by P. R. Adams
It was exhilarating to watch.
“Are you seeing this?” Shaw’s voice was high, excited.
“Yeah.”
“Check the fourth planet, just off the north pole, sunward side.”
Rimes searched the image on his helmet display for the sun’s glow and drilled the display down to the planet’s north pole. He saw it after a few seconds of frantic searching. Something—a vague blip—was in orbit. “Can we—”
“Already adjusting course.”
Rimes shifted in his harness. “Lopresti, get your team ready.”
Lopresti snapped fully alert. Her eyes danced nervously. “Trouble, Sir?”
“Not yet. We won’t know one way or another for several seconds.”
Lopresti sent a signal to her team. Helmet displays winked out, then glowed again. BAS overlays replaced video games, movies, and whatever else that had previously engaged them. Munoz jerked awake. The team quickly came to life.
There were no shouts, no reprimands. Despite her sharp edges, Lopresti had an easy leadership style that showed a lot of promise. Rimes appreciated that.
The planetary image pulled his attention back.
Everything—the planet, the blip, space around them—was resolving as the shuttle closed. Rimes brought up the Erikson’s file, yanked an image of the ship from it, and overlaid it on the image, moving it over the distant blip.
It was greater than an eighty percent match likelihood.
Shaw clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Rimes, you got something?”
“That’s the Erikson.”
Shaw acknowledged with a quiet grunt.
Rimes gave the image another look. “I can’t see anything else. Can you?”
Shaw hesitated. “No. We’re over a minute. If they’re in that ship, they know we’re here. We’re not going to outrun anything with serious thrust.”
Rimes ran his fingers over the surface of the control box. “Five more seconds.”
“Sure.”
Four, three, two, one. Nothing changed in the view. “Get us out of here.”
Shaw pushed the shuttle hard. They accelerated away at a ninety-degree angle, heading once again above the orbital plane. Immediately, the sensor image froze, showing the last recorded image.
The Erikson was orbiting the fourth planet. Alone, possibly abandoned, possibly booby-trapped.
Why? What are you up to, Perditori?
Kwon made his presence felt again, a pressure just beneath Rimes’s surface thoughts. Something had Kwon on edge. Something had them both on edge.
19
26 October, 2167. USS Valdez.
* * *
THE PASSAGEWAY outside the weapons department was dark and, except for Rimes, empty. Although the passageway had the same dimensions as the rest of the ship’s main passageways, Rimes felt squeezed and trapped. It was hard to breathe, and the air tasted foul and thin, even though the ventilation had only been off for a few minutes.
Inside the compartment, readouts—amber, red, a few green—illuminated Cooper’s anxious face. The same petty officer Cooper had been working with earlier stood beside him, her T-shirt damply clinging to her thin frame, her eyes heavy with fatigue. Cooper didn’t look much better. Sweat trickled down his broad forehead and into his beady eyes. He blinked, but he didn’t react otherwise.
They were all tired and on edge, but it was all on Cooper now, and he was plainly feeling the pressure.
Rimes wished he didn’t have to watch the drama play out, but Brigston hadn’t really made it a matter of choice. Rimes was pretty sure the request to swing by wasn’t so they could discuss the weapons system outage. He suspected Brigston wanted to talk about the mystery vessel that had joined the task force while Rimes had been out with 267.
Fripp refused to even acknowledge the mystery vessel now.
Brigston stood between Cooper and the hatch, largely obscuring Rimes’s view. Like Rimes, Brigston was watching Cooper’s face, not the readouts.
Brigston coughed nervously. “Status?”
Cooper shrugged his meaty shoulders and blinked away another bead of sweat. “Ten more seconds, Sir. Unless…“
Brigston crossed his arms and rubbed his eyes.
Somehow, the air managed to simultaneously grow thinner and press in heavier. A nervous chill ran down Rimes’s back. Despite all their efforts to bring the weapons systems back online, nothing had worked. Cooper had been forced to take everything down. The systems were taking an eternity to cycle through startup.
