FountainCorp Security

by Watson Davis

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Frozen Lotus

  SNAFU

  Insubordination

  Quarantine

  Cookies

  Suspicion

  A Night Off

  Mr. Satele

  Downtime

  Damage Control

  Resisting

  Santina's Trail

  The Fortunate Son

  The New Job

  Captured

  Switched On

  Lights Out

  A Family Ship

  Quitting Time

  Epilogue

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  For my wife.

  Prologue

  “Adolfo!” Santina Steger pressed her face and hands against the glass separating her from the subject next to her, from her friend, from Adolfo. The glass was smudged with sweat, steamed up with the heat and humidity of her breath. She pounded against the barrier, wishing she could break it down, to get to him, to help him. She yelled, “Hang on! They’re coming. They’ll fix you.”

  Adolfo sat on his shins on the floor, his head flung back in a scream Santina couldn’t hear. Black fluid bubbled up from his mouth, leaked out from the corners of his lips, running down his neck beneath his flimsy lab gown and staining the back of it black. The whole black mess reversed its course, climbing back up into his mouth as gagging coughs racked his thin frame. His brown skin grew gray, the skin around his eyes darkening to black—the black of his veins streaming out around his eyes.

  He stared at her, into her, through her, eyes wide, pausing for a heartbeat seeming to last more than forever. Then he wilted, giving up after his long struggle, descending to the floor like a neglected, thirsty flower. He lay still, his eyes open but unseeing, the whites growing darker with each beat of his heart, each beat growing slower and weaker. His lips parted and a dark liquid strand stretched down to the ground, spreading out in a shiny puddle.

  “No…” Santina lowered herself to the floor of her own cell, twisting herself, trying to find a way for their eyes to meet, a way to feel her special connection to him once more. “Adolfo. Not you, too.”

  “Well, dagnabbit.” The door to Adolfo’s cell slid open. Two of the lab techs clomped in, their bodies hidden within the lemon-colored biohazard suits, the suits fat and plump like balloons, with hoses running from packs on their backs to their big, inverted cone-shaped helmets.

  “I thought this one had the right mixture,” one of them said, shaking her head, kneeling down beside him.

  “Right mixture?” the other said, squatting down over the puddle of black residue dripping from Adolfo’s mouth and pooling up beneath his head. The tech dabbed a stick into it and inserted the stick into a cylindrical container. “This whole project’s a clusterfuck.”

  “Really?” The woman peered back through the door to the cell, motioning to someone outside. “Then get the hell out already. If Alvin hears you’re having doubts, well, it won’t be good.”

  Two more suited-up researchers entered, pushing a gurney.

  “I’ve put in for a transfer.” The man moved to Adolfo’s feet.

  “No, no.” The woman stood up, waving her finger. “I’m not taking the head. That’s your job.”

  The four techs moved around Adolfo, taking up their positions.

  Santina sobbed, her fingers scratching at the glass.

  The technicians picked him up, his head flopping back, black goo slithering down his cheek, his teeth black and shiny with the stuff. They shuffled to one side, Adolfo’s ribs hitting the gurney, the gurney rattling away from them.

  “Dammit, Rip. Lift him up. He’s not heavy.” One of the analysts reached out with his foot, hooking the wheels of the gurney, pulling it back.

  The bulbs in the cell wavered, dimming, growing brighter.

  They swung Adolfo, once, twice; the third time they threw him onto the gurney, then shoved him around to fit how they wanted him.

  “Isn’t it time for lunch yet?” one of the techs asked. “You guys want to go grab some burgers?”

  Two of them pushed the gurney out the door.

  “Yeah. Burgers would be good.”

  Santina followed them as far as the walls of her cell would allow, pressing herself into the corner, watching them wheel him away. The other two technicians walked into Adolfo’s cell, stooping down beside the black gunk on the ground, but Santina didn’t care about them. She cared about Adolfo.

  The lights in Adolfo’s cell winked out, pitch black.

