by Corey Ostman
“I’ll restore power from my workstation,” Mhau said, pushing back her chair.
He stood. “And I’ll go to Kyran’s. I’ll comm you once I’m there.”
Mhau leaned forward and pulled him closer, surprising him with a kiss.
“Be careful,” she said.
Chapter 28
“Good, she’s finally alone,” Panborn said, breaking a long silence.
The bag shifted again, and Tim was hefted into the air. Whoosh. He heard boots squeaking on the floor, ceiling straps being tugged and, more importantly, roider voices. They were back in one of the Bode-6 spokes.
Tim waited until auditory sensors detected a group of at least three roider voices. When they were within a few meters, he initiated his escape plan.
“Help! Help!” he screamed. He knew the thin material of the Faraday bag could not hide his movements, so he squirmed wildly.
“Let me out of the sack!” he added.
Tim listened, wondering if his cries were audible.
“What ya got in the bag?” asked a roider.
“Help!” Tim repeated, encouraged.
“Twofer scrap from Mars,” Panborn said, jostling the Faraday bag. “Faulty voicebox.”
“Help me!”
“Better get it looked at,” the roider said.
“Yeah,” another person added. “I had a piece that would always say ‘hello’ when you turned on the lights. Annoying as hell.”
Both voices trailed off, laughing. Despair enveloped Tim tighter than the Faraday bag itself. The roiders heard me, they just didn’t care.
His bag abruptly struck the wall. Tim’s PodPooch chassis was strong and not easily damaged, but his human psychology recoiled at the strike.
“Quiet, Eugene. I won’t warn you again.”
Panborn kept walking, this time clutching the Faraday bag against his body, concealing Tim’s movements.
He was obediently quiet for the next few minutes, as long as their area was silent. Soon, though, he heard guffaws echoing down the spoke. Different spectra than before. More roiders? How many? It was hard to tell.
Please be a big group, and stay together, he thought.
The voices drew nearer. Tim detected nine distinct people. One of them was a small child—unusual for Ceres, with its deforming low gravity. And perfect. He dove deep into those memories Panborn had disturbed: the memories of Eugene. Simone. The loss pulled at his concentration, a stiffened scar. But he found what he was looking for: the voice of Simone’s little sister.
“Please let me out, Daddy,” Tim pleaded. “Please, oh, please, Daddy!” He sobbed. Then wailed.
Tim didn’t have to wait long for a reaction.
“What are you doing to that child?” a deep roider voice demanded.
“Go away,” Panborn hissed.
The roider seemed to hesitate. Tim could hear others in the group—they didn’t appreciate a child being held in a sack, but they were reluctant to get involved. Ceres culture. He needed to pull out all the stops.
“Oh, Daddy, please let me out! I’ll be good from now on!”
The sound of voices grew louder, and he noted a tinge of anger. Tim knew he’d hooked his audience. He bawled loudly.
“Hey—you! The kid is scared,” said a female voice. He heard the whine of exoskeletal hydraulics mix in. She was roider, then. Powerfully built.
Panborn slammed him against the wall. Tim shrieked in mock pain.
“What the hell are you doing? Gimme that bag!”
Tim felt momentum transfer, heard a thud followed by a loud groan from one of the roiders. Panborn began running. Shouts were close behind.
“Daddy, please!” he yowled.
“What’s going on? Clear out!” Jacob’s voice? Distant. Panborn and the roiders must have run past him.
“Jacob!” Tim yelled, returning to his standard voice.
No response. Panborn kept running to the cacophony of roider pursuit.
“Jacob!” Tim tried again, his voice distorting as the amplifier peaked.
“Stop!” he heard a roider shout. It wasn’t Jacob. Tim felt a shiver run through his chassis. Jacob hadn’t heard him, and now the others were falling behind. How could an unaugmented human who had lived on gravity worlds outrun roiders?
“Open your door!” Panborn growled.
He was still bounding at full speed. Tim thought he’d heard the tiniest reply to Panborn’s command. Judging from the frequency spectrum, it had the characteristic envelope of a ptenda.
