by M. D. Cooper
“She’ll need to get over that.”
Andy gave her a sharp look. “Why is it you’ve got empathy for every kid in the world but your own?”
The words were like a slap.
“It’s good to see you, too, Andy.”
He turned to face her fully. “This isn’t a joke, Brit. I want to know why.”
“You want to get into this now?”
“When else are we going to get into it?”
“Not now. Never. It doesn’t matter anymore, Andy.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? You’ve got two kids who need you, Brit. You left.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “This isn’t the time. We need to find the powered armor. Did you look already?”
Andy looked at her, clenching his fists. Finally, he shook his head and pointed at a bare section of the ceramic wall across the chamber. “That cabinet over there.”
“Why weren’t you putting it on? We need to get out of here.”
“I was thinking for a second. I was thinking about you and Tim. I was wondering if it would be better if he never saw you again.”
Brit shook her head. “Now you’re just trying to hurt me, Andy. You can say whatever you need to say. I can take it. But don’t use the kids against me. That’s not fair.”
Why couldn’t he see that their kids were strong? All the other kids were weak, they needed her help.
But if that was true, why was Tim on the Heartbridge shuttle right now? She hadn’t protected him. She’d thought Andy would keep him safe and he’d failed. Had she been fair to him?
She didn’t know that it mattered now. They had to focus on the problem in front of them, as always—the mission. There wasn’t time to waste on asking why or how they had come to a situation. Here they were.
Her mind flicked to Fran, the woman who had wrapped Andy in a hug the minute they were back in Sunny Skies’ command deck as though she owned him. Brit hadn’t given herself time to think about yet: if she was jealous, angry, or didn’t care. Cara hadn’t seemed to be perturbed by the public affection, which meant it had being going on for a while. Should Brit have expected it?
“It’s not about you, Brit,” Andy said, eyes now sad. “I think that’s what’s wrong. You can’t see that.”
She couldn’t stop herself. “But it is about you, isn’t it? I told you, Andy. I would always care for you. I just wasn’t in love with you anymore.”
He stared at her, jaw clenched. The faceshield made it difficult to see what was in his eyes.
“I was talking about the kids,” he said finally. “It doesn’t do me any good to care about us anymore.”
He turned away from her and walked toward the cabinet, boots clicking on the deck. When he reached the cabinet, he swung open two rectangular doors to reveal a space large enough to walk inside. On one side hung weaponry. On the other side, four sets of heavy battle armor stood in racks like automatons. The design looked private industry, a mix of both MP and TSF technologies.
“Damn,” she said, walking up beside him.
Andy nodded without looking at her. “It looks like the service suit you’re wearing will fit over the armor too, so we can still use the torches if we need them.”
Brit sighed. “Yeah, but the armor I’m wearing won’t fit underneath.”
Andy just shrugged in response, but Brit felt a pang of sadness as she began to unfasten the armor. It had served her well over the years.
The bridge was down to just over half an atmosphere and she sealed the doors on the cabinet to hold in what there was as she transferred from one suit to the other.
CHAPTER EIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Clinic 46
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
The kid looked at the two clinic research assistants suspiciously. Cal approved of the anger in his face. He liked that Tim Sykes was a fighter. The boy was going to need it.
“I don’t want to go with them!” Tim shouted, backing toward the ceramic wall. A security officer near the command deck entrance moved as well, ready to catch Tim if he tried to run.
Cal crossed his arms. “You want to stay with me then?”
Tim shook his head violently. “I want to go back to my dad’s ship. I want to go home.”
“What do they say, kid? ‘You can’t ever go home again’? I think your next learning moment has arrived.”
The security officer tried to smile at the joke but Cal ignored him. “Here’s the deal,” Cal told Tim. “You can’t stay with me since I’m going to be busy and I really don’t want you around. You can go with these folks and they might give you something to eat. Are you hungry?”
Cal glanced at the two orderlies. Both had the distant expressions of someone lost in their Link.
“No,” Tim said. “I don’t want your dumb food.”
Now Cal couldn’t help smiling. “Good.” He snapped his fingers at the orderlies and the nearest one started.
“Yes?” the woman asked.
“Take him down to the Clinic. See if he’ll eat. And get him something to wear.”
“I don’t want food and I don’t want clothes,” Tim said.
The orderlies, both paying attention now, watched him as though he were a poisonous snake.
“Can we put him out?” one asked.
“You can sedate him, I suppose. Make him compliant. But I don’t want him out all the way. I may need him awake later.”
Without warning, the orderly nearest Tim pressed a pistol-shaped stunner into Tim’s neck. The stunner hissed as it injected him with sedative. Tim released half a squeal before his shoulders slumped and he looked up at the man with his eyebrows raised in confusion.
“Have you seen Em?” Tim asked, sighing. “I miss my dog.”
Cal slapped Tim on the shoulder. “Dog’s on ships are bad luck, kid. We’ll see about getting him over here. I bet you’re hungry now, right? Why don’t you go with these men here? They’ll get you something to eat.”
“Can I have shells and cheese?”