A section of the display blanked out, nearly plunging the weapons department into complete darkness. The remaining display area flashed red.
“Oh, shit.” Cooper’s voice quivered.
Brigston leaned in to glare at the display. “What? What is it?”
“It’s cycling again.” Cooper tapped at the display futilely. The last of the displayed blanked out. “Something…didn’t come up right.”
The petty officer was already on her knees, flashlight shining on an exposed panel. Cooper tapped a switch on the section of panel beneath her left hand; she flipped it. The display came alive again, once more a mix of red, amber, and green readouts.
Brigston stepped back and craned his neck around to look at Rimes. “The captain’s probably searching regs for the worst punishment he can give out right about now. We’re already two minutes—”
Lights kicked on in the passageway. Brigston turned back to Cooper.
“Main power coming online.” Cooper’s voice still quivered, but now it was filled with relief. “I’m showing green on all preliminary weapons systems checks.”
Brigston adjusted his environment suit. “Can I inform Captain Fripp we’re online?”
“A few more seconds…“
Rimes tensed as Brigston stiffened angrily. “Ensign Cooper, we’re well past our delivery time.”
Cooper wiped sweat from his brow. “Yes, Sir.”
The petty officer tapped through a few displays. They all showed green. “Everything checks out, Sir.”
Brigston looked at Cooper. “Ensign?”
Cooper exhaled and relaxed visibly. “Weapons systems online, Commander.”
Brigston shook his head, relieved, then he called the bridge over the intercom. “Captain Fripp, Weapons. All systems online.”
Fripp’s raspy voice filled the cabin. “Very good, Commander. We were about to send someone down to remind you that even an advanced vessel like the Valdez requires electricity.”
“Noted, Sir.” Brigston closed the communications channel and shot Rimes an anxious glance. “I hope you’re right about this.”
“We were only there for half a minute, but the sensors didn’t pick up anything. They could be out there, maybe somewhere on the planet or hidden somewhere else in the system, but they didn’t attack us, and they didn’t follow us back.”
Brigston fiddled with his environment suit. “Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t figure why anyone would steal a deep space explorer, fly it out to the middle of nowhere and then just abandon it?”
Rimes exchanged a look with Cooper. Neither had made sense of it yet. “It doesn’t make sense to us, either, Sir.”
Brigston stepped into the passageway and waved for Rimes to follow. After a few steps, Brigston stopped and peered up and down the passageway. It was still empty. “That ship that arrived while you were checking the system? Coop ran a couple checks for me. He took your idea of rigging up a drone with sensors. Perfect for a situation like this. It’s a private ship, unknown configuration. Very new, very advanced.”
A chill ran down Rimes’s spine. A private ship showing up in the middle of a military task force during critical operations? “That stinks, Sir.”
“Like a week-old corpse. Single occupant, a man by the name of Walter Theroux. Looks like he’s from the banking cartel.”
“No crew?”
Brigston distractedly tried to adjust his belt, then seemed to realize he was in an environment
suit. “What? No, no crew.”
“Why would the banks send someone out here alone?”
Brigston’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Who do you think is funding this operation? Indirectly, at least. These ships cost a mint to build, and there’s only so much the governments can do to fund their construction. The banks had billions at risk in the shipyards and the orbiting stations, and they lost a lot. The genies made the wrong enemy.”
“But why come all the way out here?”
“That’s why I asked you to swing by.” Brigston looked around again. “The captain’s going to tell you, but I thought it would be best if you weren’t surprised. This guy—Theroux—he’s going with your team when you board the Erikson.”
Rimes nearly laughed in disbelief, a response that was part his own, part Kwon. “What? A civilian? We don’t have the slightest idea what’s onboard that ship. There could be a hundred genies waiting for us.”
Brigston frowned. “It’s not open to debate. Theroux didn’t make the demand, the Special Security Council did. And Captain Fripp can’t do a damned thing about it. Theroux already identified two other people from the Hyuga who will be accompanying your team. As well as Miss Fontana.”