The whoosh of a door. Seconds later, he was airborne. Panborn’s sounds of breathing attenuated and then vanished. Tim hit the deck, bouncing blindly in the Faraday bag.
The door closed. Somebody picked him up, but it wasn’t Panborn. Whoever it was made no attempt to open the bag.
He was moving again. The new person laid him on a hard, flat surface. Then he heard another door shut. It didn’t whoosh like the others—it sounded more like a cabinet closing.
Tim decided not to say anything until he had more data.
He lay still and listened.
Strange, he thought. I hear tiny servos.
• • •
Jacob heard his name, several times. But with Lee stuck in a pod with no life support, he didn’t have time to get involved in a roider dispute. He pulled forward, harder and faster than he’d gone in months. The muscles in his arms burned.
Kyran’s door was unlocked. Unusual. Jacob tapped the panel and the door opened. He bounced inside.
“Kyran?” he asked, moving swiftly through the rooms. “Grace?”
No one was in the main chamber. Through the viewport, he could see the isolation pod. It was dark.
He flew down the hallway, to the pod’s antechamber. The room was unkempt. He kicked aside some silver sheeting and bounded up to the pod’s hatch.
Grace stared back at him through the small viewport, shouting something he couldn’t hear. Jacob quickly spun the lock and opened the door. The pressure seal released, disgorging Grace along with a blast of cold, dank air.
“What are you doing in there? What happened?” he asked.
“Where’s Tim?” Grace said, pushing past him.
“He wasn’t here when I came in,” Jacob said. “And you’re welcome.”
“We’re not sure what happened,” said Kyran, emerging after Grace. “Somebody locked us in. Grace shot out the power conduit in order to get Mhau’s attention.”
“Where’s Mhau?” asked Grace.
Something in her voice made Jacob uneasy. “I had her stay put. I wasn’t sure if it’d be safe,” he said.
“It’s not safe,” Lee said, stepping out of the pod and glaring at Grace. “Not with her gun.”
Grace spun around and put a hand on Lee’s chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“There’s no power in there, no heat—” Lee started.
“Then put a suit on.” Grace gave him a quick shove back into the pod.
“How long until the air runs out?” she asked Kyran.
“Six to eight hours,” he said.
Grace slammed the pod door and locked it. Jacob couldn’t help himself. He grinned.
“So much for Lee,” said Grace. She turned toward her window. “And the loafer’s gone too, I see.”
“Loafer?” Jacob said, incredulous.
Kyran lifted the silver sheet from the floor. “Grace. This wasn’t here before. It looks…”
“Suspicious as hell.” Grace grabbed the sheet. She turned to Jacob. “You say you didn’t see Tim?”
“No.”
“At all?”
“I said no, Grace. What’s going on?”
Grace and Kyran exchanged a look. She sighed. “Is your ptenda working, Jacob? Are we still on lockdown?”
Jacob frowned. “As far as I know, we were never on lockdown. What happened?”
Grace shot Kyran a look.
“I sent the command,” Kyran said.
She turned back to Jacob. “
An aposti killed Captain Saltari of the Waltz.”
Jacob felt a shiver run down his spine, like he was breaking an Ink stream. Aposti. He’d always thought Mhau had bypassed too much red tape when she accepted a sponsorship from an aposti. Now her sponsor was here on Bode-6, and someone was dead.
“How do you know it was an aposti?” Jacob asked.
Grace gave him an inquisitive look. “You should know how I’d know.”
“Yeah. I mean…” Jacob ran his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t going to get any easier. “The colony’s sponsor is an aposti.”
She stared at him. “An aposti?”
“It’s not that unusual,” Kyran added.
“I don’t care if it’s as normal as steak sauce.”
“Look, I was just with Mhau,” said Jacob. “She didn’t say anything about a murder.”
“What did she say?” asked Grace.
Jacob sighed. “That her sponsor had just arrived at Bode-6.”
Grace went into motion, pulling Marty from her holster and bounding to the door.
“You two stay here and watch Lee. I’m going to Mhau.”
“I should go with you,” said Jacob. He tried to keep his voice calm. He knew how much leeway protectors had in such situations. Mhau could end up dead.
