“Died?” asked Burton, a frown creasing his forehead. “This guy, an Extro? And he died? Like, for real?”
“No, no,” Ward countered, waving his hand dismissively. “Though he did forego the whole facsimile thing. The old man uploaded himself like anybody else before he got too old and suffered brain death. His children, nieces and nephews had the run of the place and could summon him whenever they wanted.”
“Descendants calling up their great ancestor,” declared Guernsey. “Fucking vain, if you ask me. Makes sense if you’re one of them types though, all rich and shit.”
“Well, he was the traditional sort. Not a lot of people back home like him anymore. Most people take the idea of post-mortality too literally.” Ward’s mind went back to the station itself, Ri-La’s lavish décor, the very reason why he had chosen the Hab for the sake of their little game. “Every bulkhead made from white jade and gold. Intricate lattice work, bamboo fences, little waterfalls running everywhere. You barely knew you were in a Hab at all. Beautiful place.”
A moment of silence ensued, at which point Labra thought to ask the obvious.
“So, what was an old dick like you doing there?”
“Same thing as always,” stated Ward. “Someone killed someone else. Interpol sent us in to find the culprit.”
“Oh my God,” shuddered Jordan. “One of the kids killed one of their own relatives?”
Ward waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, nothing bad. Turns out some of the Xian clan weren’t as traditional as their forebear. Some of them went about creating facsimiles of themselves, even woke them up before they died. I don’t know, all that time in orbit, they must have feared they’d die out unless they started cloning themselves.”
“It didn’t occur to them to get some new blood in the place? Or even someone’s DNA?” Jordan asked with a half-raised eyebrow.
Ward shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they couldn’t find anyone they thought worthy. Point is, having more than one version of yourself around can get ugly, especially when there’s inheritance on the line. But in this case, one kid killed another version of himself.”
“Wow,” Jordan whispered.
Ward continued with his story. “Forensics took all of five minutes. The trickier part was trying to deduce if the victim had been the original or not. After all the penalty for a facsimile killing their original is way higher than the reverse.”
The small gathering nodded and smiled. Ward had been wrong. Reminiscing hadn’t made him feel bad. Quite the reverse, really. He was sorely tempted to keep the stories going.
“But if we’re talking all-time best place. . .” He groped into the distant past, hoping to find something fitting the bill. “I don’t know. Earthside, I guess. Shores of Zanzibar, along the coast of the African Union. Real –”
The proximity detector began to beep, warning them they were approaching an obstruction. Everyone in the cabin seemed to jump in place, eyes darting out the window into total darkness.
“What is that?” yelled Jordan over the din.
At her station, Labra was the first to see the problem on her monitor.
“Boss, we got an obstruction on the Scythian. Autonav is asking permission to disengage.”
“I don’t see any – oh, there it is!” Ward watched as the bulky object resolved itself on the display. The autonav had to be cycled through a few filters to enhance the ambient light and sharpness. Sure as shit, there before them stood a large rock, measuring at least four hundred meters square, right where the right tread would be in less than a minute.
“Disengage,” he ordered. “Then bring us to a complete stop. Everybody strap in!”
The crew braced themselves as the Sapper powered down, the massive vehicle coming to a slow, rolling halt. When at last they stopped, everyone lurched forward, held in place by their seats’ restraints. The view outside the window seemed even darker now. The sudden absence of any engine noise gave the deck a certain stillness he found quite uncomfortable.
Into that quiet came a battery of questions all at once.
“What the fuck is going on?” demanded Burton.
“Enormous chunk of debris is sitting in our path,” explained Labra, busily punching buttons on her console, returning full control of the Sapper to her.
“Where the hell did that rock come from?”
“Not sure,” Labra answered, irately making the last of the necessary keystrokes before grabbing the driver’s wand. “Could be what’s left of a meteor that landed while we were out. Could be a piece of the crater wall. Point is, we don’t have enough clearance to get around the rock.”
“We’ll have to blow it,” Ward declared, agreeing with her assessment. Even the mottled representation on his display was enough to let him know the obstruction, wherever the rock had come from, could not be circumvented. The Passage was just too small and the Sapper far too cumbersome.
“What the fuck is going on?!”
Ward turned to see the door to the deck open, two agitated convicts standing directly inside the threshold.
“Zory. Amos. Hope we didn’t disturb your sleep.”
“What the fuck?” Muscovy repeated. “We’re sitting in our bunks and you decide to throw this whole fucking crate sideways! You trying to kill us?”
“No, but your next job might. I need you two to get into pressure suits, grab some Class-4 munitions, and plant them on a rock sitting exactly fifty meters in front of us. Think you can do that?”
Muscovy and Wesley shared a look. Their animosity diminished somewhat, making room for the incredulity creeping into their expressions.
“Why us?” demanded Wesley.
“Because the two of you are the only members of this crew, last I checked, had any experience in blowing shit up. I figured this would be a treat for you,” answered Ward.