Cal waved at the orderlies. “Sure. Shells and cheese. Whatever.”
Tim took one of the orderly’s hands, apparently surprising the man. The orderly looked down at him for a second, then shrugged and started walking down the corridor with Tim beside him. The other orderly followed, still holding the stunner as if she expected Tim to snap out of the dream at any moment.
Cal walked back into the command center and took stock of the work stations staffed with many of the same faces from before he had launched the attack on the Worry’s End. The station commander, Tom Kaffren, looked up from where he was standing behind one of the monitoring stations. He was a tall, thin man with a vulture-like stoop. He looked older than he was.
“You’re alive,” Kaffren said. It wasn’t a question, more like a statement of surprise. Cal noted a tinge of recrimination in the man’s voice.
“It wasn’t a complete loss,” Cal said.
Kaffren turned to face him fully, squaring his shoulders. The motion made him look anxious. Other officers in the room kept their attention fastidiously on their work.
“Your squad is dead,” Kaffren said. “I don’t know how you would call that mission success.” He swallowed. “I had to send a report to the regional HQ on the M1R. They were asking why we hadn’t conducted shift change yet.”
“I’m sure you had to make that report immediately,” Cal said dryly.
Kaffren ignored the taunt. “What happened over there? You’re gone for less than five hours and everyone but you gets killed. Apparently, I can’t deploy defense drones because all the control AI have been stolen and the shuttle AI you took with you isn’t pas
sing the return status checks. In addition to all that, you come back with a…hostage? What are we going to do with a hostage? I’m not configured for this kind of activity. We’re a storage site. I maintain cold ships. I have a station full of egghead researchers writing out calculations all day and maintenance techs. My single security squad is gone.”
Kaffren’s face grew more red as he sputtered out complaints. Officers around the room hunched even deeper into their shoulders, acting like they weren’t listening. The woman in the station directly behind Kaffren almost had her head in her holodisplay. Cal supposed the commander had been yelling at them before he found himself with a new target.
“Not to mention that Gibbs was my—” Kaffren stopped himself. He finished weakly with, “…friend.”
Cal nodded. “Look, things went sideways. I admit that. I didn’t anticipate what happened to Gibbs and it certainly wasn’t what I had planned. The kid isn’t supposed to be here. I can assure you of that. But he’s here, so I plan to use him.”
Kaffren stared at him, trembling a little.
Cal waited, not sure how the man was going to respond. If Kaffren and Gibbs had been lovers, which Cal sincerely doubted, he might actually try to attack physically. That would be interesting. Cal opened his hands and flexed his fingers, tapping the thighs of his armored EV suit.
“What do you want me to say, Commander Kaffren?” Cal asked. “This is a tactical situation. It’s fluid. My supervisors with the company know that.”
“The company,” Kaffren scoffed. “Heartbridge isn’t some mining operation in the ass-end of nowhere. If information about what’s happening here hits the open networks, we could see a change in the markets. Do you even understand what’s at stake here?”
Cal gave him a satisfied smile. “You’re right,” he said. “I have no idea.” He stepped closer to the station commander, setting his palm on the butt of his pistol.
Kaffren glanced down at Cal’s hands, seeming to remember he was facing an armed man in combat armor.
“You need to step back,” Kaffren said. “You might have special authority over a project on this station but I’m the commander. I’m responsible for what happens here.”
“You’re a bus driver,” Cal said. He weighed the consequences of killing Kaffren and putting one of the other officers in charge.
“You’re a mercenary,” Kaffren said, voice trembling.
Cal sighed, irritated that killing Kaffren might create more problems down the line that he didn’t feel like thinking through. He glanced at the main holodisplay in the center of the room, which still showed Clinic 46 in its center with the fleet icons a gray cloud around it and the Worry’s End, while the Mortal Chance flashed orange. Everything was in motion, but the Worry’s End seemed to be moving faster than the other objects in relation to the clinic.
He nodded. “What’s going on there?”
Kaffren squinted, looking wary of some trick.
“The Worry’s End is moving,” Cal said, taking his hand off the pistol to point. “Are you tracking that?”
Kaffren turned to watch the holodisplay, then waved at the officer at the workstation nearby. “What are they doing?” he demanded.
“I’m calculating now, sir,” the lieutenant answered. “It looks like they’re changing velocity that could lead to intercepts with at least three ships in the storage sector.”
“Which ships?” Kaffren asked.
“Two personnel carriers and a hybrid dreadnought named the Forward Kindness.”
“They can’t steal a ship,” Kaffren said. “They don’t have the security tokens.”
Cal chuckled. “They’re coming after us.”
Kaffren shot him a quizzical glance. “How are they going to do that?”
“The standard heavy weapons loadout on the dreadnought,” Cal said. “They’re going after the powered armor. What have we got on that ship that you can control remotely?”
The lieutenant said quickly, “I can activate the maintenance drones remotely.”
“Do that—just…let the people from the Worry’s End get deep inside the ship before you attack,” Cal said. He waited for Kaffren to object that Cal was issuing orders to his people but the commander only nodded.
