Against Impassable Barriers

by Kate MacLeod

  The microgravity didn’t help either. But at least her hair was too short to get in her eyes.

  “I have to remove you from this system,” Salvo said, returning her attention to Liam. “Just you. No others. I’m here with a ménage of tribunal enforcers.” She paused, and Scout sensed that those tribunal enforcers, whoever they were, must be very near at hand. Salvo had the air of someone carefully choosing her words while working hard not to shudder.

  “Yes, of course,” Liam said. “Are you coming here, or . . . ?”

  “We’re in orbit over you even as we speak,” Salvo said. “Don’t worry about nothing appearing on your sensors. Apparently, that’s normal for this type of tribunal enforcer craft.”

  “But what about us?” Scout blurted out.

  “Something will have to be arranged,” Salvo said with a frown. “We can’t just leave you there on the airless moon.”

  “Can’t you take us with Liam?” Geeta asked. Scout noticed she was standing straighter as if at attention, holding fast to the back of the pilot seat behind her to keep from floating away and ruining the effect of standing at attention. And that little edge was back in her voice, the one she used when forcing someone to acknowledge her authority as an ensign working in security on Amatheon Orbiter 1 and not get hung up on her youth and diminutive size.

  “It’s not safe for them here,” Liam said. “I can explain in more detail, but that’s the gist of it.”

  “They can be moved, but only to another location within the barricade,” Salvo said. Her eyes darted off to one side, and Scout guessed she was looking to one of those tribunal enforcers to confirm her words before looking back at Liam.

  “There is no safe place for us inside the barricade,” Geeta said. “At least two groups of people are hunting for us.”

  “It’s all right,” Liam said quickly. “Give me a minute to settle things here and I’ll go with you.”

  “We’re descending now,” Salvo said. “A minute may be all you get.”

  The hologram winked out of existence as abruptly as it had appeared.

  “How could she do that?” Emilie asked wonderingly. “Did she bypass the ship computer’s security protocols?”

  “As a captain, she can do a lot more than that,” Liam said. “She could have fired our rockets remotely and just brought us to her if she wanted.”

  “Why didn’t she?” Scout asked.

  “She knows more about what’s happening than she’s going to let on with a ménage of tribunal enforcers all around her. She has to obey all orders to the letter, but every bit of wiggle room she can find she’s going to use. Like coming here personally and giving me as much advance warning as she could.”

  “Warning to do what?” Scout asked. “Are you going to run away?”

  “No, that’s not possible,” Liam said. “I was hoping my friends would get here first, and that I could turn myself in back at galactic central. I’m afraid me being arrested was always going to happen, it was just a matter of when.”

  “What happens to us?” Emilie asked.

  “You’ll go on as we have been, waiting in the ship,” Liam said. “It’s not much longer now, surely.”

  “You’re leaving us alone?” Scout asked.

  “Alone together,” Liam said. He turned away to look out the front screen of the ship, but Scout saw nothing out there. He turned back to the three of them waiting anxiously for him to explain. “We haven’t been wasting our time here, have we? You all know how to operate every system on this ship, and Emilie even knows how to fly it. Geeta knows how to monitor her sister in stasis and make adjustments if needed, and Scout has all the tools of a galactic marshal save the gun. You’re as prepared as I can make you.”

  “You knew this would happen?” Scout asked.

  “I knew it was a possibility,” Liam said, looking out the front screen again, this time his eyes lower down towards the lava bed, but again Scout saw nothing.

  “What’s a tribunal enforcer?” Geeta asked.

  “They are officers of the court. They’re a strange lot, all from the same planet near the galactic core. The planet was settled by humans centuries ago, but there was something in the soil or water or air that changed them over time. They are something other than human now. Some say they are telepathic. All I know is that they don’t talk much, just watch you with these piercing eyes, and they are all damn unsettling. But you don’t need to worry about them. I know ‘enforcer’ sounds scary, but unless you are attempting to violate a court order, ‘observer’ would be a more apt description of them. And there would be no reason for you to violate a court order.”

  He looked out the window again, then went to the back of the cabin and retrieved a bag from one of the cabinets. Personal things, Scout guessed.

  “Crossing the barricade violates the court order,” Geeta said.

  “Which is why you’re not going to try to do it without my friends’ help,” Liam said. “Just wait here for my friends the Torreses. John Carlo and Mary Grace. You know what they look like, and you know the sign and countersign.”

  “Justice,” Geeta said.

  “Sovereignty,” Emilie said.

  Liam gave them a nod.

  “Don’t you need to turn in the belt?” Scout asked, touching the buckle of the double belt around her hips. The equipment on that belt had come in handy on more than one occasion, but technically it was never hers.

  “No, keep it,” Liam said. “Gertrude left it to you.”

  “She never said that,” Scout said. Her cheeks flushed; she had as much as admitted to reading all of Gertrude’s personal correspondence to know such a thing for sure.

  “She gave you access,” Liam said, looking almost puzzled that Scout hadn’t known that.

  “How . . . when?” Scout asked, even more confused than he.

  “She must have gotten a sample of your DNA at some point?”

  “Blood,” Scout said. “She tested me for poison.”

