He grimaced. “That bad?”
“Getting worse every day.”
CHAPTER 22
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3771
BOOZE DOES NOT HELP IN LOW-G
Zero-g was no fun with a belly full of rum. Sanda clenched her jaw and sucked her cheeks in to keep nausea at bay as she pulled herself along the command deck’s nominal ceiling toward the cargo bay. Judging from the grunts Tomas was making, he wasn’t faring much better.
Soon as she was close enough, she shoved herself down and drifted toward the cargo bay door, snagged a nearby cupboard handle in one hand and wrenched it open. Ten pairs of gleaming mag boots—Icarion grey, of course—twinkled up at her. She shoved her feet in a likely pair and clamped them tight around her ankles.
Her makeshift calf rattled in the mouth of the boot and she winced as the magnets activated and jerked her leg forward at an awkward angle. Damn. That was going to be hell to get out later, and she’d probably dented the metal. Whatever, it felt good to have her feet on the ground again, even if the rum in her gut was now pushing insistently at the bottom of her throat.
Tomas locked in and clanked along beside her, looking a little green around the gills. “Looks painful,” he said, pointing to her prosthetic with his chin.
“Yeah, I didn’t think that one through. Not like I won’t have time to fix it, huh?”
He kind of laughed, kind of frowned. A mixed message that summed up pretty much exactly how she felt every other moment since she’d woken up in Bero and learned the truth of what had happened to her home.
She slapped the panel to open the cargo bay and clanged inside, Tomas right on her six. What she had to show him wasn’t very promising. All the scrap she’d gathered from the debris field—minus his evac pod, which was still in the medibay—was anchored down to three mag pallets in the hold. At first glance, she’d gathered maybe enough to repair one evac pod. Maybe. And, unfortunately, that first glance was accurate.
“Oh,” he said, sobered.
“Mm-hmm. That’s how I found you. I was looking for parts to fix up my pod, hadn’t counted on needing to fix two. While you were getting, uh, settled in, I went back out every day. This is it. This is all that’s useful from this proximity.”
“I don’t suppose one pod could fit two people, could it?”
“For a couple of weeks, maybe. We’d come out with a bunch of nutrient deficiencies, but it could work. For years, on the scale we’re working toward? No fucking way. We’d absorb each other’s nutrients and end up dying anyway. Gross, right?”
“Definitely.”
He squinted at that collection of scrap, working his jaw around, probably trying to arrive at an answer she and Bero hadn’t seen. Trouble was, she and Bero had had a whole lot longer to think about things, and a drunken human brain wasn’t exactly going to outpace the thought process of a determined AI.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. She gave him whatever time he needed.
“This is real. It’s really fucking happening.”
“I’m afraid so.” She patted him on the shoulder, the way Biran had done to her whenever she got worked up over something. “I know you saw what was left of Ada, but, well. Look at this.”
She clanged over to the nearest pallet and pulled back the sheet of clear plastic she’d pinned over it. This heap was mostly junk, random bits that might be useful in the future but for now were just taking up space. It also held the remains of the gasket she’d repaired on her first day. She pulled the strip of rubber out and presented it to him, turning it so he could see the three wear fractures.
“See this? It was the seal on Bero’s first airlock. The day I woke up, this thing decided to blow. Icarion rubber is just as good as Prime’s, I know that much, and I’ve never seen damage like this before. This is what rubber looks like after it’s oxidized for two hundred years. Weird, right? This is what we’re up against. Not just finding the materials we need—but finding them in good enough condition to make use of, to trust.”
He took the gasket from her and turned it over in his hands. The ends trailed up in the low-g like two twisting, stiff snakes. Tomas brushed his fingers over those three breaks in the rubber, and grimaced.
“Can I keep this?”
She shrugged. “Sure, whatever keeps you motivated.”
He tucked it under his arm and looked around, eyeing each pallet as he performed the same mental inventory she had done dozens of times. No matter how you distributed the supplies, there wasn’t enough.
“I think I need to lie down.”
“Follow me.”
She guided him back through Bero and popped the door on the same cabin she’d found the Caneridge in. The clothes in that closet had belonged to a tall male, so she figured Tomas could probably find whatever he needed in the deceased researcher’s old things.
“This work?” she asked.
He blinked in the gloomy lighting. As they’d come up the ladder, Bero had turned down the lights, shifting the ship over to dusk-approximate. Even in space, humans liked their circadian rhythms to sync with some sort of light source.
“Yeah, it’ll do fine.” He shuffled inside and dropped the gasket on the ground by his new bed, then grabbed a tablet off the nightstand with a screech of Velcro and tapped it to life. “This’ll get me Bero’s info?”
Bero answered, “I’ll connect that tablet to my internal systems now. Any questions you have, you may query me directly or type them into the tablet, if you prefer.”
“Great, thanks. Sergeant Greeve, if you wouldn’t mind…?” He lifted his brows in question, staring straight at the door.
“It’s Sanda. And don’t stay up too late messing with that thing, we’ve got a lot of strategy to work on in the morning.”
“I don’t think I could stay up late if I wanted to.”
She grinned and stepped into the hall. “Good night, Tomas.”
