All at once, the answer leapt up at Roon from the floor she was so thoroughly bullying with that punishing stare. “Quarantine!”
A serpentine grin slithered across Xenecia’s lips. “Quarantine. Yes. That should do nicely. Expected response time?”
“They’ll start with the command decks, then work their way through the rest one by one. Depending on what kind of threat is detected and how disciplined the hazmat team is, it could take anywhere from two minutes to twenty. The average is something like twelve minutes for a station this size.”
“Good. More than manageable. Quarantine it is, then.” After all, the hazmat team would have to cover each deck section by section, room by room. Roon and Xenecia would use that protocol to their advantage, making a predetermined beeline from the station’s armory to its interrogation facility. There, they would take custody of Fenton and proceed immediately to the flight deck. The only question that remained was, “How do you intend to induce such a quarantine?”
“Do you know what this is?” Roon produced a slim, vacuum-black tablet device from within the clutch she carried with her.
“Of course, I do. It is a flexpad.”
“Do you know what’s inside it?”
Xenecia shook her head. She was a huntrex, not an engineer. Her tools were her instincts and the modified mare’s leg carbine she intended to liberate from the station’s armory.
“Never mind,” Roon finally said. “Technically I don’t either. I went on a couple dates with this Free Planetary Pilgrims guy a few years ago. He went on and on about all the toxic chemicals used in mass-produced data devices, among other things. He used to work at one of the major producers until he ‘saw the light’ and ‘broke through his own paradigm.’” Roon made a curdled-milk face, as well as the appropriate air quotation marks where necessary. “Anyway, apropos of nothing. The point is, if we shred this thing into as many pieces as possible and introduce it into the ventilation, it should trip the atmospheric integrity alarm, right? Then everyone—literally, everyone—has to scramble to their preassigned posts, help each other into their suits, double check that there are no exposed seams… hell, we’ll get twelve minutes easy, if not more.” Roon met Xenecia’s deadpan stare with wild-eyed intensity for one beat. Two. Three. Then her face crumpled under a mask of uncertainty. “Right?”
“I have gone along with worse plans,” Xenecia allowed with a frightening smile. “Give me the device.”
Before Roon could object, Xenecia took possession of the flexpad. She considered it for all of a moment before shredding through its ruggedized alloy casing as if it were nothing more than tissue paper. From within the casing the supposedly toxic guts of the thing spilled out around their feet.
Cracked circuitry and fractured fiber optics. A mutilated motherboard. Any number of nontoxic parts.
Nothing, absolutely nothing they could make use of. Roon was caught halfway between cursing and crying out when Xenecia looked up from scouring the pile.
“Hello, what have we here?”
Xenecia held up a small piece of the motherboard. A matte black chip roughly the size of a small tooth sat in its center. The more Roon appraised it, though, the more detail her eyes began to pick out. Specifically, the gauzy halo surrounding the tooth-like node that shifted from egg-white to ochre to halcyon.
“Roon, look away!” Xenecia ordered.
Roon did as she was told, blinking fiercely as the regular color spectrum reasserted itself before her eyes. “What the hell?” Rubbing at her eyes, she made her way to the washroom to rinse them out. “What was that?”
“That,” Xenecia said as she admired the sliver of motherboard from behind her polarized, socket-tight lenses, “is a very radioactive battery source. Looks like your friend Mr. Free Planetary Pilgrim was right on at least one count.”
“I’ll be sure to let him know if we survive this.” Roon peered through loosely splayed fingers at the prize Xenecia held in her hands. “Oh my—that thing was inside there the whole time?!” She dropped her hand and stared down the length of her body as if she expected to start erupting in tumorous growths at any moment.
“Mm-hmm. Explains why they never need charging. You will run out of life long before it ever does.”
Roon looked downright panicked, gesturing frantically. “Should we be, y’know, handling it like this?”
Xenecia just laughed. It was the laugh of a hyena, or some other thoroughly amused predator in waiting. “First of all, you are not handling it. I am. Second, it is radioactive, but not deadly so. I do think, however, that it might be just what we are looking for.”
