The Furthest Planet

by James Ross Wilks

  “Kojo,” she said, “you have to understand what those men tried to do. You don’t know what she’s been through.”

  “Go on, Captain, explain to me how past trauma excuses murder. Explain how it excuses covering up that murder and what, blackmail? Bribery? How did you convince Mr. Kondratyev to confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”

  “Bribery,” she conceded. “Money for his sister’s family. And a chance at a job on Cronos Station where he could send more back.”

  “I’m sure that’s little consolation to her now that the station has been destroyed,” Jang said. “Not that you could have known that Victor would destroy the station,” he added, as if to prove that he wasn’t being unfairly judgmental of her.

  “Kojo, you can’t tell anyone,” Staples said.

  Jang drew himself up as much as was possible in zero G. “Captain, you may give me any order you wish, and I will follow it as long as it pertains to my responsibilities on this ship, but you do not control my thoughts. Perhaps if you had confided this to me, you might have been able to order me to keep your secrets, but I came to this realization by myself. My mind and my words are my own. Can we agree on that?”

  Staples stared up at him, resolute in her acceptance of the situation. “Yes. That’s fair. I could tell you that spreading this across the ship might destabilize this crew, but you know that. For what it’s worth, it was my choice. Don told me not to hide it, and he told me that it was only a matter of time before it came back to bite me. If you want to tell people, I’ll deal with it. Until then, I’ve got a prisoner to see. Unless there’s something else?”

  Jang glanced down the corridor for a moment while he thought. “I wish you had told me, Captain. I wish you had trusted me.”

  “For what it’s worth, I do too. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Excuse me,” she said and shouldered pushed past him to the locked door before he could ask her what the expression meant.

  “Captain,” Amit said. “Welcome.” As he spoke, he unclipped himself from his chair and bowed awkwardly in the zero G. Several books that Staples had loaned him were strapped to the other chair, and he held a copy of Macbeth in his right hand, a finger keeping a page for him.

  He was looking better, Staples thought. Not only had the sickness that had resulted from Jabir’s injection left him, but he was putting on some weight and gaining some muscle as well, though his frame was still slight. Staples had insisted on feeding him at least passable food, and she guessed that he had spent some of the time in his room exercising. She hadn’t yet decided whether she was going to hand their prisoner over to Bao, but she was determined to treat him like a human being as long as he was on their ship.

  “How are you?” Amit added, perhaps because etiquette demanded it.

  Staples shut the door behind her and took hold of a bar on the wall next to her to steady herself. “How am I? Well, I’ve had three pretty rotten conversations in the past twenty minutes, and now I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Amit grasped the table, which was clipped to the flooring, and pulled himself back down into the chair. Once he had fastened himself into place again with the belt, he looked at her and said, “I’m sorry.” Staples thought that he looked it.

  “So am I. Listen, I need to ask you something. When I explained our nanite theory to you, you mentioned heart attacks. I didn’t press it at the time, in part because you were a mess and in part because I had more important things to talk to you about, but now I need to know something. I just spoke to a man who said that, in addition to shooting up my ship, killing my friend, and costing my navigator her arm, you might have been responsible for other attacks on my crew. Were you?”

  Amit nodded. “Yes.” He briefly outlined the meetings he had been instructed to attend with people both on Titan Prime and in Las Vegas. He told her about how at each meeting one of the attendees had been sacrificed, seemingly struck down by the power of God, and how effective a motivator that proved for the others.

  “I wonder how Bao knew,” Staples murmured.

  “Mars is more or less a sovereign planet, Captain Staples. The cities are fairly autonomous, but it does have a central government-”

  She spoke over him. “And governments have intelligence networks. No doubt Bao has access to whatever they find. They must have traced the attackers on both Titan Prime and in Las Vegas. Someone or some camera somewhere must have seen you talking with them.”

  Amit nodded. “That makes sense.” Lacking anything else to do with the book, he tucked it into the pile under the belt on the other chair.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, more out of anger than curiosity. The answer was plain enough.

  “Confessing to attacking you three times instead of one? Surely you can see why I might not want to tell you that.” Amit tried to rest his hands on the table, but they floated up, and so he clasped them in his lap. “You might not believe me, Captain, but I have seriously considered telling you. I’m…” he looked around at the bare walls of his spare room. There was a bed, the table and two chairs, and nothing else besides the books. “I’m feeling a little lost, Captain.”

  “I’m probably not the best person to talk to about your feelings,” Staples said, tension in her voice.

  “You’re the only person I have to talk to,” Amit replied. Staples understood that he was not just referring to his isolated state. The man had been recently robbed of a God who had literally sent him messages. For a moment her anger wilted, but then she thought of her friend bleeding out on the sidewalk of Las Vegas under the summer sun and the fury returned.

  “I’m not sure that death wouldn’t be the best thing for me. For everyone. I admit that I don’t want you to return me to Bao. The torture was terrible, and I never had the answers he wanted. If that’s your plan, I’d just as soon die, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Staples was taken aback. “It’s actually not all the same to me. If I don’t return you to Bao in forty-eight hours, he’s coming to get you. I don’t feel great about handing anyone, no matter how guilty, over to the hands of torturers, but I’m also not about to risk a single member of my crew to protect you.” She cocked her head. “And now I’m wondering whether I need to set a suicide watch on you.”

