by Corey Ostman
“That was fast.”
“I could tell they were hungry,” Jacob said.
“First time I’ve ever seen Chng hungrier for food than gossip. Or complaining.”
“Is this the crawler?”
Mhau broke her gaze with Jacob. She circled the small spacecraft. Its treads were still caked with Cererian dust after her last excursion. Nobody else liked to use this unit: it was older and slower, and had a smaller crew cabin in order to accommodate the ion drive.
“This is it,” she said.
The starboard portal was already open. She pulled herself in, through the main seating area, and into the cockpit. Jacob followed, taking the jump seat.
A glance at tactical showed that the techs had sealed the airlock on their way out. Mhau sealed the hatch, depressurized the chamber, and initiated the crawler’s main drive. The crawler vibrated to life, humming through the controls beneath her fingers. It was an old machine, simpler in design for a simpler time of exploration, but it was her favorite. She’d kept it in good repair.
Mhau glanced at the clock. Four minutes? Depressurization never seemed to take this long before. She hoped it wasn’t another glitch.
Jacob sat stone still. His knuckles were white, gripping the sides of his chair. He was peering too intently out of the small viewport, looking away from the outer spiral, across the plateau, to the cliffs and ridges on the far side of the valley.
“Not as colorful as Marble Canyon,” she said, after a moment.
Jacob closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
“How’d you know?” he whispered.
Mhau smiled. How could she not know, after all this time?
“When we first moved here,” she said, “I used to pretend that the white powder was snow. If you look long enough, you can fool your eyes into thinking it’s winter. Kind of looks like the mesa near Marble Canyon.”
He blinked, staring at the scene. “I never saw that before.”
“You should have,” she said. But the words came out more bitter than she felt. That was when she realized she’d forgiven him.
“Glad you see it now,” she said.
To her relief, the status board finally showed full depressurization. Mhau engaged the engines, then put her hand over Jacob’s. The crawler rumbled forward. She noted an anemic wheeze aft and caught the sweet scent of hydraulic fluid. It wasn’t the first time the door actuators had temporarily lost pressure during power-up. Mhau knew there’d be enough pressure to open the starboard hatch. Although the beast was slow, it would take the aposti away from Bode-6 and, more importantly, give her time to get rid of those pawns and get the station back under control.
The crawler shook as the treads bit into the icy Cererian surface. Turning to starboard, she pulled back on the yoke, easing the crawler toward the airlock to which she’d directed Panborn. Clamps on the exterior of the crawler popped as their electromagnets tried to grab hold of the airlock ring. She nudged the yoke and heard a satisfying thud as the ring mated with the crawler hatch.
Jacob fingered his ptenda. “Grace, we’re in position by Airlock G7. We’re going back inside. You ready?”
“No,” said Grace, her voice garbled with static.
Mhau’s stomach flipped. Panborn was due any minute. If Grace didn’t hurry, she wouldn’t be near the squeeze clutch in time.
“Try to keep your suit in contact with the exterior,” Mhau said, trying to sound calm. “It will help facilitate the transmission.”
“Copy,” Grace said, her transmission clearer. “Don’t wait for me. Get the aposti aboard that crawler.”
Chapter 35
“I’m nearing the Shack,” Grace transmitted. It was a lie—she was nowhere near the power hub just above the squeeze clutch. Kyran was silent, though he could track her position: a tacit approval.
She wasn’t about to LEMP pawns Kyran might need for Tim, or play backup to the naïve duo of Jacob and Mhau. Grace was the only person on this rock who had anti-aposti training, and she needed—
No. She had to admit it to herself. It was revenge. Revenge for Tim. She wasn’t going to let Panborn get away with murder. As long as Panborn was alive, others would be in danger, like Euler and the other Essex twofers on Mars. Raj, too. As Tim’s main creator, he’d be next if Panborn ever made it back to Earth. How many other innocents could he kill? I will not allow that to happen. Panborn, you aposti slug, I’m coming for you.
She took one last look at the vast, icy expanse of Ceres. The sun dazzled to her left, a yellow disc in a black, starry sky. She slowly turned, taking in the landscape of Bode-6 and the frosty plateau beyond. She thought of Tim. He would have loved this view.
