Fergus’s mind was a whirling, blank pit. Don’t panic, he told himself. The suit would not panic.
The Governor opened his eyes again. If he looks toward Gilger, we’ve lost.
Instead, the Governor turned back toward them. “I’ll allow this prototype test as long as it doesn’t interfere with my investigators’ work. My technicians and security personnel will attend Mr. Anders for the duration, as I’m sure we’re all very curious about this rather fantastical device you’ve described.”
“Thank you very much, Lord Governor.” Fergus bowed.
The Governor looked around. “Anyone else have anything to add? Except you, Arum.” When no one spoke, he stood. “This hearing is adjourned pending further information. You may all leave. Mr. Harcourt, you and your associate stay a moment.”
Gilger paused in the doorway, tapped Graf on the shoulder, and gestured toward Fergus. He said something too low to hear, then swept out of the room. The Luceatan stared at him a few seconds longer before following his boss, as if committing his face to memory.
That can’t be good.
The Governor had brief conversations with several departing people, including one of the Shielders, in voices too low to make out. When at last the room was empty of anyone except his security chief, Harcourt, and Fergus, the Governor walked back to the head of the room and sat down on the edge of the table. “What are you up to, Harry?”
Harcourt held out his hands, palms up. “I am motivated by nothing except seeing justice done after losing a friend and neighbor,” he said. “Mattie Vahn was a good woman and a good member of the community. She donated half her crop three standards ago when we had the biodome failure and saved a fifth of Cernee from starving until it got fixed. You know Gilger has never contributed a damned thing except trouble and death. We owe it to Mattie to see justice done, and you know it.”
“Katra informed me of the murder of Minnie Vahn at Blackcans just prior to this meeting,” the Governor said. Katra nodded her head in acknowledgement. “You understand that without proof, I must regard that as a separate and unrelated event? Unless something comes along to tie the two things together?”
“I understand,” Harcourt said.
It was nearly a minute before the Governor spoke again, his gaze never wavering. “You are not wrong. Gilger is an ass, and a dangerous one at that. This attack was bolder than I would have expected of him, but the way things stand right now, he’ll probably get away with it, and I can’t say that I like that outcome. If this plan you’re concocting works, I won’t have any cause to question the integrity of you or your associate, will I?”
“I would hope not, Lord Governor,” Harcourt said.
“Good.”
The Governor stood again and looked the both of them up and down. “Nice suit, Mr. Ferguson,” he said. “Glad to see you survived after all.” Then he turned and left.
Katra stayed in the doorway. “I’ll be in touch when we’re ready to transport you to Mezzanine Rock for your test,” she said. “In the meantime, don’t leave Central.”
“Where would we go?” Harcourt asked.
“Nowhere I couldn’t find you,” she said, and with a half smile, followed after her boss.
The conference room was empty. Fergus put a hand over his face. “No one here is at all like what I was expecting. Except for Gilger, which is not to his credit.”
“No, I imagine not,” Harcourt said.
“Harry Harcourt, huh?”
“Shut up,” Harcourt said. “Let’s get—”
He was interrupted by a familiar wail of sirens. “Another flyby?!” he exclaimed.
“Now what do we do?” Fergus asked.
“I’ve got a small office suite in the middle ring I use to conduct local business,” Harcourt said. “We can check the newsfeeds from there. If the Asiig are stirred up, this could all be a huge waste of time.”
Walking to Harcourt’s suite, they passed people in the corridors murmuring anxiously to one another and jumping at shadows. Every face they passed bore a hunted expression, from visitors to Cernee locals.
They watch us all the time, Mari had said.
Fergus wanted nothing more than to grab Venetia’s Sword and get out, and he said as much to Harcourt once they were safely in his suite.
Harcourt opened a cabinet, got out a bottle of scotch, and started hunting for bulbs. “I didn’t expect Gilger to lose his cool like that. And the way Graf was studying you? You’ve made yourself an enemy. And that’s without them knowing why you’re really here,” he said. He found bulbs and set them out on the counter. “If there’s any particular C&R you’d like or anyone left at home to send you to, best let me know now.”
