by Patty Jansen
“Stop pacing,” he yelled at Gaby.
She did, giving him a haunted look.
“Your pacing drives me nuts. Relax.”
“That’s easy for you to say, with your rich father in a privileged position.”
“What are you talking about? My father is retired, disgracefully, too.”
“I had hopes for a career in space.”
“So did I. Does this mean that we can’t still have one?” If space agencies punished people for revealing truths they didn’t want to hear, then he wasn’t sure if he wanted to work here.
Gaby said, “If you’ve fallen out of favour with these people, you’ve pretty much had it. The Orbital Launch Station is the gateway to space. If you don’t get on with the people here you can forget about it.”
“This is not about not getting on with the people here. It’s about the safety of the entire fucking Earth!”
She retreated from him.
He backed away. “I’m sorry.” He wiped his face. Ouch, his lip. “We need to get out of here.”
She nodded.
He studied the door, tried to find something to prise it open, but the room held only three chairs and a table, all of them bolted to the floor. There were no cupboards or drawers. His pockets held nothing useful, and the pull-tab from the zip of his jacket was too fat and short to fit between the door and the frame.
How to get out?
He kicked the door. Ouch. “Come on, Gaby, help me—what are you doing?” She was still looking at her computer.
“Look at this.” Her eyes were wide.
He went to stand behind her so that he could see over her shoulder. Blue text scrolled over a black screen.
“It’s the sector traffic control log,” she explained at his raised eyebrows.
He read the conversation so far. The Everbright reported that they had several people with sudden and unexplained bone fractures.
A report said, One on the bridge just now. He went to press a button and his arm just shattered. We’re without a head navigator.
Just then, a line of text appeared on the screen:
Asking for advice. Return to the station or proceed?
“That’s the Everbright,” Gaby said.
Jonathan nodded.
Another line of text replied:
Were you cleared by Quarantine?
Yes.
“No!” Jonathan yelled. “White cleared them to get rid of them. They shouldn’t have left. Tell them.”
She typed and cursed. “I can’t. I can only read this. No one is replying to my other messages.”
The conversation on the screen continued:
Station Control replied, Then proceed as normal. Notify Earth authorities on arrival.
Jonathan groaned. Then he had an idea.
“Gaby, can you get a message to Earth?”
“Who are you going to contact there?”
“My old professor, or my dad, anyone.”
“It will be night there.”
“Try it anyway.”
She had just started typing when there was a sharp click and the door slid open. Into the room came . . .
“Manuela!”
She was alone, still in her Quarantine Authority uniform.
She put her finger to her lips. “Shh, quick, before those bullies find out. I waited for ages until they were all gone.”
“What changed your mind?” Jonathan asked. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”
“Locking you up here didn’t seem right.”
Jonathan followed Gaby out of the room. They ran down the passage until coming to the lift to the inner level.
When the doors had closed Manuela spoke again. “Also, that crewmember with the broken leg died this morning. They contacted Quarantine to assist with transport of the body, and they were funny about all the questions I asked about how he died. They sent me a report and I took one look at it and almost puked, it was so awful. Like, his whole skull had collapsed. Then I saw your message with the photos. I showed them to Major Kitchener.” He was the highest-ranking Space Corps officer on the station, who, presumably, had the power to stop military ships leaving.
“And? What did he say?”
“He wants you to speak with you immediately.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
She didn’t know the answer to that question.
Chapter Fifteen
MAJOR KITCHENER had been speaking to the station and base crew assembled in the canteen for the usual staff morning briefing. This was the only time that Jonathan had ever seen the man.
His voice just died down when Manuela, Gaby and Jonathan came to the door. People in the room started moving towards the door, giving Jonathan strange looks.
A chill crept over his back. He had two years of his contract to go, and he’d already made more enemies than he could count on the fingers of both hands, and his toes.
“Ah, there you are,” Kitchener said, when the bulk of the crowd was gone. He came across the room, his face humourless as always.
“Thanks for standing with me,” Jonathan whispered to Gaby.
“I didn’t do much. It was all your initiative, and you’re not very popular right now.”
This was what it must have been like for his father. “I’m not sure I care a lot. We did the right thing.”
“Come and sit here for a moment.” Major Kitchener indicated a table close to the door.
Jonathan and Gaby sat next to each other.
There was a kind of strange solidarity in the moment. Gaby might not have been willing to help him at first, but when he had put the choice of being stupid or a coward before her, she had chosen his side.
At least, they would be dismissed together.