Muscovy and Wesley glanced at each other, this time with looks suggesting they were about to say something obscene. Ward pre-empted them. “And if that’s not cutting it for you, how about the fact I’m in charge and I fucking told you to?”
“!” swore Muscovy, spitting.
The door slid shut behind the unhappy pair a second later. Ward spun back around to see the dubious-looking expressions aimed at him.
“You think that’s wise, boss?” asked Labra.
“Ah, they’ll get over it,” he said dismissively. “Bastards could use the exercise too.”
“I think she means trusting those goons with explosives. Suppose they don’t place them quite right and blow us all to shit?” Guernsey asked, a worried expression on his face.
Ward chuckled. “You know they can’t try without getting hit by a neural spike that’ll leave them as capable as a puppet with the strings cut, or if we’re lucky, dead. Besides, I know those guys’ rap sheets well enough to know they know where a bomb has to go to cause maximum damage.”
Ward may have mouthed the words, but he wasn’t supremely confident in them. Death by incompetence wasn’t something the Spike had been known to prevent. However, he certainly wasn’t going to let any other members of the crew risk their lives on such a hazardous task.
Alas, his crew weren’t finished with their objections.
“Suppose,” Labra started, swinging her chair around to face him. “They don’t kill all of us, just themselves.”
Ward opened his mouth, about to ask how that could possibly be a bad thing, then it struck him. Two dead miners, killed in an accident on his watch during the commission of a controlled demolition outside of standard procedure.
Yes, that would be a very bad thing indeed! Labra recognized the pained realization on his face and shot him a look suggesting mutual understanding. Ward nodded uncomfortably to let her know he was right there with her.
“Well, one can only hope they remember their training. And their penchant for blowing shit up works in their, and our, favor.”
Labra spun back around, the look of worry disappearing as the back of her head turned to face him. Ward glanced
around at the other crew members and offered a confident smile, a smile evaporating as he made eye contact with Guernsey. To him, Ward allowed the sudden feeling of anxiety to bleed through.
A few very tense minutes passed before Muscovy and Wesley made contact.
“Fifty meters to obstruction,” called Wesley through the comlink. “Can’t see shit.”
Ward was a bit relieved to hear the man’s voice. Pressing a key on his chair, he responded in kind. “Trust in your automap, it’ll point you straight.”
Several more minutes passed before Wesley signaled again.
“Approaching the obstruction.” Another long pause. “Obstruction reached.”
Fuck, this is dragging out, Ward thought, keying the comm. “You be careful placing that explosive.”
This time, Muscovy’s voice came over the line. More muffled expletives, followed by an angry chastisement.
“We know what we are fucking doing!” A few more expletives followed, fetching a few laughs from around the deck. Ward decided to leave them alone for the time being. Micromanaging at this point would only hurt their chances of pulling this off. Instead, he curled his hands into fists and took several deep breaths, counting down the seconds.
“Okay, charges set,” Wesley announced at last. Everyone on the deck exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Ward did his best to appear unsurprised.
“Are we receiving?” he asked Labra.
“Remote signal’s up, reading the signal loud and clear.”
“Good job,” Ward signaled. “Now get back in here on the double!”
Laughter reached him over the link. Letting Muscovy and Wesley know he cared about their safety, even if selfishly motivated, undoubtedly amused them. They would be certain to drag out their return for as long as possible to piss him off. But with the likelihood of them blowing themselves up, and his liability now at zero, the few minutes Muscovy and Wesley took to get back to Sapper seemed to fly by.
“Got ‘em coming in the lower airlock,” stated Anouk. “Cycling through now.”
“All right,” Ward said, extending a hand to pat Labra gently on the arm. “Sandy, if you would be so kind as to get that rock out of our way.”
Labra favored him with a blinding smile before happily depressing a key on her console. Through the window, a bright flash erupted, banishing the darkness outside for the briefest of instants. The windows automatically responded, adjusting their polarity to filter out most of the intense light.
What made it through, in that briefest of instants, was seared into their memories. An explosion permanently removed an impediment in their path. There was something strange about that.
Burton put his feelings into words. “That felt good!”
“Yeah, who knew blowing shit up could make you feel awesome?” enthused Guernsey.
Ward smiled. Another unintended bonus to taking the matter into their own hands and clearing the path back to Prokofiev: for one instant, his crew felt they were in control. He wished that had been his intent, because control was the nicest gift he could give them right now.
Three
The main access ramp took its time getting open. Though as soon as the ramp opened, Ward and his crew felt the onrush of recycled base air. So much less stuffy and stifled than the Sappers recycled air. Mixed in with the smell of metal and grease were some hints of fresh ozone and water vapor. Much nicer than the bottled air they’d been breathing for days.
As the access ramp began to angle forward, Ward and the other crew members caught sight of a squad of security officers waiting in the bay. Six men of varying height, all wearing the same cobalt blue uniforms, a sash running from waist to shoulder, epaulets indicating their slight differences in rank. Hands uniformly placed behind their backs, accentuating their sidearms and batons.
