Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Neilson sat up and crossed his arms across his chest. Katy thought he was trying to look relaxed, making an effort to at least appear more reasonable. “Listen, I’m not against using the soil reclamator. God knows the people around here need it. We lost another baby yesterday. I’m just not convinced that it’s the best idea to sell the waste products. I mean, no one at the Mining Division’s going to complain if the workers they get are healthier and happier because their kids aren’t sick. That’s a good thing. It’s just I’m not sure we want to wreck that with this selling stuff. It’s just dangerous. People get killed for doing stuff like that. It makes me nervous.”

  Alia spoke up, her voice edgy and raw. “Listen, our captain has been flying for over thirty years! You know exactly what that means, and she’s only been given a contraband warning six times, all of them misdemeanors, and only once in the last eight years. We don’t get caught!”

  Katy reached over and put her hand on Alia’s arm.

  Neilson scowled. He seemed much more comfortable being opposed directly by Alia’s irritation than he did with Katy’s kindness and listening. He was already shaking his head when he answered. “I’m not willing to bet my life and the lives of 20,000 people on your ability to stay clear. If you get caught, and they find out where this came from, they’ll stick a nuke up our ass and turn this place into glass. Not to mention what they will do to you and your ship. It won’t work. We need some kind of guarantee. Your plan doesn’t offer us any.” The chance to push back seemed to have energized Neilson and got him rolling.

  Katy kept her calm. “What about our cost? It’s not like the reclamator was free for us. We may have gotten it at a steal, but we still had to purchase it from the warehouse. This wasn’t a company requisition, after all. We’ve got some float on it, but we can’t exactly afford to just give it to you.”

  Neilson nodded his head, still scowling, arms still crossed. He looked up and to the side. Katy had the distinct impression that he was pretending to think on the spot.

  You’ve been planning this for a while, she thought. You already know what you’re going to say. For now, her best move was to let this play out and see where it led. She couldn’t make any decisions until Neilson laid his cards on the table.

  Neilson uncrossed his arms and spoke slowly, as if his thoughts were just occurring to him. “What if … what if we still give you that container that we owed you for free at the beginning of the contract? The value of the lithium in that container alone should be enough to cover the cost of the equipment and make your ship a tidy little profit.” He was nodding now, as if the idea sounded good to him. “I think we can take that much risk. One load of lithium isn’t going to be noticed on the market. After that, however, both of us should just forget about the idea that there’s anything valuable on this hellhole. We keep the reclamator, and you get paid. I think that would be a win for everyone.”

  So that’s his angle. Katy almost laughed out loud. The whole proposal was ludicrous in the extreme, but she wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to do about it. “That’s not the deal we agreed to in intraspace.”

  Neilson pursed his lips. “Deals can change.”

  Katy continued calmly. “Yes, they can. I just can’t change the deal on my own. I will have to contact our captain and talk it over with her.”

  For a moment, Neilson looked pleased, then his eyes hardened, and for the first time, Katy thought she saw a spark of malice there. “I suggest you take our offer. After all, I could just take the food, the medicine, and the reclamator. It’s an off-books drop. What would you do then?”

  Katy didn’t miss the threat in Neilson’s words, but the stubborn part of her had no intention of giving Neilson any satisfaction from seeing her sweat. The best way to do that was to maintain her faith that compassion left her with far more options in a difficult situation than anger. She, Soren, and Freddi had planned for this possibility. If things went sideways, she and Alia were to jump planetside with the seven containers and hole up somewhere until the Clarion returned for evac.

  Katy smiled whole-heartedly. “Well, I don’t think either of us wants to see that happen, do we? It’s been a long day. Would you mind showing us to our quarters? I think both of us could use a few hours of sleep.”

  Neilson, grinning like a cat that had caught a mouse, nodded to his assistant. His voice sounded magnanimous, almost compassionate. “Of course. Talk it over with your captain, and let me know in the morning what you decide.”

  The silent assistant stood and spoke laconically. “This way.”