As she transmitted she was topside, Grace removed her ptenda from the wrist of her suit and clamped it to a handhold. Then she began to climb down the ladder at the edge of the outer spiral. She faced the exterior of Bode-6 as she descended, using her visor telemetry as her eyes. She only had to unclamp and clamp her tether a few times before her left boot reached down for a rung and found empty space.
Grace looked down. The top of the crawler was about a meter below her. Mango.
She listened to the comm: Mhau was talking to Panborn.
“The crawler is docked,” Mhau said.
“I know, child. We’re already here.” Panborn replied.
Grace smirked. Mhau should have known. Panborn hadn’t given them thirty minutes. Only ten. She unhooked her tether and dropped, hitting the crawler roof, feeling the vibration of the landing through her boots. A bead of sweat ran from her forehead down the side of her nose, then past her chin. She moved to the edge and swung herself to the crawler’s hatch, then turned the hatch’s dial. Seconds ticked by as she waited for the airlock to respond.
“We still need a few more minutes.” There was panic in Mhau’s voice. Trying to stall for time, for Grace to deal with the pawns.
“For what? You’re here and the crawler is ready!” came Renken’s scratchy reply.
“Enough,” rumbled the aposti through the comm.
The hatch opened and Grace climbed inside. Leaning against the wall, she punched the pressure button and waited for her suit to report standard atmosphere.
“Um, Grace?” Kyran signaled on a private channel.
Not now. “What is it, Ky?”
“I know we’ve had some disagreements since you came here,” he said. “Especially about Tim.” He swallowed audibly. “I just wanted to say that I trust you. I agree with you. Good luck.”
Grace smiled. “Thanks.”
Green!
Grace unclamped the helmet and removed her pressure suit. She hastily wedged the suit into a conduit run, then reached inside her helmet and unzipped the fabric that lined the skullcap. She unclipped the power pack underneath, watching the internal lights of the helmet flicker, then fade to black. Reaching behind her neck, she also pulled off her sleep squeeze. It hurt—she hoped she wasn’t doing too much damage to her neck. Then she reached behind her right ear and removed the dermal dot. She placed them all on the deck in a neat row.
A few years ago, these bits of technology would have seemed alien to her, and frightening. She had grown to find them useful, but now they were dangerous. They stood in the way of her revenge.
She hit them with her hammer, one by one. The dot shot a blue arc of sparks, but the squeeze and the power pack shattered without pyrotechnics. She scooped up the debris and put them in her pocket.
Clipping the hammer to her belt, she squeezed herself alongside her pressure suit, between the wall and conduits.
And waited in the dark.
Chapter 36
With Panborn on the way, it’d be impossible for Grace to reach the squeeze clutch in time. Mhau turned to Jacob, expecting to see the same panic she felt. Instead, he seemed calm. No, more than calm. A corner of his mouth was curled up.
“Wish I had a phasewave,” he said, spinning the crawler’s airlock wheel.
It was Jacob as he’d been on Earth, as
he had been in their first few months at Bode-6. In a way, Mhau was relieved that he didn’t have a weapon. His returning confidence was palpable and she didn’t want any sort of confrontation. She needed Panborn off the station without incident.
Based on Panborn’s last transmission, “we’re here,” she expected Renken and Panborn would be just outside the airlock. But when she went to the hatchway to look out, the spoke was empty.
“Where are they?” she whispered.
“There,” Jacob said, pointing at the far end of the spoke.
Mhau squinted, but she couldn’t see anyone. She looked down the spiral in both directions. Empty?
“There’s nobody,” she began, then stopped.
Now she could see two figures bouncing toward them. They were far away: she didn’t know how Jacob had seen them before. In front was Renken Larchmont. Gone from his step was the usual swagger conferred by his position at Bode-6. He looks scared, Mhau thought. Behind him, and quite a bit taller, loomed Uriah Panborn, in his robes and hood, his face in shadow under the overhead lights.
