Black Sheep

by Rachel Aukes

  Walter cried out. Nolin froze.

  “Come back down,” Throttle ordered.

  “No!” Walter exclaimed before gritting out, “We keep going.”

  Nolin gave Throttle a long glance. She gave a slow nod, and he began climbing again. The old man clutched the cord, and she couldn’t imagine how much pain he was in, having his arthritic joints stretched and twisted in ways not used to moving. Her father had suffered from arthritis, though nothing nearly as severe as Walter’s case. She remembered seeing her father walk stiffly after sitting for too long, and his fingers no longer moved nimbly across instrument panels.

  She imagined she’d have arthritis eventually, as nearly all spacefarers—especially those who flew with their ships below one g—dealt with it. It seemed that the human body was far more resistant to change from its very narrow range of environmental variables than the human mind.

  As Nolin climbed, Walter no longer cried out, but the man was hunched as tightly around the cord as he could. Throttle followed up the ladder, placing a hand on Walter’s leg after every rung she climbed so that he knew she was there to keep him stabilized. She didn’t have to do much; Nolin was moving so carefully and so slowly that he could’ve been hauling a basket full of eggs and none would’ve cracked. Then again, Walter certainly seemed more fragile than an egg.

  “I’ve reached the top,” Nolin called down. “The ladder ends at the ceiling, and there’s a door to my left.”

  Walter took a jagged breath before speaking. “You see the keypad?”

  “Yes, I see it,” Nolin replied.

  “Enter the numbers five-one-seven-two. Then press the pound key.”

  Throttle heard a click above her.

  “It worked. I’m opening the door,” Nolin said.

  Walter was jostled and Throttle reached out to steady him. Suddenly, the man was lifted several inches, and he grunted.

  “Sorry,” Nolin said. “I’m through the doorway, and I’m going to start pulling you up and through.”

  Now that Walter was on Throttle’s left rather than directly above her, she could better stabilize him to make his climb less jarring. When Walter reached the doorway, he reached out. If he was trying to tug himself into the next space, it didn’t work. Nolin turned the man around to pull him through back-first, and she saw Walter’s face was red, his features tight with pain.

  She held his dangling legs to keep them from banging into the wall.

  Inch by inch, Nolin lifted Walter through the doorway. The moment the old man was through the opening, Throttle sprang up the last few rungs and crawled through the entry point.

  She closed the door behind her and found Nolin busily loosening Walter’s harness. As soon as the Jader was free, he leaned back against the wall and sighed. His entire body seemed to deflate. She turned first to Nolin. “You okay?”

  Nolin was sweaty, but he brushed her off as he handed her the rope. “I’m good. Just need to get better about moving my joints.”

  She stuffed the rope into the bag. “The gravity feels heavier here,” she said as she took in the room, which wasn’t a room after all, but a gangway that outlined a maze of pipes and tanks.

  “It is,” Walter said, his voice sounding far less strained than it had during the climb. “The water systems are near the outskirts of Jade-8. The outer edges feel more of the rotational pull from the artificial gravity. It’s not enough to notice when you’re just walking around, but it’s definitely something you notice when you’re working hard. Rumor is, the reason Gerrold West chose to establish Jade City in the center of the colony was as much from the symbolism of being in the heart of Jade-8 as it was the location of the lightest gravity across the colony. He thought the subliminal sense of lightness would make people happier, and happier people tend to spend more credits.”

  Walter held out a hand. “Here, help me up.”

  Throttle and Nolin each grabbed Walter by the shoulders and brought the stiff man gingerly to his feet. He stood for a moment, taking several deep breaths, before opening his eyes and shuffling forward. The pair followed the engineer down the plank. Throttle drew her blaster. The gangway was visible to anyone in the area and offered no protection from gunfire. She didn’t like how exposed they were, and knew if she saw someone, she’d fire first and hope there was no more than one guard to deal with.

