by Kelly Jensen
He ran past his rover, not wanting to waste precious minutes moving Orfeo’s out of the way. Without his helmet, the air outside seemed alive and tasted bitter against his tongue. The poison mist. Not enough to choke him instantly, but enough to damage his lungs if he stood outside for too long. He looked up at the flickering shield. If the mist was getting through, failure must be imminent.
Bram didn’t waste time standing there debating the future of his crops versus the need to find Gael and Aavi. He ran directly to Orfeo’s rover. Panic drilled through his temples as he fought to get his suited form inside the vehicle. He held his breath as he reached beneath the console for the power button, hoping Orfeo hadn’t slaved the rover to his Band or some other device he carried on his person.
The whine of the vehicle’s electric motor starting would have been the sweetest sound he’d ever heard if the storm hadn’t thrown fury across the sky that same moment. Breathing out, Bram executed a spinning reverse turn and directed the rover back up the road. He didn’t know why Aavi might have gone to the cloud garden, but he could imagine her doing it—either because that had been their plan for the day and children could be mind-bogglingly pedantic, or for reasons he didn’t want to contemplate right now.
It seemed to take forever for the rover to cover the distance between the farm and the trail up the side of the crevasse. Warnings flashed across the holographic display to the right of the cockpit—about the storm, the wind, and the atmospheric conditions. The last had Bram fighting for breath. The air outside was still viable, but for every meter along the road the rover climbed, the higher the poison count rose. Mist now cloaked the windshield and obscured the rear sensors. A horrible feeling of uselessness tried to push up through Bram’s need to find Gael and Aavi.
If they were all the way up at the cloud garden, they might be high enough to not be affected by the storm. He had to hold on to that.
He couldn’t see the head of the trail by the time he’d counted off a kilometer. Bram halted the vehicle and pulled on his helmet, quickly clicking it into place. He reached under the front passenger seat for an emergency kit and banged his gloved fist against the canopy release. The door swung up and he pushed himself through the gap.
Mist was giving way to rain, which could be good or bad. It might drop the poison count if it wasn’t being swept up out of the crevasse. Bram trudged through moisture-blurred reality until he found the bottom of the trail, his breath dragging in and out of his lungs. He couldn’t stop to rest, not even for a second. He made it to the first switchback and turned the corner, ready to push into the wind.
Then he saw the pink rock.
There were no pink rocks on Alkirak. Red and purple veins, sometimes. Deep ochre and umber dust underfoot. But nothing pink.
Bram wasn’t sure what he was seeing until he touched the rock. When he lifted his glove, the surface of the rock seemed to peel away. Fighting a rising yell, Bram dropped the pack and ripped it open to look for the emergency blanket. He knew covering Gael’s back—and that was Gael’s back, scorched by the mist, skin already sloughing off—would cause more damage, but he had no choice.
“Gael!” His voice echoed inside the helmet.
Bram wrapped the blanket around Gael’s head and shoulders and tried to pull him away from the outcropping. Gael’s lack of reaction brought nightmares Bram hadn’t even known were tucked away in his psyche screaming toward the surface. He tugged again and almost sobbed in relief when Gael hunched forward instead of backward.
“Wrong way, buddy.” Gael might not be able to hear him over the fury of the storm. “I need to get you—”
A flash of white-blond hair beneath Gael’s shoulder snapped the situation into sudden focus. Gael was curled around Aavi. Protecting her with his own body. Bram lost his sense, then. All the rational thinking that had kept him alive in shafts tunneled through ice and rock—every one of them filled with bad air, no air, or the cold hard nothing of space—fled.
He didn’t know how to save his family.
Think, you dumb fuck. There had to be something he could do.
Dropping to his knees, he leaned forward and pressed his helmet directly to the side of Gael’s head. “When I say three, give me Aavi. The rover is just underneath us. If you can’t run, I’ll come back for you—I promise, Gael. I’ll come back for you. Nod if you can hear me.”
A nod.
“On three.”
Another nod.