“Hey, Sanda?”
“Yeah?”
He hesitated, picking at the edges of the tablet gripped in both hands. “You’re…” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “… Very brave. Thanks. For everything.”
“No prob.” She slapped the door closed and stood a moment, staring at the shuttered portal, examining his face in her mind’s eye as she’d last seen it, lit by the glow of Bero’s interface. Pensive. Worried. All things to be expected. But something about it seemed off to her, itched at the back of her mind. He’d been trying to make a decision, she thought. A decision he wasn’t yet willing to discuss.
“Sanda?” Bero asked. She knew without asking that he had dampened Tomas’s room, made it so they couldn’t be overheard. She turned back down the hall toward the mess, thinking to clean up before bed.
“Yeah, Bero?”
“Do you really trust him?”
She entered the mess and grabbed their cups, scrubbing at them in the sink with microcleanse cloths. Rum fumes tingled her nose as the cloths ate up what residue was left, cleansing and sanitizing with each swipe. There was still a third of Caneridge left in the bottle. She wondered how long it’d last.
Bero didn’t press her. He knew her well enough to know she was thinking, struggling to puzzle out what she felt before she responded. Did she really trust him? He had kind eyes, a quick laugh. Nice jaw and hipline, if she were being honest with herself, but she had to be careful with that. He claimed to be an offworlder—not even really Icarion. But those were all incidental, superficial facts.
Did she really trust him?
She stacked the cups back in the pantry, listening to the satisfying clunk as magnets held the cabinet door shut. Just a comms man. A loner on a freighter who found appropriate work on Icarion. He’d adopted some Icarion ideals, and suspicions, for his own, but that didn’t mean much. It was only natural to blend in with the people you decided to live among. Was he trying to blend in with her?
“I like him,” she said, and that much was true. He was easy enough to like. But she’d found him drifting in a dead deb
ris field. Found him where no living being should have been. The carrier had been automated. No atmosphere. There was no reason at all for a comms specialist to be all alone out there. She hadn’t even found any others—any corpses.
“But I don’t trust him.”
CHAPTER 23
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
PRINCEDOM IS PAINFUL
Biran’s fingers screamed in pain as he tried to use his wristpad to summon an autocab. Swearing, he shook out his hand, flicking droplets of Kan’s blood onto the grass, and barreled into a full-on sprint down the narrow gravel road that wound through the Keepers’ neighborhood.
“Biran!” Anaia shouted after him, her voice faint from the top of the hill. He flung a hand up to indicate he’d heard her, he was sorry, anything really—just acknowledgment. Kan and his friends could trash Biran’s house for all he cared.
The convoy was dead.
His heart thundered in his chest, and not because he was out of shape. He hit the bottom of the road and turned away from the houses, angling toward the neighborhood gate. A couple of guardcore lounging in the check station jerked to attention at the madman charging them. Their stunners swung his way as they took up defensive stances.
“Identify yourself,” one barked.
Biran swung his wristpad up, beaming his ident number to them, but did not slow his pace.
“Speaker Greeve?” the one nearest him pitched her voice up in confusion, a startling break in protocol. The guardcore were meant to be unidentifiable by Keepers so that no favoritism could seep in. Even their genders were obscured by their armor and helmets.
“Open the damned gate!” He slid to a stop in front of them, tried to point at the gate mechanism, and winced as his broken finger failed to straighten.
“Is there an emergency? We saw a call go out for a medivan.”
Biran grimaced in frustration. “Can you drive me to the Cannery?”
Silence prevailed as the guardcore’s hands fluttered to their wristpads, a silent conversation taking place. Biran forced himself to stand tall and calm, brushing his mussed hair off his forehead and trying to slow the heaving of his chest. After a moment’s thought, he stuffed his broken-fingered hand into his pocket, hoping to hide Kan’s blood and his own injury.
“A replacement for me is on the way,” one of the guardcore said. “Come with me please, Speaker. I can take you to the Cannery.”
“Thank you.” Biran tried to sound dignified, but he was sure his relief was palpable. This was a new world for him, pretending he felt one thing while his insides were screaming another. He wanted to embrace it—wanted to be the man Graham thought he could be—but his body betrayed him more often than not.
He could fix that, he told himself, he just needed training. Practice. Never mind that there wasn’t time for that—that he was needed now, and in perfect form. Never mind that lives might depend on his ability. That lives had already been lost.
Never mind all that, because that way lay a downward spiral of anxiety and despair.
He swung up into the jeep and braced his good hand against the roll bar as the guardcore fired up the quiet murmur of the electric engine. This one, like all government vehicles, sounded like the faint rumble of tires over gravel. Just enough sound to warn pedestrians it was coming. As the autopilot took over, the guardcore leaned against the frame, stunner slung at the ready under one arm, as they wended their way down from the prestigious neighborhood of the Keepers into the more sedate homes of those who worked on Keep Station. Those few whose jobs could not be replaced by robots, or who supplemented the basic income afforded to all Prime citizens with extra work.
Five minutes’ driving time passed before Biran realized that those citizens were watching him. They peeked through windows, curtains twitched aside, came out to stand on their porches, or simply stopped where they walked down the side of the road. Heads turned, gazes tracking the sedate advance of his vehicle. Biran’s skin crawled from the scrutiny.
