Breach of Containment

by Elizabeth Bonesteel

  Chapter 65

  There was darkness, and there was warmth, and sometimes in the depths there were voices. And at some point, she realized she was not dead.

  Elena heard Bear’s voice often, deep and gentle, just as it had been when he had met her in the airlock. She thought at first he was her guide, the one who would lead her to wherever she was going; surely if this were the real, living Bear, he would be shouting at her for something instead of being kind. But she never caught words, and she did not seem to be going anywhere, and the warmth and darkness did not change.

  She began to notice other voices: one, light and feminine—that had to be Jessica. Not as gentle as Bear, but sharper and full of anxiety. She heard her mother, clear and practical: Don’t worry about us. We are fine. We’ll see you soon. Elena wondered who we meant. Then there was another, gravelly and broken here and there, that she thought might be Bob Hastings, and that was when it occurred to her that she might be alive.

  Why would he be with my mother? she thought, and let her mind drift for a while. There was a lot to be said for warmth and safety and soothing voices.

  Eventually she began to feel something heavy against one leg, something odd and warm and outside of herself, like nothing she had felt in the soothing darkness. She had a leg, and she could feel it, and it was held down with gravity onto something firm. The heavy thing moved, and she began to wonder if she could move her leg as well, and she wondered why she would have a leg in this place, and her ankle twitched and the rest of her body began to come into focus: spine and back and arms and neck and the other leg, which had nothing heavy against it but was far less comfortable.

  She woke long enough for Bob to ask her name, and to tell her that her mission had succeeded. She wanted to ask if they’d rescued anyone else—if they’d retrieved Mika, who just wanted to go skiing, or any of the others. But all her mind could form were single words, and the first word she could think of was “Earth?”

  Bob’s lips had thinned. “Fourteen thousand dead,” he told her, “and probably more yet to be counted. But it could have been a lot worse.”

  And he had told her that Syncos Relay was up and running, if only temporarily, and showed her a message from her mother, who was as brisk and cheerful as always. “Don’t worry about us,” she said at the end of it. “We are fine. We’ll see you soon.” And then: “I love you, Elena.”

  Somewhat to her surprise, Elena had burst into tears. Bob told her that was the concussion, and stayed with her until she fell asleep again.

  The next several days passed quickly for Elena, in cycles of heavy darkness and moments of lucidity. The dark, comforting dreams she’d had when she was unconscious deserted her in favor of heavy, torpid sleep, and often it was only the discomfort of spending all that time on her back that woke her up. She had tried, at one point, turning onto her left side; her back had sighed with relief, but the pain in her right hip was so severe she had to lie flat again. Mehitabel, disturbed by this, had stalked briefly up to Elena’s face and knocked her nose disapprovingly against Elena’s chin. Elena had lifted one arm to scratch the cat on the head, and was immediately treated to purrs and forgiveness.

  She saw no one but Bob in those times, and after the third or fourth window of wakefulness, she began to wonder at what he was wearing. Medical staff were allowed some leeway, but Bob had always been strictly military as far as his clothing was concerned. When he was up for long stretches with patients he sometimes took off his jacket, but she had no explanation for his prolonged appearances in only an undershirt. Black, as well: still regulation, but as a rule Galileo’s crew generally went with white. She kept meaning to ask him, but Bob tended to monopolize their conversations, giving her cognitive quizzes and asking how she was feeling. And her brain was sluggish, still shaking off the coma. Bob assured her it was normal, and that she would recover; but in the meantime it was making it hard for her to figure out what was going on.

  The fifth time she woke up, Jessica was there, and she, too, was wearing a black tank top over her uniform trousers. She was also beautiful and familiar and exactly who Elena needed to see, and Elena spent a few minutes crying at the sight of her. She was beginning to wonder if that tendency would ever pass.

  “Why,” she asked, when they had both finished crying, “is everyone out of uniform?”

  “Ah.” Jessica met Bob’s eyes over the bed, then looked back at Elena. “That’s complicated.”

