Plot me a course towards Queen Amina access hatch 31-2E.”
The curved dotted line appeared on the rear camera’s image, which he enlarged so that he could see more clearly. Hopefully he had enough thrust to get him there.
All right, Brody. Now or never.
He opened the valve.
Nothing seemed to happen. He glanced down, in so far as he could through his helmet, and confirmed that a small cloud of gas was coming out of the valve. But with little frame of reference in the wormhole, it was hard to tell if he was even moving. In theory, slow but constant thrust was his best chance of catching up.
But fast it wasn’t. And if he was wrong – if the suit’s computer miscalculated in the slightest, or he missed his chance, he was out of fuel, air, and luck.
It wasn’t the first time Kovalic had found himself at gunpoint, and he would wager it wasn’t going to be the last. His eyes went from the barrel of the weapon, to Sayers’s own eyes – hard, like ice – to Xi.
Slowly, he raised his hands. “I see.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Xi. “I admire what you’ve done here. Infiltrating my operation isn’t easy – I should know. I’ve had any number of would-be spies thrown out an airlock.”
“And I’m sure that doesn’t hurt when it comes to inspiring fear in the rest of your crew.”
“That is where you’re mistaken, major. I don’t trust fear to keep my employees in line – they love me. I look out for them.”
Kovalic glanced at Sayers, but if there was any wavering of conviction in the young woman, it didn’t show on her face. Stone cold. For the first time, doubt started to worm its way into the cracks of his mind.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been betrayed, either.
“Adelaide here understood what I was offering,” said Xi, laying her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Around here, we reward people for a job well done, instead of just trying to knock them down with the next challenge.”
“Plus, you pay well,” added Sayers, a smirk on her face. “Can’t say the same about him.” She waved the gun at Kovalic.
“Money? That’s what this is about?”
“It doesn’t hurt. Have you seen how they live around here? It’s a hell of a lot better than that shithole you dragged me out of. I could get used to being pampered for once in my life.”
This was not going exactly the way Kovalic had planned.
“So,” he said, looking between the two women and then at the guards lining the railing above. “Now what?”
“Now,” said Xi, with a smile borrowed from a shark, “we probably toss you out the airlock. Unless, that is, you think your government would be willing to ransom you?”
Kovalic donned his sunniest smile. “What government?”
“Then I guess there’s no profit in keeping you around.” She pointed two fingers in his direction.
“If I may,” Kovalic interrupted, before the guards could move in. “Obviously, you’re perfectly capable of kicking me into a wormhole. But, if I may suggest, that might not be the most prudent course of action.”
Xi cocked her head. “Oh? I am so looking forward to hearing this rationale.” She waved a manicured hand, light glinting off gold nails. “Please, continue.”
After a quick check to make sure he wasn’t about to be shot, Kovalic lowered his own hands, making a surreptitious check of the mission clock on his sleeve. Thirty-eight minutes and counting.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “If you do throw me out the airlock, you’ll most assuredly never see your prized Aleph Tablet ever again.”
Xi stared at him for a moment, then threw back her head with a rich, deep laugh. “The balls on you,” she said, admiration tinging her voice. “You didn’t tell me about the sheer bravado.” The last was an almost reproachful aside directed at Sayers.
Kovalic held his breath, watching Sayers, but the young woman’s brow only furrowed, as if she were deep in thought.
“I suppose I can indulge this a little further,” said Xi, crossing her arms. “Entertain me.”
Kovalic bowed his head at the reprieve. “Of course, madam. My team has already breached your security – I presume Ms Sayers has told you that.”
“She has.”
“Ah,” said Kovalic, almost apologetic. “Plans have a way of being… fluid in this business, and her information’s out of date. See, my team’s already obtained the tablet from your vault.”
Xi laughed. “Oh, come come. I expected better of you, major. If you’ve already gotten what you came for, why are we here having this lovely conversation?”
