The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books)

by Gardner Dozois

  Luckily, the hare was frozen in confusion. Beau lowered his aim. Forget finesse, go for the center. His fingers were cooling, but still comfortable. He tuned out the explosion of chatter pouring in over the radio, squeezed the trigger again. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Drew was staring at the panel, trying to fathom what had happened. Then Sarah’s voice was in his ear. “Meteorite. If something had to get hit . . .” She switched to the all-suits channel. “Just a bit of rock. Nothing to worry about . . .”

  Then Damien jerked and a strangled gasp came over the radio, fading as the training suit went flaccid. He staggered back, then slumped forward, restrained only by his tether.

  Later, Drew would wonder if he already knew. If so, it hadn’t yet penetrated his thinking brain. But even on mental autopilot, he was remembering Sarah’s safety drills. Vacuum wasn’t death. Not instantly. And he and Sarah were closest to the victim. Faster than even she could react, he unclipped his tether and sprinted for the newby, being careful not to run so hard he hurled himself over the rail into a long fall.

  “Hang in there!” he yelled, as if the guy could hear him with a suit full of vacuum. At the same time, he was ripping a patch from his emergency pouch, letting the vacuum activate its glue for instant application.

  The holes in Damien’s suit were round, about a centimeter in diameter, a fog of frozen red spicules still jetting out of them. Three holes in a tight triangle, only centimeters apart. What kind of meteorite did that?

  Then his thinking brain clicked in.

  He’d always wondered how he’d react if the long arm of his family found him. Sometimes he’d deliberately pondered it, uselessly trying to plan. More often he dreamed it in time-frozen nightmares. But now time wasn’t frozen, although there was the stark clarity he’d once known just before the starter’s gun, when you were simultaneously aware of everything and nothing.

  He braked hard just before another bullet shattered more of the panel, right where his head would have been.

  He wanted to yell a warning, but there wasn’t time. Instead, he yanked the emergency release on Damien’s tether, while more shards erupted around him, fragments stinging like angry bees. Then he was pushing off like a sprinter out of the blocks, grabbing a stanchion with one hand, Damien’s suit harness with the other, swinging around toward the far end of the panel just as he saw a quick succession of tiny flashes in the darkness below. The stanchion vibrated with impact, but if he’d been hit, he couldn’t feel it.

  Then he was on the backside, as more sniper rounds pierced the panel above him. No scaffold here, just a maze of braces connecting panels to machinery that kept them always pointed at the sun.

  In the bulky training suit, navigating this would have been impossible, but now it was like monkey bars on a Jersey playground, made easy in the low gravity. He wedged Damien in an angle between two braces and slapped on a patch. Then he yanked another from his kit, the biggest available, holding this one for a slow count of three, as Sarah had instructed, so the vacuum could fully activate the glue. He was feeling lightheaded, but ignored it. Damien needed him to focus. Sarah needed him to focus.

  He slapped the patch over the two remaining holes, then reached behind Damien to turn his air up full blast. Blood spicules continued to escape, even as the suit inflated, but before Drew could pull a third patch from his kit, Sarah was with him, slapping on one of her own. Then she turned to him. “You’re leaking,” she said. “Raise your arm.”

  The lightheadedness was back with a vengeance, fireflies now flickering at the edges of his vision. But Sarah’s voice was an anchor. “Shit,” she said. “There must be a dozen little holes!”

  He looked down, saw fog. Air, not blood. But the fireflies were multiplying.

  Sarah’s voice pulled him out of a mounting daze. “One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand. Okay, that got the biggest ones. Stay with me Drew! One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand . . .”

  His head was clearing, drawn back partly by the urgency in her voice, partly by the rapidly thickening air in his suit.

  “—one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, that’s the worst. The rest are just nicks. You still there?”

  He nodded. The emergency patches were contracting, as the glue pulled the holes together. Putting pressure, too, on any wounds. Not that they’d be major. He’d been hit by shards, not bullets. He could even feel the patches warming him as they did their job to ward off frostbite.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Sarah’s voice carried the smile he couldn’t see.