“No. Just—”
The alarms cut off, the sudden silence almost a noise of its own.
“At least that was mercifully short,” Harcourt said. He pulled up the news on the office console and read the summary out loud. “‘A single Asiig ship passed FiftyRock before turning and heading back out into the Gap. None taken.’ That’s the closest they’ve come in a long time.”
“Why?”
“Who knows?” Harcourt said. “Maybe some day they’ll come take us all. For now, though, they’ve spared us again.”
The console chimed, and Katra’s face filled the screen. “Naptime is over,” she said. “Get your exosuits on and bring your prototype to Authority dock 16B. Be there in an hour or less. Both of you.” The connection closed.
Harcourt put the unopened bottle of scotch and bulbs back in the cabinet. “Let’s get this over with before any more complications come along.”
Fergus had been assured that the Asiig only rarely crossed the Gap, but that made two visits in less than a week. When he got back to his exosuit, tucked up next to his ludicrous prototype, the first thing he was going to do was have Harcourt show him how to tune in to the Boolean public alert signal.
If he never saw that little yellow light appear on his suit’s display panel, he’d be a happy man, but he was not going to take the chance that the aliens were done marauding until he was safe and sound hundreds of light-years away from there.
Chapter 8
Several hours later, under the skeptical eye of Katra herself, one security officer, and two of the Governor’s techs, Fergus and Harcourt offloaded the prototype from an Authority flyer onto the platform of Mezzanine Rock. No one offered to help. “We’ve cleared the platform and nearby corridors for you,” Katra told them. “The Governor suggested you would probably prefer a minimal audience due to trade secrets.” She spoke those last words as if naming a perversion. “I don’t know much about photons and waves and transcripting beams, but I know a rat in the walls when I hear it. You be careful you don’t go gnawing on anything I care about.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” Fergus said.
She grunted, unconvinced. “I’m going to check my perimeter while you get set up to do whatever it is you think you’re going to do.” She turned to her techs. “You two, stay out here with them and observe.”
She left without looking back.
Harcourt left Bale and his other man on the platform, watching. Maintenance rings had been pounded into the rock surrounding the opening, so it was just a matter of awkwardness to haul the bulky machine up and onto a smooth area of rock.
To their right, Beggar’s Boulder was lit up; beside it, a few lights flickered in the remains of Rattletrap. Past both, up against the backside of the last of the sunshields, was a dimly lit large hab that was starting to feel familiar: Blackcans.
Once the prototype was aimed in the hab’s direction, he tethered it down and began powering it up. “Right,” Fergus said. “You sure you want to stick around for this?”
Harcourt laughed. “I should be putting as much distance as I can between myself and this madness. And yet here I am. And besides, Katra said I had
to be here.”
“True. But you could have made some excuse. You don’t need to put yourself in danger.”
“Right, because otherwise my life as an arms merchant out along the Gap is very low-risk,” Harcourt said. “I looked you up, you know.”
“What?”
“Mars. I know what you did there. You were a hero. And then you just disappeared. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be proud.”
Fergus sighed. “Because I was an idiot kid. I’d just run away from home, and for the first time in my life I felt like I was free, like I could do anything. I thought I was invincible, and without a single bloody thought about consequences, I convinced other people who should have known better to trust me. People got hurt.” Some worse than hurt, he didn’t add.
“But you succeeded. It was a defining victory for Free Mars. They all knew what the risks were. You’ve never gone back?”
“Many times, but always under a fake name,” Fergus admitted. “I don’t want to be anyone’s hero, not anymore. Not at someone else’s expense.”
Harcourt watched him for a few moments, then nodded. “Mars gets under your skin, makes you a different person,” he said. “Once it does, you don’t really ever escape it.”
“Yet you’re out here.”