  Amit rubbed his chin in thought. “What will happen to you if I die under your watch?”

  “Nothing good,” Staples replied.

  “Then you do not have to worry. I do not want to be tortured, but if my death would mean any more pain for your crew, you have my promise that I will not harm myself.”

  Staples didn’t know Amit Sadana well at all, but as she looked at him, small and broken in the aluminum chair, she decided that she believed him. She tried to imagine what he had been through, the ways that his life and perceptions had changed in the last month, but every time she came to the idea of picking up a pistol and firing at people, her sympathy evaporated.

  “Okay, I believe you. The other reason I came was to ask if you will cooperate with us.”

  “You said that you needed my help, but not what I could do,” he responded.

  “We have a friend who can, we think, use the implants in your head to locate Victor.”

  “The sentient AI you said was the one who manipulated me. Will that require my death?” he asked almost casually.

  She shook her head blew out a sigh. “Fortunately, no. I don’t need another moral quandary like that facing me right now.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  “It’s… a bit complicated. Our friend isn’t here right now. We’re hoping to pick him up on Mars. He thinks he can use the communication data signatures to track Victor’s messages to you back through netlink to figure out the source. It’s the only hard evidence we even have that Victor exists, and yours are the only communications he’s sent that we’ve been able to pin down.”

  “Then please do so. I am angry at no one so much as myself, Captain Staples, but the entity who impersonated God and us
ed me to kill someone… he is very much in second place.”

  Staples ground her teeth. “Two people. You killed my friend Jordan in Las Vegas.”

  Amit frowned. “The woman whom you were walking with?”

  She nodded in annoyance.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “What?” she asked, incredulous.

  “That wasn’t… my people, I should say.” He looked at her levelly and spoke with conviction.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I have no reason to lie, Captain Staples. I am at your mercy already. A sniper shot her. I have no idea who it was or who was responsible. In fact, whoever shot her ruined the ambush we- I had arranged. There were people on either side of the street tracking you. The plan was to kill you when you got back to your landing craft and use it to infiltrate this ship. The sniper sprung the trap early, and you and your crew escaped.”

  Staples thought back over her recollections of that afternoon. They were chaotic and flushed with moments of panic and sorrow, but she thought that she remembered several seconds passing between when Jordan had fallen and the man with the goatee had fired at her.

  “Maybe it was...” her brow furrowed in thought. “Another team?”

  Amit shrugged. “If there was another team, I never knew about it. It doesn’t make much sense. I ran military intelligence operations for years. You don’t put two teams on one target and not tell them about each other. This is exactly why. They end up stepping all over each other and fouling everything up.” Belatedly, he seemed to realize that the failed operation he was referring to was the attempted murder of the woman floating in front of him and her entire crew. “I’m sorry,” he added.

  Staples ignored the apology. “Huh,” she said. “Are you enjoying it?”

  “I’m sorry?” he said again, this time in query.

  She indicated the book on top of the pile. “Macbeth. Have you read it before?”

  “Never. Did you pick it in particular?”

  A humorless smile played across her lips. “I’ll admit I did.”

  “A man driven to murder by supernatural forces,” Amit stated.

  “Would he have been a killer if the witches hadn’t interfered? Are we masters of our destiny or pawns on a stage?” she asked rhetorically. “Yes, I thought you’d find it relevant.”

  “I am.”

  “I have one more question for you. If you were set free, if your life were returned to you, what would you do with it?”

  Amit opened his mouth to speak, but Staples interrupted him. “I don’t want your answer right now. I don’t think I want to hear it, and frankly, I just don’t want to talk to you anymore. Maybe later.” She took one last look at him, then opened the door and left.

  Chapter 7

  The last time Clea Staples had waited at the end of a berthing tubeway in Tranquility, she and her late first mate had been expecting the delivery of two stasis tubes. To say that that job had led to a great deal of difficulty for the crew would have been a gross understatement. She hoped that this one would produce better results.

  They had been lucky to find a job at all, she reflected. Most of the work lately had been Solward, but desperate times always brought out a few risk takers. Rents and taxes had dropped across Martian cities as people fled back to Luna and Earth, and so a few brave souls had decided to invest rather than retreat. As a result, Staples and her crew were delivering machine parts, computers, and cabling to an empty warehouse on the edge of town. Over a dozen pallets of cargo sat in her hold waiting to be unloaded. There were hydrogen-cell forklifts available for hire, but first the crew had to get the cargo off the ship and down the tubeway into the berthing area. For this reason, she had asked the majority of her crew for help.

