by Watson Davis
"Let me put it to you like this: you don't get paid until we know this is taken care of." Roscoe cut the communication.
# # #
The table under us pitched to the left, a loud rumble trembling in my chest, pushing my breath out. The calla lily chairs shook, bits of dust spewed down in plumes from the ceiling, and a crack ran through the wall, with more cracks rising up from the corners of the doorjamb. I jumped off Edmund, looking at his face as he shot up to his feet.
I said, "Did that sound like an explosion to you?"
The emergency lights flickered on, battle-station alarm buzzing, artificial gravity shutting off.
"Get dressed." He flipped over in the zero-G, thumping down on his feet on the other side of the table, scooped up our clothes from that side, and tossed mine across to me.
I bounced off the wall, snatching up his pants, and threw them at him. I pulled my pants on while I somersaulted through the air, catching my shirt with my left hand, scowling at the spasm in my shoulder and my side before pulling my shirt on.
Edmund launched himself toward the door. I shoved off from a chair, tapping on my temple, opening up my communication channels, getting an earful of static and chatter. "Network's down."
Edmund reached the door first, but it was non-responsive; the power was down. He wedged his fingers in the seam of the door, setting his feet on the door jamb, and wrested the door open.
I dialed through every comm channel, just to be sure. "I can't raise the team."
"I'll head up to Command." He pushed off into the hallway, raising his voice over the growling background noise. "You go down to the apartments. Gather everyone together and bring them up to me, or find somewhere safe."
"Yes, boss." I kicked off from the door, peeling away from him and flying through the hallway, dodging pieces of the walls, of the doors, of splintered chunks of furniture.
A man I didn't know, wearing the bars of a colonel, flailed about, unused to zero-G. I grabbed him by the back of his collar in passing, dragging him along with me to a wall. I landed us and stared into his eyes, examining the dilation of his pupils to check for concussion. "Hold on here until the gravity comes back on."
"What's going on?" he said, his voice shaking.
"I don't know yet." I patted a handle on the wall. "Hold on here until someone comes for you, okay?"
I did not wait for his response, launching myself again, bouncing down the halls, stopping to orient a couple more people.
I arrived at the elevator to the staff apartments and inched the doors apart. Wind rushed past me, whistling past me, the pull of atmosphere escaping from a breach tugging me down toward the apartments.
The wind stopped as the emergency auto hatches closed sections off, isolating the rupture. I spun myself around, heading instead to the stairwell, not wanting to risk going down an elevator shaft when the damned gravity could kick back on at any time and send me plummeting to my death, or sending an elevator hurtling down on me. No thanks. A couple of desperate firefighters made the jump into the black smoke billowing up from the shaft. I respected them for taking the risk.
I took the stairwell down four floors, bounding from one wall to the other. One second everything floated in the zero-G, and the next second everything crashed to the ground.
I smashed down on the stairs on my side, crying out in agony from my recent injuries now reopened and reinjured, rolling down the last few steps to the landing.
Everything around me fell in a jumbled array of insane chaos with shattered glass raining down the stairwell. A vending machine, lying on its side, spewed foam from the ruptured cans inside, the fluid pooling on the floor, dripping down the stairs, puddling on the carpet.
I lay on the staircase, groaning—upside down, my head and shoulders on the landing, my legs on the stairs, my arms wrapped around my ribs. Keep going, dammit.
I slid myself down the stairs, rolling the rest of the way to the landing, and picked myself up from the ground. I lurched through the door, through the broken shards of everything.
"Motayen team!" I yelled, wincing at the ache of breathing, at the grinding of one rib against the other, trying to breathe without taking a breath, picking my way through the uncertain rubble, wishing I had gotten my shoes on.
"Here! Motayen team!" Sly staggered out, leaning his shoulder against a shaky edge of a wall, eyes half-shut in agony, hands to his head; blood streamed out from his open mouth and dripped from his chin in thick strings. He coughed, holding his abdomen.
