Breach of Containment

by Elizabeth Bonesteel

  Elena thought her mother would argue, but instead she only said, “You need to hurry.”

  Elena pushed herself into the room and looked around. Mika’s uniform was too fitted to hook anything into it; Elena would need to find something she could loop around the woman, something she could use to drag her. Spying a cabinet, she pulled it open and found a long cabled loop of temporary lighting. She pulled out a length and tugged experimentally; she’d have to double it, but it might be strong enough. Her hands were shaking, and she was grateful her plan required no fine work.

  She doubled the loop and ran it around Mika’s chest and under her armpits, then ran it around her own waist, threading it through a loop in her trousers. She took an experimental step and had to stop, gasping; Mika’s weight pulled at her hip, and Elena could feel things giving inside of her that weren’t supposed to be moving at all. But she didn’t lose consciousness; indeed, the motes grew no worse. Whether that was a good sign or a bad one, she didn’t know.

  Her lurching was much less efficient, but she managed to keep Mika sliding along behind her, still unconscious. Or possibly dead—it hadn’t occurred to Elena to check, and there was no time now to stop. Why does it matter? a part of herself asked. Because it does, came the answer, and she nearly laughed when she realized that was all the logic she had left.

  She could feel it in the wall, every step she took, every time she slid her palm forward: the station was coming apart. The vibrations were becoming stronger, and a rhythm was taking over: pressure was building, trying to escape, and eventually it would find a way, taking them all to pieces.

  She turned a corner, and forty meters ahead she saw the airlock door. Her heart actually leapt when she saw it: she would have her stars after all. “I don’t know how to open it,” she said.

  “Hang on,” her mother said, and ran ahead of them. She did something Elena couldn’t see, and the inner airlock door slid open. The outer door was translucent, but the hallway was too bright for her to make out many stars from here.

  She would have to go out. She would see better when she went out.

  Twenty steps, then ten; and then she was dragging Mika into the little room. She unhooked the makeshift harness and fell forward, hands on the airlock door. She blinked into the darkness, and they came into focus: all those tiny lights, a million million suns, places she had never been, would never see. Peaceful, eternal, welcoming, giving her warmth and company all of her life, since she was a little girl. Do you remember, she wanted to ask her mother, when I told you I wanted to sleep on the roof? You said no, and I was so angry. And you put in a skylight in my room, and I slept under the stars anyway. You never told me I was silly. You never told me I was wrong. My first memory, Mama. My last memory, too.

  She was on the floor. She glanced up at the wall; the airlock controls were above her, out of her reach. This would have to be enough, then. She let herself slump against the door, and put her palm against it. Insulated against the vacuum: she couldn’t feel the cold. She knew the cold would be too harsh for her, uncomfortable, but she felt a pang of regret. So close. So close . . .

  The light crept into the corners of her vision, and brightened until she couldn’t see. She blinked against it, hearing voices around her; someone was talking over the comms system. Warnings, instructions, something; the usual cacophony of disaster, of people denying the inevitable. Stars, she thought. Stars.

  And then a shadow appeared in the light, and she blinked at it. Not her mother this time. Someone much larger, much wider, and when she saw the light reflecting off of a bald head, she knew. “Bear,” she said, and smiled. “I didn’t think it would be you.” She supposed it was all right, that it was Bear. Maybe it meant he had forgiven her. Maybe it meant she had forgiven herself.

  “Be still, Lanie,” he said.

  He looked worried. How strange, she thought. He shouldn’t worry. Everything’s all right now. “Everything’s all right now,” she said, trying to reassure him.

  “Hush.” He was reaching out toward her, but she couldn’t feel anything. “I’ve got you. I’ve got her,” he added, and she wondered who he was talking to.

  She kept looking at his head, covered in intricate tattoos. She had thought they were all abstract, but here, in this bright light, she thought she could see faces in there as well. She had always meant to ask him about them, to find out what they meant to him, but it had seemed such a personal question. “Do you know,” she said, “you have the most beautiful head I’ve ever seen.”