  “Good. You scared the hell out of me there for a moment. Damn this place. How can you love it so much, only to . . . Never mind. Still got a leaker. One-one-thousand, two—”

  Beau’s hand was near-frozen, his aim useless. Time to put the outer glove back on while he still could. What the hell had happened? He’d seen the impacts, watched the blood fog, seen the suit deflate. And still the hare’s voice kept coming through the radio. First he’d shot high, then he’d shot the wrong man. How could he make so many mistakes?

  Briefly he’d thought of just shooting everyone he could see, hoping one might be the hare, just as he’d shot, on general principles, at the two who’d snatched the original target and dragged him out of sight. But whatever his clients wanted, it was either business or vengeance. Neither thrived on that kind of publicity. His job was a hit, not a massacre.

  Meanwhile, he listened to the radio chatter, filtering voices.

  “Meteorite swarm,” the one called Sarah was saying. “Do you have any idea how rare those are? Damn! Second day on the job and he was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Damn.”

  Beau remembered the image of the two of them in the bar, heads together. A couple, incipient. If the woman came into his sights, shooting her might be useful. Apparently she and the hare had been the ones who’d dashed to the rescue of that Damien guy. What would he do for the woman if she was hurt? Shooting her could be a very good idea.

  “Is he alive?”

  Drew’s brush with vacuum had left him oddly energized. Like the time he’d gotten tripped and fallen in the 10,000-meter nationals. Get up, take control, and move, move, move, back into the race. But methodically, not purely on emotion, or you burn out and crash a different way before you reach the end. He’d gotten a school record for that one.

  “I don’t know.” Sarah’s voice seemed kilometers away. “Damien, can you hear me?” Her light illuminated his face, but if he was breathing, it was impossible to tell.

  Drew didn’t need to consult the web to know the nearest shelter was the access passageway beneath the array. “Gotta get him down.”

  He pulled the emergency release on his own tether, clipping it to Damien’s suit. Wrapped the other end around his wrist. Thank God for lunar gravity. How much could the man weigh here, even with the training suit? Thirty pounds? Surely no more than forty. “I’ll lower, you steady.” Suddenly he remembered who was boss. “If that’s okay.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Sarah switched channels. “Christophe, Andrea, get your butts over here. We’re on pylon—”

  “No!”

  Drew grabbed her gloved hand, switched off his suit mike, leaned over to touched helmets. Waited until a click told him she’d done the same.

  “Damien was shot. Whoever did this is still out there. People need to keep out of sight. Damien wasn’t his target.”

  “Who was?” A pause. “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was starting over. I don’t know who got bought out, where . . . I never thought I was putting anyone else in danger. When we get him down, maybe I should just walk out and announce myself. Get it over with.”

  “No.” There was surprising fire in her voice. “And that’s an order.”

  He nearly laughed, but was already bracing to lower Damien to the next level.

  “Yes, boss.”

  Even in one-sixth gee, fifty meters of Jungle Gym wasn’t easy. Espec
ially because Sarah had ordered everyone to extinguish their lights, forcing him to work by enhanced starlight. But five minutes later they were down, and moments after that, they were bundling Damien into an airlock, a halfdozen other sunners crowding in with them. Then there was air, someone had a first aid kit, and he and Sarah were stripping off Damien’s suit.

  He was alive, but not by much, his chest making awful noises as air went in and out through the bullet holes.

  “Shit,” Sarah said. “We need a medic, now.”

  Someone reached for a panel marked emergency com, but Drew stopped him. “No.” He flipped the latches on his helmet and took it off. Sarah understood immediately and did the same, while the others, puzzled, slowly followed suit.

  “Is there any way to make that com private?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. It’s designed to bring help even if you’re too badly hurt to know your location.”

  “And no way to lock that door?”

  “Crap. You think whoever did this is still out there.”

