by Barry Kirwan
***
The final wave of applause sputtered to a close as people quit their seats. Micah watched Kane stride to the front exit to press the fatty palms of his wealthy guests, sending them on their way to visit the rest of Eden Mission Control; every handshake worth millions of credits.
Micah watched the security guards depart, and leant back in his chair, guessing it must have been some kind of false alarm. He flicked off all the monitors except one. Antonia’s backless, low-cut silver dress clung to her as she stood up, hair held high with a gold clasp. He touched her image on the screen with the tip of his finger, then drew it back, trying to ignore her depressingly handsome escort, looking instead for any sign that she was unhappy, that something was missing from her life, but saw none. Who am I kidding? Rudi’s right. She’s class, and I’m..."
The comms screen flashed on. "Nice work, Sanderson," Vastra said. "Just spare me the fucking down-to-the-wire heart attack next time, okay?" He cut off without waiting for an answer.
"You’re welcome." He watched everyone leaving, and gave up on the heart rate monitor. It was useless now, and Security was down there.
Facing the opposite wall, his gaze fell upon the solitary poster of the four Ulysses astronauts standing at the Zeus I airlock, helmets in hands. He tried to imagine himself there too, a fifth astronaut. Like thousands of others, he’d taken the entrance exams as soon as he was twenty-one. The psy-profile had screened him out: over-analytical. He’d thought about that evaluation a lot, not missing the irony. At least they’d given him a job. He remembered what Rudi had said one day.
"Micah, with you the glass isn’t just half empty. You think the liquid is wrong because your life is a beer glass, but you want champagne."
Maybe he was right. Micah stood up and stretched. Now that his mind was free of the holo-presentation, he returned to the problem he’d been wrestling with the past few weeks: the missing lighthouse markers in the recent Ulysses data streams. If the third one was no longer there, it could spell trouble for the astronauts. He left the Media Lab, as if discarding an old shoe. Rudi’s right. I don’t know why I do this. Eager to immerse himself back in Dataland as they called it, he headed off to join Rudi in the Optron Lab.
***
Gabriel scanned the holorium using his sighter’s fish-eye mode as the last of the delegates, attendants and security left, Kane shooing them onwards until he was alone. The hit was imminent, but Gabriel could see no one. Kane paced a little then made a call on his wristcom. Just in case it was relevant, Gabriel activated his eavesdropper. It only picked up Kane’s side of the conversation.
"We need to meet... Yes, I have it... No, not on an open line... Very well… Tonight... late… let’s say midnight... Don’t worry, I’ll be alone."
Kane flicked off his wristcom and spun around towards the exit, to catch up with his entourage.
The tiniest flicker of movement caught Gabriel’s eye in a darkened and disused glass-fronted control booth on the right side of the holorium. It had been his own back-up choice as sniper location. The woman, from what he could see of the side of her face, had waited till the last moment. He used his sighter to auto-zoom in. The woman’s eye met the sighting-glass of her pulse rifle, forefinger curling around the trigger. Gabriel flexed his tongue against his lower gum, and a red spot appeared on her left temple. As he heard Kane grab the exit door handle, he clicked his teeth, fast. There was no recoil. The laser pulse passed straight through the glass booth window with minimal refraction. A black hole of charred flesh, the size of a small coin, burst open where the spot had been, accompanied by a wisp of grey smoke. The woman slumped on the table she’d rested her rifle on, then slid silently out of sight, the weapon toppling after her. He hadn’t been sure if the booth had been soundproof, but was relieved to find that it was.
The holorium doors closed behind Kane and the lights dimmed. Gabriel de-activated the gravitics and fell, twisting like a cat to land on all fours. He sprang up and raced to the side wall, to the sealed control booth. Forcing open a panel, he entered the tiny room to find her spread-eagled on the floor, eyes glassy green.
All assassins knew this fate awaited them sooner or later. He rested his right palm on her forehead, closing her eye-lids with a fluid stroke of his fingers. "Be at peace now, your part is over. Rejoin the river." He said it in Tibetan, incanting their shortest prayer for the dead.