Rimes couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Fontana was IB and a genie. Taking her along at least made sense. “The Hyuga’s a medical ship.”
“It is.” Brigston smoothed the front of his environmental suit.
“Taking medical ship personnel? A civilian? And I don’t have a say in this?” Rimes felt his voice rising, felt a need to strike out. He pinched his lip and took a cleansing breath. Calm.
“No one has a say.” Brigston smiled bitterly.
“Commander, I’ve been training this team for the last several weeks with a single focus: to ready them for whatever the hell the genies are planning to throw at us when we find them. We don’t have significant experience in ship boarding, repelling boarders, or planetary landing. Adding a civilian to the mix is a crazy complication.”
“We don’t like this any better than you do. Just take a few minutes and think it through. It doesn’t change anything. You still have an obligation first to your soldiers.”
Rimes breathed slowly for a few seconds, then he nodded. “Might as well go see the captain.”
Brigston patted Rimes on the shoulder. “When life gives you lemons…“
“…make sure they aren’t poisoned,” Rimes finished. “I know.”
A troubling quiet settled in the passageway after Brigston returned to the weapons department. Rimes stood alone for a moment, wondering at the machinations that had brought him to the moment.
Genies, the cartel, the Special Security Council—I’ve got to make sense of this, or I’m going to get everyone killed. They’re making pawns of us again, controlling our moves and counter-moves. But who are they, really, and why are they doing it?
Fripp obviously asked Brigston to break the news to me. Because Brigston lives outside the ship’s politics and is the least hung up on Navy culture? Because we knew each other from the Broussard? Was it meant as a courtesy, or is Fripp in on this whole thing, like everyone else seems to be?
Rimes walked the passageways for a few more minutes, hoping to find some peace before finally making his way to the bridge.
But peace of mind was elusive.
26 October, 2167. Shuttle 259.
RIMES STARED STRAIGHT AHEAD, his eyes focused on Meyers and Walter Theroux, who was squeezed into the harness on Meyers’s left.
Theroux was small and slender. He had a thinning patch of brown hair and his pasty skin almost certainly never spent much time in true sunlight. Even though his environment suit was ill-fitting, he seemed remarkably oblivious to it. More likely, he refused to show any annoyance in front of the soldiers.
“You are angry?”
Rimes turned to look at Lieutenant Ikumi Watanabe. Other than shortening her hair slightly, she hadn’t changed since he’d met her on the Okazaki years before. He tried to rationalize how they could possibly run into each other again in the depths of space. It was hard to reconcile: billions of humans, hundreds of space ships, an unimaginably huge galaxy, and here they were sitting next to each other on a shuttle in a largely unexplored solar system.
Pawns. “Not with you,” Rimes finally said. He tilted his head toward Theroux. “He’s putting a lot of people’s lives at risk unnecessarily.”
Watanabe watched Theroux for a moment. “Am I putting lives at risk, Captain Rimes?” Her voice was even softer than normal.
“You’re military.”
Something about Watanabe’s face unsettled him. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. She seemed innocent, fragile, and vulnerable, and it left him feeling irrationally protective of her.
Kwon stirred deep inside Rimes’s mind, and the thoughts and images that filled Rimes made him close his eyes. He fought a wave of nausea, then exhaled. He turned back to Watanabe, saw her for a moment both as a pretty woman and prey, something he could only rectify with effort.
He pointed at the sidearm mounted on her hip. “Do you know how to use that?”
She adjusted her environment suit top and nodded sincerely, not the least offended by his words. Her eyes moved across his face. “I remember asking when I met you about your work. This is the same? Dangerous?”
“Yes. Very dangerous.”
“Ensign Ito is a qualified nurse.” She said it as if that should eliminate any concerns about their presence. “He also knows how to use his sidearm.”
Rimes considered the statement for several seconds then went back to watching Theroux. Rimes tried to imagine the bank conglomerate’s representative in a combat situation with Kwon.