  “ ‘Who’?” one of the others asked. “I thought it was a—”

  Sarah waved him to silence. “Later.”

  “Right now,” Drew said, “he may think we’re still out there too.” He tried to remember what they’d said over the radio, bringing Damien inside. “Either way, we need to give him as little information as possible.”

  He tried to think like the type of man his family would entrust with making sure he paid for his betrayal. But Sarah was a step ahead. “Eventually, he’s going to figure it out.”

  “Yeah.” His mind was functioning again. All that time he’d spent wondering . . . even the nightmares had prepped him for this.

  But again, Sarah was ahead of him. “So we need to get Damien somewhere else.” She turned to the rest of her crew. “Take him outward, away from the dome. At least two or three pylons out. Far enough nobody’d expect us there. And if you run into anyone from Snellman’s or Wang’s crews, for God’s sake, no radios.”

  “Good.” Drew said. “I’ll go get help.”

  There were grab plates along one side of the corridor. He had no idea why. Maybe they were for traction, hauling loads. Sarah had been right. Even on the Moon, labor was sometimes cheaper than equipment, but power was one thing sunners had aplenty.

  This part of the PEL was ten klicks from Luna II. Drew had once run that far in twenty-eight minutes, fifty-four seconds. And that had been in full Earth gravity—the day he’d fallen.

  He stepped to the nearest plate and started to jog. Found his rhythm and stretched it to a long, low lope. Four plates per stride. Five. Six.

  Beau wished he knew more about the hare. What had he done? What type of man was he? If he was right that this was about vengeance, then it was about someone who’d done something stupid back on Earth. And there was only one kind of stupid that could produce a hit as expensive as this.

  Stupid people stayed stupid. Which meant there was really only one thing the hare would do now. Character and geography constrained him.

  Not for the first time, Beau was glad he wasn’t similarly constrained. His grab boots still held a fifty-two percent charge. He knew where he needed to be next and had been running for it from the moment the suit radios went quiet. That should give him enough of a head start.

  For reasons known only to the tunnel drillers, no corridor in Luna C was perfectly straight. Maybe it was fear of staring endlessly into vanishing-point distances. Maybe it was simply a desire to avoid monotony. Whatever the reason, they progressed in short straights, bounded by easy curves, like a gently meandering road or trail.

  Drew was rounding one of these curves when a figure loomed in front of him.

  A man in a jet-black skinsuit.

  A man with a rifle, emerging, as if by magic, from an airlock a scant thirty meters ahead.

  Drew attempted to brake, missed the next plate, and slid across the lunar-gee floor, flailing until his hand caught a plate with a jerk, just as a bullet pinged the floor and zinged down the tunnel behind him.

  Then something he belatedly registered as a spacesuit helmet flew over his head in a fast, flat arc, smashing hard into the black-suited man’s hand.

  “This way!” Sarah yelled, waving him back around the curve he’d just rounded. “What, you think you’re the only one who ever tried to run the plates? Move!”

  More bullets pinged, but these were wild, barely aimed, as he and Sarah dived around the curve. A moment later she ducked into an airlock, pulling him after her as the door shut. Already the air was cycling for space.

  “Wait!” he yelled, scrambling to lock down his helmet. “You don’t have any air!”

  But she’d already grabbed a helmet from an emergency locker. “One size fits all.” She clamped it down. The outside door opened, and they were on the surface. Alone, in the dark.

  He stared back into the airlock, wondering how much lead they had. Not much, but maybe he could extend it a bit. He grabbed another helmet out of the emergency locker and used it to wedge the outer door open.

  “Good move,” Sarah said. Then she was on the broadband. No need for silence now. “Base, we have a casualty in pylon corridor four, near airlock twenty-seven. Please send a medic. And be careful. We have an assassin with a gun. Repeat, assassin with a gun.” She paused. “And you, creep, if you’re listening, you leave my crew alone. If you want me, come get me. You know where I went.”

  She cut out. Touched helmets with Drew. “I guess it’s just you and me. Any brilliant ideas?”