He searched her matt black clothes and her body for any signs of her origin or who she worked for, not expecting to find anything; she was clearly a professional. On instinct, he pulled up her tunic and checked her waistline for a clan assassin’s tattoo, but saw no mark. Gloves off, he ran his fingers around her lower waist. He encountered a rougher layer of flesh above one hip. A stenciled tattoo had been erased, though not without leaving a trace of the yoga mudra symbol. So, she was from Indistan, most likely ethnic but gene-altered to render her skin white and her hair blonde, though her eyes should have remained brown. He re-opened one eye-lid and placed a finger-tip on her eye-ball, dislodging the tinted contact lens.
Satisfied, he heaved her limp frame over his left shoulder, carrying her rifle in his other hand, and headed towards a nearby maintenance shaft leading to the furnaces, seven floors underground. As he opened the hatchway to the vertical shaft, a gust of hot air greeted him. He wondered if she had climbed up it to get into the booth, since the only other way in was through a heavily secured area. He inhaled deeply, but smelt no traces of sweat from her body. Not good. Unlike him, she’d had inside help, which meant Kane was still in danger. He tapped in a coded message: target not safe, and waited.
Gabriel’s wristcom twitched three times: return to base. He would be instructed to kill again. He launched the corpse into the shaft, re-activated his boots and gloves, and descended, ignoring the searing heat. He recalled Kane’s last words -- a meeting tonight, at midnight. His instincts told him that whoever had arranged this hit would do all in their power to make sure the meeting never took place.
Chapter 2
Ulysses
Kat heard the footfalls pounding behind her, getting louder, closing. She sprinted towards the Lander, cropped black hair glistening with sweat, muscular arms punching through the gritty breeze. Her slate-grey eyes remained locked onto the desert terrain five meters ahead, like she’d learned in the Falklands. She dared not look back, partly because she might trip, but more because she would freeze if she saw it bearing down on her. Two hundred meters. The open hatch promised sanctuary. Zack – be there!
She ran full throttle, clutching her helmet in her right hand. She’d seen the scalpel-sharp claws: one slash and she was history. She flung the helmet over her right shoulder, and counted. One – Two – She winced at the crunching noise. As if it was egg-shell, not carbo-titanium, for God’s sake! How far behind? She couldn’t work it out. It didn’t matter; the hatch was barely a hundred and fifty meters away. She raced, ignoring the muscle-lock cramping her lungs, the strain in her thighs begging her to slow down. Go to hell!
Pumping her arms harder, she drew in a breath, and vaulted a table-height rock, grazing her left knee and almost losing footing as she landed hard on the other side, arms flailing to maintain balance. As she got back into her stride, the ground shook as the creature hit the deck behind her without missing a beat. Her legs finally got the message – she increased her speed.
***
"Any time now, Pierre," Zack bellowed. He watched Kat’s mouth twitch; her thin lips pull back in fear, eyes darting wildly beneath pale eyelids. His instinct was to place one of his stocky black hands on Kat’s shoulder to comfort her, or else shake her to bring her out of it, but he stopped short – they’d agreed not to wake her. Pierre strode in as fast as the synth-grav would allow, deftly maneuvering between the stasis cots in the cramped second compartment, pianist-length fingers meshed in a tangle of short black hair even a crew-cut couldn’t subdue.
"About time," Zack said.
Pierre primed a contact syringe, an
d in one smooth movement flicked it switchblade-style towards the side of Kat’s neck. There was a hiss, like a sharp intake of breath. A wash of deep red crawled across her face then vanished.
"Will it calm her down?" Zack frowned at her normally smooth, fine-featured face, now crumpled like a piece of paper, slick with sweat.
"No, but she’ll realize she’s in a dream. If she remembers, she can control it."
Zack looked down at their youngest crewmember. Yeah, if she ain’t too shit-scared. Her chest rose and fell with increasing speed. "Her vitals okay?"
Pierre tapped the holopad next to the cot. Several red spikes radiated outward, but none pierced the edge of the surrounding green hexagon. "Tolerable. In the dream she’s running, so her lungs work faster."
Zack chewed his lower lip. The nightmare was coming more regularly the closer they got to Eden, and Kat reckoned it wasn’t a normal dream, always exactly the same. So they’d decided to try a lucid dreaming technique, injecting a stim during the nightmare, so she could maybe control it and recall what was chasing her.