“I just want to commend both of you for persevering with your message in the face of considerable adverse opinion.”
Jonathan said, “Thank you, sir. But I would be more happy knowing that the ship has been stopped.”
“It has. We’ve ordered it to park in Lower Earth Orbit. It can run on autopilot there forever, or at least until we can get medical personnel in to remove the crew.”
Again, he couldn’t restrain a shudder. He heard in the major’s voice that the Corps expected many of the crew to die. This had been the fate of at least half the people affected by calciphages in the few reported cases. Even if the bone damage could be fixed, the organism’s short life span led to piling up of dead organic material in the bones, and this led to infections.
“What’s going to happen to the ship?” he asked.
“It will stay in orbit until we can be sure we’ve eradicated the disease.”
Which was going to be pretty much impossible, but one could try. More likely was that the ship would need to be abandoned, or . . .
“Is there a cure?” the major asked Gaby.
She shook her head. “At this point, there isn’t.”
Jonathan shuddered to think of the ship as a giant flying sarcophagus. They already knew that the man with the broken leg had died. The remaining crew would either die as well, or turn out not to have been infected.
“It’s not pretty, but it seems your actions prevented much worse.” Major Kitchener drew something from the pocket of his jacket and gave it to Jonathan.
His phone.
There was a message on the screen, from the Corps’ General Li. It said,
Ask that young man how we can entice him to join up. Bartells are a pain in the arse, but if the son is half as stubborn as his father, I want him. Ask him if he has any siblings. By the sound of this bungle, we’re going to need a handful of Bartells out there.
Jonathan met the Major’s eyes.
“So?” The Major said. “What do you want in return for your joining the Corps? You would agree with me that you’re wasting your talents in the Quarantine Authority.”
“Um . . .”
Jonathan glanced at Gaby.
“I want your guarantee that Dr Larsen is not demo
ted or otherwise disadvantaged in her work for having helped me. I want my father to receive a full apology.” He grew bolder. What the heck? “I want you to give Dr Larsen a better placing, too.”
The Major looked at Gaby, nodded. “Consider it done.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” Gaby said after the Major was gone.
“No, but I could never have made the conclusions I did without you.”
“I was a coward and didn’t want to help you.”
“Because you were afraid that they would hurt you. I would have done the same had this happened to me in a month’s time, after I’d become better acquainted with Cresswell and his mates.”
“There will always be Cresswells. The whole Corps is full of Cresswells.”
“Most Corps personnel are good.”
“Most of them are too scared to stand up against the Cresswells.”
“Then we’ll just have to find more Bartells, right?”
She looked at him and shook her head. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
Thanks for Reading
In the next instalment of the series, Observation, Jonathan and Gaby go on their first assignment together. People joke about the attacks of illness suffered by visitors to bases on the Moon. But they soon find out that this is no joking matter, on more levels than one. Get Observation here.
About the Author
PATTY JANSEN lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.
Her novels (available at ebook venues) include Shifting Reality (hard SF), The Far Horizon (middle grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and The Icefire Trilogy consisting of Fire & Ice, Dust & Rain and Blood & Tears (dark fantasy).
Patty is on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, goodreads, LibraryThing, google+ and blogs at: http://pattyjansen.com/.
More by This Author
Quick link to all Patty Jansen’s books
In the Earth-Gamra space-opera universe
The Shattered World Within (novella)
RETURN OF THE AGHYRIANS
Watcher’s Web
Trader’s Honour
Soldier’s Duty
Heir’s Revenge
The Return of the Aghyrians Omnibus
The Far Horizon (For younger readers)
AMBASSADOR
Seeing Red
The Sahara Conspiracy
Raising Hell
Changing Fate
Coming Home
Blue Diamond Sky
The Enemy Within
Historical Fantasy
FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY
Innocence Lost
Willow Witch
The Idiot King
The For Queen and Country Omnibus (Books 1–3)
Fire Wizard
The Dragon Prince
The Necromancer’s Daughter
Hard Science Fiction in the ISF-Allion universe
Shifting Reality
Shifting Infinity
Epic, Post-apocalyptic Fantasy
ICEFIRE TRILOGY
Fire & Ice
Dust & Rain
Blood & Tears
The Icefire Trilogy Omnibus
MOONFIRE TRILOGY
Sand & Storm
Sea & Sky
Moon & Earth
Space Agent Jonathan Bartell
Contamination
Observation
Short story collections
Out Of Here
New Horizons
Visit the author’s website at http://pattyjansen.com and register for a newsletter to keep up-to-date with new releases.