“Stay here!” Grace said. “Someone has to watch Lee. You’re a deputy now, Jacob.” She opened the door. “Do your duty.”
Jacob watched her go. He thought about contacting Mhau, but paused, his hand hovering over his ptenda. He thought about how she’d responded to the murder of Jeanne Loorden. Ceres had jaded his former lover. How much did Mhau know? Was she an accessory to murder?
Chapter 29
Mhau reclined at her workstation, potatoes warming her belly, finally feeling hopeful. The latest readings showed reduced interference. She turned to look at the cabinet, where the PodPooch was safely stored. It seemed Panborn was right about the glitches, strange as it was to trust an aposti in these matters. Now it was just a matter of using the pawns to put the PodPooch in stasis, and talking to Grace.
She heard the privacy chime. Before she could open the door, Grace burst into the room. Mhau stood. The protector dropped into a crouch, her weapon in hand, scanning. Everything about Grace projected power: her stance, the steely intensity of her gaze, the steady aim of her phasewave.
“Good, you’re alone,” Grace said, straightening and sealing the door behind her.
Mhau’s heart raced. She’d never been so close to a protector in combat mode, and had never had a phasewave pointed in her direction.
“We need a Bode-6 lockdown, Mhau. Immediately.”
“A lockdown? Lee escaped?” she asked. Her vocal chords responded slowly, like she hadn’t spoken for months.
“No, not Lee.” Grace holstered her phasewave.
Lockdown. The concrete nature of the command enabled Mhau to focus and act. She turned to her workstation and began to swipe through the perimeter hierarchy. Her hands shook.
“Jacob tells me the colony’s sponsor is aposti.” Grace said.
Mhau looked at her. It was clearly not a question: it was a statement. Judging by the stern look, it was also an accusation. Mhau was well aware of the dislike cloisterfolk had for aposti. But dislike was an inadequate word for the hatred emanating from this protector.
Mhau tried to say yes, but found it difficult to speak and breathe at the same time. She nodded.
Grace bounded forward. “Your sponsor,” she began, emphasizing sponsor like it was profane, “choked Captain Saltari to death and left her body in a storage locker aboard the Waltz.”
Mhau’s universe contracted. Somewhere outside of herself, Grace continued to speak. Somewhere, her own hands still danced through the menus of her workstation. But all she could think of was Panborn. The secretive contacts, the odd demands. The flagrant promises. Her sponsor was a murderer? And she. Was she his accomplice?
“We’re in lockdown,” Mhau said, staring at the screen.
“Where is the aposti, Mhau?”
“I don’t know,” Mhau said, shaking her head. “I saw him some minutes ago, but he left. He was running—”
“Which direction?” Grace demanded.
“Inner spiral,” Mhau said, hoping Grace would leave.
“Can you track him with the blurp network?” Grace said, moving closer.
Mhau shook her head.
“Why?” Grace roared. “What makes him so precious that he can bounce around Bode-6 killing people, and we can’t track him?”
“It’s not that,” Mhau pleaded. “He only just arrived. His sleep squeeze hasn’t been scanned—”
“Quiet!”
Simultaneously with Grace’s command, Mhau heard a sound. A faint scraping, the sound of servos whining. And it wasn’t Boot.
“I’m here, Grace.”
The muffled voice came from her cabinet. Mhau froze. She had no idea the PodPooch could speak. The units she’d seen back in Malabon were fairly intelligent but only barked, growled, and occasionally whimpered.
Grace turned toward the cabinet. “Tim?”
“Here,” it repeated.
Grace tore open the cabinet doors. Containers Mhau had placed in front of the Faraday bag clattered out. The protector lunged into the cabinet and lifted the bag out in her arms.
“Tim!” Grace yelled, turning the bundle in her hands. “Why is he in the bag? Inside your cabinet?!”
Grace seemed to grow larger, filling Mhau’s apartment with her presence, her voice, her anger. Mhau backed into her seat, knocking it down. For a moment, she was a small child, recalling the corrupt protectors who stalked her neighborhood and her nightmares in Malabon. She wanted to hide from Grace, to crawl under something and disappear.