"Are you okay?" I nudged my way to his side, staring up into his face, checking his pupils. "That blood? Are you coughing that up or...?"
"No." He gave his head a shake, grimacing. "I think I lost a coupla teefers."
Moritz stumbled out from her hall dragging Callus behind her, both of them caked with a dark powder, her eyes a shocking white, Callus's arm over her shoulder and her arm around his waist supporting his weight. Callus grimaced, hopping on his left foot, the fabric of his left pants leg stained black with blood and torn open to reveal the damage, the bone visible, jutting out through his skin.
Moritz asked, "Have you seen anyone else?"
"Edmund headed up to Command and sent me down to gather the squad." I backed away to allow Moritz and Callus to pass by into the hall, waving my arms, urging them forward. "Where is everybody else?"
FountainCorp Rescue staff ran by, four of them, wearing emergency suits and screaming out directions. "Everyone out!" They split into pairs, each group entering a different hallway.
"Motayen team?" Kevin's voice came from farther down the hall, weak, ending in a hacking cough.
I slipped between Sly and Moritz, picking my path through the debris as quickly as I could. "Kevin? Where are you?"
"Over here." His hand, sticking up from beneath part of a wall, moved, his fingers wriggling.
"Can someone help me?" I crawled up toward his hand, careful to stay away from long beams and planks that might shift below my weight and make things much worse, or might transmit load to Kevin's body underneath the rubble.
"On my way," Moritz said. She handed Callus off to Sly, leaving the two of them holding each other upright and clinging to the wall.
The two of us eased the wall back, and Kevin sat up, his hair a terrible mess, his torso bare, dark with grime, shiny with sweat and blood.
"Is everyone okay?" Vanessa asked as she trudged into view with Lorber's right arm slung over her shoulder, Lorber's left arm over Malordo's shoulders, and Lorber sagging between the two women, gasping for breath, head lolling around, a trail of blood trickling down from her scalp and her legs dragging on the floor.
"Alive." I offered my hand to Kevin, taking his weight as he pulled himself to his feet, checking to make sure he could support himself. "Beaten up. How is she?"
Malordo said, "She could use a medcomp. I've got nothing but static on the comm."
"Yeah, same here." I pointed over to Sly and Callus. "Let's carry her over there. Clear out some space so they can get comfy. Kevin? Can you and Malordo head upstairs and let Edmund know our situation? Vanessa, Moritz and I can stay here and keep everybody functional until more help arrives."
"Sounds good." Kevin nodded.
Malordo darted out from beneath Lorber's arm, allowing me to drop in and take her place. Kevin and Malordo took off, jogging a few steps, slowing down to a limp, jogging a few more, disappearing into the hazy smoke.
"I was sleeping," Vanessa said. "Woke up in hell."
"Yeah, I was in the conference room, um, talking to Edmund," I said.
"Still?" Vanessa pursed her lips, shaking her head. "That was a long talk."
"Yeah." I pointed to a cushion in a space Moritz had cleared near Sly and Callus. "Set her down over there."
A light flashed, a message coming in from my comm. I said, "Hold on, I've got some message. Maybe it's Edmund with orders." I accepted the call, boosting the signal, applying a filter to clean out the static. "Ohmie, here. Talk to me."
"Help me," Santina whispered.
"Where are you?" I strained to listen, to block out the sounds of coughing, closing my eyes, suddenly afraid she'd been caught in the blast, had her room destroyed, the rubble trapping her, but all I heard was static. "Are you hurt? I'll come find you."
"Dorothea?" Vanessa asked, moving toward me. "What's up?"
"Can you hear me?" I motioned for Vanessa to be quiet, limping away from her. "Where are you?"
"A ship. The Wayward Daughter." Her voice crackled, a few more indistinct words fading into nothing.
"The docks." I straightened, blinking, struggling to breathe, wanting to strike something.
"Dorothea?" Vanessa asked, her voice a warning, her concern and fear bringing me back.
I gestured toward the rest of the team, staring into Vanessa's eyes, focusing her attention. "Edmund wanted everyone safe, so take care of everyone until Kevin and Malordo return. Clear?"