“This is a mistake,” Roon said to herself. “All of it.”
“No,” Xenecia corrected as she forced the ruptured battery through the slatted filter of her ventilation system. “This is business. It always has been, and it always will be. Now, get ready. Fenton needs you.”
“Right. Fenton needs me,” Roon repeated.
Two minutes later, the atmospheric integrity alarm tripped. A radiation leak had been detected aboard OS Tau. The station was going into lockdown.
10 • BREAKOUT
Fenton stirred to the sound of voices. Familiar voices, distant and muddled, echoing just beyond the gauzy, indistinct membrane between dreaming and waking, but voices nonetheless. Like a drowning sailor clutching a lifeline, he instinctively groped for the return to consciousness they heralded.
“It shouldn’t be much longer now.” The first voice was pinched and gravelly. Placating, even servile.
“Is there perhaps some way to expedite the process?” The second voice was lower, smoother. Confident. Poised. In command.
“Well…”
“Yes or no, Doctor. Either one will be sufficient for the purpose of answering my question.”
“In that case, yes, there is perhaps some way to expedite the process. However, under the circumstances—”
“Do it.”
“Ahem… sirs?” A third voice. Younger and less sure of its place than the first two, vying for entry into the standoff.
“As I was saying, I would advise against it under the circumstances. Highly.”
“And as I was saying, Doctor: Do it.”
“Sirs—”
“In my professional opinion—”
“What you call your professional opinion, I call insubordination and dereliction of duty. Have I made myself perfectly—”
“Sirs!”
When at last the young officer finally succeeded in securing their attention, Carsten and Jenner turned to find Fenton watching them. Despite the unruly stubble muzzling his face and the heavy bags pulling at his eyes, he was following their exchange quite lucidly. Jenner looked aghast, as if he and Carsten had been caught in flagrante delicto. Carsten merely smiled. Somehow the gesture made him seem more imposing than the delicate fragility of his frame should have allowed.
“Behold, Doctor,” he said, spreading his hands out before him. “Our disagreement resolves itself presently. How fortuitous.” Stepping forward, he favored Fenton with an even more exaggerated version of the same gesture. To Fenton the effect was of a gnarled old buzzard spreading its wings, descending to feast upon a fresh corpse. “Welcome back, Mr. Wilkes. So good of you to rejoin us.”
The right to remain silent. Fenton exercised it, using every ounce of focus to make sense of the situation. The room was familiar to him. It was the room he had been held in before being moved. Or one very nearly like it. He supposed he couldn’t say definitively, or that it mattered one way or the other. Once again he was securely fastened to the chair, a captive audience for whatever sick game Carsten was playing now. Here was a man who had poisoned and manipulated him, almost killed him. Fenton felt no shame in reserving a healthy portion of concern for what this man was capable of.
Finally, when it became clear he was expected to answer, he had only one word to say: “Roon.”
Jenner stepped away from Carsten and the officer. He set to work at something out of
frame. From the faintly metallic shuffling, Fenton guessed it was an instrument table.
“Roon,” he said again into the vacuum of their collective silence. “I want to speak to Roon.”
More shuffling from the instrument table.
“Your goddaughter. I want to see your goddaughter. My advocate. Where is she?”
Jenner stepped back into frame. In his right hand he held a hypo. His face was as inscrutable as ever.
“Where. Is. My. Advocate?! Get me Roon, you son of a—”
Carsten raised a hand. Much to his chagrin, Fenton allowed himself to be silenced by the gesture. “Sadly, Mr. Wilkes, it seems you’ve taken a turn for the worse. I regret to inform you that you suffer from serious cranial trauma and possible brain injuries, as evidenced by your recent seizure, and are therefore not considered mentally fit to stand trial under Article 49 of Morgenthau-Hale’s Sovereign Corporate Charter. As a result, you no longer require the services of an advocate.” The old buzzard’s lips twitched into a smile. His leathery skin creased at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “I would ask if you understand what you’ve just been told but, well.” His tiny black eyes sparkled merrily. He was a predator toying with his cornered prey. “Under the circumstances, that would be rather remarkable.”