As the two came closer, it was apparent that the aposti was clutching Renken by his collar. The older man was rigid, his head cocked at an uncomfortable angle. The lower edge of his jacket had been torn. Renken was no longer the patriarch of Bode-6: he’d been transformed into nothing more than an aposti’s shield.
Mhau tapped her ptenda and put the spoke in maintenance mode, effectively sealing it off from other colonists. It would be safer for Renken, safer for all of Bode-6. Renken had loyal followers at the station, willing to intercede at such an outrage. And Renken doesn’t need anyone else seeing this humiliation.
In a matter of moments, the pair were before her.
“Hello, engineer. And greetings, former protector,” the aposti said, lilting just enough on former to be insulting. “I appreciate the way you’ve handled this, Tapang. Now I have just one more errand for my dog,” he gave Renken a shake, “and I’ll be on my way.”
“What?” Renken said, inhaling halfway through, making it sound more like a hiccup than a word.
“You’re going to make certain that lovely orbital crawler is clear.” The aposti’s voice was deep, making his words all the more menacing.
Jacob tipped his head toward Mhau and whispered. “What does he mean by ‘clear’?”
“He wants an implant scan. To see if anyone is aboard,” she said, unworried over this final formality. Mhau could perform the scan herself right now from her ptenda, but she figured the aposti wanted to see the results on a device closer to him. And insult Renken again.
The two men passed by, heading to the crawler. Renken was sweating, his breathing raspy and erratic. They came to a stop just beyond the crawler’s airlock.
“Check it,” the aposti rumbled.
As Renken worked his ptenda, she glanced down at her own readout. There were only three sleep squeeze IDs hovering nearby: Renken, Jacob, and herself. And there were no comm signals coming from the crawler. The machine was empty.
More worrying, there were no messages from Grace.
“No IDs. Clear!” Renken said, lifting his arm over his head so that the aposti could see his ptenda’s screen. She knew Renken had wanted to shout it, wanted to appear to be back in charge, but his yell was more like a gasp.
“Excellent,” Panborn said.
He tossed Renken toward Mhau and Jacob. Jacob uncoiled next to her, catching Renken mid-flight. With his legs back under him, the dockmaster hunched over, panting.
“You ok?” Jacob asked.
Mhau wondered if Renken would berate Jacob, as he’d done in the past. Instead, he stayed bent over, breathing as rapidly as if he’d run a marathon.
“Check his vitals, Jacob. Alert Kyran.”
Jacob nodded, bending over to check Renken’s ptenda readout. Mhau looked up to find Panborn had already climbed aboard the crawler. Soon its ion engines flared, and it began to hover.
“He’s leaving,” she whispered.
Jacob left Renken’s side and slid next to her.
“Renken’s system is stressed, but he’s ok. Kyran wants to talk to you, though.”
Mhau raised her wrist. “Go for Tapang.”
“I’ve lost Grace’s signal,” Kyran said.
Mhau frowned, calling up the station’s roster on her ptenda. Grace’s squeeze ID and suit comm had disappeared from the bode.
“Donner, report.” Jacob spoke into his ptenda. “Grace?”
“Have the pawns moved?” asked Mhau. She had a horrible image of Grace covered in purple.
“No,” said Kyran. “No activity.”
Jacob headed to the spiral. “We need to suit up and find her!”
Chapter 37
Grace waited in the deep shadow of her conduit lair. She strained to listen, missing Tim and his accentuated senses. Did she hear breathing? Murmurs? The clicks and squeaks of organic movement? Through the floor plate, she felt the hatch open and close. Later, a rumble as the crawler’s engine started.
She waited, hugging the conduits against the rocking motion of the crawler.
Shaking transitioned to smooth acceleration as the ion drive fired and the crawler began to skim the surface of Ceres. The craft was hurtling toward escape velocity. It was time.
Grace grabbed two vertical conduits in either hand and extracted herself from the tangle of pipes in her hiding place. She hung for a moment and listened. No voices, just the sound of the ion drive. In the dim light, she found a service handhold just above her head. She used it to propel herself forward.