  21

  Salvador

  Katy woke in the middle of the night to someone covering her mouth and shaking her shoulder. Her eyes burst open, and she tried to scream. It came out as a muddled gurgle. Neilson’s assistant let go of her shoulder but kept his hand firmly covering her mouth. He frantically waved to the room. His eyes were wide, almost desperate. He pointed to the ceiling and then shushed her with a finger to his lips.

  Catching up quickly, heart pounding, Katy nodded her understanding and tried to relax her body, showing that she wouldn’t speak. Tentatively, the assistant loosened his hand from her mouth. It was all Katy could do not to let a residual moan of fear escape her lips, but she managed it. Slowly, she rose from her bed.

  Leaning so close to her ear his breath tickled, he whispered, “If you want to save your life, you have to wake your partner silently. Hurry, we have only minutes.”

  The assistant’s tense posture, shaking hands, and frantic whisper convinced Katy that the man was serious. Her eyes widened, and her senses became suddenly aware of all the sounds in the room. Adrenaline made her feel like an animal listening for an approaching predator.

  She raced quietly to Alia’s bed and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Alia, we have to leave, now!”

  Alia startled awake and let out a shrill yelp. Then she saw that it was Katy and calmed down immediately.

  The sound of Alia’s scream hadn’t been loud, but the man looked like someone had dropped a glass vase in the middle of the floor.

  He’s scared, she thought. Neilson must be more dangerous than I thought.

  Katy helped Alia out of bed. Neither of the women had changed out of their jumpsuits before they slept, a bad habit developed on cargo vessels by longshoremen who often had busy schedules. Both women pulled on their boots. Alia started to tie hers, but the assistant waved his hands frantically, signaling for them to follow silently.

  Katy and Alia followed him out of the room. He led them around a corner and down a short hall to a long-abandoned storage room, only a little larger than a closet. The floor was heavy with dust and stacked with cleaning supplies. At the far end, a second door led to who knew where.

  The assistant only spoke with them once the door was shut behind them. “I can’t stay with you. Will you give me your word that if someone else were to lead the people of St. Justina that you would honor your agreement with Neilson for the export of lithium?”

  Caught off-guard, it took Katy a moment to understand what she was being asked. She hesitated, trying to catch up. “What’s going on?”

  The assistant shook his head. His voice became fierce with fear, and he grabbed her arm. “Will you give me your word?”

  Katy’s brain finally caught up. She stuttered in a fierce whisper. “Ye–yes, of course. Tell me what’s happening!”

  The assistant pushed them toward the far end of the small room. “I have no time. You’re not safe here. You never were. You’ve been a fool to trust Lars Neilson.” The assistant pointed to the door. His face was red, and the tendons in his neck strained at his skin. “That’s the old delivery dock. No one uses it anymore. Leave and then run, just run. And don’t let anyone see you!”

  With one more shove on Katy toward the door, the assistant bolted from the storage room back into the building.

  Alia spoke in a low voice. “What the hell was that?”

  Katy shook her head. “I don’t know, bu
t he was more scared for us than himself, I think. I’m not sure that I’m ready to just bolt out into the desert of Salvador, though. Where are we supposed to go?” Katy walked back to the old-style metal-handled door. The handle didn’t move. She turned around and looked to Alia. “He locked us in.”

  The world turned to sound and fury. Katy was knocked across the room by the metal door as it wrenched inward on its now twisted frame. She hit her head on something, and then everything went black.

  The first thing Katy became aware of was that the side of her head hurt, and the world seemed muffled somehow, as if someone had stuffed thick cloth in her ears, blocking out all sound. Stars swam before her eyes. Someone was tugging on her arm. Alia. She brought her hand to her forehead, and it came away wet. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see motes of dust swirling in glare from the room’s only light, which had somehow miraculously survived the blast.