Fenton refused to cower in the face of the beast. “Not fit to stand trial, but fit enough to torture until you get what you want out of me. Got it.”
“Torture? Far from it. Morgenthau-Hale does not condone torture of any kind,” Carsten said. “Think of this as more of an advanced interrogation and it will proceed much more pleasantly for all involved.”
For you, maybe, Fenton thought. He certainly had no intention of making the man’s job any easier for him.
Carsten’s face darkened as if Fenton’s thoughts had been broadcast ship-wide via public address. “Do yourself a favor, Mr. Wilkes,” he intoned sourly. “Tell us what we want to know.”
Uncrossing his ankles, Fenton planted his feet firmly on the floor in front of him. It wasn’t much as a show of defiance, but it was all he had.
“Very well. Let no one say we didn’t give you a chance to do this the easy way.” Carsten jerked his bald, pitted head toward Fenton. The young officer nodded. Stepping behind him, the young officer forced Fenton’s head to the side so that his ear nearly touched his shoulder. “No doubt you remember Dr. Jenner,” Carsten continued. “But perhaps you do not remember the substance he is holding?”
Fenton said nothing.
“Allow me to enlighten you. Triggerfly venom. Nasty little piece of business native to the Tyro System. When properly administered, it creates a feeling of intense euphoria. It also diminishes the human capacity for deception. Rather useful combination in my particular line of work. When administered improperly, however…” He fixed Jenner with a quick but no less blistering stare.
“I warned you the method was inconsistent,” Jenner said unflinchingly. “Delivery via food can result in unforeseen complications. Why do you think triggerflies don’t feed it to their prey with their morning eggs?”
“Yes, so it would seem.” The corner of Carsten’s mouth twitched in an aborted sneer as he looked back to Fenton. “Which is why we’ll be injecting you directly, now that we are no longer bound by the need for pretense.”
Fenton just stared, his head still clutched and contorted within the hands of the young officer.
“Do you understand, Mr. Wilkes? You will tell us what we want to know, down to the most minute detail, and then we’ll flush your worthless corpse out into space.” Carsten leaned forward at the waist, looking Fenton squarely in the eye. His lips twisted into an unctuous smirk as he spoke. “You’ve lost, Fenton. There are no happy endings. Not for fools like you.”
“Fuck. You. Ass. Hole,” Fenton answered pointedly. His voice came out a husky rasp because of his awkwardly angled neck. Still, the substance of the retort remained the same.
Carsten clucked with laughter, though he was far from amused. Fenton could feel the disappointment radiating off the man like white heat. He had wanted the satisfaction of watching his prey squirm and plead before the inevitable. Of knowing he had stripped away a little piece of his soul. Fenton was actually quite terrified despite his fearless facade, but if nothing else he was determined to deny Carsten his perverted satisfaction.
At some length, Carsten eyed Fenton. Finally he stood and stepped to the side, smoothing a wrinkle from the front of his uniform. “You may proceed, Dr. Jenner.”
Jenner stood fixed as a statue during the uncomfortable confrontation. Now he stepped forward, lifting the hypo. He made a show of holding it out before him, directly under the light, as if examining its contents. Passing through the acid-yellow venom within, the light shifted and warped. The effect provoked a visceral response in Fenton. He bucked furiously in the chair, growling and kicking out at the floor, at Jenner, at anything in his path. The officer began to apply pressure through his arms, slowly closing off Fenton’s airway. The growling was reduced to a croaking gurgle. His legs didn’t so much kick out as begin to spasm without direction. Little silver motes bloomed before his eyes, and he knew he was about to pass out.
“That will be enough of that, Ensign,” Carsten said. The pressure on Fenton’s neck ceased immediately. He was still locked in the officer’s restraining embrace, but at least he could breathe again.
As the motes dissolved and his vision cleared once again, Fenton became aware of Carsten leering grotesquely at his lap. Although he couldn’t see the source of the man’s deranged amusement, he could feel it soaking through the starchy sickbay gown. Just as he was about to go under, his bladder had let go. The shame of that humiliation was crippling. By the time the shrill bleat of the klaxon pierced the air a moment later, he was all but ready to let himself be dosed into euphoria before his lifeless body was cast off into the cold black void of space.