The images were ugly.
Rimes shook the thoughts away as he might a bad dream and turned back to Watanabe. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you end up on the Hyuga?”
Watanabe looked away and lowered her head, embarrassed. “Too great an ambition, I think. After I completed my post-doctoral work, I applied for an entry-level position at a LoDu business in Tokyo. It was deemed…less than honorable. My resignation was refused, and I was given…low jobs. I volunteered for whatever I could. I was surprised to even be considered for the Hyuga. Apparently, someone felt there was a need for a chemical engineer to oversee recycling and reclamation. I could not decline. It was actually an improvement on my old position.”
It doesn’t seem to matter the culture. It must be a human need to keep others in their place. Pettiness, resentment, the need for control. Maybe the genies have the same flaws? We should be so lucky.
Rimes’s earpiece chirped, pulling him back to the moment. It was Shaw, the pilot.
“One hundred kilometers, Rimes.”
“Anything?” Rimes heard the anxiety in his own voice and hated the sound of it. Shaw sent an access point into the shuttle’s sensor data; Rimes accepted. The distance to target display showed they were already approaching the eighty-five kilometer mark.
“Sensors show all clear so far. Shuttle 332 reports the same.”
“How’s the task force doing?”
A pause, then, “Same thing—all clear.”
Rimes tried to relax. They’d run through the possible scenarios—genies lying in wait; the Erikson rigged with nukes, a biological weapon, or even pre-programmed to plunge into the planet’s atmosphere. They’d even considered the possibility the ship was full of dead genies and everything was safe.
It was a trap. Even without Kwon’s influence, Rimes would have felt sure of that. But they couldn’t take a chance it wasn't. The Erikson was worth too much to ADMP.
And the banking cartel.
Rimes lowered his voice and un-muted the channel to Durban. “Durban, you reading me?”
“Yeah, loud and clear.”
Despite the shuttles’ subpar Grid connections, communications were remarkably clear. Durban’s fear was evident in every word, so Rimes imagined it was just as evident in his own voice. “We’re ap
proaching our position, fifteen klicks out. What do you think about keeping Ensign Ito in the middle of your team when you go in? Maybe have Munoz watch him?” Rimes winced. Had he been in Durban’s position, Rimes would have seen the intrusion as an assumption of incompetence.
“I’m taking point.” If Durban was bothered by Rimes’s suggestions, it didn’t show. “I have Amacker and Wang pulling up the rear, Kershaw and Xye behind me with Sheila, Munoz and Siamwalla bracketing Ito. Lopresti’s going to keep Evinger and Takashi on the shuttle until I give the all clear.”
“Excellent. Can you get me a video feed?”
“One second.”
Random sounds and imagery bled into the channel as Durban fiddled with his system. After a few seconds, a grainy video appeared in a corner of Rimes’s display.
Ito—a mousy, round-faced young man—sat next to Lopresti. He futilely wiped sweat from his brow and upper lip.
Rimes lowered his voice even more. “Ito’s a mess.”
“I know.” The frustration was every bit as clear in Durban’s voice as the anxiety. He looked around the rest of the shuttle. Lopresti’s squad seemed relaxed. Munoz yawned and flexed his massive arms. “We should be good. Everyone knows the situation.” Durban’s gaze locked on Fontana. She was sitting opposite him in the cargo bay. She waved and smiled warmly, exposing her sharp teeth.
Hunter’s teeth.
Durban waved back.
They’ve gotten close. Static washed out the connection. The image returned after a moment. “Durban, you there?”
“For the moment.” Durban’s voice was tinny and distorted. “You think they could have cut just a few more corners cobbling these flying coffins together?”
“Give them time.” Rimes brought up the Erikson’s deck plans. Theroux had provided some value, after all. “So I’ve been thinking about the plan. Instead of waiting for you to clear the passageway down to the starboard junction, maybe it would be better to have you hold at the entry and have me bring my team in. We could secure the port junction and protect your flank.”