  A dim popping sound met Katy’s ears as flashes echoed from the hall outside the now open door. Katy recognized the sounds of fletch riflefire, but it sounded kilometers away. It must have been very loud to Alia. Finally, her flight instincts kicked in, and she let Alia drag her upward off the floor. They threw open the back door to the alley and bolted out onto what was once a loading dock. The small room they had occupied was located next to a much larger pair of automated doors on the facility, but they had been ripped apart by the blast. Katy was surprised the building still stood.

  Alia dragged her forward. The loading dock formed a small square in a narrow alley between two of the administrative buildings. There was just enough room to fit two precisely landed standard containers with just a little extra room on one side for a top-loading heavy garbage dumpster. The containers were long gone, but a rusty dumpster still hunkered there, forlorn and dilapidated. At some point, someone had removed its launchers, so there was no chance of flying it out.

  Still pulling Katy by the sleeve, Alia bolted toward it. Katy tried to pull the other direction, preferring to escape down the alley, but then her eyes saw what her damaged ears had not heard—flashes in the street beyond. She turned and bolted with Alia to the dumpster. Two huge sheets of thick steel plate topped it. Alia tried to open it but failed because it was held shut by a restraining bar. She tried to pry open the bar so that she could lift the heavy lid, but even though all the electronics had been skimmed from the flying garbage truck, the bar still held. Katy grabbed Alia by the arm and ran toward the end closest to the loading dock. There was just enough room to squeeze between the dumpster and the dock. As she worked the crank on the manual inspection hatch, Katy decided her hearing must be coming back, either that or the wheel on the small door was making a racket loud enough to wake the dead.

  Katy had just finished and was swinging open the door when Alia pushed at her back, shoving her forward into the dumpster.

  It wasn’t long before even she could hear Neilson’s booming voice arriving on the loading dock above them. “That shithead Gantry tried to kill me! If I ever see him again, he’s going to pay!” She couldn’t say exactly why, but it felt to her that several people, probably men, had walked out onto the dock with Neilson.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll stop those fuckers!”

  Alia had just scrambled into the dumpster behind Katy when she heard several people jump down from the dock into the small loading area. Peering carefully out of the door, Katy couldn’t make out much. Just a pair of military style boots, like those the guards had worn the first time she had arrived on Salvador.

  Neilson continued to rant. “Fucking hell! If I don’t have those girls in custody when Mercer arrives, this whole deal will be off.”

  At the name Mercer, Alia looked up with a start. If Neilson was working with Harvey Mercer, it could only mean one thing: Maximus was involved somehow. Neilson’s behavior suddenly made sense, and that terrified Katy. Neilson had made a deal with Maximus to sell the lithium to them. Katy had no doubt that Chapman had made them part of the deal—no matter what he had or had not guessed about her identity. Torturing or killing some of Soren’s crew would be the perfect revenge for editing his memories. They had to escape or die trying.

  With her hearing now approaching something approximating normal, Katy heard at least one set of boots running back toward the loading dock. “Sir, Gantry’s people have broken through our lines at the end of the alley. They’re going to come this way. Get back inside. We’re going to have to hunker down and fight our way out.”

  “Mother of bloody hell!” cursed Neilson. “Someone get me a fucking gun! And find those girls! They had to come out this door. They can’t have gotten …” Neilson’s words trailed off into silence, punctuated with the sounds of distant weapons fire.

  Katy could feel it. Neilson knew. Up to this point, the boots had been noisy and heedless in the square, but now footsteps echoed purposefully toward the dumpster. Katy grabbed Alia by the shirt and started to drag her back further into the dark safety of the dumpster. It wasn’t wholly dry, and at any other moment Katy might have worried about what foul muck it was that she crawled through, but right now she didn’t care. She only knew that death or worse was a couple of steps from the end of the dumpster.

  One of Neilson’s thugs leaned down and looked into the dumpster behind the long, square barrel of his old maglev fletch rifle. In the dim, Katy could barely make out his face until he reached up and turned on the light mounted on the barrel and blinded them both. “Gotcha!” he said with quiet satisfaction.