  The lights in the adjacent cells flickered off.

  Santina held her breath, staring at the gurney.

  Adolfo blinked, eyes glowing. His hand shot out, grabbing the hose connecting the tech’s helmet to her pack, ripping it off, fingers tearing at the faceplate, the woman shrieking for help.

  Santina retreated to the back of her cell and listened to the horror, the slurping, squeezing her eyes shut, hands over her mouth, until the lights died.

  All the lights.

  # # #

  A red light from his internal computer flashed in the peripheral vision of Dr. Darnell Nieve, LightDream Corporation’s Sub-Vice President of R&D, signaling the receipt of an important message. He leaned forward, eyes glazing over, his index finger tapping his temple to check the sender of the message—Brigadier General Jillian Busque of Atlas.

  Dammit.

  He eased his chair away from the conference table.

  “Darnell?” Yesenia Alwa, the President of R&D. said, “Is something wrong?”

  All eyes wheeled away from the holovideo presentation glowing in the darkened room, the presentation pausing as everyone turned to Darnell, most seeming thankful for an interruption. He stood, shrugging, smiling. “Sorry, everyone. You know how it goes. I’ve gotta take this call.”

  Some nods, some grins, but Yesenia Alwa asked, “Something we should be alarmed about?”

  “No, no.” Darnell backed toward the door, which whisked open when his hand touched the handle. “A project leader who’s a little shaky and needs some managing, nothing too important.”

  Yesenia smiled, inclining her head, waving him on.

  Darnell slipped out the door, shutting it behind him. His hand rose to his temple, shifting to a more complicated encryption method as he strode down the bustling halls of LightDream’s corporate offices. “I’m not in a secure spot, Jill.”

  “Well, it could get worse mighty quick,” Jillian answered with a Cerean twang. “The Frozen Lotus has gone full dark.”

  “What do you mean?” Darnell turned down a hallway, sliding to the side and nodding toward an exec he didn’t recognize but who had made eye contact.

  “We can’t get any response from the Frozen Lotus,” she said. “All her systems appear to have shut down. If I didn’t know the station was there, I wouldn’t be able to tell except for the ghost of its heat signature, and even that doesn’t look like it will be there much longer. No one responds to hails. Station appears to be dead.”

  “Excellent.” Darnell raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and walked into a hectic cafeteria—the mouthwatering scent of hot food in the air, the rushing of people, the roar of conversations, glasses clinking. “Just what we wanted. Alvin finally got the programming right on at least one of the batches, then. Just a second.” Darnell stopped and tapped his temple, flipping through various report feeds, finding the Frozen Lotus’s data dumps. The last one was six weeks old. “Well, crap.”

  “Sounds like you’re creating more work for me,” Jill said. “I don’t have a lot of free time.”

  “Yeah, neither do I.” Darnell sat down at an empty table, eyes flitting back and forth. “We need to get th
e latest of Alvin’s research, some tissue samples from his subjects, and we need to utterly destroy that station.”

  “And by we, you mean me,” Jill said.

  “Going dangerous places and performing dangerous acts aren’t requirements for my job,” Darnell said, covering his smile with his hand.

  “So I need to physically send my people to that damned place?” Jill asked. “How am I supposed to clear this with my commanders?”

  “I’ve got a friend who can get the Frozen Lotus condemned as a biohazard zone,” Darnell said. “You need to figure out a way to take care of these things for me. I’ll push the paper around to recreate that lab and reassign someone good to continue Alvin’s work, because it’s ready to go. One?”

  “We are One,” Jill said in an exasperated tone, cutting the connection.

  Darnell glanced around, making sure no one was watching him. He rose, brushed off his suit, and strode back to the strategy meeting, composing in his mind the request for a biohazard declaration to his friend at the Council of Free Stations.