  XI

  “Assassin?” Raz was on his fourth cup of coffee but the sleepiness he’d been fighting was suddenly gone. “Where?”

  He clicked off the com. “McHaddon. With me. Caeli—” Damn, what could he give her to do? “Duty roster. On my computer. Password Booker2Much@Earth.”

  He caught her glance.

  “Yeah, I know. Call everyone. Tell them to get their butts on the com to me now. Okay, that might not be the best metaphor. But get them off whatever they’re doing and in touch with me, no excuses.”

  He was already half out the door. “And if you come up with some brilliant way to stop an invisible sniper in the dark, give me a call.”

  Then he was in the corridor. Not that dashing off to Luna II really did much good. But where else could he go? Luna II was where the action was.

  At the last moment, he stopped, hurried back to his desk. Thumbed the lock on the bottom drawer and fumbled inside until he found his sidearm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched it. In the domes it just wasn’t safe.

  He wondered if the damn thing even worked. Not that it mattered. If it came to a shootout, a professional assassin would have him before he even knew he was under attack. But he strapped the holster beneath his jacket, even as he was back on the com, demanding that the Luna II Overway be at the station, now.

  For one brief moment, he was glad Caeli was here, in the office. She’d have his back, as best a civillian could do. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but sometime in the past few hours he’d realized she would always do that, even if the person she was defending him against was himself. And here in the office she was only a com call distant, while still out of harm’s way.

  Both mattered. A lot.

  Drew stared across the regolith. Lights off, vision enhancement at max. Rocks were grainy blurs, slopes indistinct, tripping easy.

  Somewhere beyond was the crater rim. A 4,000-meter drop into the land of eternal dark. Not that at the moment it would be any darker there than here.

  His air gauge told him he was good for forty-seven hours at minimal exertion. Maybe he and Sarah could just hide.

  Then he looked down. Even enhanced, his footprints were barely visible. But they were there.

  “Leave me,” he said. “Circle back. It’s me he wants.”

  “No.” There were a lot of things in her voice, not all of which he could parse.

  Then light burst from an exit 400 meters down-t
unnel.

  Running for Luna II was no longer an option, and circling back would get them trapped at the PEL. The only choice was into the void ahead.

  Drew pulled away, breaking the tenuous helmet-to-helmet contact. His family wanted to kill him. Sarah was willing to risk dying with him. Just as he’d risked dying for Damien, who he’d never even met. He hoped he lived long enough to figure out what it all meant.

  Meanwhile, they had to move. A one-time runner and a born-and-bred Loonie in a marathon of unknown length: one that only ended when they escaped and lived . . . or didn’t.

  Raz was in Archie’s, the only place he could come up with for his informal field office. Archie didn’t even try to offer him Scotch. Coffee was the order of the night. Technically it was a breach of regulations not to pay, but paying would be a mortal insult. Especially since Archie had chased out a sea of Darkout revelers, many of whom still hovered in the plaza, wondering what was happening.

  “So let me get this,” Archie was saying as he filled Raz’s mug. “Some Earth goon’s chasing him, up on the rim?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So why doesn’t he just come back in here?”

  “Maybe because he can’t. We’re pretty sure the bad guy’s got grab boots, so he can move pretty fast. He also shot up the PEL pretty good.” The story was still garbled, but it sounded like a miracle Damien was even barely clinging to life. “If you were him, would you lead someone like that back here?”

  “Hell no. These folks are like family to me. You get that bastard, okay?”

  “If I can, Arch.”

  For the nth time, Raz pulled up a holo of the PEL. Smooth ground, sloping toward the rim. A few boulders, but nowhere to hide. Drew and Sarah had shut off their transponders, presumably fearing their pursuer could home in on them. But where would they be going?

  He flipped on the com. “Harken?” She’d been one of the first to check in, so he’d made her com coordinator, relieving Caeli. “How many folks you got up on the PEL, so far?”

  “Three. Two more coming.”

  “ETA?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”