  Katy brought her knees up in front of her chest and blocked the light with one hand.

  “Get your hands up where I can see—”

  For the second time in an hour, Katy’s world rattled and shook. The air outside the dumpster turned orange and red as the shock of another explosion washed by. Katy didn’t have time to close her eyes before the whole thing was over.

  The light that had been so carefully aimed to blind her now shone on the thin layer of slime at the bottom of the dumpster. The man who held it lay unmoving, his body twisted at an odd angle, halfway in and halfway out.

  Unlike the explosion in the building, this time Katy and Alia were protected from much of the concussion. Her ears didn’t feel stuffed with cotton, although they were ringing a little. Stunned, Katy sat still, even as the sounds of small-arms fire erupted right near them. Alia scrambled forward and retrieved the weapon from Neilson’s man.

  She made her way back to Katy. “He’s dead.” Alia quickly turned off the light on the barrel of the weapon. She sat with it pointed at the door to the dumpster.

  For the next thirty minutes, Alia and Katy huddled there, while all around them the sounds of battle ebbed and flowed. Katy jumped each time a weapon went off in proximity to the dumpster. More than once, she screamed as the dumpster vibrated around them. Once, weapons fire strafed along the side of the dumpster, and both women found themselves face down on the floor, even though rounds from fletch rifles and stunners had no hope of penetrating the thick steel.

  Most difficult for Katy was the man who lay screaming in pain somewhere just above them. On the hospital ship, the deaths Katy witnessed had been silent—sedatives and nanites had done their part to keep the transition calm and as stress-free for those around the dying patient, but as a doctor, she knew it all to be a construct. More than a few times in her virtual training, the patient she saved in intraspace had entered her care screaming and thrashing as simulated pain wracked an artificial body.

  Here in battle for real, the moans and sharp cries of a man dying on the loading dock above her was like running the sharp edges of her nerves across a spinning grinder. For the most part, he moaned incoherently, but in his moments of lucidity, he cried out his wish not to die. Every time he did so, Katy felt her body twitch. At one point, she rocked forward a little, ready to bolt out into the sporadic hail of death to try and help him.

  Momentarily letting go of her grip on the rifle, Alia grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard. She whispered stiffly, “You
can’t go out there. You can’t save him. Not now.”

  Feeling a lump form in her throat, Katy nodded and swallowed.

  By the end, Katy’s hands were shaking. She wasn’t exactly sure how long it had been and, for a while she and Alia huddled there in a trance, staring at the ground in front of them, unwilling to believe that the gunfire would not come again. Eventually Katy emerged into the present and, shaking her head a little to clear it, looked around. The body of Neilson’s man still lay curled unnaturally around the doorframe of the service hatch. Slowly, Katy released herself from Alia’s grip and crawled toward the man’s body.

  Her stomach flipped over. What’s your problem, Katy? You’ve seen dead people before. Sensing the judgment of her own thoughts, Katy stopped. For a second, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Come on, Katy! You cut open hundreds of computer-generated cadavers in training!

  She breathed again, creating a space for herself separate from her thoughts.

  Yes, but none of the cadavers wanted to kill me.

  Katy opened her eyes, now ready to do what needed to be done, but first she sat still, listening for any sound nearby that might indicate an ambush. The immediate sounds of fighting had passed on from the small loading area, but they hadn’t gone too far. It was still difficult to hear any small sounds that might indicate someone was waiting for them.

  She sat back, wondering if it might be better to stay put.

  Katy looked at Alia, who had crawled forward with her, to see what she thought. Making eye contact, Katy raised her eyebrows and gave Alia a half shrug.

  Still holding the weapon, Alia pointed toward the door with a tip of her head. Leaning forward, she whispered, “We’ve got to take the risk. They know we’re in here. If the other guys beat them back for now, it doesn’t mean they’re going to hold them off. We have to get away before they can come back for us. You heard what they said about Mercer. If Maximus is behind this, we’re in trouble. Chapman would kill us in a heartbeat.”