  “She used that to give you access,” Liam said, checking the contents of his bag briefly before throwing it over one shoulder. “If she hadn’t, you would never have been able to remove that eyepiece, let alone use it.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Scout said. “I handed the eyepiece to someone else to look at the tablet. Gertrude had never met her. How did she have access?”

  “She could use the eyepiece because you handed it to her, and she could see only what you had summoned onto the tablet for her to see. She wouldn’t have been able to use it in any other way.”

  Scout had so many more questions, but something clanged against the hull, echoing through the cabin.

  “They’re here,” Emilie said. “Five bald people in long blue robes and your boss. How are they just standing . . . oh, I see. Clever. I guess it’s safe to open the door now.”

  “Yes, it’s time to go,” Liam said.

  “Wait!” Scout said, rushing to catch Liam’s arm. He had to catch hold of her shoulder as well to keep her from tumbling over him. Once he had her steady, Scout pulled a battered tablet out of one of the belt’s many pouches. “This was Farlane McFarlane’s tablet. There might be evidence on it. Maybe a way to get some of the money he stole back to his victims.”

  “Good thinking,” Liam said, tucking the tablet into a pocket on the side of his bag. “You three are going to be all right. There’s not a doubt in my mind about that.”

  “I wish we were going with you,” Geeta said. “If they knew about my sister . . .”

  “It wouldn’t change anything. I’m sorry,” Liam said.

  “I wish I were going just to get a closer look at that ship,” Emilie said, still gazing out the window. Her voice was full of wonder and awe, the sort of thing that would usually bring a smile to Scout’s face. Emilie’s enthusiasms were sometimes hard to understand, but they were so genuine they were infectious.

  But at the moment, it was all Scout could do to blink back the tears as Liam pressed the button to open
the door and lower the ramp. At least this time he was walking away of his own free will, not dragged off to be tortured by parties unknown.

  But the result was the same. Scout was on her own in a world she barely understood.

  Then she felt a hand on her arm and looked up at Geeta bravely attempting to summon her first smile since her sister had been hurt. It was a wobbly smile, but it was enough. Scout knew she wasn’t alone. Not this time.

  Emilie had moved from the window to the top of the ramp to look down at the cluster of figures awaiting Liam. The five with bald heads and blue robes formed a circle around him and Salvo as he stepped up to her, hands extended as if ready to be shackled. She waved away his gesture with a grimace of annoyance, then led the way back to whatever ship had brought her there, the five tribunal enforcers maintaining a disciplined phalanx around them.

  None of them had so much as glanced up at the three girls still in the ship.

  “I can’t wait until we get to galactic central,” Emilie said as she pressed the button to redraw the ramp and close the door. “You should see their ship! It’s like living crystal, gorgeous and fluid. They just extend part of it like a pseudopod to attach around the doorway of our ship. Better than an airlock. It’s amazing!”

  She went back to the window to watch the ship lift back up into the starry sky, but Scout couldn’t summon much interest in the wonders of a world that felt further away than ever. Neither could Geeta, who was staring fixedly at the part of the floor that had just been a ramp, biting down hard on her lip.

  Scout wasn’t used to being around people, not since her family had died when she was ten. She really didn’t know how to be a friend. She didn’t know what to say, so she just put her arms around Geeta and hugged her tight. Geeta stiffened momentarily, but then she relaxed and hugged Scout back.

  They would be okay, Scout decided as the two of them slowly drifted across the cabin. As long as they were all together, they would always find a way to be okay.

  3

  The days passed, or rather time did. They slept when tired, woke when rested, and ate when they were hungry. The sense of being on the same schedule with each other even faded away. Emilie seemed to be always awake, getting up from the pilot’s chair only to answer nature’s call or help herself to another meal from the still nearly full cabinet. Geeta worked out to the point of collapsing but only slept for an hour or two before untangling herself from her hammock and stumbling/floating back to the tension bands.

  Scout tried to keep to a normal schedule, but it was impossible to know what that was when the world outside the windows never changed. There was no day or night, a fact that Emilie and Geeta were quite used to, having spent their entire lives on board an artificially lit space station. Scout was used to the sun, to always knowing how much time remained of the day by its position in the sky. She knew the patterns in the movements of the stars at night as well. But here it was all different. The sun seemed stuck just over the peaks of the mountains behind the ship, and the stars were in configurations she had never seen before.

  The only measurable change was the planet slowing rising over the horizon in front of the ship. It seemed unmoving hour to hour, but over the course of the growing number of days, it was becoming ever more prominent, lighting up the interior of their craft like a full moon over the prairie.

  “It’s getting bigger, isn’t it?” Scout asked on a rare occasion when they were all awake at the same time.

  “Closer,” Emilie said. This moon isn’t tidally locked.”

  “What does that mean?” Scout asked.

  Emilie shut down the pilot training program she had been running to give Scout her full attention. She started moving her hands in gestures that made no sense to Scout. “We’re orbiting just like the planet is, only slower. The sun is setting behind us, the planet is rising in front of us. Not at the same rate, though. Do you want me to make a model?”

  Scout winced. Emilie would happily explain it over and over until Scout understood, but that could take hours. Better to focus on the important part.