“One, two—”
Gael rocked back and turned, thrusting Aavi into Bram’s arms. Aavi shrieked and screamed. Bram tucked her against his front and ran down the path. The rover was only meters away. He did not stumble, he did not fall. Lightning didn’t strike him down. Thunder did not knock him from his feet. He shoved Aavi under the canopy and ran back for Gael.
He was right there, on the path, his gait hitched as though moving hurt.
It probably did.
Bram met him halfway and swept him up, ignoring the fact his own body was about to give out. He carried Gael to the rover and pushed him through the door, climbed in after him, and smacked the door seal. The rover shook and the door mechanism whined, but the canopy came down.
Bram had his helmet off in seconds, tossing it behind him.
“How you doing, Aavi?” he asked, trying and failing to keep his tone bright.
She sobbed in reply. The fact she could sob answered his question better than anything she might have said though. If she could cry, she could breathe. The rebreather masks were fairly efficient. They might not have lasted the whole storm, but they’d apparently lasted long enough.
Gael, on the other hand, was wheezing. His mask was still in place and didn’t look damaged. Still, every breath sounded labored.
Quickly, he dealt with Aavi. “I need you to check your skin for burns. Can you do that, sweetheart?”
Her sob seemed to rise in a yes sound, and he could hear her moving behind him.
Bram reached for the blanket wrapped around Gael’s shoulders, and Gael shrank away from him, hissing. His breath rattled faintly, and behind his mask taut lines of pain creased his face. Bram stopped, his gloved hand hanging in the air between them, and then he touched Gael’s mask.
“I need to pull this away. The filter is probably all kinds of clogged. I won’t touch the blanket.”
Gael nodded.
He didn’t yell as Bram lifted the mask off, removing clumps of hair along with it. Bram’s vision blurred, and he couldn’t speak until he swallowed four times. Then again. He opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say. The mask hadn’t covered Gael’s scalp, just his face. Bram had seen worse injuries, but never on someone he’d cared for this deeply.
“Don’t speak. Just breathe, okay? Stay with me if you can, don’t . . .” Don’t die seemed like the most basic instruction. Stupid, really. “I’m taking you to Landing. The company has a clinic there.”
Gael nodded again.
Bram started the rover and brought up the course map. He thought briefly about his farm on the terrace below, wondering whether the power had failed and his crops had been washed away. So what if it had? The people with him right now were more important.
If only he’d realized that before he’d gone down into the crevasse.
Bram juggled the sleeping child in his arms, trying to alleviate the strain on his biceps and the ache in his back. Aavi wasn’t heavy, but he’d been holding her for at least an hour. Every time he bent to lay her on one of the disagreeable chairs lining the narrow hall outside the clinic, she tightened her arms around his neck and whimpered. He’d stopped trying to put her down.
He paced the length of the hall twice more before pausing in front of the panel separating the waiting area from the doing area. For about the eleventy-hundredth time, he tried to see beyond his reflection in the darkened glass, and failed. Dressed only in the light garment he wore beneath his environment suit, he looked almost naked. And twitchy.
Bram turned away. Rapping on
the glass might summon the nurse, but he’d probably get the annoying holo attendant. The first time she had popped up, Bram had recalled his earliest visit to a Muedini clinic. All potential hires were prodded, poked, and shot up with a dozen different vaccines, most of which protected against sexually transmitted diseases. He could have died of ice lung and they’d have paid a death benefit. But they hadn’t wanted him spreading crotch rot to the other miners.
They hadn’t updated the holo attendant in all that time, and she was still too annoyingly chirpy. Bram much preferred the nurse.
The outside door slid open behind him and Bram turned. Oh dust, Maia.
She glanced from the child slumped over his shoulder, toward the darkened glass panel, then finally back to Bram. “I saw Orfeo’s rover parked out front.”
Following procedure, he’d transmitted a distress call to Muedini’s Ground Ops station as soon as he’d been in satellite range, reporting the accident and giving Orfeo’s coordinates. The knowledge he’d left a man down in the crevasse chewed at his gut, but the choice he’d made upon leaving his farm remained resolute: Gael took top priority.