Grace worked up a rhythm on the evenly-spaced ceiling handholds. An empty passenger cabin flashed by: six seats, minimal lights, duffel in the corner—like the one into which Panborn had shoved Tim. She bulleted through the small cargo bay of the crawler. The area was empty, but her mind was filled with anger and grief.
The cockpit’s door was open.
Grace pulled forward until she hung just in front of the aperture. Then she stretched out her arms, released her grip, and dropped to the deck. Quiet! On her way down, she saw a robed figure seated at the controls, the bastard whose claws had reached across millions of kilometers to kill Tim Trouncer.
My Tim.
Panborn did not turn around. Grace calmed her breathing. She scanned the cockpit, knowing that the aposti might have brought Renken aboard, but Panborn was alone. Good.
At this distance, she couldn’t use Marty’s phasewave: the aposti would hear the thrum of the reaction chamber, and a phasewave burst in a small cockpit might destroy the avionics, or even the hull. A traditional slug could do the same. She knew what breathing vacuum felt like. Not good.
The aposti was strapped into the pilot’s seat. If she could pounce while he was restrained, she’d have the best chance of knocking him unconscious. The back of the seat itself was about two meters from the cockpit door. She mentally prepared herself. If it were anybody but an aposti, she would simply attack to subdue and let a Belt trial provide justice. But aposti didn’t allow themselves to be captured, so though her plan was still to subdue, she had to be ready for lethal force.
She imagined herself a cannon ball, and the bulkhead as the cannon. She crouched down, grabbing either side of the doorway. Leaning her body into the cockpit, she kept her knees bent—they’d provide the gunpowder. She locked her eyes on the aposti’s brown hood and thrust out.
Airborne!
Her launch was perfect, her aim toward the back of Panborn’s head ideal, but mere centimeters before impact, the aposti shifted his head to the right and arched both his body and the seat forward. Her hands hit the back of the pilot seat. The impact caused Panborn to slam against the yoke, pitching the crawler nose down. As she spun, Grace glimpsed icy white filling the viewscreen. She wasn’t sure of their altitude—she hoped it wasn’t too high—but knew she didn’t have time to watch. Or worry.
“Donner!” the aposti growled, hitting the restraint release and springing clear of his seat.
Grace grabbed the back of a seat, trying to swing herself into a standing position. Before she could right herself, Panborn slammed one forearm into her stomach and pressed his other against her throat. In the close quarters of the cockpit, she knew she’d have seconds before her back was against the hull.
She wouldn’t yell, she wouldn’t squirm. I am the weapon. And unlike him, I’ve trained in zero-G. Grace grabbed the aposti and brought the bottom of her boot against his leg. Panborn lost his grip as their bodies spun away from one another.
• • •
Mhau halted at an intersection down the spoke.
“What is it?” Jacob said, lurching to a stop by her side.
“I can’t go with you,” she said.
“But Grace?”
“You search for Grace. I’ve got to deal with the pawns.”
“Too dangerous! What if they’re the reason Grace is missing?” His eyes were wide now, topped by angled eyebrows intent on dissuading her. But she didn’t have time to debate this with Jacob. Not now.
She swung to her right and pulled down Spoke-B. “I’ll comm you when I’m in position,” she said. She turned her head and began to pull down the spoke.
“Mhau!” Jacob yelled, but didn’t follow. He knew, then, that this was the only practical answer. There was no sense in both of them getting killed. That didn’t stop her wishing he would rush after her. Just a little.
Mhau dismissed her foolish notion as she pulled forward. Her castle was close, the door still open. As she entered, Mhau passed the Faraday bag lying on the floor. She didn’t pause, but her thoughts stayed with the bag. She couldn’t bring back Tim Trouncer, but she might just save Bode-6.
A well-worn pressure suit hung next to her workstation. She slipped it on. This will offer limited protection against pawns, she thought as she locked the collar into position, but it will give me time to start the emitter.
“Mhau,” Kyran’s voice crackled in her helmet. “I’ve pinged Grace’s ptenda. She’s still topside.”
“Near the Shack?”
“No.”
“Understood,” she said. “Your priority is still the residents of Bode-6. Do not affect a rescue until after you’ve heard from me.”