“What’s going on?” he asked out of the side of his mouth, keeping an eye on all those watching him.
The guardcore flicked at their wristpad. “Word is spreading of the destroyed convoy, sir.”
“So?”
“You’re… kind of the face of that, Speaker Greeve.” They put a slight emphasis on his last name, and that subtle direction dragged at him like a weight. Of course they’d come out to see him, the man who’d beamed his face into all their homes to claim the heroes of Dralee could be recovered, if only they tried to talk to Icarion. To open the paths to peace.
As soon as word spread he’d left the Keeper neighborhood, they’d know. They’d whisper among themselves in private group chats, speculating about his advance through the station. Speculating, too, about the medivan that no doubt had gone screaming through their streets seconds before he appeared.
Some strange impulse within him wanted to wave, but he pushed that aside and put on a grim, serious expression instead. It wasn’t hard to fake. Though his whole body vibrated with fear, he had to temper himself. To remind himself that this was only one step on the path. That Icarion had attacked, yes, but it may have been a rogue member. They could make no assumptions about Icarion’s intentions until they heard from Icarion itself.
He pulled up his wristpad and pinged Graham with a CamCast request. He accepted immediately, his dark olive face flushed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Heading to the Cannery now. Is Ilan with you?”
“Coming home from the warehouse now. Should we come up-station?”
“No. Stay put. The streets are tense.”
“Here, too.” Graham glanced over his shoulder. “People are afraid. The ambush at Dralee was one thing. This is a complete refutation of hope. We might see protests.”
Biran looked up, scanning the wary faces that washed by him as the jeep sped down a wider road. “I’d be shocked if we didn’t. What’s the word on the net?”
“Unhappy. Speculative. They want to know if the threat is real or not, if Icarion’s planning a big offensive. No one’s buying into peace anymore, I think. They’re talking themselves into striking first. Into taking Icarion down before they can do any more damage. The rumors about a super weapon aren’t enough to keep the bloodlust down.”
“Dangerous,” Biran said, before he could catch himself.
“So there is a weapon.”
“Icarion has always been a threat.”
Graham smirked. “Not militarily. But don’t elaborate. I know you can’t.”
A circle expanded across Biran’s wristpad, like the ripples of an ice cube dropped in a glass. General Jessa Anford was calling him. Priority line.
“Dad, I have to go—”
The impact came without warning.
Something slammed into the road ahead, fountaining rock and fire and heat into the air. Static filled Biran’s ears. White light—no, dust, light could never be so dull—overwhelmed his vision and then that heat, electric heat, seared his face, his exposed hands. Unseen pressure slammed him against the seat, snapped his head back, and then the world twisted up. The jeep wrenched sideways off the road and pitched like a rag onto its side. Metal screamed, he screamed, something roared in his ears but it was his own blood—his hearing dampened by the blast.
Blast. That was it. That was why his body was lying sideways, half in the dirt through the jeep’s open window, armored hands shaking him, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Speaker Greeve!” The voice came to him from far away, but demanded attention.
Biran opened his eyes, blinking grit from them, and wiped the back of his hand across his face. Blood smeared—shards from something had scratched his face. His nose bled. The visor of a guardcore hovered over him. Biran remembered where he was, what he had been doing.
“What the fuck?” was all he could say.
The guardcore let loose a shaky laugh—it was the woman. She extended him a hand and helped him crawl out
of the wreckage of the jeep. He brushed dirt from his suit then realized how stupid that was. It was ruined anyway, large patches torn from the arms and legs. He’d been an idiot not to strap into the jeep. Only the brilliant engineering of the thing had allowed him to walk away from that accident.
That red ring on his arm just kept flashing at him. Biran accepted the call, saw his own dirt-and-smoke-smeared face in the corner of his wristpad view as Anford came into the screen. She took one look at him and nodded.
“You’re alive.”
“Seems that way.”
“Good. Where are you?”
He didn’t know. He looked up, squinting against the haze that thickened the air. The guardcore stood beside him, wary, both her hands on the stunner and very much ready to use it. The jeep had torn up some poor person’s yard, scraped the succulents they’d been growing right up and pulverized the whole display, but had luckily missed the house itself. Judging by the fact no one had rushed out to investigate the accident, he figured no one was home.
Wherever the owners were, he hoped they were safer than this.
Smoke curled from the road just a few meters from where the jeep had been. Great tufts of concrete had been peeled up by the impact, like someone had shoved their thumb through an orange peel. Alarms blared up and down the street, and people rushed all over the place. Covered in dirt. Streaked in blood. Not everyone had been as lucky as him.
“Residential neighborhood just outside the Keeper zone. Something struck the road in front of us, but I and the guardcore are uninjured.” He glanced sideways at her for confirmation she wasn’t hurt, and she gave him a curt nod. “We’re maybe fifteen minutes from the Cannery, in a vehicle. Hour on foot.”
“I’ve picked up the location of your wristpad. I’ll send an auto for you.”
“Don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“That wasn’t an accident, was it?”
Velocity Weapon Page 17