  Frozen Lotus

  “Suit up!” Captain Edmund Motayen yelled, launching himself through the hatch into the staging area with a scowl on his scarred face, dark eyes intense, searching our ranks for someone to scream at, his eyes lingering on me for longer than I would have liked.

  “Yes, sir!” I shouted, adding my voice to the chorus of eleven others of Motayen’s CovertOps team. I slid through the zero-G into my recon suit, snapping the light armor around me like an old lover, fitting the helmet over my head, the heads-up display coming to life before my eyes, supplementing my on-board comp with targeting and threat assessments, weapon system ammunition levels, and encrypted comm feeds to the rest of the team. My weapons remained nonoperational because of my provisional status.

  Recruit Vanessa Moat, the other newbie in this team and my section partner, popped out from her berth beside me, ready to go, anxious for her first live action, slamming her armored fists together.

  “Moat?” I reached out from my compartment, snatching at her arm; as I pulled her back, throwing her off balance, her legs continued forward while her upper body came back toward me.

  She jerked, triggering her boot jets, blasting back into me and my suit’s docking mechanism, ramming me into the corner. Bouncing off me, she floundered down the aisle separating the suit berths on either side of the ship. My medcomp flashed red: soft-tissue damage in my ribs and shoulder.

  Someone chuckled on the team channel.

  “What the fuck is going on back there?” Edmund’s voice blared through our comms, his angry face growing larger in my HUD. “Provisional Recruit Dorothea Ohmie? What the hell are you doing?”

  “Nothing, sir,” I said, cutting my medcomp’s connection to the server to keep it from transmitting a warning to Edmund. I ejected from the housing stabilizing my suit, grimacing as I breathed, and drifted out to lend a helping hand to Moat.

  “Why did you do that?” Vanessa asked, broadcasting her question over the team channel for everyone to hear.

  I transferred the connection to a private one between the two of us, stretching my hand out toward her. “Come on. Get back in your berth until we get the command to begin the op.”

  “Attaching,” our copilot, Major Stemple, said, his voice calm, distracted.

  Our FountainCorp-622 attack corvette, disguised as a beat-up courier, attached to one of the Frozen Lotus’s many empty docks, the edge of the umbilical tucking into the tracks in the hull, clamping into place airlock to airlock. The sudden change of velocity surprised me. My hand bounced off Moat’s helmet. She twisted toward me, her arms wrapping around my waist. The two of us, now tangled together, plunged through the aisle and crashed against the forward bulkhead.

  Edmund cut the laughter short, muting everyone’s comm on the team feed except for his own. “Kevin, please take your two newbies up to Command and Control, and keep them out of my damned way. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Yes, boss.” First Lieutenant and Executive Officer Kevin Fine, the leader of my unit, leapt out from his compartment. His voice a growl of anger, he said, “Second Unit, try to get your shit together. We’re in C&C, because no one trusts you two girls in battle yet.”

  I pushed away from the bulkhead, away from Vanessa, and slapped the battered orange button to open the portal to the command and control module of the tiny ship, seizing a handrail by the door to stabilize myself and wait for Kevin to go through first.

  Vanessa charged past me through the open hatch into the cramped room above.

  Sergeant Sylvester “Sly” Boultinghouse erupted out of his berth, reaching out and grabbing the handrail next to mine, checking himself there.

  Kevin paused looking up into the C&C. A touch of his boot jets and he floated up into the room above.

  I sighed, lowering my head, and gestured for Sly to go through first. He tugged on the handrail, propelling himself up and through the opening into the C&C.

  Around me, throughout the staging chamber, Motayen’s and Master Sergeant Malordo’s units emerged from their berths, sauntering out into the main aisle, and sorted themselves into formation by section. I yanked myself up into the C&C, finding an empty spot between Sly and the pipes along the bulkhead, a spot across from Vanessa and the portal to the cockpit, rolling to face the big screens and watch First and Third Unit do all the real work on this, my first mission as a vile, money-grubbing recruit for FountainCorp Security.

