Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3)

by Scott Rhine

  “No.”

  “Because when Sojiro was beaten in some kind of hate crime, her whole team rushed to his side.”

  “So Llewellyn is needy. Why should I cut the jerk any slack?”

  “He doesn’t have a lot of good models for social interaction. His mom died when he was young. His father pushed him and his brothers so hard to achieve that his oldest brother killed himself at boarding school. When Lou made pilot on this mission, do you know what his dad said? ‘Why didn’t you make commander?’”

  Mercy was quiet for a long while. “For your sake, I’ll try to be nicer.”

  Once Mercy was asleep, Yuki went to the common room to wait for Lou. She’d been dozing on and off all day, so she wasn’t particularly tired. When Park came out for his shift, she explained the controversy.

  Holding a tea bulb, Park shook his head. “No. No. No good.” Pushing over to the snowflake, he knocked on the helmet. When Lou came out, the Korean drive theorist said, “The flow lines are directional, from the lower mass to the higher.”

  “Oh, shoot. So if both ends of the green line are exits, we can’t use it?”

  “In networks, that’s called a sink. We can’t escape that system. If they’re both entrances, unless we start there, it doesn’t work either.” Park took a snapshot of the pilot’s workspace and spent his time adding arrows, waking Sojiro to do legwork on a traditional computer.

  Overnight, Red isolated and categorized each system—origins, sinks, pass-throughs, branches, and out-of-bounds. Then she boxed groups of systems that led only into the sinks, and labeled them sinks as well. Nodes leading out-of-bounds were marked uninteresting by the same process of contagion. She simplified the entire map of the region for that time period.

  Sojiro kept up the simplification process by computer.

  When Zeiss came out to take his shift, he was awed by the progress. “It will take another day, but this we can solve. You guys have done so much. Good job.” Turning to Yuki, he said, “Get a picture of the whole team under this map; it’s a work of art.”

  Once Zeiss annotated the most likely solution, they all posed under the bubble diagram. “We still have a major experiment to perform, but we’re going to pass the test.”

  At the commander’s request, Yuki transmitted her third photo to Mori Research, with the caption, “Map from Saturn subspace nexus to midway.”

  Chapter 16 – Spontaneous Combustion

  When Alistair was rescued after many long hours, he was relieved. His air wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The shuttle, however, delivered him to a space station with armed Chinese men who tried to put him to work. The Canadian officer responded with only name, rank, and serial number.

  He sat cross-legged in a glorified closet until one of the agents handed him a radio tuned to UN frequencies. His eyes shot up when Professor Horvath explained the unsavory compromise to him. “I know it’s a lot to ask, especially given how much you’ve done for moon base already. You’ve saved countless lives. But with the new alliance, we need as much water as you can salvage from up there, the construction ice in particular.”

  “It’s all interwoven with the steel and the solar panels. It will take days to unravel all this,” Alistair complained.

  “We don’t have that long. Before the next wave arrives, we have to bring the last shuttle back here and use it to defend.”

  “You mean the nukes are still in flight?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Damn idiots. There’s nothing left to fight for; they’re just doing this for spite.” How could he save her and all his people who’d been evacuated? “It’s a shame Mercy Smith didn’t stick around. The very accident she was afraid of could save you.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Nena Horvath. Several members of the command staff were hovering in the background in the picture, obviously listening.

  “She said if the fields got too close, at the wrong resonance frequency, the weak atomic forces would kick in, and the fields would fuse together like a molecule. The danger is only at start-up, though.”

  “Why would we want that?”

  “Once it fuses, it’s much bigger than the originals and a more stable valence something or other. Unfortunately, you can’t shut it down by pulling the power plug.”

  “Pretend I never took quantum physics.”

  “Sorry, boss. Here’s how Mercy explained it to the managers—a three year old could understand the physics. Once you blow up a balloon, two things can happen with the potential energy trapped inside. Firstly, you can open your fingers, and the balloon will jet around the room. That’s the effect our shuttles choose. Secondly, you could tie it closed to give to your kid. Have you ever rubbed one of those balloons in your hair and placed it against the wall?”

  “Yeah,” Nena said with a snort. “Benny taught Red to do that with everything. If the wall’s too rough, instead of having a balloon Dachshund, you get a really loud bang. Everybody pees themselves, draws a weapon, or both.”

  “TMI, boss, but you get the analogy. If you can avoid the bang, the static charge of the Icarus balloon will anchor it in place on top of your headboard. You can use that nuke-proof barrier to play peekaboo with parent Earth, and they can’t see you behind it.”

  “How big is the combined radius?”

  Alistair shrugged. “Um . . . her minimum safety zone before she’d let us power the engines on was about a kilometer. So I’d guess half that? You could stick the cluster about where the end of the mining launcher sits, and Bob’s your uncle. Since the missiles coming at you are all shortest-path ballistic, you’d be saved.”

  Her face was priceless. “A-man, we’re not paying you enough. You’re brilliant.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Thank you, sir. It’s a pity you can’t use Mercy’s shield idea.”

  “I’m not so sure. Tech Specialist Smith gave us very explicit instructions on what not to do—sort of like Einstein warning Washington about atomic weapons in that famous letter. Only she was a little more specific. She gave us the exact frequencies to avoid and circled them on the start-up power curves.”