Jenner was just about to inject Fenton with the triggerfly venom when the alarm brought him up short. He snapped to immediately, crossing the room to deposit the syringe on the instrument table before making a beeline for the door.
“What the blasted hell is that?” Carsten said, his voice a tightly coiled snarl. He was suspicious. Rightly so. “And where do you think you’re going?!”
“That,” Jenner said, stabbed at the air, “is the atmospheric integrity alarm. There’s been a radiation leak. As the senior medical officer, I’m in charge of coordinating the medical response.”
“You cannot leave now!”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“Fine.” With or without Jenner, Carsten was not to be deterred. “Hold him still, Ensign,” he commanded. Not that Fenton was even remotely capable of resisting anymore. As shameful as it was, he couldn’t wait to slip away on the wings of ecstasy. It was more than he deserved, considering how foolish he had been.
Carsten slipped into the path of the overhead, looming over Fenton like an eclipse event. “No doubt you’ll want to cherish what little time you have left, Mr. Wilkes,” he said. He smiled darkly, raising the hypo to Fenton’s neck.
The door slid open abruptly. Carsten looked up just as the flashbang grenade came clattering through the cell’s unguarded entrance. The sudden presence of the grenade provoked an instinctive response in the officer and Carsten. The both of them lunged away, trying to make themselves as small as possible. Instead, the explosion of light and sound caught them at their most exposed, leaving them completely defenseless as two silhouetted figures quickly swept into the cell behind the blast.
“Get him on his feet and ready to move!” the taller of the two shadows commanded as it swept through his periphery in a blur of movement.
The second shadow knelt before him, touching his face tenderly. “Fenton? Fenton, are you okay?”
His vision was still seared white from the flashbang, but he recognized her voice. “Roon? Is that… what are you doing… I kept asking… but he wouldn’t…”
“Hold still, Fenton, we
’ll have you out of here in just a—NO!”
Every muscle in Fenton’s body tensed in expectation of a second shot.
“No,” Roon said again, sharply. From the sound of her voice she was just off his right side now.
“Why?” he heard Carsten wheeze tightly from the floor, also to his right.
“Because I can do what you never could.”
Carsten drew a shallow, rattling breath. “And what might that be, little dove?”
For a long beat Roon said nothing. Then, “I can control my urges.”
“Am I killing him or not?” This from the taller voice. The very sound of it sent a wet, scaly chill crawling down his back. “Either way, we need to get moving. Now.”
There was a second pause wherein all he could hear was Roon breathing. “Tie him up or knock him out,” she finally said. “As long as he can’t give us away, I don’t care.” Then she came around to kneel before Fenton once again. When she spoke to him it was soft and soothing, a gentle caress with her voice. “We need you to walk with us now, Fenton. Can you manage that?”
“I think—I think so.”
With Roon’s help, he stood. He took a single, steadying step, followed by another. Then the deck pitched and yawed beneath his feet. As the ground slipped its moorings and rose up to meet him, Carsten’s last words echoed hauntingly in his head…
There are no happy endings. Not for fools like me.
11 • ESCAPE
Roon gasped as Fenton crumpled to the floor, vying to put herself between him and it. Rather than stop his descent completely, however, the most she could hope to offer was to soften his landing. “Oh! No, no, not now—damnit, Fenton, wake up!”
Having secured Carsten, Xenecia produced a slender plastic blister from within her bandolier. “Stand aside.” She cracked the blister with an audible snap, passing it back and forth beneath Fenton’s nose. His head jerked sharply, then lolled uncertainly from side to side. She handed the broken blister to Roon. “Give him a moment to get his bearings. If afterward he is still dazed, do it again, just like that.” She repeated the back-and-forth gesture before securing her carbine. “I will scout ahead and clear a path. Make haste, but do so cautiously.” Before Roon could object, thinking surely their best chance of surviving this mess was to stick together, Xenecia was at the doorway, checking left and right, and then she was gone.
The Lazarus Particle Page 7