“I think it makes a pretty good diversion. After all, here I am and here you are. But the real show is taking place somewhere else.”
“Why would you tell me this?”
Kovalic made a show of looking at the mission clock on his sleeve. “Because the job’s already done, madam. All I need to do is keep you here as long as possible while my team makes their escape.”
At the corner of Xi’s eyelid, Kovalic caught just the barest hint of a twitch. She wasn’t buying his story, but he’d wedged in just enough of a lever to make her concerned. Someone like Xi didn’t get this far in life without being careful.
“Anyway,” Kovalic continued. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me. Throw me out the airlock or in your brig. Either way, it’s not going to stop you from getting robbed, because you’ve already been robbed.”
By shades, Xi’s expression had morphed from supreme confidence to barely contained anger. She stalked forward, past Sayers’s outstretched weapon, toward Kovalic.
“You’re bluffing,” she said, sizing him up. “Badly.”
“Am I? Then why was your vault’s emergency fire protocol activated five minutes ago?”
Xi’s jaw clacked shut, her eyes flashing, but she beckoned over one of her security team and murmured something to him before turning her attention back on Kovalic. “I don’t think you understand the lengths I’ve gone to to secure the Queen Amina. The idea that your pathetic team could break it in a day is utterly unthinkable.”
Kovalic grinned. “The bigger they are… Look, you want to check? Check. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
“Proximity alert,” said the calm voice in Eli’s ear.
What the–
His mind had wandered during his slow progress back to the Queen Amina, worrying about whether or not using his oxygen tank had been the right decision, whether he’d ever see the rest of the team again, and whether or not joining up with Kovalic’s outfit had been a good idea in the first place. Now the gray hull plating of the ship suddenly loomed close – too close – in the rear-view camera, and the distance readout was ticking down way too fast.
Continual thrust in the vacuum of space means you keep accelerating, dumbass. How could he have forgotten that? Piloting 101.
“Proximity alert,” the voice repeated. “Decelerate immediately.”
No shit! But with his arms wrapped around the oxygen pack, he didn’t have any way to slow himself down – and he
definitely didn’t have time.
A moment later he slammed into the side of the hull, knocking all the breath out of him. He bounced off, spinning again, and felt himself cartwheel wildly, skimming along the surface.
The spray of oxygen sputtered as the pack ran out of air. Eli groaned, blinking away the rear-facing camera and watched as his course reappeared on the HUD overlay. He was only about twenty meters from the vault hatch, and moving in the right direction, even if he was still spinning wildly.
Enough of this stupid thing. He released the oxygen pack, watching it drift off towards the ship with its last dying gasp. I’ve only got one shot at this. He caromed towards the hatch, glancing at the RCS propellant tank – not enough left to counteract his spin, but if he used it at just the right moment, he might be able to give himself a nudge in the right direction.
The dotted line of his course angled closer and closer to the dark open square of the hatch, and when he was just a few meters away, Eli extended all his limbs and fired his starboard RCS thrusters.
He was close. The lip of the hatch caught his legs, whacking both his shins and sending him tumbling into the darkness of the vault, where he rebounded off a bulkhead. His fingers fumbled through the thick gloves of the vacuum suit as he tried to grab a handhold – any handhold – and halt his spin. There wasn’t any artificial gravity in the hold from what he could tell, which made sense, since nobody was supposed to be down here while the ship was moving anyway.
At least he was inside. That was the good news. The bad news became apparent when he checked the gauge at the corner of his HUD and found that he’d just expended the last of the propellant for the RCS system. And, another warning reminded him, his in-suit oxygen was dangerously low.
The bad news is winning.
His feet skittered along a bulkhead, his boots failing to gain purchase. The gravboots! He clicked his heels, but then an alarm blurted in his ears as they failed to activate.
Shit, they burned out. He kicked a second time, harder, and the alarm sounded again. Being ripped from the hull might have permanently damaged them. A lump rose in his throat.