  “Don’t talk,” he said shortly.

  “My uncle thought I’d be scared of you,” she told him, thinking back to their first meeting. “But you weren’t scary at all. You treated me just like everybody else.” She frowned. “Do you know, I don’t think anybody had ever done that for me before? Just treated me like a regular mechanic. Not like some stupid kid playing at being an adult. And then your pilot did that awful inversion, on purpose just to get at me, and made me throw up. I was so mad.”

  “Sweetheart.” There was something strange in his voice. “Be still. Don’t move, honey.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she told him. “It’s nice to see you, Bear. I didn’t think it would be you, but I’m glad it is.” She wasn’t sure her words were coming out of her mouth as clearly as they sounded in her head. “I should have thanked you earlier, you know. For helping me. For giving me a place to go, and a purpose. I should have thanked a lot of people. There’s never any time.”

  Bear was shouting at someone, and she could see other silhouettes behind him, and she was getting so tired. She couldn’t see her mother anymore, but that was all right; she was here with her friends, and there were stars, even if she couldn’t see them anymore. She was warm. She was safe. She was home.

  “Tell Greg,” she said, and that was all.

  Chapter 58

  Yakutsk

  “Commander?” Jessica said into her comm.

  “We’re moving,” Emily Broadmoor said. “He’s on the other side of the moon.” There was a pause. “Captain . . . we’re not going to make it in time. Once we get there, if we shoot him down, the debris will shred the whole place.”

  “You’ve got to try anyway!” Jessica shouted. “At least there’s a chance.”

  “Commander Broadmoor is right,” Bayandi said. He was sounding more detached. “I will be far too close by then. If I . . .” He fell silent.

  “Can you self-destruct, Bayandi?” There was nothing, and she rounded on Gladkoff. “Turn it off!” she shouted at him.

  “I—” He still looked confused. “This makes no sense. The nukes and the comms were linked. I turn off the nukes, the comms compulsion goes off.”

  “Did you write the programming,” Jessica asked, “or did they?”

  “They wouldn’t set me up like that.” He sounded so certain.

  “If Chryse crashes into this moon,” she said, “there’s a good chance her logic core will survive, not to mention her other components. Not as good as having Bayandi whole and operating, but a whole lot better than nothing. You’re expendable, Gladkoff. Just like the rest of us.” She turned to Dallas. “We need to get this comms system shut down.”

  “If it’s dumped programming into him,” Dallas said, “it won’t matter.”

  “We have to do something!” she shouted. Furiously she began rummaging through the system that had become so familiar to her. “Gladkoff, are you sure these nukes are off-line?”

  “I—I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  They want Chryse. They don’t want a heap of radioactive melted metal. “Help me shut this shit down,” she snapped at him.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You installed it!”

  “They gave me plans. They—”

  “Then use the brains you were born with and reverse-engineer what you did!” She began terminating connections, severing each line to the outgoing telemetry. But every time she took one out, another one sprouted. This thing is a fuckin
g Hydra. Beside her, Dallas was doing the same with what appeared to be slightly more success; the outgoing stream was growing thinner.

  Even with Dallas’s skill, they would never make it in time.

  “Dallas, is there a dome breach alarm? Some kind of siren we could sound to let everyone know to jump into their suits?”

  “In Villipova’s office.”

  “Go,” she said. “Trigger it. I’m going to shut down the power to this whole installation.” She glared at Gladkoff, daring him to challenge her. “You may want to find a suit somewhere,” she said to him.

  “So might you,” Dallas pointed out.

  “Unless you have a better idea, go set off that alarm!” she shouted. Dallas fled, and she kept terminating connections; she was getting ahead of the tide, but not by much. “Bayandi?”

  “I cannot stop.” He sounded misty, like a sleepwalker. “I cannot stop.”

  “Hang on,” she told him.

