by P. R. Adams
“Yes.” Credence seemed strangely cold, as if she lacked any sense of empathic connection with him. “We tried several things and finally relied on a combination of imaging techniques, building out composite images from sonic and conductive signals. It was actually quite amazing. We detected four distinct chambers, two large, two small. Some of the images inside the lower large chamber gave us the impression of…you’ll laugh, but a micro-reactor. I mean, something so small…” Her voice trailed off.
“Was there a way to open it? Latches? Locks?” Kleigshoen asked.
“Not that we could see. We ran the highest-end cameras over every millimeter of the surface. If there were seams, they were beyond anything our eyes or systems could detect.”
Rimes held up a hand. “Could we focus on the Silver Light for a moment? You said it was a civilian ship?”
Credence laughed nervously. “It was a cargo hauler. The crew seemed very happy and friendly. From the sound of it, they made more off the run out here than they would in three good years of operation. Everything was good until Li pulled that gun.”
“And you said he worked for Wang?”
“That’s what he claimed. He could’ve been lying, but why bother? I mean, he had a gun, and he was willing to use it.” Credence covered her faced with her hands.
Once again Rimes felt terrible for pressing Credence, but he needed answers. “They checked out with your internal databases?”
“When they radioed, they claimed they needed to use our infirmary. It was a minor emergency. Scott checked them, and they seemed legitimate. And when they came aboard everyone seemed so nice, and they had a crewman—Johnson—who was sick. I guess that could have been fake. But Li started waving that gun around. He demanded answers: Where was it? Had we touched it? Who knew about it? The Silver Light crew was just as terrified as us when that happened. You could see they weren’t part of it. Li hit Scott with the gun. He threatened to hurt me if Scott didn’t cooperate.”
Rimes chewed his lower lip as Credence talked. It was making sense. It was Anton’s race for the next big thing. “And then the frigate arrived?”
“The big ship?” Credence nodded. “Yes. They…I don’t know, I guess they cut into the Silver Light?”
“They breached the hull and boarded her?”
“I think so. And then there was a gunfight, but it was…Li was dead. I think they executed the Silver Light crew also. I heard the gunfire through the airlock. I don’t know why they couldn’t have closed it. The screams were horrible.”
Rimes patted Credence’s hand as she fought back tears. “And the big ship, you said that was SunCorps?”
“Yes. She was directly from their headquarters, not one of their corporations. Lowen-something.” Credence screwed up her face, nose and brow wrinkled, lips puckered awkwardly. “I can’t believe I’ve forgotten the name. I swore I would never forget her.”
“So what happened then? You said the SunCorps people took Scott? Why?”
Credence seemed to shrivel. “He touched it. Scott touched it. He didn’t mean to. He just…couldn’t help himself. He was drawn to it.”
“Scott touched the thing you found? You said before it was in one of your isolation chambers.”
Credence began sobbing again. “I suspected it for a bit. I woke up the second day after we found it, and Scott was gone. I thought he was in the bathroom, but when he didn’t come back I went looking for him. When I reached the lab wing, he was coming out of the main physics lab. He said he was just going over some of the earlier tests. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he was…it was as if he were sleepwalking when I first saw him, as if his mind was somewhere else or maybe turned off. He didn’t even seem to realize I was there at first. Then he came around.”
“And after that? Li arrived? Then the big ship?”
Credence wiped away a tear. She looked fragile and lonely, and Rimes could see that she was deathly frightened. For just a moment, he saw Molly sitting before him, looking at him with sad, pain-filled eyes and golden curls. Molly—Credence—nodded.
“Why put you in the lifeboat? Why not…” Rimes thought back to Molly’s charred corpse.
“Why not kill me? Another ship arrived. They wanted to use me as bait, to draw it in so they could destroy it. They didn’t say that, but it’s what they…I could put that much together. They shoved me into the lifeboat and ejected it into space. I was sure I was dead.”