Vanessa nodded. "Where are you going?"
"To rescue Santina."
"Go!" Vanessa shouted, waving her arms. "What the hell are you waiting for?"
Resisting
"Have you…?" I waved my hands before a worker in a dockworker’s suit, trying to attract his attention.
The worker was guiding a collection of cartons on a hand truck, a pallet on wheels, his head down, shoving the whole thing around piles of other crates, dodging other dockworkers with other dollies, but he ignored me. I skipped back out of his path, tripping when my heel caught on the flange of a refueling port. I caught myself on another passing container tug.
"Hey!" the dockworker driving it bellowed. "Get your ass off my load."
The dock rumbled as a freighter launched, firing its thrusters, the exhaust flowing against the thick outer hull, the floor trembling even so, the air quaking.
I held onto the side of the container. "I'm looking for a young girl, a teenager."
"Ain't got time for this." The woman swung her arm at me. "Get off my barge or I'll call security."
"Good." I slapped my palm on the crate. "Do it. Call them. They haven't been answering me."
The woman directed the tug toward a door opening into a cargo vessel loaded with containers like the ones I was clinging to, bodyguards and corporate executives jogging in. She yelled, "You better jump down, or your butt will be headed to Mercury."
I kicked off, landing in a relatively quiet spot on the black deck, the corrugated metal embedding itself in my bare feet. I stood between two large doors leading to the holds of ships, one of them closed with boxes pushed up against it, the indicator over the door flashing. A siren blared, alerting the berth of another transport ship incoming, while around me people rushed around with hands to their temples.
"Provisional Recruit Ohmie?" a man's voice called, out but was almost lost in the wash of exhaust and bells, of rumbling engines and hissing steam.
"Yeah?" I whirled, combing the area for the source of the voice, and finding two men striding toward me, men with the intense eyes of people on a mission, eyes darting left and right, searching through the chaotic mess around us for threats. They wore police light armor with badges on their armbands indicating they worked with FountainCorp Security. I jogged toward them. "I have been calling and calling you guys. We've got a big problem."
They stopped, hands dropping to the slugthrowers on their hips partially hidden by their jackets, each gazing a different way, looking for danger. One of them glanced toward me, saying, "Yes, ma'am. We have numerous problems right now, as I am sure you can imagine. If you would come with us."
"Of course." I nodded, falling in between the two men, marching through the hangar between tall stacks of crates, toward a corridor entrance beside a central posting for the dockworkers. "But there's this girl; her name is Santina."
The man who'd been talking raised his right hand, waving it, signaling for me to wait. "Let's go somewhere quieter and out of the way."
"Okay, but we need to hurry." I bounced forward, turning to face them, to urge them forward, but they plodded on despite my trying to goad them to a faster pace.
We entered the service passageway—it was empty, the bright lights harsh, the panels on the walls pulled down in many places and resting on the floor, showing the pipes and cables running through the structure.
"Okay," I said as soon as the door slid shut behind us, blocking out much of the sounds of the engines, the people shouting commands, the whirring of sirens from the dories. "A young girl under FountainCorp Psych's charge has been abducted, I think. Possibly to hide whatever's been done to her, or something."
"Yeah, yeah." The man gestured for me to pipe down with his left hand, his right hand going to his temple. The other ambled around behind me. The first one said, "Hold on."
I redirected myself toward the other guy. "She told me she'd been taken on a ship. I searched through the harbor feeds but several of them are down. I don't know if that was part of the plan with the explosions, but..."
The man tilted his head, smiling. "Did you say you planned for the explosions to take out some of the cameras in the docks?"
"What?" I shook my head. "No. That's stupid."
"Yes, sir," the other man behind me said. "I have her right here."
"You've got to convince your bosses to put some sort of stop on outgoing traffic, in case she's already launched," I said.
The man leaned up against the wall, his smile growing, spreading across his face, his right hand sliding out of his jacket with handcuffs.