  Walter walked until the metal gangway opened into a five-square-foot platform. He stopped at a computer screen and keyboard protruding from the wall. He began tapping away at the keys. “I built myself a backdoor through the login credentials when I was first diagnosed with RA. I had a suspicion they were going to screw me, so I wanted to keep my options open. I honestly never thought I’d be back here, though. It’s funny how our psyches guide us down paths that we’d never think of taking at the time only to realize later it was the right direction all along.”

  Throttle and Nolin turned and scanned the water-treatment facility for any sign of danger.

  “How often does someone come through here?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “I used to walk through here once every day, but now no one ever does, not unless there’s a system alert,” Walter said. “The system allows engineers to disable alerts for up to a day for maintenance, so that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  He tapped away for a couple more minutes before speaking again. “That should do it. Let me see my bag.”

  Throttle handed him his bag, and he opened the front pocket to pull out what looked to be a clear bag filled with several syringes. He held up the bag and handed it over. “There are four holding tanks, and I need you to inject one dose into each tank.”

  “What is it?” Nolin asked, taking it with skepticism.

  “I’m not sure exactly. All I know is that it’s a cocktail of various bio-organisms that aren’t gut-friendly. And you don’t want to ingest this in its pure form. It’ll kill you. At least that’s what Doc Jones said when she offered them for the cause.”

  Throttle’s gaze narrowed. “Is she a gutter rat?”

  “No,” Walter said.

  “Then how can you know we can trust her?” Throttle countered.

  “Her son’s one of us. He would never take her credits, knowing she struggles like anyone else around here. This is the one way she can help him find a better lot in life. I think she even hopes to travel with him, though I don’t know if he’ll let her leave a decent job behind.”

  Nolin examined the bag. “Let’s hope it works.”

  “It will work,” Walter said. “This plan has always been one of our fail-safes, in case East or West tried to clear out the gutters. The only problem you’ll have is anyone who hasn’t drank the water and those who are naturally immune, but there shouldn’t be many, not with how dry the air always is on Jade-8. For everyone else, the effects should be in full force four to six hours after ingestion. That’s a long enough delay that everyone should’ve drunk the water by then.”

  “How long will the effects last?” Throttle asked.

  “Twelve to twenty-four hours before each person builds an immunity. For new people getting sick, it depends on how soon the water engineers find and fix the problem.” He chuckled. “I know who works the water systems. Trust me, it’ll take them at least two days to find the problem and neutralize it. People on the East side are going to have nasty stomach bugs for some time.”

  Throttle held out her hand. “You take two. I’ll take two.” When Nolin handed her two syringes, she scrutinized the clear liquid briefly to make sure nothing leaked. She turned to Walter. “Where are the tanks?”

  He pointed across the other end of the area where four massive cylinders stood from floor to ceiling. Every water line in the area either went in or out of one of the tanks. “The gangway ends before the tanks, and there are no ladders, but you can use the rope to climb down. There’s a panel near the bottom of each tank that looks somewhat like a fuse box. Open it, and you’ll see an injection port. The ports are for accepting monthly injec
tion treatment tubes, but these syringes will fit just fine. Insert syringe; push the plunger all the way down. Move on to the next tank. It’s as simple as that.”

  “We shouldn’t need the cord,” Throttle said and looked to Nolin. “With our grav boots on maximum, we should be able to walk down the tanks.”

  “It’ll be hard to walk,” Nolin said.

  “But we can do it,” she countered.

  Walter’s brows rose. “You have gravity boots? I’ve heard of them before but have never seen a pair.” He looked at her and Nolin’s boots. “They look like regular boots to me.”

  “They’re a little different,” she said and then added, “We’ll be right back.”

  Nolin and she jogged down the gangway, with her setting the pace. She supposed they could’ve walked, but she’d been growing more and more antsy with how slow this phase of the mission had been going so far. She was constantly scanning for cameras, but it seemed that Walter was right in that either there weren’t enough resources to track movement in all the systems, or Jade-8’s leadership was that naïve to believe that no one would ever think of sabotaging one of their environmental systems since all colonists on that side of Jade-8 depended on them. Throttle went with naiveté being the likelier of the two options.