“Please let me out,” the PodPooch said, its voice the only calm thing in the room.
Grace pulled on the straps.
“No, Grace!” said Mhau, horrified. “Stop! The—the glitches in the bode! They stopped the moment I—”
Grace’s face flushed red. “What moment? Since you locked us in with Lee? Since you wrapped up my PodPooch in a bag?”
With Lee? Mhau swallowed. “The aposti—”
“You let the aposti into Kyran’s apartment!”
“Please, Grace, you have to listen to me—”
Mhau continued to back away. She knew there was no place for her to go, but any additional distance, even a few steps, felt safer. She could see that the protector only had one more strap to go before the PodPooch would be free. Mhau didn’t want the glitches to return, but she knew she couldn’t convince Grace in time. The safety of Bode-6 demanded she act.
Her back hit the shelf and she could retreat no further. With her eyes still locked on Grace, she groped behind her and grabbed the vial of shimmering purple pawns.
The effect on Grace was immediate.
“Where did you get those?” Grace demanded, partially standing, the bag dangling in her hand.
“If—if you don’t stop opening the bag, I will be forced to release them.”
“Like hell you will!” Grace said.
The PodPooch stuck its head out of the bundle.
“Oh,” it said. “Look at the pawns.”
Mhau couldn’t see the alert panel on her workstation, but she believed it would show increasing electromagnetic interference. It could be cascading through critical systems at this very moment. She lost all patience.
Mhau opened the vial. A purple swarm erupted, hovering in front of her for a moment before racing directly to the PodPooch. Grace shouted and tried to rewrap the dog, but the swarm crossed the room too quickly.
“Oh,” the PodPooch said. “Primary membrane failure at—” Its voice went from clear to static. It swiveled briefly, looking to her like its servos had lost positional feedback. Then it froze.
“Stasis,” said Mhau, her shoulders relaxing.
“Tim!” Grace yelled, kneeling by the robot. A strange blue liquid started dribbling from its
chassis. Grace frantically tried to cup the fluid in her hands. To Mhau’s surprise, the mouth of the PodPooch dropped open.
“Grace, I think,” it said, “I’m dying.”
An illegal AI.
Mhau felt sick. She had never been in the physical presence of an AI, but she remembered remotely dealing with one on Vesta. She didn’t realize she was crying until she could no longer focus on the protector. Grace was a blur as she scooped up the robot and rushed out the door.
From far away, she heard Grace’s wail as the apartment door slid shut.
Chapter 30
Grace felt numb, her thoughts wrenching from one image to the next. There was no logic, no direction. She was a marionette worked by grief. She stared at the frayed edge along the bottom of Kyran’s lab coat. He should repair that. She didn’t understand why he’d wear cheap fabric when mimic would be superior.
A sterile field hummed, and there was a clink of forceps as Kyran laid them on the instrument tray. Blue gel dripped from the jaws of the tool and pooled across the reflective surface.
She couldn’t recall how she’d gotten here. Had she run? No, running was impossible on this icy rock. And she hadn’t used the ceiling straps. I cradled Tim in my hands. Grace crossed her arms over her chest and grabbed her shoulders, trying to stretch, feeling no relief. Downhill, she thought. It had felt like falling downhill.
Grace unfolded herself and examined her hands. She thought she saw lines of blue gel in the creases of her palms. She started to trace them, to collect the precious fluid, but they were just shadows, just parts of her hand where the veins were close enough to the surface that her own blue showed. I kept most of the blue gel from spilling. It will be enough. Tim will be fine. She wiped her hands on her jumpsuit. They still felt wet. Just sweat.
She heard the door open and turned. Jacob arrived, carrying two large beakers. They were filled with blue gel. Maybe half a liter. Would it be enough to quench Kyran’s concern over gel loss? There was blue liquid everywhere, too much of it.
“Go back and get the rest,” she said.
Jacob motioned to the door. He had roiders in tow, each carrying smaller vessels with gel inside.
“I’ve asked colonists to scour your path from Mhau’s to here. We’ll find all of it.”