Ward recognized most of them by sight, despite their best efforts to be indistinguishable from each other. The desire to all look the same remained unquestionably something called for when it came to Hermian officers’ uniforms. Nevertheless, he knew the shortest of them to be Chief Banks, the facility’s head of security. The fact Banks showed up in person, accompanied by five escorts to boot, could only be a bad sign.
For the next few seconds, the ramp completed its descent excruciatingly slowly. Every second charged with nervous energy as the crew glared at the people who were surely here to haul their asses away. Only Ward appeared outwardly calm during all of this, mostly due to the drugs still permeating his system.
At length, the ramp reached the ground with a loud thud. Several more seconds passed as both the guards and the crew stood there motionless, like some sort of standoff, each side waiting for the other to speak first.
“Prisoner Ward, number 136-709?” asked Banks.
Ward stepped forward from the others. “That’s me, sir. What is the problem?”
“The Administrator requests your presence, prisoner Ward. Please come with us.”
Ward felt a slight prickle on the back of his neck. Banks framed his request politely, yet urgently. Ward wasn’t sure if the invitation was a good thing or a bad thing. In all likelihood, he was going to hear about his breach of protocol. However, it remained to be seen if that was a formality or not – depending on how the Iron Widow felt about him bringing in a bigger haul than normal. He imagined their minor delay on the way home might also be a cause for concern.
In either case, he knew he had no choice but to comply.
“What about my crew, officer?” Ward asked, feigning ignorance.
“Banks, prisoner,” he informed Ward irately, plainly not buying the feigned ignorance. “And they are free to go, for the time being.”
Ward heard a snicker from behind him. “Free? Ain’t that a fucking joke?” Muscovy couldn’t keep his mouth shut, even when faced by a security squad.
If Banks heard Muscovy, he chose to ignore the remark and continue. “They may be questioned later, as per the Administrator’s decision to proceed with an investigation into your conduct.”
Shit, Ward thought. So it was that bad. He should have known the new administrator would be quick to clamp down on any trace of independent thought or judgment. He could only hope he managed to show sufficient deference once he stood in front of her so she would let his crew off the hook.
“Lead the way,” he said, stepping onto the ramp and advancing towards them.
“Not so fast!” called Banks, raising his hand, motioning to one of the taller security guards at his side. The man stepped forward and produced a pair of cuffs. “You know the procedure, prisoner. Place your hands in front of you.”
Ward did his best not to roll his eyes or appear defiant. Given all the security measures in place, including the one residing inside his skull, the mere suggestion he needed to be restrained was ridiculous. But the officer was right, standard procedure did apply. Obligingly, he placed his hands in front of him and showed no resistance as the tall one moved towards him and placed the cuffs on his wrists.
“Please follow us,” Banks said cordially, but unconvincingly. Another officer joined the tall one, on Ward’s other side. The trio set off in lockstep, following Chief Banks out of the bay. Ward cast one look behind him at his crew, who were unhurriedly making their way out of the Sapper. Predictably, Muscovy and Wesley didn’t look the slightest bit concerned. The others, he saw, were taking their time and making a point of watching him. Knowing they were with him, at least in spirit, remained a comfort.
The walk was long and uncomfortable. The cuffs chafed, causing his wrists to ache and added injury to insult. Harsh and piercing cold blue lights illuminated the corridor. Even at the brisk pace the officers were keeping, the walk felt interminably long. Of course, that was the point. Before anyone was brought into the Administrator’s office, they had to be sufficiently intimidated.
Ward knew the procedure well enough, having subjected others to something very similar in the past. Now, somehow, knowing that simple fact didn’t help much. In the end, uncertainty w
as always the killer – the fact you didn’t know how bad you were going to get it once the runaround was complete.
A few bends later, they arrived at a nondescript door in the middle of a long corridor. Banks stood before a panel set to one side and waited for the panel’s sensor to pick up on his presence. The panel instantly processed the security chief’s ID and biometric information, beamed to the panel from his cortical implant, and turned green. He then issued an appeal into the small speaker mounted at the top.
“Administrator Sandoval?”
“Who is it?” The reply sounded like grinding metal, only partially due to the quality of the speaker.
“Chief Banks, ma’am,” he replied. “We have prisoner Ward, as ordered.”
“Enter,” came the casual response. The door slid open, and Ward was escorted inside.
The décor changed once again, as did the smell of the air. Ward caught the smell of evergreens, soft perfumes, and sandalwood. He also noted several interesting features not present when the last Administrator had occupied the room. In the corner nearest the door, a sofa with the appearance of actual leather; a bunch of seats and tables that had nothing to do with her desk; rugs on the floor; and some artwork, depicting various places in the Solar System, hung on the walls.
The most impressive thing in the room was the aquarium in the far corner. At his current distance, Ward couldn’t be sure, but the dancing form inhabiting the aquamarine environment appeared distinctively Europan. The dancing form’s movements were immensely graceful and hypnotic, to the point Ward was startled when the Administrator – seated at her desk – began to speak.
“Prisoner 136-709?”
The Cronian Incident (The Formist Book 1) Page 3