  East and West underestimated the power the gutter rats held. Here was an invisible caste of people with access to Jade-8’s systems and an understanding of all the interrelationships of how things worked. If it hadn’t been for Mutt and his gutter rats, Throttle knew she had no chance in getting back her ships and sleepers on her own.

  She felt like a kindred spirit to Mutt. Though their personalities were different, they each would do anything to protect their people. Until this mission was over, she gambled that Mutt thought finding a new colony for his people was worth the danger. She hoped Mutt didn’t change his mind and decide the risk was too great after all.

  As Nolin and she approached the water tanks, she saw that each tank had a large number painted in white on the side. She climbed over the gangway railing, holding herself to keep from falling, and pointed. “How about you take one and two, and I’ll take three and four.”

  “You got it, boss,” Nolin said as he climbed over the railing.

  They turned on their grav boots through their wrist-comms and cycled up the magnetism to the maximum setting. Throttle struggled with disconnecting her boot from the edge of the gangway and nearly flung over the top of the first tank. She’d chosen the nearest two tanks not out of selfishness but out of practicality. Nolin was stronger. He could travel farther and faster in grav boots than she could. Now, if this room had no gravity, she’d be superior to every member of her crew.

  She trudged down the side of the water tank numbered one. The boots held her to the tank, but gravity tried to pull her down. It was like doing a never-ending sit-up to keep her body relatively straight, and she moved as quickly as she could down the vertical side of the tank. When she neared the bottom, she turned off her boots and jumped onto the floor. She ran partially around the tank until she found a metal-covered plate. She opened it to find an array of switches and inputs. She found the injection port in the bottom left corner. She took out a syringe and slid the narrow plastic tip into the port and pressed down the plunger with her thumb. The liquid drained into the tank, and the instant it was gone, she unplugged the syringe and jogged to tank two.

  Once there, she ejected the second syringe in the tank before running back to the first tank. She initiated her grav boots once again and began climbing. It felt as though her boots were filled with gold. I wish, she thought to herself and she forced her steps. Her leg braces creaked but didn’t click, and she imagined she was pushing them beyond their limits. As soon as she reached the top of the tank, she turned off the boots and leapt to the gangway. Nolin joined her seconds later.

  “Let’s hope the rest of the mission is that easy,” he said.

  She eyed him. “We’re not done yet.”

  They ran back to Walter to find him working on his screen again. “Everything looks good. No alerts.” He turned around, a broad smile across his face. “My job is done.”

  “We just need to get you back down the ladder and to the tunnels,” Throttle said.

  Walter’s smile fell. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He began walking at a glacial pace back to the door.

  Throttle craved to hurry back to Birk and Finn to complete the mission and reclaim the sleepers. Plenty of Jade-8’s innocents were about to suffer, but, hopefully, none would die, thanks to Walter. If this plan failed, Throttle would have to resort to violence to get the sleepers back, and innocent bystanders would be killed.

  She didn’t want anyone to die. Not the Jaders and certainly not the Trappist sleepers.

  So she gave an arthritic old man, who was saving thousands of lives, all the extra time he needed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Birk and Finn followed Cinder into Jade City. The spry teenager kept them moving at a fast clip, weaving around people so smoothly she’d nearly lost them more than once. She came to a stop outside a general storefront.

  She held up the pass-card Throttle had given her. “How much is on the card?”

  Birk shrugged. “My guess is fifty thousand credits, give or take, assuming Jakob West is an honest fellow.”

  She guffawed. “He’s not.”

  Birk pulled out the pass-card he’d stolen from the Jader pirate and handed it to her. “Here. Take this one, too. It’s not like I’m going to need it.”