  “No it isn’t,” Bob said, and Elena thought he sounded annoyed.

  Jessica sighed, and looked back down at Elena. “Okay, then. I’ll try to keep it simple.” She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I’ll try to keep it short. The Admiralty knew that Athena Relay was going to be destroyed. Maybe not the whole Admiralty, but more than enough of them, and they let all of those people die anyway. And when Meridia streamed the vid out of Indus Station, the Admiralty tried to act like they’d been in on the whole thing. Taking credit. People are kind of . . . irritable about it. Pissed off.”

  Good Lord, had they all been fired? “How pissed off?”

  Jessica cleared her throat. “Well. You know about Greg, don’t you?”

  She didn’t. But when Jessica told her, she realized on some level she had already known. “Is that why he hasn’t come to see me?” she asked.

  “No, that’s why I haven’t come to see you,” Jessica said. “It’s been fucking insane here. Greg . . .” She sighed. “He’s had a rough time of it since Bayandi.”

  Even post-concussion, Elena knew an excuse when she heard one. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “I think he does, Lanie. I think he just doesn’t know what he’d say.”

  That makes two of us, she thought. “So, wait. Never mind Greg.” Greg, she thought, she would manage, eventually. She would find him, and sit with him, and they would claw at each other until they figured out what they were to each other again. Same as always. “The crew. What’s happened?”

  “See, it’s sort of the same thing, really,” Jessica said, and Elena recognized her friend’s habit of beating around the bush when she was nervous about the reception she was going to get. “Because the crew feels sort of set up and betrayed by the Admiralty, and they see what Greg did, and they’ve—well, not all of them, but a lot of them, enough of them, really, that it’d probably work—they’ve been wondering, if it works for him, maybe it’d work for them. For us.”

  Elena replayed that in her head a few times. “You’re telling me two hundred and twenty-six people are planning to resign their commissions?”

  “It’s still under discussion,” Jessica told her. “And it’s more like a hundred and sixty or so, although the others are not so much disagreeing with the idea, just wanting to handle it differently.”

  “But that’s only—” Her recovering brain could not do math. “That doesn’t leave enough people. What about Galileo?”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” Jessica said. “They’re kind of thinking . . . Galileo could come with us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It makes sense, really, if you think about it,” Jessica said rapidly. “And even the people staying think it’s a good idea. It’s just that they haven’t given up on the Corps, and it’s never a bad idea to have good soldiers, is it? And it’s not like we’d be the enemy. There is no enemy, really, except maybe Olam, and a few other of those colonies, although some of the big ones have already publicly denounced Olam and are throwing their weight behind Central Gov. Shenzhu, Volhynia—”

  “Jessie.” She didn’t think her muddled head was the problem. “What has happened?”

  “Oh.” Jessica seemed to realize she had skipped the point. “Sorry. It’s—we’ve been discussing it with Meridia, and, well, for the moment, at least, the plan is to keep our crew, take Galileo, and join PSI.”

  Elena let that sentence sit in her mind until she understood all of the words. And then, despite the pain in her head, she began to laugh, and she
laughed until she was crying again.

  Epilogue

  Yakutsk

  “Already have one of those,” Dallas said.

  “Bullshit,” said Rankine. “I came looking yesterday and you had fuck-all.”

  Dallas shrugged. “Had a good afternoon.” And smiled.

  Rankine rolled her eyes, cursed a few more times, and finally agreed to sell the part for twelve. Dallas counted out the hard currency and, as Rankine was leaving, recorded it in the ledger and pushed the update to the others. Transparency, Dallas was learning, was the best way to keep the peace.