“I escaped the Mars Colonial Authority,” Harcourt said. “I never escaped Mars. And now my kid is back there . . . Don’t you ever feel it, trying to pull you back?”
“No,” Fergus lied.
“You will,” Harcourt said. “Everyone does eventually.”
“Not if—” Fergus started to answer, but then Katra’s two techs appeared on the platform’s outer edge, pulling themselves up onto the rock not far away. Fergus fiddled with some dials in what he hoped appeared to be a methodical way. When the techs got bored enough watching him to start talking to each other, he carefully slipped the doorkey into the back, clicking it into place.
Good enough, he thought. Time to do it.
Toggling his comm over to open broadcast, he cleared his throat. “This is Mr. Anders, recording on behalf of SteloFocus Tech of Lunar Three. I am about to test the prototype Light Afterimage Retrieval Device, Beta Unit Two,” he announced. “We are in Cernekan’s Halo at a location known as Mezzanine Rock, atop Platform C, and we’ll be directing our light transcription beam toward a habitat named Blackcans. There was a fatal incident here a few days ago, and we will be attempting to retrieve the afterimage data from it.”
One of the techs floated nearer, craning his head over Harcourt’s shoulder for a closer look. “What do those dials measure?” he asked.
“Ah . . .” Fergus said. “This one measures the disturbance velocity of ambient particles, and this one shows the correlation between light amplitude and event displacement.”
The man frowned. “What?”
“Should we start?” Harcourt interrupted.
“Yes. Yes, we should.” Fergus pulled his handpad from his pack.
“And what’s that?” the tech asked.
“I’m recording data on the internal functioning of the device for later study by our engineering team,” he said.
“May I?” The tech began to reach for the pad.
“I’m sorry, it’s proprietary information,” Fergus said, turning the screen toward his chest.
“Oh,” the tech said. “Well, how exactly does—”
“I’m sorry, but every moment that elapses since the event negatively impacts the retrieval density. I’m sure there’ll be time for questions afterward if the test is successful.”
“Oh. All right.” The tech returned to his compatriot’s side and stared glumly out into the darkness.
Fergus powered on the ring of spotlights. The matte-surfaced hab in the distance lit up with a tiny but brilliant white dot. “The device is calibrating itself to the environment, and we should be able to begin collecting preliminary data soon,” Fergus said over the open comm for anyone who might be listening. “At this point, it is critical that the beam not be interrupted, or we risk corrupting our original data source.”
“How long, do you think?” Harcourt asked over their private channel.
“No idea. I just hope Gilger shows.”
They stared out after the beam, waiting. “Can I ask . . .” Fergus started to say, then trailed off, not sure he should.
“About?”
“Mari. The Vahns.”
Harcourt gave a short laugh. “My daughter was four when we came here on the run,” he said after some thought. “I wanted somewhere quiet. Half the Wheels was in ruins, and I had only the bare remnants of a team left, so it was a stroke of fortune that at the other end was a family with kids Arelyn’s age, you know? I don’t know how we’d’ve made it if it hadn’t been for Mattie Vahn. Arelyn practically lived over there for years, and she and Mari were inseparable. And then they became teens.”
Fergus nodded.
“Arelyn’s smart. Smarter than me, and not one to back down from a challenge, but also not really one to go out and get into trouble the way I did when I was her age. The Vahns really suit her as extended family. On the other hand, there’s Mari.”
“More of a trouble-seeker,” Fergus said.
“Yeah,” Harcourt said. “So Mattie Vahn and I came to an arrangement. Mari started taking on a few small courier tasks for me, showing up when we were doing self-defense exercises, things like that. We wanted her to be able to take care of herself off the farm, because it was obvious she wasn’t going to stay put. When Arelyn decided to go back to Mars, explore her heritage . . . well, Mari—”
“Gilger’s here,” Fergus interrupted, silently cursing the timing. A ship was threading its way carefully between the Leakytown lines in the distance, entering the Halo. Flysticks and one-mans scattered in its wake. Fergus’s heart raced at the sight of silver glinting in the starlight. Venetia’s Sword.