Shifting Aavi’s weight, Bram ran through a few opening statements before settling on: “There was an accident.”
Maia took a step forward. “But he’s okay?” She tipped her head toward the interior of the clinic. “Did he break something? I told him to wait for a company team, but you know Orfeo. Still thinks he’s a crew boss.” She tried for a smile, which fell away as her brow pinched. “Where’s Gael?”
Aavi stirred, lifting her head from his shoulder. The small movement seemed to double her weight. Bram’s arms shrieked in protest. He shifted her up a little and bent his knees, hoping he could lower her onto one of the chairs.
“Aavi, honey, I need to put you down for a minute. I’ll stay right next to you.”
She whined the whole way and clung to his neck even after her butt touched down on a chair. Squatting beside her, Bram said, “Gael’s inside.”
Aavi looked at him, probably assuming he’d spoken to her. He had, because it was easier than telling Maia that Orfeo was not behind that wall.
“What happened?” Maia sat next to Aavi and put a hand to her shoulder. “Hey there, sweetness. Are you worried about Gael? I’m sure he’s going to be just fine.” Maia frowned as she found a red splotch on Aavi’s forearm. “What’s this? Did you burn yourself?”
“They got caught out in a storm. Gael . . .” Bram fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. The ruin of Gael’s back looked worse against the darkness of closed lids. “He shielded her.”
“Oh no. Oh, Bram.” Maia’s gaze cut sideways, then back again. Her eyebrows asked the next question. Will he recover?
Bram shrugged. The rain had probably saved Gael’s life in the interim, washing the flesh-eating mist from his back. Now it would depend on how his body responded to what were, essentially, third-degree burns across his scalp, back, and shoulders, and how far the poison had managed to penetrate. The last update from the human nurse had been full of horror stories about organ failure, possible lung collapse, and brain damage. Bram had marked each item as “worst case” and hoped for the best. That was what miners did.
As soon as Aavi’s grip loosened, Bram reached to untangle her fingers. He held her hands as he stood and spoke over her whimpers. “I’m right here, Aavi. You know I’m right here. Not going to leave this room. But I need to talk to Maia for a minute.”
She made no protest as he let her fingers go.
Cocking his head toward the door, Bram moved in that direction, hoping Maia would follow.
She did. “Orfeo isn’t with you, is he?”
Bram shook his head.
Her jaw tightened. “Tell me what that damn fool did.”
“I contacted Ground Ops as soon as I was in range. They probably have him by now.” If they’d used a light flyer instead of a rover, and he suspected they would have. Orfeo was a forty-year man, after all.
“Not what I asked.”
“He fell, Maia. It was a long drop. Five hundred meters. I’m sorry.”
She stared at him.
“You know how slimy the rock is down there below the mist. It’s been a while since he did any climbing. He was out of practice.”
“He fell?” A question, but not.
“He fell.”
Maia continued to study him intently, her eyes flicking back and forth as she measured the lie. Bram remained still throughout, clinging to his version of the truth. He could feel her reading the story in his eyes, though, and he saw the knowledge of what Orfeo had set out to do, what he might have done, slowly dawn in hers. A rising sun he did not want to witness.
“Oh, Orfeo,” she finally breathed. Her shoulders squared. “What are you going to tell the company?”
“He fell.”
The set line of her jaw quivered. Just once. Then she returned his nod. “An HV message came through for you. Bounced back from your address three times before landing at the exchange.” Her way of telling him she hadn’t been snooping. “A warrant officer with questions about Gael. Apparently someone here in Landing has been making inquiries about him. Someone with priority access to the Muedini satellites.”
Keeping his face expressionless was about as wearing as carrying Aavi up and down the waiting hallway for the past hour.
Maia’s compressed lips trembled. She nodded toward Aavi, who sat staring at the wall. “I can take her back for a bit if you want. You need a shower and something other than underwear. Then you should answer your mail before they send someone down here after your family.”
She made to move past, and Bram put a hand on her arm. “He wanted me to take care of you.”