  They were due to meet her at fifteen, which was still a quarter of an hour away. Gringolet had berthed the previous evening, and most of the crew had spent the day on shore leave. Despite the fact that Victor seemed less of a threat, she had still cautioned her crew to stay in groups, and they had readily agreed. Staples could have waited in the ship for them, but she wanted to be out in the receiving area watching the people and families bustle here and there. The cavernous room with its shops, barkers, holographic displays, and shady characters gave her an oddly nostalgic feel. She imagined Templeton next to her and remembered their idle conversation with the ever-evasive Dinah. That was before the veil had been ripped away and they had learned the dangers that threatened humanity from the shadows. They were good memories.

  Staples heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Ian Inboden approaching her. She had no idea if the man still held a grudge over the dressing down she had given him, and at the moment she didn’t really care.

  She glanced at her watch. “You’re early,” she observed.

  Ian did not stop or even slow. He brushed brusquely past her and said only, “Screw you, lady.”

  She blinked in surprise. Only once he was walking away from her did she realize that he was carrying a backpack. She had no idea if he was making a show of running away like a peevish teenager, just looking for a night off the ship, or if she could consider the insult his tendered resignation. It was even possible that Jang had told him about her cover-up of Bethany’s murder attempt. Shrugging to herself, she decided that for the time being it didn’t matter. If he hadn’t returned by the time they were ready to leave tomorrow, she could contact him through his watch. Upon searching her conscience, she found that she wouldn’t really mind if he didn’t answer.

  Three hours later the job was completed and Staples, Jabir, Dinah, Overton, and Evelyn were returning from a satisfying and surprisingly economical dinner at a local restaurant. They ambled silently and contentedly through one of the major tubeways between the larger domes that made up the commercial sector of Tranquility. It was still early evening, and people moved around them as they returned from work or headed out for the night. Though they had been to Tranquility many times, the mood of the populace had undoubtedly changed. They could feel a nervous tension in the air, one of expectation and dread. There was nothing new to say about the existence of aliens or even the movement of the Moon, but that didn’t mean that people could relax.

  The job had gone off without a hitch, and for the first time in the last month Staples felt a little better about their financial situation. The ship had been refueled, the crew had been paid, and most importantly, they finally had enough money to purchase an automaton body for Brutus. In preparation for this, the artificial intelligence currently occupying their ship had downloaded himself to a memory stick about the size of Staples’ finger.

  It rested in her pocket, and she played with it absently until she realized that she was fondling a member of her crew. The idea that a mind, a sentient creature capable of reason and feeling, could fit on such a small device awed her. Upon further consideration, she realized that the human brain was not much bigger, at least when measured on a cosmic scale. Even so, she felt burdened by the responsibility of carrying a life, one of only two of its kind in existence, in her hip pocket. Her hand found its way back to the drive and gripped it tightly.

  Jang and Yoli had parted company with them as soon as the job was finished. The two had requested permission to take the Delta V so that they could visit Yoli’s family in Prosperity, and Staples had agreed. The Delta V did not handle well in the scant Martian atmosphere, but it would serve to get them to their destination and back. After their last conversation, Jang’s request for some time away did not surprise her. As yet, she had seen no sign that the terse security chief had shared her secret with the crew, but she felt sure that he had told Yoli. She didn’t know if they would return either, but if they didn’t, she would have to insist on the return of her craft. It was difficult not to feel as though her crew was falling away piece by piece.

  As they passed by a screen blasting a news broadcast, Evelyn gravitated to it. The rest of the group stopped with her. Staples had seen the word splashed behind the repor
ter too: Nightshade.

  The reporter was a woman in her late thirties with too much makeup and helmeted hair that defied the light Martian gravity. Her voice was nasal and insistent. “…despite the focus on the mysterious movement of Earth’s Moon, investigations have continued into the US government and SETI’s secret warship development program, called Nightshade. An anonymous source within SETI has confirmed that the operating systems that allow those vessels to perform without a crew were developed by a company called the Teletrans Corporation. How exactly this company was able to develop this technology and why the US military utilized them is as yet unclear, but the justice department and several watchdog groups are calling for an investigation of Teletrans.”

  “Isn’t that-?” Overton asked.

  “My God, they might actually do our job for us,” Staples muttered. A sense of jubilation rose up from her stomach and seemed to expand throughout her. A whole scenario played out in her mind. The investigations would pull Teletrans apart. Brad Stave, Owen Burr, and their cohorts would be led away to prison in handcuffs. Victor would be found and destroyed, and Staples and her crew would return to their lives. It all suddenly seemed possible.

  A throaty woman’s scream echoed down the corrugated tubeway from the next dome. Several others quickly followed it, those of both men and women. Some were undoubtedly borne of fear, but a few carried the timbre of pain.

  Staples looked around at her crew and saw her own baffled and frightened mien reflected on their faces. No one knew what to think. The pedestrians closest to them were looking back towards the commotion but moving purposefully in the opposite direction. Then a second uproar came from the other end of the tubeway, from the dome that harbored the restaurant they had just left. The people near them stopped, unsure of what to do.

  Her spell of uncertainty broke, and Staples took off running towards the source of the first scream, trusting her crew to follow her lead. She didn’t know exactly why she was running towards danger, apart from the fact that it was between her crew and her ship and the general conviction that to act was better than to stand passively amazed.