  A moment later a klaxon sounded, through the air and over the comm system. How long does it take people to get into env suits? How long will the air last once I pull the power on this thing? No time for calculations. No time for safety margins.

  She looked up; directly above them, growing larger against the dark sky, was the bright shape of Chryse, listing drunkenly toward the surface, aimless and deadly.

  First day of command, and probably the last.

  She shut down the power.

  Chapter 59

  Budapest

  The employees of Indus Station may or may not have been loyal to Ellis, but they had no qualms about getting the hell off of a station about to explode. Greg was ready for them, a pulse rifle in his hand as he opened the door to the airlock.

  “Back the hell off!” he shouted at the crowd. “One at a time, in the door, until I say stop. There are ships behind me. Anybody tries to bring a weapon, I blow this shuttle right here and take out your airlock with it. Understood?”

  There was still shoving and shouting, but they managed to push onto the shuttle no more than two at a time. Greg had no idea what the vehicle’s official capacity was. He would take as many as would fit, and count on the autopilot if he found himself unable to get back to the pilot’s seat.

  They were about half full when he heard from Savosky. “I’ve got her,” the freighter captain said, but something in his voice made Greg’s stomach drop.

  “Savosky?”

  Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one . . . the ship was filling up. He would have to shut the door soon, and that would not go over well.

  “Savosky, is she alive?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But it’s bad, Foster. Hurry the fuck up.”

  Greg looked into his shuttle: packed. He turned to the people still in the airlock. “There’s a ship right behind me,” he promised, hoping Meridia’s shuttle was close. “Hang on.” There were protests, and pushing. He had to pry hands off the hull in order to get the door closed, and they cursed him from the other side. His other passengers stood, crushed together, many stunned, some looking sick, some staring in anguish at the door.

  “Can’t you—” someone began.

  “We’ll get everyone we can,” he promised. “But I have to get us out of here so the next ship can come in, understand?” He had the autopilot decouple and launch, then pushed his way to the front of the shuttle. By the time he reached the pilot’s seat—nearly hidden by the crush of people huddled against the walls and on the floor—they had dropped away from the station and were speeding back to Budapest. Behind him, some people began to argue; the shouts grew too loud for him to ignore. He hit the internal comms, making sure his voice was amplified. “Shut up, all of you, or I’ll open that door right here!”

  In the moment, he thought he’d do it.

  They reached Budapest, and he had the door open before the shuttle hit the deck. “Out, quickly,” he said. “Arin, how much longer before it blows?”

  “Four minutes, eight seconds,” Arin said.

  Greg turned the shuttle around, spilling the last few people unceremoniously to the ground, and sped out through the atmospheric barrier. He might have time for one more run. He might have time to save a few more.

  It’s bad, Foster.

  If he couldn’t save her, he could save someone.

  Meridia’s shuttle was pulling away as he got back to the station. “Two minutes, twelve seconds,” Arin told him. Greg connected with the airlock and opened the door; there were mercifully few people standing there.

  “Get in now!” he shouted, waving at them. He’d worry about disarming them later. “Twenty seconds and these doors shut. Get moving!” He headed back toward the pilot’s seat, not watching what they were doing.

  He had no idea if they’d be able to get far enough away.

  “Full power the moment that door seals,” he told the shuttle, and a few seconds later he was thrown to the floor, the artificial gravity unable to keep up with the inertial shock of speeding away from the dying station.

  And then Indus blew.

  Greg grabbed the arm of the pilot’s seat, half blinded by the explosion, and he wondered for a moment if it would engulf them, if brightness would be the end of all of it. He was flung forward as the shuttle pitched, caught from behind by the blast wave; they spun, the engines struggling to compensate, and he could not see Budapest or Meridia or even the stars.

  Chapter 60

  Yakutsk

  Dallas had always been prepared to die on Yakutsk’s surface, victim of an env suit leak or an air supply problem, or even one of Villipova’s purges, which occasionally encompassed scavengers. But Smolensk—the dome itself—had always seemed invulnerable, impenetrable. Eternal safe haven.