Cold-blooded murder. Rimes saw red, and his thoughts shifted to vengeance, protection. Credence’s youthful innocence and vitality made the idea of what SunCorps had done even more terrible than the murder of the Vishnu’s crew. They used her as bait. A harmless scientist forced into their disgusting war.
“You’re going to be safe now,” he said as he took Credence’s hands in his own and held them.
“Jack?” Kleigshoen seemed confused.
“Just a minute, Dana.” Rimes looked into Credence’s eyes, finally understanding the pain and sorrow he saw there. She’d been dragged into this, and all she wanted was to be free. “As soon as the Drake can move again, we’re going to pursue them.”
“Thank you,” Credence said. She squeezed his hands. “I understand.”
“Jack?”
“Not yet, Dana. Jenny, did they happen to say anything that might give you some idea of where they were going?”
Kleigshoen stormed out of the galley, which seemed rude and unprofessional. Rimes wondered if there might be some strange friction building between her and the genies.
Credence sighed and lowered her head. “Oh. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but, yes! They said they needed to get it back to their team in Atlanta. I was thinking maybe a ship name or a facility somewhere. You think they meant Atlanta back on Earth?”
Rimes saw in Imogen’s eyes what he felt in his gut: panic, fear, dread.
If it’s a weapon, they could cripple Earth’s power centers. If it’s something like we saw on Sahara, something that manipulates the thoughts of its victims…
Rimes shuddered. He was sure they were already too late.
32
19 April, 2174. The Drake.
* * *
Rimes sat beneath the tallest oak in the park, his navy blue T-shirt drenched with perspiration. His chest rose and fell as he struggled to catch his breath in the heavy air. Three months of training in the relatively pleasant desert basin on the Han colony world had stolen away his acclimation to Plymouth’s primordial atmosphere and stronger gravity. Molly sat just outside the oak’s shadow, arms resting on slightly raised legs. She wore a matching orange T-shirt and shorts, an outfit that brought out the coppery shine of her skin. Her big eyes lingered on his face for several seconds without meeting his. He reached a hand toward her.
Instead of taking it, she turned to watch Calvin and Jared as they ran across the native bluish grass of Plymouth, giggling.
“Six months,” Rimes said, trying not to show the pain her rejection had inflicted. “They grow so fast.”
“You missed Calvin’s birthday.” Her head tracked the boys as they returned to the soccer ball Rimes had kicked around with them earlier. “I think he’s old enough for that to really bother him now.”
Rimes couldn’t help wincing at that. What made the words hurt the most was that they were rooted in truth. Molly wasn’t merely attacking, she was stating painful fact.
“I’m sorry. Promotions come with responsibilities. Robert’s not ready for this sort of thing, and Lonny—”
“Who said Robert’s not ready?” Molly’s eyes narrowed. “Robert? Lonny? You?”
“He barely knows the unit, Molly. He has a lot of qualification to go through before I can hand this sort of thing off to him.”
Molly looked away, and he caught her wiping tears from her eyes. “Jared! No pushing!”
He almost intervened, told her to let the boys play, but he knew she was just trying to avoid talking to him. He watched her for a minute, trying to understand what w
as going on in her head. Her behavior since his return made no sense. She’d never advocated on anyone’s behalf before, so it was strange hearing her talk up Pearson’s qualifications. She’d been cold since Rimes’s return two days before, but that was typical for her. Counseling would turn her around eventually. But even without it, she normally warmed to him by the second day. Instead, she seemed colder than when he’d returned, even angry.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” he finally asked. He hadn’t forgotten their anniversary or her birthday, the things that mattered so much to her, and she wasn’t pregnant, not with the way she kept so busy when he was home. “Did I screw something up?”
She didn’t turn from the boys, but she twice wiped tears from her eyes. “You told me this was going to be a five-year deal, Jack. Five years. Then we’d be off to the capital and a better life.”