Pierre gazed into the mid-distance as he discarded the syringe. "Do we run because we’re afraid, or are we afraid because we run?" He said it as if reciting, a hint of his Parisian accent lingering.
Zack sighed, wondering for the hundredth time why Pierre wasn’t back at MIT, surrounded by his best friends – equations and a muon-scope. "Spare me the psy-crap, Pierre." He glared at him. They both knew why she was running.
"I have to go. I’m finishing some tests. There’s a strange variance –"
"Whatever." Zack said, not letting up on him. "I thought you liked Kat?"
Pierre hung there for a moment, then spun on his heel and retreated to the cockpit.
Zack re-focused his attention on Kat, planted himself on a mag-stool, and leaned back against the graphite-grey inner hull. "Take it from me, kid, sometimes it’s okay to run. You run as fast as you damned well can."
***
Kat felt a pricking on the side of her neck, like an insect bite. Her cheeks and scalp burned. It was the signal she’d rehearsed, so she'd know she was in the nightmare again – the same one she’d had every night for the past week – injected with the stim as planned. But it didn’t help. Just because she knew she was in a nightmare didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified. Yet she needed to see the creature, needed to bring back details that where flushed away moments after waking. She knew what she had to do to control the dream: hold her hand up in front of her face and see her palm. That was all.
Even as she began to raise her right arm, a bone-shaking roar erupted from the creature. Her ears shriveled in pain. The wake of the primal howl hit the back of her head. Though she didn’t think it possible, she increased her pace one final time, as if her transition from mortal fear to pure panic allowed one last gear-shift. But it was right behind her. She wasn’t going to make it. She tried to believe it was just a dream, telling herself: Look around! See it before you wake up! But she couldn’t – she imagined its claws raising, ready to strike.
For the first time she noticed that although she was in a desert, the light was a ghostly green, like an old radar screen. Why? No time to figure it out. Zack was at the hatch, beckoning wildly with one hand, leveling the shoulder-mounted cannon with the other. She tried one last time to turn and see the creature, but her neck refused. "Get down!" she heard Zack shout, just as the creature swiped her feet from under her. She fell, tumbling through air like a high diver in slow motion, before spiraling downwards, crashing through the desert floor into blackness.
Kat sat up sharply and hit the rubber pad above her cot with her head. "Shit! Every – bloody – time!" She collapsed back, breathing hard. She drove her fingers through wet, matted hair and laid her forearm over closed eyes, waiting for the tremors to subside. She was safe, back on the Ulysses. Not that she’d left it in the past three months since they’d departed Zeus Orbital. She breathed out slowly, to bring her pulse back under control, and tried to recall. What had been chasing her? What had been so important, aside from the obvious – to escape? She couldn’t remember. Vague, receding thoughts uttered muffled cries through a thick fog in her mind – something about color – something was green. But what? And why did it matter? By the time the mist had dissipated, there was nothing but the distant low grumble of Ulysses’ engines, cushioned by the susurration of the aircon, with its attendant hospital-like smell. The nightmare, along with all its secrets was gone. Her shoulder and neck muscles unwrapped and she let out a long sigh. She wanted to sleep more, but not at the risk of nightmaring again. She heard the scrape of a mag-stool and left her forearm in place. "You babysitting me again, Zack?"
"Good thing we placed that rubber mat there, else you’d have head-butted a hole in the hull by now."
Kat nudged her forearm upwards just enough to reveal Zachariah Katain, his large, oval black face grinning downwards, framed by wire-mesh eyebrows and a gleaming bald pate. His jaw stuck out, as if permanently mocking life. His eyelids were a different story as they always seemed to be a fraction closed, alert, as if targeting something. She’d met other vet attack-pilots who’d had that same perpetual hunter look, like they couldn’t switch it off any more. It reminded her that although Zack appeared to be a regular, jovial wife-and-two-kids guy – because he was – he also had that killer instinct just underneath the surface.
He beamed. "Been dreaming about me again, babe?"
The banter was part of their routine. It helped. "Course. But you know it’s not that kind of dream. Your weapon was bigger this time, though."
He belly-laughed, mock-punching her shoulder with his fist, then grew more serious. "Well?"
Kat replaced her forearm blindfold. The dream had gone again, sunk back through the crevices in her outer cortex to the inaccessible, squishy middle regions of the brain.