  Stupid.

  For a few moments, Dallas thought the light was getting brighter, more blinding, that Chryse was filling the sky, blocking out the darkness, an instant away from crashing through the invulnerable windows, depriving them of air before destroying Smolensk in a flash of bright fire; and then Dallas heard the voice coming from Jessica’s comm, no longer cloudy, no longer distracted. “I believe, Commander Lockwood,” Bayandi said, “that I can control my ship again.”

  Dallas heard the familiar roaring whine of a sublight engine engaging, and the light receded, and all that was visible through the windows of the dome were the dark night and the shrinking outline of Chryse’s pale hull. Dallas could hear, distantly, the cheers from outside, and next to Jessica Gladkoff had collapsed against the wall, sinking to the floor.

  Alive. A wave of relief and euphoria swept through Dallas, and Jessica was standing right there, and impulsively Dallas hugged her, shouting her name, and she kept saying, “I can’t believe that worked,” and over her shoulder Dallas could see the dome’s backup kick in, activating their old air handlers, leaving Gladkoff’s new system inert.

  Bayandi had been freed.

  When the captain spoke again, his voice came over the general comms, echoing throughout the dome. Dallas supposed he was speaking to Baikul as well, and probably all of the people on the surface, their endless civil war interrupted by the sight of a starship descending to destroy them.

  “Gladkoff,” Bayandi said, “you may tell your employers that your task has failed.” He sounded imperious, dismissive, and very, very angry. “To the people of Yakutsk, I extend my personal apologies. While my guidance systems were, in fact, under the control of Ellis Systems and not myself, I take full responsibility for allowing them to take control of Chryse. There has been loss of life.” Bayandi fell silent for a moment. “For that I cannot atone.”

  No, Dallas thought. You can’t. But Dallas thought Martine would have forgiven him.

  “But I would suggest that you remember this day, and remember that all of you together fought this threat. You have seen, for so long, two sides: Smolensk and Baikul. From what I have seen of you, from what I have learned of you, I would say there is only Yakutsk. You have lived here for hundreds of years. You have built homes and businesses. You are known
throughout the sector for skill, talent, and ingenuity. And I would say to you, as an old man who has seen more than you have . . . war is lazy. War is an easy answer. Perhaps, after this day, you might consider trying something else.”

  When Bayandi spoke again, his voice was only in the env room. “Gladkoff. You are there?”

  Gladkoff’s skin was damp and shiny, and he was still catching his breath. “Yes.”

  “Your station is destroyed.”

  Dallas didn’t know what Bayandi was talking about, but Gladkoff clearly did. He nodded. “I understand.”

  “Many of the employees were saved. The events were vid-streamed by Meridia, and are currently being rebroadcast throughout the sector. Ellis cannot play the benign savior any longer.”

  That seemed to bring Gladkoff back. “The nukes were supposed to be a bluff,” he said, crestfallen. “I would have died with the rest of them if you’d crashed into this rock. Why would they do that to me? What was the purpose?”

  Dallas thought the purpose was obvious.

  “I don’t know the ways of the amoral, Gladkoff,” Bayandi said. “But in your shoes, I would be seeking a different employer. In fact, I might consider not going home again.”

  Gladkoff blinked. “I did everything they asked.” He was beginning to get angry; he looked, Dallas thought, more human than he had since the moment Dallas had met him. “They can’t do this to me.”

  Under whose jurisdiction? Jessica had asked, when Dallas had suggested prosecuting Gladkoff. “I’d be more worried about what we’re going to do to you.”

  Jessica still had her arms around Dallas. She smelled rather pleasantly of soap and flowers, and a little bit of Yakutsk’s persistent red dust. When Dallas spoke she let go and took a step back, becoming professional again. “As a Corps representative,” she said to Dallas, “I would like to officially request that you try this man under your current justice system.”