  Jamyung’s parts yard would, eventually, be sold to whoever wanted to buy out the public claim; but in the meantime, Dallas and six of the others had taken over the space, keeping the business going until either someone came up with the money to buy it, or they decided to dismantle it. Dismantling it, Dallas had discovered, would be unfortunate; in the weeks since the near-disaster with Chryse, a number of small freighters and passenger ships had stopped at Smolensk, attracted, Dallas realized, by the novelty. And nearly every ship had stopped by Jamyung’s looking for parts, expecting either quality, obscure inventory, or both. Dallas had taken two days sorting through everything in the yard as well as in the basement, meticulously cataloging what had originally lived only in Jamyung’s head. There were a staggering number of strange and expensive parts, and that, coupled with the reputation that Jamyung had apparently built, meant the business was worth a great deal indeed.

  But Dallas, who could afford to buy it, did not want it.

  Jessica had not stayed long, but Dallas had shared at least as many stories as she had. Jessica talked about her childhood, and her big family, and how she still missed the damp, sweltering nights of Tengri’s summers. Dallas told her about sneaking out to the moon’s surface at night, when the parents had all been asleep, and getting caught curled up just outside the airlock in the morning. Their stories, Dallas thought, were the same, despite the differences. Hot and cold. That, Dallas decided, was why they got along so well.

  Dallas talked to Jessica about Jamyung’s business. “Feel like I owe him,” Dallas had told her at last.

  “You owe him respect,” she had said, curled up with Dallas on the small, comfortable bed. “You owe him memory. He deserves to have someone run his business who loves it as much as he did.”

  Dallas wasn’t sure Jamyung had, strictly speaking, loved the business, but there were a dozen scavengers who would take over the yard with enthusiasm. And so a number of them had organized, and were sorting through all of Jamyung’s spotty records before deciding a fair valuation for the place.

  One for one seemed to be falling by the wayside.

  Change, of course, was going to be neither linear nor smooth. Gladkoff was awaiting charges of conspiracy to commit murder, although Dallas thought his claim of ignorance was possibly going to work. Already there were people in the streets suggesting that Gladkoff was clearly a dupe, that nobody that stupid could be guilty of conspiring to do anything. The charge of murdering Blair had a better chance of sticking, especially since Jessica had recorded her eyewitness testimony before Galileo had departed. But once again, Dallas thought Gladkoff’s stupidity defense might work. After all, a corporate drone wouldn’t have any experience dealing with a Smolensk coup attempt.

  I’m sorry, Martine. Dallas owed her memory, too.

  Villipova had already escaped charges, arguing with her usual icy aplomb that she had believed Gladkoff’s intentions, and that her parts examiner—Dallas—had found the problem in time to stop the calamity. Dallas didn’t see her grip on power loosening anytime soon . . . but still, there were signs. More people made jokes about her in public. And some people were talking about open elections and even running for office. It was possible Villipova would handle the noise with another purge, and the other potential candidates would unaccountably find themselves outside. But Dallas allowed—just a little—for some hope that things might actually change.

  Dallas checked the time: nearly 1:00. Thirteen hundred. Dallas would never hear military time again without thinking of Jessica, and her bright hair, and her smile, and her inexplicable ebullience in the face of what looked, to an outsider, like the collapse of Central Gov. “When you grow up with half your cousins dying every spring,” she had declared, “little things like a government shake-up don’t seem like a big deal.”

  Perspective, Dallas supposed, and opened a comm line. “Friederich, what the fuck?”

  Friederich connected. “Relax, Dallas. I’m not even five minutes late.”

  “Not yet. Where are you?”

  “Around the corner. Ran into Rankine, pissing in my ear about what a skinflint you are. Channeling Jamyung now?”

  Dallas laughed. “She’ll be back tomorrow, trying to sell more crap. Hurry up. I’ve got things to do.”

  Dallas took ten minutes to update Friederich on the inventory and accounting, then left the man to look after the yard for the rest of the afternoon.

  Slipping into an env suit and boots was reflexive for Dallas, as easy as breathing, and just as essential. Walking the two blocks to the northside airlock, Dallas double-checked the seals and opened the door at the end of the passive corridor. With a lurch of the stomach, Dallas was outside, body light, feet anchored firmly, the light of the city suddenly dim and unimportant.