“The promotion means staying on here a little bit longer. If Robert works out, I’ll pass this on to him in a couple years.” He toyed with walking over and sitting down next to her, but the tension in her shoulders told him that would be a bad idea. He felt like he’d entered a minefield. It always felt that way to be around her anymore. “That’s the way the military works. Give a lot, get a little. When you get that little bit, you don’t waste it.”
“Yeah?” Molly finally looked at him. Her face was a mess, wrinkled, red, and quivering. “Well I’m sick of how the military works, Jack. I’m sick of this life, of raising the boys hundreds of light years from home. I’m sick of…of…your war games and training and…and…” She buried her face in the crook of an arm. “I want a divorce, Jack. I’m done with this.”
Rimes leaned back and tried to catch his breath. His heart raced. His mind alternated between an absolute emptiness and a cacophony of thoughts—he’d failed, he’d missed signals, something was wrong with her, something was wrong with him, she’d cheated on him.
“Molly, what—” His voice was weak, squeaky.
“I slept with Robert.” She glared at Rimes, bloodshot eyes full of hate. “He came to me after you left. He was upset you took Lonny instead of him. He said you weren’t giving him a fair chance. It was all the same things I felt.”
“You slept with Robert?” Rimes saw Calvin and Jared fighting in the distance, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The strength had gone from his limbs. His voice had deserted him. “My XO?” Our friend. The betrayal, doubled, squared.
“I told him how you treated me the same way.” Molly’s voice gained strength. “Always less important than your job, always less important than your soldiers. You spend more time talking with Lonny than you do with me. Robert said I deserved better, that I was unique and special. He told me how pretty I was. He asked me how my dissertation was coming along. You remember when you talked to me like that? Do you?”
You won’t talk to me. You’re always demanding, always busy, always so angry. I can never do enough. You push me away when I reach out. “We can work through this.” Rimes could feel it: he was trying to convince himself. In the back of his mind, Kwon whispered thoughts of terrible revenge against Pearson. And Molly. “We don’t need to end this.”
“I do, Jack.” Molly stood. “I’ve had all I can take. You’ll never make me happy, and that’s what I need in life now.” She stormed away, shouting at the boys to stop fighting and to come to her. She grabbed their hands and dragged them after her, eventually disappearing among the people gathered in the quadrangle.
Rimes sat up abruptly. Sheets were bunched around his hands where they had dug into the large foam pad that had served as his mattress since arriving on the Drake. He massaged his brow with the heels of his hands and felt his mind slowly casting off the last vestiges of the dream. The air in the physics lab was dry and cool, antiseptic.
The dream was different. A different time, a different pain. So real, and yet not. Is this healing? Molly. Jared. Calvin.
He realized that he was naked, and his sheets were a mess. A woman lay next to him, her back and one pale shoulder visible.
Credence. Jenny.
Rimes gulped, instinctively looking for signs of injury, signs of life. Flesh moved across her ribs as she breathed. He looked to the hatch and saw with relief that it was secured.
What was I thinking? He looked at her, and his heart ached at her vulnerability and the pain of her loss. So young to have lost so…
His earpiece chirped. Rimes scrambled, desperately trying to locate it, throwing the sheets back from his side of the mattress. The earpiece was on the floor, beneath a workstation a meter away. His body protested as he stretched across the cold floor and dug beneath the workstation, but not before the earpiece had chirped twice more.
Credence stirred, turning, then sitting up. She seemed unconcerned about the sheets sliding away.
“Go ahead,” Rimes said nervously to the earpiece, angling to be sure Credence wouldn’t be captured in the video.
Meyers’s image appeared in the display. “Jack, we need to talk.”
“Who is it?” Credence asked sleepily as she wiped at her eyes. “Is something going on?”
Rimes waved for her to be quiet. “What’s up, Lonny?”
“What was that?” Meyers asked. “Are you with someone?”
“It’s nothing. What’s up?”
“I’m on my way to the lab with Ladell.”