The hard line of her jaw quivered again. “Not now, Bram.”
Bram let her go.
Behind him, Aavi whined again and Maia cajoled in a soft tone. He didn’t listen for the words, he simply let the sounds in the hall blur into background noise as he contemplated his future.
Right now, it stank, and a shower wasn’t going to help much. But he supposed he could stop offending innocent bystanders until he figured out a way to deal with the rest of it. First, he put his palm to the wall screen, summoning the holo attendant.
A dark face materialized in front of him, her smile absurdly happy. “How may I help you?”
“Status report for patient Gael Sonnen.”
Her smile didn’t twitch as she said, “Patient Gael Sonnen is still being treated. His prognosis has not been updated.”
Frustrated, Bram smacked his palm against the glass.
“Do you have another inquiry?” the holo asked.
“No.”
Showered and dressed in a Muedini coverall, Bram sat in the back corner of the saloon, a borrowed holo terminal set up in front of him. He checked in with the clinic first and found Gael’s status had been updated from “In treatment” to “In recovery.” His chair was halfway back from the table before he read the fine print: no visitors for twenty hours due to infection risk.
Bram switched the display to discreet mode and checked his public inbox. There were dozens of messages waiting for his attention. The top one was from CWO Joshi. Tapping the sender’s name gave little more information, except that the C stood for Commonwealth. Alkirak stood well outside the Commonwealth, though, and didn’t officially belong to any territory. The three closest systems, all hosting Muedini operations, were part of an enterprise coalition, making them subject to company law before galactic law—which governed very little beyond piracy.
So, CWO was sticking a hand outside its jurisdiction.
Had Orfeo already shaken that hand?
Only one way to find out.
Bram keyed open the message and sat back as the HV played.
Joshi was a small, fine-boned woman with dark hair, dark skin, and a nose that was too large for her face. Her eyes were her best feature. They snapped with intelligence and wit. After introducing herself and explaining her cred
entials, she jumped right in. “M. Orfeo Reyes of the Muedini Corporation made inquiries regarding Aavi, last name unknown, description match ninety-one percent with warrant record number ZB-501878, Aavi di Vorss, ‘Di’ being a Commonwealth designator for ‘property of.’ Aavi was reported missing on the fourth day of the tenth month, local calendar, Standard date: 25.12.2567.”
Bram tried to reckon the dates on the Muedini calendar and gave up as Joshi continued. “Aavi is presumed stolen by Commonwealth citizen Gael Sonnen, who carries two additional warrants for theft and one for murder, record numbers ZB-501997, ZB . . .”
Bram sucked in air as the ringing in his ears drowned out the rest of the record numbers.
“I am currently stationed at Alkirak Orbital. I understand communication with remote homesteads is better served by record transmission. Henceforth, I have attached a complete copy of the case log. I have an appointment with M. Reyes at 1600 hours, on day 98, Muedini local, Standard date: 8.4.2567. If I do not hear from you prior to my shuttle departure, I will assume M. Reyes has taken responsibility for the fugitive and child, and that you have relinquished all claims.”
Holy hands, Orfeo had actually contacted a warrant officer. It hadn’t been an idle threat.
Bram checked his Band. Day 98 was tomorrow, 1600 hours approximately twenty-eight hours from now, giving him twenty-five hours to read the log before CWO Joshi boarded the shuttle. Orfeo’s confession in the mists billowed up from the darker corners of Bram’s mind, and he had to swallow against a sudden burn at the back of his throat. The man he’d thought he knew had been prepared to trade a child for his farm. Something that—to Bram—wasn’t worth a life.
And what of Gael’s involvement?
The echo of warrant numbers battered at his ears. Unable to continue down that seam, Bram keyed open the attached case log. He listened to Aavi’s file first. The details were similar to what Aavi had shared the afternoon she’d tried to rid herself of the Band—with one notable difference: her owner had been executed, and it was believed the perpetrator of this crime had abducted her. Sadly, Aavi’s reported value was less than the credit chip she’d apparently been carrying.