Behind me, the other man said, "Yes, sir. It could not be helped. She was killed resisting arrest."
# # #
Edmund ran into the command center, plunging through the door and pushing his way through the wide-eyed, ashen-faced personnel. He found a place inside, to the side of the door, to survey the situation, identifying the various groups—Internal Affairs, CounterEspionage, Operations. He picked out his ops commander, Admiral Sylvi Gentili; a trickle of blood ran down her forehead. She was shoving people away who were trying to patch her up, the other team leads arrayed around her.
Edmund elbowed his way through the crush of bodies rushing from place to place to Admiral Gentili's side, raising his hand in salute. "Captain Motayen reporting, ma'am."
She skipped back a step, her eyes wide, face pale. "CounterEspionage reported you dead, Captain."
He blinked. "What?"
Major Beske punched Edmund's shoulder, chuckling. "He's too fookin oogly to kill!"
Major Galik and Captain Barraco laughed, slapping Edmund on the back, their rough hands pawing at him.
"Where the hell were you?" Gentili brushed the others aside, putting her hand on his neck, staring into his eyes as she wiped blood from her brow.
"I was..." Edmund gulped. "What? Why?"
"Near as we can tell, one of the bombs exploded inside your apartment." She slapped his cheek lightly and stepped back. "We'd assumed you'd gone back home after the debrief. Thought you'd bought it for sure."
"I… uh… took my time heading back." Edmund licked his lips. "I needed to clear my head, so to speak." He grimaced at his own unintentional choice of words.
"Well, good thing." Gentili laughed, taking hold of his arm and dragging him along behind her through the press of officers and enlisted men toward the control panels and banks of monitors. "I'm glad we've still got you. Whoever did this planted some sort of virus into our comm systems just before the bombs detonated. We've lost a lot of good people."
A man in a light suit stood behind the HV feeds, arms crossed over his chest, the lack of expression on his bland face looking like boredom. The monitors displayed twisted synthsteel I-beams and ragged chunks of pulverized ferrocrete littering the floor.
"Commander Frankl?" Gentili guided Edmund forward. "Looks like the reports of Captain Motayen's passing were premature."
"Hold it there." The man tapped the sergeant seated before him on the shoulder, and shifted his eyes to Edmund, his expression remaining neutral for a he
artbeat before an insincere smile crept onto his face, never reaching his eyes. He reached out his right hand. "Captain Motayen. I am so relieved you survived the attack. I was sure she'd gotten you."
"She?" Edmund's hand hesitated before stretching out and taking Frankl's, the strength in the man's grip surprising Edmund. "What do you mean 'she'?"
"Your suspicions were dead-on about your Provisional Recruit Ohmie and her loyalties to organizations inimical to FountainCorp." He pursed his lips, pumping Edmund's hand with more vigor. "Good job on your part, recognizing her deception. I wish we'd shown up here sooner."
Edmund blinked, pulling his hand away. "Who is 'we'?"
"Oh, I'm sorry." His smile reached his eyes this time. He touched his chest with his fingertips. "I'm Commander Mick Frankl of FountainCorp CounterEspionage. I'm the man who's been reading your statements and discussing them with Director Perisho, may he rest in peace, and I've been—"
"Wait." Edmund shook his head, a sour taste in the back of his throat. "What about Gus?"
"Ah." Frankl sucked in a deep breath, glancing past Edmund to Gentili, gesturing toward her. "Admiral?"
"Yes." She patted Edmund's back, staring down at the deck, brow furrowing. "We found his remains and the remains of other people at the party taking place in his suite when the bombs went off. He died quick. He didn't suffer too much."
Edmund gulped, pressing his hand against his forehead, blinking his eyes. "Today was his fucking birthday."
"We're sifting through the genetic remains, and so far we've identified five individuals killed at that location." Frankl turned and pointed to one of the screens and the names displayed. "We're looking to discover if your little mole had any dealings with any of the other corpses, whether this is somehow a smokescreen to her true target."