Rimes threw the sheets off his makeshift mattress, desperately searching for his underwear. Credence seemed to enjoy his panic. She didn’t move, even when the last of the sheet was thrown from her.
This isn’t happening.
“Is it the drives? Are we—” Rimes found his shorts at the same time Credence did. He quickly pulled them away from her, glaring as she giggled. “Are we mobile?”
“It’s Tymoshenko’s system.” Meyers’s voice rose in excitement. “We kicked off another decryption bot last night to try to crack that last storage segment he had. It worked. You need to see this.”
“Great.” Rimes fought to untangle his T-shirt from Credence’s panties. He tried to remember how they’d ended up in bed together. He recalled a long talk about their losses and pain, crying and laughing about memories he thought he could never share, then…nothing. “Call Dana. Meet me in the galley in ten minutes. I’ll get Imogen.”
“All right,” Meyers said. “We’re right near there. See you in ten.”
Rimes closed the connection and jogged to the emergency shower. He’d just stocked it with soap and towels. It was imperfect, but it was home.
“Jenny,” he said as he hastily stepped into the shower. “You’ve got to get dressed.” He released a blast of water and squirted a bit of soap onto his palm. “We can’t have this.”
Credence padded up to the shower. “Have what?”
She hadn’t pulled on any clothes yet, leaving her body on full display for him. She was pale, young, and soft, not the sort he generally gave a second glance. She wasn’t unattractive, though, and he was still a man, a man who’d been alone for too many months. Standing there, she seemed free of inhibitions. He convinced himself he would die alone without Molly. He almost felt ashamed. Almost.
“A relationship or any sense of impropriety,” Rimes said as he lathered up. “Not at a time like this. Not with so much at stake.”
“It was just a night together.” She crossed her arms angrily, like Molly used to. “We both wanted it. Are you always such a prude?”
“No.” Rimes looked at her. Yes, she was more attractive than he was giving her credit for. Why am I so hostile toward her? How did it happen? If I’m over Molly, why wouldn’t I turn to Dana? Is it pity for her loss? What’s wrong with me?
“Well, don’t get all high and mighty on me. I don’t need your judgment. We didn’t take advantage of each other.”
“I told you, I was married for—”
“And I was with Scott for seven years.” Credence blushed. “We weren’t taking vows, you know. I wasn’t trying to steal you away from Dana.”
Rimes
froze. I told her. I admitted my failure, my weakness. “I don’t want discipline to suffer, that’s all.” It took several blasts before the last of the soap was gone, but when it was he stepped out of the shower and toweled off.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He kissed her forehead gently, surprised at the authenticity of his concern for her and the desire to kiss her on the lips. It wasn’t just her feelings he was concerned about, he realized, but her safety.
“I’m fine.” Credence stepped past him into the shower. “I survived stage four glioblastoma. This is a cakewalk.” She released a blast of water and doubled over, shivering and cursing.
“Sorry. It’s cold.” Rimes smiled sympathetically. Molly had always hated that he took cold showers. “I thought you knew.”
Credence lathered up. “I should have remembered. We never used the emergency showers.”
“Well, when you get done, come to the galley. We’ve cracked an important system.” Rimes quickly dressed. “I’ll meet you there.”
He was halfway to the galley before Imogen answered. Ji was propped on a knobby elbow behind Imogen, angrily glaring over her shoulder. They were staying aboard Ji’s shuttle on a makeshift mattress of their own in the passenger area. “What is it, Colonel?”
“We’ve cracked the last piece of Tymoshenko’s earpiece. Meyers says we’re all going to want to see this. I told him we’d meet in the galley in three minutes.” He slowed as the galley hatchway came into view, not wanting Meyers to hear the call going through so late.
Imogen examined him again, her head tilted and eyes squinted. He half expected her to sniff the air. “Ten minutes. Just like you.” She ended the connection.
Rimes shook his head as he walked, marveling at human and genie nature. They weren’t so different.
Let’s hope we can find strength in our commonality.
33
