A rectangular crate tumbled free and the loader lurched forward. Wyatt plowed another three meters past the obstruction before he came to a stop. Straight ahead, a dozen spaceport employees stood in a circle. Their piercing gaze turned slowly toward him.
He bolted from the driver cage. “Maya, let’s go!”
No answer.
“Maya—” he yelled again, but he was already stumbling back through the gap with his Vector against his shoulder. He could feel the constricted coming awake. He could feel the eyes on him.
Maya stood rooted to the same spot, her weapon trembling in her hands. Three figures walked toward her with a haunting gaze that burned the air with wisps of gold. Wyatt knew the specks were coming. He could taste them. He lunged forward and grabbed the back of her collar. As he pulled her away, he caught a glimpse of her face and saw the abject terror of someone about to lose it.
He threw her through the gap in the barricade.
She tripped and fell on top of her Vector with a clatter. Wyatt stumbled over her and grabbed her vest in a single, unbroken motion.
“Come on!”
“I-I … they’re …”
Wyatt dragged her forward with his momentum just as another wisp of gold darted across his vision.
“We need to move!”
“I can’t …”
Wyatt thrust his face next to hers and shouted at the top of his lungs. “Maya, you are RESIT! Now move!”
The volume seemed to snap her out of it. He shoved her to her feet and ran next to her, his equipment rattling with every step. He could see the signs for the next terminal in the concourse. But numerous figures now loomed from the shadows, lining the walls and the grand picture window with the coast behind it, gazing in silent menace. Golden specks darted with more frequency along the edges of his vision. Each little fleck seemed to nudge Wyatt in a different direction, nipping at his consciousness with an accumulation of distractions. He fought to ignore them, to stay focused on the goal of reaching the shuttle.
A burst of agony flared in Wyatt’s calf, worse than any cramp or muscle tear he had ever experienced. He nearly collapsed to the deck. A memory loomed from the shadows of sneaking to the safe house under cover of night, creeping along the catwalk under the bridge with a police patrol above. The phantom pain of a long-lost limb had immobilized him. Not now, God, please, not now.
Wyatt forced himself forward, stumbling. His teeth clenched so tightly he thought he might crack them.
They passed another cargo terminal, dodging shipping crates and cargo pods strewn about the concourse. A dozen people watched from the windows as Wyatt and Maya ran.
Wyatt sputtered words into the comm. “At Four!”
The constricted were moving now. Several maintenance personnel walked toward the middle of the thoroughfare. One spaceport employee, a young woman with black hair pulled into a bun, took several steps forward and put herself directly in their path. The irises of her green eyes loomed brightly on her face.
Don’t look. Don’t look …
Wyatt squinted at the walkway, at the reflective tape that said RESIT on the back of Maya’s ARC vest, at his own feet as they chugged one in front of the other. He steamrolled past the woman at full speed just a meter behind Maya. But he could feel the tug on his head, a firm pull that wanted to draw his face to the left so he could stare into the gaze of those magnificent green eyes. They called to him with a thousand shiny flecks of light.
“Acid One, what is your status?” crackled the comm.
“Passing Five!”
His leg howled in agony. Wyatt missed a step and stumbled, barely keeping his feet.
They sprinted under a truss structure supporting a large sign that read Passenger Terminal. Kiosks and shops announced the changeover to human cargo with supplies on sale for upcoming shuttle trips. An overturned carbon-fiber display lay in Wyatt’s path, an array of zero-gee drink pouches spilled across the concourse.
Maya was slowing down. Her head drifted toward a bearded kiosk cashier who had his gaze locked on her.
“Wyatt, run!” someone shouted, not over the comm. It was a human voice from somewhere up ahead.
You don’t need to run.
The urge to slow down slipped its arms around him. Why was he breathing so hard? So unnecessary. All he had to do was stop and let one of the nearby people comfort him.
Stop running. Stay with us.
He felt a vague and easy warmth. The burning from his prosthetic seemed more distant now, anesthetized.