The two techs were arguing about the day’s episode of One Star, Bright and Distant. No one else on the surface had noticed the encroaching ship.
Gilger’s pilot was good. Venetia’s Sword cleared the last of the Leakytown lines and turned its nose toward the newly opened space between Mezzanine Rock and Blackcans.
“What is that?” Fergus shouted, waving wildly toward the ship. As the techs turned, he shouted over the broadcast channel, “Unknown ship, please change course! You are about to disrupt a vital scientific experiment!”
The techs were talking now, their faces animated underneath their shields, but they weren’t on the public channel. That’s okay, Fergus thought, I know what they’re saying. Moments later, Katra came up from the platform with one of her officers, took one look at Gilger’s ship, cursed, and disappeared again.
Four red lights arced up from the far side of Mezzanine Rock: Authority one-mans, rushing to intercept the ship, too far behind to cut it off in time.
“No!” Fergus cried, letting as much anguish as he could muster fill the word. Harcourt turned his face away, his back shaking with laughter he couldn’t quite hide.
The techs shouted into their comms as the one-mans drew up behind the ship. Venetia’s Sword came to a stop exactly in Fergus’s spotlight. The beam beautifully lit up the blue stripe along its side. Fergus held his breath, each agonizing second like hours, until he felt the tiny vibration of a chirp on his handpad. Handshake. He had it! He nudged Harcourt with his elbow, and when the man turned, he nodded his head slightly. Harcourt grinned.
Whatever dialogue was taking place between Authority and Venetia’s Sword, the ship began to move off, but barely at a crawl. Katra had come out onto the platform again. “That ship ruined my experiment!” Fergus complained to her. “It’s too late now—all our data is lost!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Anders,” Katra said. “Mr. Gilger claims that he came by to view the trial of your prototype because you’d roused his curiosity durin
g the hearing and misunderstood the direction in which you’d be shining the light. He sends his sincere apologies and hopes he moved out of your way in time. You can be assured that I will be having further conversations with him about this.”
“I was quite clear about my requirements at the meeting!” he complained.
“I thought so too, sir,” one of the techs said. But his sympathy seemed to be fading already, and both of them left with Katra, no one offering to help bring the device back down.
Once they were alone again, Harcourt switched back over to the private channel. “Now what?”
Fergus took his doorkey back out of the machine and slipped it into a pocket. “Now I need to hole up somewhere quiet and crack the code, then find a way to get access to the ship again. In forty-eight hours or less.”
“You realize there’s a good chance Katra will confiscate your machine to figure out for herself what we’re up to? She’s overzealous that way.”
“Uh, no,” Fergus said. “I didn’t think of that. Ideas?”
“None. I can bluster my way around almost any of her officers, but not her.”
“Great. Um, who’s that?” Fergus said. He pointed.
A small one-man was heading toward them.
“It’s not Authority,” Harcourt said. After a pause, he added, “nor is it slowing down. I think we need to get out of here.”
“But the prototype—” Fergus started to say when Harcourt grabbed his arm and pulled.
“The driver just ejected. We need to move now!”
They scrambled along the maintenance rings back to the platform. “Incoming ship,” Harcourt called over the public channel. “Collision course!”
“Get in,” Harcourt shouted to Fergus, and together they grabbed the edge of the dock and threw themselves into the envelope.
The one-man hit above them, exactly where they had been perched during the experiment. The force of it turned their tumble through the closing platform envelope into a high-velocity push, and they slammed against the far side. Their comms filled with shouting and the sounds of sirens. The platform’s inner doors tried to open but stuck halfway, warped by the explosion, as air from the bay whistled past them and out through the damaged exterior. Through the floor, Fergus felt the rumble of emergency doors slamming shut farther inside the rock.
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