  “So we’re not really on the far side of the planet anymore, or at least we won’t be soon,” Scout said. “Are we still actually hiding?”

  “I don’t think anyone really bothers with the moon,” Emilie said. “All of the satellites and space stations have a much closer orbit.”

  “It was thoroughly surveyed by our ancestors when they first arrived,” Geeta said, wiping slick sweat from her arms with a grungy towel. They had no effective way of doing laundry, which was becoming quite apparent, but no one was going to tell Geeta to stop exercising. “They found nothing worth mining, and with most space stations being under spin to simulate gravity, there was no reason to put an outpost here.”

  “But if someone was still looking for us?” Scout asked.

  “Would they be?” Emilie asked. “They chased us away from the space station, but they never fired shots.”

  “They were shooting at us in the hangar before we took off,” Scout said.

  “Maybe us being gone means we’re as good as dead to them,” Emilie speculated. “We’re not there anymore to make trouble. It might not be worth the resources it would take for them to keep hunting for us.”

  “So are we safe, then?” Scout asked.

  “We have to stay here,” Geeta said. “This is where Liam’s friends know to find us.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting we leave the moon,” Scout said. “But maybe we want to move the ship away from the rising planet, so we’re back on the far side.”

  “I think we’re better off where we are,” Emilie said, adjusting her glasses. Since they had left the station with its network behind, she no longer had endless founts of information available to her, and Scout wasn’t even sure she needed the lenses to correct her vision. It was more like she wore them out of habit and kept tapping at them when she was thinking, also out of habit, although that often—like now—ended in her making a frustrated scowl.

  Scout supposed that to Emilie, it was a lot like being blind.

  “I agree,” Geeta said. “I’m worried if we try moving the ship we might draw attention. Liam put us down here with mountains all around us. I doubt we’d find a better place to hide.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Scout said.

  She just wished their ride would get there already.

  In the middle of what Scout considered her night, when she was tucked inside her hammock with both dogs packed in around her, the midrange sensor alarm sounded. She squirmed around until her head was poking out of the canvas.

  Emilie had already activated the hologram and was floating away from the pilot’s seat, searching for what had triggered the alarm. It was another trio of ships in formation at the edge of the display field. Scout and Emilie watched them as they cut across the border of the sphere and disappeared.

  “Same direction as the last group?” Scout asked sleepily.

  “Similar,” Emilie said at a whisper, since Geeta was still softly snoring. “Not identical. Perhaps they are increasing patrols.”

  They stayed as they were for several long minutes, waiting for something more to happen, but nothing did. Emilie stretched and then sailed to the back of the cabin for another meal packet before heading back to her seat. Scout tucked her head back into the warm space and calmed the fussing Shadow with a hand on his head.

  The alarm went off again some hours later. This time Scout untangled herself from the hammock and sailed out into the center of the cabin. Geeta had been exercising, but she released the bands to help look for dots of motion.

  Two sets of three ships now, flying in separate formations. One was heading in the same general direction as the last two had been, but the other was on a path that was going to take it close to the moon, on the way down to a closer orbit of Amatheon.

  Emilie was looking up through the windscreen and Geeta and Scout drew close behind her, hovering near her shoulders. None of them said a word as their eyes sea
rched the star field.

  Emilie saw them first, raising a hand wordlessly to point out three all but invisible specks moving through the black. There was no sound, not from the ships and not from the three of them as they each held their breath, watching the patrol ships fly by.

  For a moment they stood out in sharp detail, the blue-white glow of Amatheon behind them giving them a sharp silhouette. Then they disappeared, swallowed up by that light.

  “Not looking for us, I guess,” Emilie said.

  “Were they close enough to see us?” Scout asked.

  “Just sitting here, running nothing but life support, in the shadow of those mountains?” Emilie shrugged.

  “They weren’t looking for us,” Geeta said. “I don’t have any flight training, but that didn’t look like a search formation. It was just a patrol.”

  “Okay, but what happens when the planet rises a little higher and that mountain range is no longer between us and the Star Farer space traffic monitoring satellites?” Scout asked.

  Emilie touched her glasses and grimaced, then remembered the ship’s computer was there to help with just those kinds of calculations. “Ship, how long until we’re no longer in that mountain’s shadow?”

  “Four days,” the computer answered, providing a hologram as if someone had asked it to show its work.

  “Surely they’ll pick us up by then,” Scout said, but her voice didn’t sound as hopeful as she had expected.

  “We’re getting to the point where we might have to consider that something went wrong,” Geeta said.

  “We’re not there yet?” Scout asked.

  “No,” Geeta said, but if she had any confidence in that answer, it was drowned out by her ever-growing exhaustion.

  “Four days,” Emilie said. “We can wait here until then, but in the meantime, we need to come up with some other options.”

  “We can’t try crossing the barricade,” Scout said.

  “No kidding,” Emilie said with a humorless laugh. “You never looked out at that ship, but its hull was crystal clear. Like, invisible. And it never appeared on any of the ship’s scanners. The sky could be full of those, and we’d never know until we were surrounded. No, the barricade is not a viable option.”