A dozen figures with constricted eyes crowded in front of the last terminal gate. They formed a tight gauntlet, as if all of Wyatt’s family and friends had gathered to encourage him to stay just a little bit longer.
Maya was slowing down, too. “I can’t …”
A mistimed step made Wyatt stumble again. His face scraped against the back of Maya’s vest, the edge of a loose ablative puck poking into his chin.
A tiny scrape to prick the cocoon enveloping them.
It was enough.
“Move!” he shouted, for both of them.
Thighs pumping. Heart thrashing. Lungs on fire, his prosthetic seemingly ready to rip apart. They thundered toward the wall of constricted as the golden flecks tried to smother him, dipping into his mind and darting away with his thoughts. Wyatt grabbed Maya’s collar to keep them together. He squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his shoulder, and braced himself like he was about to take out the opposing team’s quarterback.
He rammed into something. A body, perhaps several. A brief resistance, then open air as obstructions flew aside and he rumbled along the downslope of a passenger walkway.
The warm cascade of golden flecks turned sharp, sour. He blinked and realized he had Maya in both hands. Wyatt desperately tried to stay in stride and not fall.
But the sparks were receding. The agony of his leg was coming back.
Wyatt and Maya lumbered down the access corridor that led to the shuttle hatch, toward the desperate, waving arms of his squad mates.
32
Catapult
Juliet, Alpha Centauri A
2 March 2272
The catapult may have been tailored for human passengers, but the acceleration of the shuttle still pressed everyone into their launch chairs like the packaged cargo they really were. Three gees tugged at body parts inside and out as they shot down the maglev track. Two hundred kilometers away, the vacuum tube would terminate and eject them into the atmosphere with enough velocity to reach low orbit.
Wyatt rolled his head to the side. Annika sat next to him in the eight-seat-wide configuration, teeth clenched, eyes front, looking like she was on a thrill ride at an amusement park. She seemed so little in her safety harness. Did she understand what was happening around them? Wyatt didn’t know how much information Chris shared with her, but she seemed like a brave girl. He hoped she would be brave enough to deal with the news of what happened to her family.
Warning chimes sounded from the cockpit. Teo’s voice crackled over the shuttle’s comm system. “We’re about to hit atmo. There’ll be a bit of a bump with the transition.”
Wyatt watched as the light disappeared from the portholes. Then the entire vehicle shuddered as they ejected into the thin air of a much higher elevation. Somewhere behind them a sonic boom echoed over the coastal mountain range. The shuttle’s onboard engines fired, taking over from the maglev track and shaking the interior with a mighty rattle.
He lifted his eyes and looked at Chris sitting on the other side of Annika. The Marine stared out the porthole with a sullen expression.
Wyatt could feel the tension. Chris and Finn leaving Juliet wasn’t part of the plan, but the horde of constricted at the spaceport hadn’t given them much choice. Remaining behind would have been a death sentence. Yet despite having only one escape route via the shuttle, Chris had always been very clear that his fight was down on the surface. He had other cells of resistance Marines hidden around the city. His top priority remained th
e struggle against a government bent on wholesale murder. Wyatt wondered how long it would take for him to start negotiating his return to the surface.
The passenger bay remained silent as the engines continued their burn. Outside, the noise of air rushing past the fuselage lessened. By the time the sky turned to black beyond the portholes, the vibration of the thrusters composed a lonely chorus by themselves.
“Engine shutdown in three … two … one … shutdown.”
Weightlessness.
Annika’s eyes grew wide. Strands of hair face floated in front of her restraints.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Wyatt asked.
She turned to him and smiled.
He had not seen her do that before. She looked happy. How long since she last felt a bit of joy? The poor girl had been through so much. Her family dead. Her mother consumed by a disease they didn’t understand. She had nothing left—nothing except Calista, Finn, Chris … and now Wyatt.
He turned to Annika. “Do you want to float around?”
An enthusiastic nod was his answer. Wyatt released his harness buckle and then did the same for her. Annika slid gracefully out from her chair and held on to the buckle as her momentum sent her feet up to the ceiling. She stood upside down, pure joy on her face.