  Stars.

  Scavenging had always been fun for Dallas, with the pleasures of both hunting and discovery. But as a child, even a very small one, Dallas had loved best that first step outside the airlock door, when there was nothing but the dome beside you and the stars above. It was a moment of solitude, of insignificance, of eternity, and it always made Dallas feel whole and content and serene.

  Fuck terraformers. This is my home.

  And Dallas stomped out onto the dusty surface, in search of parts to sell.

  GALILEO

  “Please, Bob?”

  “No.”

  “Half an hour. No longer. I promise.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I’m going crazy in here.”

  “A week ago you were unconscious,” Bob scolded, “and I thought I was going to lose you. You need to stay in bed and heal, Elena. They’ll all be out there when you’re better.”

  She needed his help. She thought she could sit up on her own, but there was no way she could make it across the room to a wheelchair in the state she was in. She had tried, earlier that day, when he had left for lunch; it had taken her longer to get back into bed than it had to discover that her weak legs and still-damaged hip could not hold her up.

  He was glaring at her, stubborn and fixed, worried for her because he loved her. She hadn’t wanted to resort to manipulation, but he left her no choice.

  “I need to see him, Bob,” she told him quietly. It had the virtue of being the truth.

  His eyes changed first, but it wasn’t until he looked away from her that she knew she had him. “Twenty minutes,” he said. “No longer. You need rest, Elena.”

  Ted came by to help her comb her hair. She had tried combing it herself, but despite most of her fine motor control returning, she still had trouble with snarls, and pulling against her scalp was excruciating. Ted was careful, and managed to remove all the tangles without pulling at all. She caught him, at one point, holding a bicolored curl, twisting the blue and the brown around his finger.

  “You should have done this years ago,” he told her. “The blue is pretty.”

  “Have I told you how much I missed you?”

  He grinned at her. “Not often enough.”

  He stayed while she got dressed. She changed everything she was wearing down to her underwear, just to feel different. Wearing all black felt normal, natural; leaving behind the colors of Budapest felt like casting off chains. Her hair annoyed her. Ted had evened out the length, but it was too short to pull back and too long to stay out of her eyes. She should cut it short, or just shave it off; but long hair made her think of her mother, and
she had always thought of it as good luck.

  The act of preparation nearly exhausted her, but when Bob guided the wheelchair to the side of her bed, she gave him a confident smile and swung her legs over. God, she was weak. Her mind remembered being able to stand, to run, to fight, but her body was weak as tissue, unable to manage even the smallest task unaided. Bob had assured her it would pass, but every day that went by she found herself more and more frustrated. She needed to see the outside world, and her friends. She needed to see Greg, see him smile or yell or avoid her or whatever he was going to do. She needed to know what normal was going to look like from now on.

  She settled into the chair, her hip complaining, and smiled up at Bob and Ted. “Victory!” she said. Ted smiled; Bob frowned.

  “Twenty minutes,” the doctor repeated. “I will come and find you, Elena.”

  She looked up at Ted. Get me out of here, she thought at him. Their years of working together paid off; he flashed her a smile. “No worries, doc,” he said as he began pushing her toward the door. “She’ll be safe as houses.”

  The hallway outside the infirmary was deserted, but her eyes took in the pale walls, the darker floor, the high ceiling with its diffuse lighting, and she felt buoyant. She was home. She was staying. There was no more reason to leave, no more reason to try to be something she was not. She could have her ship, and nothing else mattered.

  Except, of course, the things that did.

  She leaned her head back and looked up at Ted. “Can I work for you?” she asked. “When I’m better?”

  She knew he had been thinking about it. Ted wouldn’t have said anything to her, or to Jessica, or to anyone else; but she knew him, and she knew he had ambitions. She also knew how good he was at his job, and how good he believed she was at hers. He would not have made any assumptions . . . but he would have hopes.

  He kept his eyes on the hallway before them. “Truth is, Lanie, I’d feel a little weird bossing you around.”