  She eyed it warily for a moment and then headed into the shop. Birk and Finn shot a quick glance at each other before following her. Cinder walked down an aisle, stopping near the middle. She motioned, and Birk saw shelves lined with various medical supplies. He scanned one shelf, rifled past the small first aid kits, and pulled out a white kit with a handle.

  Finn pulled out one identical to the kit Birk held and placed his hand on it as though mentally measuring it. He gave a small nod. “These’ll work.”

  Finn pulled out two more kits while Birk turned over the kit in his hands. His eyes widened upon seeing the price tag. “Twelve hundred and fifty credits? That’s robbery!”

  Birk looked up to see the clerk, a hunched-over elderly woman, watching them. He held up the kit. “How much for just the container?”

  “Why are you haggling? You have plenty of credits,” Cinder said quietly by his side.

  “Because only suckers pay full price,” he answered just as quietly.

  The clerk was frowning at him. “Why would you want just the box? The supplies are what folks want.”

  “I don’t need the contents. It’s the perfect size for a lunchbox,” Birk replied without a hitch.

  “I have lunchboxes two aisles over,” the clerk replied.

  “People are always stealing my lunch. I’m thinking they won’t if I have it in one of these.”

  She shook her head. “Well, I suppose I could sell an empty box for four hundred credits.”

  Birk guffawed. “Four hundred credits for an empty plastic box?”

  “Do you want it or not?” the old woman countered.

  Birk waved her off. “Yeah, but you drive a hard bargain.”

  The clerk seemed pleased by that comment. Finn handed Birk three additional kits and went to stand near the entrance, keeping an eye out for trouble.

  Birk carried all four kits to the counter.

  The old woman warily eyed him. “You want all these as simply empty kits?”

  He nodded. “One for each person in my family.”

  The clerk looked at Birk like he was crazy, but she went ahead and emptied the contents from each kit. Bandages and ointment tumbled onto the counter, which she pushed to the side. She stacked the four empty kits. “That’ll be sixteen hundred credits.”

  Cinder handed the clerk the pass-card Birk had given her earlier.

  The clerk scanned the card, pursed her lips, then handed the card back to Cinder. “This card’s be
en reported stolen. It can’t be used.”

  Cinder tossed the card at Birk. “Thanks a lot,” she said drily before turning back to the clerk. “My friend here found it on the beltway. I figured it fell out of someone’s pocket.”

  The old woman wagged a finger and glowered at the pair in front of her. “You know it’s the law to turn in any pass-cards found. You gutter rats have no respect for the Jade-8 way.”

  Cinder jutted out her chin. “You mean the Jade-8 way of selling yourself to be a slave to someone just to survive?”

  The clerk huffed. “Hard work pays off, which you would know if your father had a work ethic.” She shot a hard look at Birk.

  He smirked and inhaled to tell her exactly what he thought about working for a paycheck, but Cinder retorted first.

  “Oh yeah. Tell me how well it’s paying off for you working behind that counter? ’Cause I remember seeing you at the cafeteria on L-One all the time.”

  The clerk bristled. “Times are tough for everyone. That doesn’t make it right to ignore the system and take Jade-8’s resources without doing anything to help the greater good. You gutter rats are parasites.” She placed her hands on the medical kits. “Now let me guess, neither of you has a pass-card that you didn’t steal.”

  Birk put his hand over the clerk’s and pulled the kits back toward him. “We do, so if you’ll kindly take our credits, then we’ll be on our way.”

  Cinder handed over the pass-card Throttle had given her. After the charge went through, Cinder pocketed the card, and Birk suspected the girl had already made plans for spending the remaining credits on herself.

  “Thank you,” Birk said sarcastically to the clerk as he took the medical kits. “I’ve been through worse towns, but Jade City is near the bottom,” he muttered as they strode from the store.

  Finn joined their side. “That’s the first thing on the list. What do we go for next?”

  Birk turned back to Cinder. “Your friend of a friend had better be able to get us what we need.”