As if in response to her delight, Wyatt’s prosthetic leg decided to reduce the agony from the spaceport terminal to a slow, smoldering itch that now barely registered on the pain threshold.
Chris finally turned to watch. His face softened.
“I think we have a future RESIT cadet here,” Wyatt said.
The Marine allowed himself a nod. “It seems so.”
Annika flashed the biggest grin yet. She went to raise her hand in a thumbs up but the orientation of her body shifted unexpectedly in the microgravity. She scrambled to clutch the restraint harness.
Wyatt laughed. “Don’t worry. First time’s a little weird. You’ll get it down.”
“What’s the plan now?” Chris asked.
“Teo has us on a trajectory to Gateway. We don’t have a flight plan logged, so they’ll challenge us when we try to dock. Things might get dicey.”
“Finn and I are good in a fight.”
“I know you are.” Wyatt glanced at his arm. “You’re injured. Finn’s got his little girl. You two hang back this time.”
“I don’t really do ‘hanging back.’”
“Chris. You kept us alive on Juliet. We’re grateful. But we’re in space now and this is my backyard. Let us do our job.”
It was clear Chris wanted to argue, but after a moment he simply shrugged his acknowledgment. “Okay. Your show.”
“Thanks.”
“Wyatt.”
“Yeah?”
Chris turned to Annika. “Why don’t you go check on Calista, make sure she’s okay?”
Annika frowned—she seemed to know she was being dismissed so grown-ups could talk. But the whimsy of freefall quickly took over as she climbed across the passenger seats to her longtime friend in the back.
Chris took a deep breath. “I’m glad you made it through the concourse. I’ve been in that position. With constricted staring at you. I’ve felt them before.”
The hairs on Wyatt’s neck stood on end. That’s exactly what it was. Feeling them. “They called to us. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to run. I couldn’t understand why all I wanted to do was stop and go to them. It was like sliding down a slope, and I was struggling to do anything about it.”
“It’s hard to not give in. A lot of people do, obviously.”
Wyatt felt uneasy at the narrow margin of error afforded him by years of training and discipline. “I guess my old drill instructor earned his money.”
Chris glanced in Laramie’s direction. She was farther aft, tending to Carlos.
“Laramie wanted to go into the concourse and get you.”
“No. I ordered everyone to stay on the shuttle.”
“I watched her flip her safety off, Wyatt. Your man Gavin held her back. Pretty sure she was going.”
Wyatt frowned, a protest forming on his lips. Laramie had great instincts. But would she have disobeyed a direct order? He didn’t think so—at least, not if Wyatt was the one giving it.
Chris raised his hand to cut him off. “Look. It didn’t happen, so no harm, no foul. The loyalty’s great.” He glanced at Laramie again. “But if you’re going to join this fight, Wyatt, you need to rein your people in.”
“My troopers work in space, Chris. They’re disciplined and they follow orders.”
The Marine regarded him coolly. “Sure. But they’re human beings, too.”
Wyatt couldn’t help but think of the terror on Maya’s face as he dragged her through the barricade in the terminal.
“Noted.”
Chris frowned. “I’m not … reprimanding you, Lieutenant. I’m just sharing wisdom. One constricted is dangerous. When there’s a bunch together? They will feast on you.”
“With a thousand gold sparks.”
“Yeah.” Chris nodded. “Or, if any of you had shot them, they’d have burned you to a crisp.”
A deep quiet hung between them.
“I can understand the fear that brought in martial law.”
“Sure. I understand it,” Chris said. “But that doesn’t make it okay. These aren’t caricatures of some dehumanized enemy. They’re real people, Wyatt. They’re our people. A few days ago they were probably having dinner together, tickling their kids before tucking them in. Now they’re, I dunno, sick. They elected government officials to protect them. Not to kill them.”
“But having seen it up close, how do you fight something like that, Chris? How do you do it without ending up like them yourself?”