  First Unit’s gunner and grenadier, Private First Class Landry and Private Moritz, shoved a portable generator into the airlock behind Edmund and the unit’s acting sergeant, PFC Callus, with Third Unit waiting their turn at the airlock door.

  I hung in the shadows between conduits, my stomach churning at having my first FCS mission start so poorly, ashamed at making such a boneheaded mistake. I shouldn’t have left Mars; I should have let Vanessa crash and burn on her own.

  The beams from the away team’s helmet lights gleamed and glittered, reflecting off bits of dust in the air, off the blobs of unnamable liquids undulating in the lack of gravity. The two teams passed through the empty boarding gate, each one covering their fire zones with the precision of the well-drilled, through the loading area, passing by crates and boxes. Limp bodies stretched out, heads back, mouths open, skin chalky in the harsh helmet light with dark lines showing their veins and arteries, their clothes stained with bodily fluids.

  The two units made quick time to the central chamber where Third Unit took up position, attaching themselves to the walls and floors for stability, aligning their fire zones for mutual protection. First Unit continued on, leapfrogging down the corridor in a strict pattern, everyone covered at all times.

  Nemesis. I need to work on my zero-G technique.

  I shifted to a direct link to Fine, sending an alert message to request permission to speak.

  “I’m a little busy with overseeing an ongoing mission right now, Hero,” Fine said. “I haven’t been impressed with your performance so far, so this had better be important and good.”

  “Yes, sir.” I licked my lips, fighting back the urge to tell him to fuck off. “There’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam on the route back. Maybe someone should clean it up in case the away units come back in a rush.”

  Fine didn’t respond. His comm link indicator changed colors denoting a connection to the Third Unit’s lead, Master Sergeant Malordo. I hunkered down, trying to relax, bolting upright when Fine switched back over to me, his voice crackling in my ears. “Are you volunteering?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d have thought vets with medals of valor on their chest knew better than to volunteer for anything but shore leave,” Fine said, turning his head to look back at me, the mirror-finished faceplate on his helmet hiding his expression, but the avatar beside the comm link showing his arched eyebrow.

  “I’m rusty,” I said. “I figure I’d better brown-nose some to repair my tarnished reputation.”

  Fine’s head
jerked around, our thread cut, and the link indicator changed colors once more to indicate he’d connected to Edmund.

  # # #

  I floated in the Command and Control room, holding myself steady with a hand on one of the girders along the ceiling, watching the big screens with my unit and the two pilots.

  The away teams progressed through a secondary airlock from the docks into the main corridor, leaving the thick doors propped open, their helmet lights piercing the absolute darkness of a dead station, strange and unnatural.

  Kevin swiveled around, pointing at the portal leading to the airlock. “Dorothea and Vanessa, clear the docking area of debris. We don’t want the away teams to negotiate their way through this crap when they come back.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, smiling, relieved to have something to keep my hands busy, to practice moving in zero-G. I pushed myself off from the ceiling toward the hatch, twisting myself around to avoid colliding with Vanessa, who darted in front of me.

  Vanessa bounced through the doorway, propelled faster because I bumped into her back, my shoulder hitting her between the shoulder blades. I opened a link between the two of us. “Sorry about that.”

  Vanessa didn’t say anything, but contorted her own body, smacking me in the rib area with her forearm and kicking against my shins with her feet to get momentum to move her toward the airlock. Her strikes landed on my armor, not hurting me in the least, but the force of them moved me back up, the shot to the ribs sending me back into the C&C, the kick against the legs giving me a bit of spin. I caught myself against the edge of the portal, steadying myself, then stilling myself relative to the ship. I pulled against the hatch, sending myself into the airlock.

  Vanessa slapped the button to close the airlock. She moved to the outer door, blocking my view. I edged in closer and flicked my helmet light on, peering over her shoulder through the window.

  She pushed me back with her elbow, turning her head toward me, her face obscured by the smooth, mirror-like plate on her helmet. “Back off.”