Cal chewed his lip, thinking. If Brit and Andy Sykes were planning an attack on the station, then it didn’t matter what kind of ransom deal Cal offered. They already expected him to hurt their son. They weren’t going to trust him.
Fair enough.
“I’ll be down in research,” he said.
Kaffren spread his hands in exasperation. “What do you want us to do about the ship? I don’t have anyone to send out there to fight them off.”
“Use your lieutenant’s idea. It’s good. If that doesn’t work— I don’t care. Blow up the ship.”
“Destroy the ship!” Kaffren scoffed. “Do you have any idea what it’s worth? I’m not going to be responsible for another Benevolent Hand.”
“Lose a ship or lose the station, it’s going to be up to you,” Cal said.
He turned and walked out of the command deck, ignoring Kaffren’s further complaints. As he entered the maglev for the ride down to the research section, Cal decided it no longer mattered if Heartbridge hung onto Clinic 46. He wasn’t certain he could stop the Sykeses with the resources available. So he needed to start thinking ahead.
If this piece on the board was lost, how could he use the loss to enable future moves?
During the five-minute maglev ride, Cal prepared a Link message for Jirl Gallagher. He didn’t want anything that happened next to come as a surprise to Jirl or the board.
CHAPTER NINE
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Approaching Clinic 46
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
As she watched the thousands of spinning objects in the immediate space around Clinic 46, Lyssa experienced a moment of confusion when she realized the ships, people and other various debris could easily be the red dots on a black field that had comprised her world with Dr. Hari Jickson. She felt stupid as the truth settled on her mind that an icon represented something real like a ship, a piece of debris, or a person.
Everything around her seemed to stutter, skip back several seconds and then move forward different than it was before.
Was this what had obsessed Fred, the AI at the Mars 1 Ring? The distinction seemed so simple now that she saw it, but it led down new rabbit holes of possibility, where every red dot she had ever seen as a target to be destroyed had been a real thing in a real place with a name and a past. Representations were real.
She wanted to scold herself for having thoughts of Tim, but that only shook her out of the reverie. She remembered Cara and Andy’s comforting talk about Rabbit Country. She had her own Rabbit Country of thoughts and questions that led her away from where her mind needed to focus.
Lyssa floated in the midst of a spinning collection of objects that were no longer simply icons but the real things filling the space around the clinic. Sunny Skies was accelerating away from the Forward Kindness, getting clear of the explosion to come.
She watched Fran fretting over the engines, and Cara studying the spectrum output from the clinic as well as the Cho. Periodically, Fugia Wong made a comment about how they should have left for the Cho already, though not since Fran had yelled at her to shut up. Senator May Walton stood next to Fugia, looking angry about something Lyssa couldn’t determine. She hadn’t been paying close enough attention to their conversation to know if it was about Fran yelling, or something else.
Outside Sunny Skies, the Forward Kindness flickered like a circuit about to fail, as three tiny objects left its surface, gathering velocity toward the larger object of Clinic 46. The rest of the space was filled with ships, and the debris of Shuttle 26-12, which had been destroyed by fire from the station while docked with the Forward Kindness.
Lyssa shifted her perception back to Andy, checking the thru
st signature, environmental control and weapon status available in the new powered armor’s info feed. The suit turned him into the equivalent of a tiny dreadnought, protected by layers of defensive alloy, resistive shields, kinetic guns and energy weapons.
Harl and Brit wore similar sets of armor, with Brit’s having the addition of the welding rig. Lyssa didn’t see why they would need the plasma cutters since each set of powered armor could cut through several centimeters of reinforced material with its energy weapons alone. She supposed it didn’t hurt to carry extra capability, although she noted the additional weight was affecting Brit’s thruster efficiency.
Based on Lyssa’s analysis, each suit could easily get them from the Forward Kindness to Clinic 46. What she wasn’t certain about was the effects from the pending explosion and any debris that might move outward from the dreadnought’s exploding containment bottle. She was also concerned about radiation levels but didn’t see a solution to the problem except distance and the possibility of aligning the three humans with the far side of Clinic 46 when the Forward Kindness exploded. Currently, her models did not show Brit, Andy, and Harl reaching a safe distance.
She debated giving Andy this information. He was currently occupied with familiarizing himself with the power armor—and Cara, who didn’t seem to realize that her dad needed to focus. Lyssa didn’t understand why Andy wouldn’t tell her to leave him alone.
“Dad,” Cara said in a low voice, obviously trying not to be heard by anyone else on the command deck. “Dad are you okay?” There was a pleading note in her voice.
“I’m all right, Cara.”
Lyssa found herself listening more closely than she intended. It seemed so strange that Andy could be encased in armor, floating through vacuum to escape from an exploding ship to the station, a place where he expected to fight, and he could still maintain enough calm to reassure Cara. How did he separate the different parts of his mind? Did he selectively forget what was happening around him, like Fred focusing on different parts of the Mars 1 Ring?
“Fran said the Forward Kindness is going to blow up.”