Chris swiveled his head aft. Dr. Bell floated in midair, crouched into a ball while he entertained Annika and Calista.
“That’s what we need him for, isn’t it?”
33
On Approach, Gateway Station
Juliet Orbit, Alpha Centauri A
3 March 2272
Chris floated just outside the cockpit and saw a magnificent view through the forward windows. It had been a long time since he had been in space. He watched in fascination as they glided toward the massive space station. Long, tubular pressure vessels comingled with structural lattices to form the scaffold of a central harbor area. At the ends, habitation rings rotated in opposite directions to provide artificial gravity.
The pilot was listening to something in his headset and turned to Wyatt hovering just behind him. “Flight Ops is pissed. They’re demanding to know why we’re making an unscheduled run.”
“Where to start?” Wyatt snorted.
“NAV transferred to Station Control,” Teo said, adjusting some controls. “Docking in ninety seconds.”
Chris felt the vibration of the maneuvering jets as the shuttle made course corrections. They floated toward an empty docking boom ahead of them. Just beyond, a single freighter sat latched on to an adjacent lattice, inert and lonely.
“I wonder where all the other shipping is,” Wyatt said. He tapped Teo on the shoulder and pointed out the window. “Do you recognize that spacecraft?”
“Not something that came through with us, but that might end up being our ride. I don’t see any alternatives.”
Wyatt turned and caught Chris’s eye. “Any idea where all your interplanetary assets are kept, Master Sergeant?”
Chris peered out the cockpit for a narrow view of the long freighter. “Sorry, Wyatt. I just shoot things.”
“Stand by,” Teo said. “On final approach. We’re about to dock.”
“Okay. Excuse me,” Wyatt said, pushing himself around Chris as he exited the flight deck. When he spoke to his troopers in the passenger bay, it was with the voice of command. “Listen up, RESIT Team. We are engaging in a hostile boarding exercise. Laramie and Kenny, you take point. Maya in the back, Gavin and I in the middle. Clear a path to Flight Ops. Got it?”
Multiple aye, ayes so
unded as hands checked weapons. Chris felt compelled to check his Viper too, but the handling was difficult with one arm. He handed it to Finn and decided to stick to his sidearm.
The clack of a docking ring reverberated through the fuselage.
Kenny hovered near the ceiling hatch and watched an atmospheric monitor. “Pressure’s matched.”
Before Chris could blink, Wyatt was giving orders. “Go.”
Kenny pulled a recessed lever and broke the seal with a hiss of gas. The metal door swung open and he pushed himself through without hesitation, followed quickly by Laramie.
A voice thundered from inside the docking boom. “What the hell do you think—”
Silence.
Laramie’s voice came over the comm. “Clear.”
Wyatt and Gavin headed up next, Vectors ready.
Maya floated near the hatch and organized the rest of them into pairs. She made maneuvering in microgravity seem effortless. Chris, on the other hand, found it incredibly difficult and struggled to remain oriented correctly. His zero-gee training had been years ago. And this time, he had a broken arm.
A tug on his sleeve caught his attention. Annika was looking at him, ready to move.
“Let’s go, girl,” he said. “Stay close to me.”
Chris grabbed the edge of the circular hatch with his good arm and jerked his body through. The docking boom was clearly designed for small spacecraft. Rectangular sections of white insulation covered a narrow interior that stretched perhaps ten meters long. Chris floated his way up a series of orange handholds until he passed through another hatch into a large cubical compartment. Each wall was filled with a sliding pressure door bifurcated in the middle. All of them remained sealed except for the one leading to their shuttle.
Kenny and Laramie hovered next to two people wearing utility vests and maroon coveralls. One of them was trying unsuccessfully to keep a bloody gash under his eye from dribbling into the air. Chris floated closer to them to make room for the others coming up the docking boom.
Wyatt was fishing through the vest pockets of the uninjured man. A pat on the side produced a thick plastic access card. Wyatt called to Gavin and flung it across the compartment.
Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1) Page 24