"Don’t worry, kid. Next time."
She heard him pad back out to the cockpit. She decided to rest a while longer; still had an hour off duty, not that there was anywhere to go, or anything to do as far as leisure was concerned. A day in the life of an astronaut. An image of her four-poster bed back in New Oxford flickered seductively, but she rinsed it from her mind. No point. She’d made her choice.
She closed her eyes, determined not to sleep.
***
Zack ducked his head as he entered the cockpit the Ulysses’ chief designer had once explained to him was "compact." He squeezed past his Captain and their Science Officer, Blake and Pierre, as they’d become after three months of sardine-can intimacy. Busy, as usual. Both working separately – ditto. Pierre was in virtual again, immersed by his visor in data slipstream analysis, oblivious to his surroundings.
From the back of his pilot’s chair Zack caught his reflection and sighed. He’d have traded his cobalt one-piece uniform for his old flying jacket any day of the week. The one consolation was the golden-winged image of Daedalus – the wiser father of Icarus, now employed as the Eden Mission logo adorning the crew’s chests. The crests glinted in the cockpit spots, especially Blake’s, since he polished his every morning.
Zack plumped himself into his servo-chair at the front of the cockpit, to the left of Blake and in front of Kat’s empty comms station. Three men and a girl in a tin can. But then he’d seen the early Mercury and Apollo craft, the Endeavour, and even the Mars Intrepid – those guys would have wept over such luxurious real estate. He fingered the two multimode joysticks that made him one with the ship, and felt his mood lighten. He couldn’t maneuver with the warp online, but once they decelerated… He could barely wait.
He stared out at the black velvet of deep space, punctuated by random pinpricks of ice-cold light sliding towards him with a glacial grace. Constellations that’d been his friends since childhood were gone. A girlfriend had said one night, a lifetime ago, that as long as you can see the stars and their patterns, the Big Dipper and Orion, you’re never lost, you’ll always find your way home. Zack’s substantial bulk, maintained des
pite space rations, shuddered.
He glanced across to Blake, his Captain and vet War buddy for fifteen years, studying a small-scale hologram of ship integrity. It showed the cockpit near the front end of the fifty meter long Ulysses, resembling a hornet’s body, its four sections and two back-up conical ion engines and dark waste exhausts at the rear. Zack frowned. The energy exchanges going on in the back of the fourth compartment were measured in yottawatts, off the imaginable scale. Only Pierre really understood it, but even he’d admitted that if the engineers had got it wrong, they’d be dead in a picosecond. Zack thought of the crew of the Heracles, lost with all hands. He’d known each of them personally.
The harsh red flicker from the Ulysses holo reflected off Blake’s rusty hair and chiseled features, lighting up the bow-shaped scar above his right eye from hand-to-hand combat in Thailand, and the pockmarks on his left cheek from the gassing at Geronimo Station. Blake had lost a lot of men in the War, but always got the job done.
"Seventh nightmare in the past week," Blake said, in his Texan drawl. He didn’t look up from his display.
"Yep," Zack replied. It was starting to affect morale, his own, at any rate; superstition and ill omens made lousy companions on long, confined trips. Seafarers had known it for millennia. Space was like the sea, just infinitely less forgiving.
Blake swiveled his chair to face him. "Anything new?"
Zack understood the implied question: was it like that screwed-up mission ten years ago, where one of their marines kept having nightmares for two full weeks beforehand? He shook his head. Blake resumed his work.
Zack toggled the forward screen control and with a flick of a finger, a single star changed to red – Kantoka Minor, Eden’s star, dead ahead. One more week, he mused; one more week before setting foot on another planet.
Before seeing if Kat’s nightmares have any substance.
He kicked back in his pilot’s chair and pondered. Neither the robot-based Prometheus nor manned Heracles missions had returned. Prometheus had arrived three years ago on Eden, but stopped transmitting after an hour. A year later, the manned Heracles had exploded, just five days before arrival, the list of possible explanations long and wild. Still, as they approached the nebula where Heracles disappeared, he was getting edgy, spending more time in the cockpit than was good for his spine; they all were. He glanced at his holopic of Sonja and the kids, smiling and waving, tucked into his console. He tried to smile back.