  “Holy shit. But you don’t have enough Icarus fields lying about, do you?”

  “With the last shuttle and the spares Fortune Aerospace shipped up for the Tetra experiments, we might. They’re different types, but we have a room full of geniuses sitting around down here who haven’t earned their paychecks this month. We have a chance.”

  “Only if we get the ice and the shuttle to you folks as soon as possible.”

  “I thought you said that would take too long?”

  He scratched his facial stubble. “How much swing do you have with our Asian friends?”

  “If they don’t cooperate, I can kick their butts out into vacuum. Of course, the folks up there would do the same to you. What do you need?”

  “Ask them if they have any more of those nasty robots that took apart my lasers. Each of those robots could mine your water faster than a dozen people.”

  “I’ll see what we can do. Horvath out.”

  The Chinese officer who’d handed him the radio said, “You know they can’t evacuate us all and get the water back in time.”

  “I know,” Alistair said. Anyone not on the shuttle crew was probably dead.

  “Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “She has enough on her mind right now.”

  “You could’ve bargained for a ride.”

  “It’s going to come down to minutes, either way. My greed and delaying might get everyone killed.”

  “So, after the robots do their job, we should have a final party?”

  “Yep. If you got ’em, smoke ’em. I wouldn’t save anything for the weekend.”

  ****

  Incognito, Corporal Ye sat in the food court of the mall at the base of the Tokyo skyscraper. He enjoyed a cinnamon bun the size of his face and a coffee from Sri Lanka. Even though he’d only had the assignment four days, being liaison w
as a great job. The man next to him had clothes that screamed Party Political Officer. The man glared at Ye with every bit of bun he nibbled and every short-skirted girl he waved at. The crowds were loud, but he could still hear the bubblegum music well enough to bob his head in time. When people walked by dressed in T-shirts advertizing Sojiro’s Manga, Ye laughed at the irony. The Chinese army was chasing the very group these teens were now idolizing.

  “Why are we in this shrine to excess?” complained Comrade Shih.

  Ye shrugged. “Mori will only deal with me. He doesn’t trust you or your men, so we meet in public. No one gets hurt, and everybody’s happy. I think I might try a sample of that chocolate milkshake.

  “Sit, you fool!”

  “Is something wrong, honored sir?”

  “He’s late.”

  “No. His wife passed through the level above ours three minutes ago. She should finish her sweep in another two—once she locates all your snipers. After the kidnapping attempt, he is understandably reluctant to trust us.” He gave Shih a crooked smile.

  The political officer paced, holding a cell phone in his left hand.

  When Ye saw the chocolate shake in Mori’s extended hand, he knew that Mori’s people had been eavesdropping the whole time, and corporate security had a complete dossier on each man. “Thank you, Mori-san,” Ye said, bowing and holding out his hand to accept the gift.

  Shih smacked the bribe out of the corporal’s hand, splattering Ye’s shoes and the potted plant beside him. “Enough. He is not your lapdog. You have kept us waiting long enough.”

  Mori, unruffled, said, “A minute only. I thought the good corporal—”

  “One hundred hours have elapsed since the landing. You promised to place one of our agents on the alien craft.”

  “Be reasonable. I promised to do everything in my power to help you achieve that goal, and I have. I gave you half the shuttles in my fleet. I used information from the alien telescope to provide you with continual updates. Your people shuttling water know all about alien, superdense-ice construction techniques now. When I shared my agent’s picture of the subspace routing device and their access point, I advanced your space program by centuries.”

  “Unless you stop them, the crew of the Tetra will escape through the Saturn anomaly.”

  Rigid from being cut off rudely several times, Mori explained, “I can’t make the alien craft go any slower. Perhaps if a few of your men jumped out, a shuttle with lower mass could speed up enough to catch them in the next couple days.”

  “You leave me no choice.” Shih dialed the phone. “Is this Japanese National Defense? I am an officer with Chinese Intelligence. We have tracked number seven on your terrorist watch list. My agents followed him aboard a Tokyo train minutes ago—the one that travels through Mori Research Plaza. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  Turning to Mori, Shih said, “This is to remind you to keep your word.”

  Through the three-story wall of clear glass, the entire food court saw the blinding flash in the east. After the column of white came the storm of razor-sharp glass blowing inward. People ducked and screamed. Men ran from behind the food counters to surround Shih. Stunned, he said, “It wasn’t supposed to be that big.”

  The explosion eliminated most of the research site, detonating supplies like oxygen, acetylene, and fuel storage in a fireball just shy of nuclear. Preliminary estimates came in at a thousand dead, and many times that injured.

  ****

  While her friend Yuki was on bubble watch near the snowflake, keeping an eye on the pursuing shuttle, Mercy glared angrily at the doctor’s cabin door, her hands stuffed deep into her lab-coat pockets. “Any news from Garden Hollow while I was confined to my room by the Gestapo?”

  Yuki sighed. “All dull. They’re convinced that the swamp is used to return elements back to the entire ecosystem, so Herk named it ‘Recycling Swamp.’ I heard all about gathering human nitrate for fertilizer.” She made a gagging gesture. “Today, they’ve expanded food gathering to tomatoes, sample grains, and algae.”

  “Sample grains?”

  “Oh, yeah. The vegetables are fairly available, but only about 5 percent of the fruits and grains are harvestable this week. The rest we’re preserving for replanting. Tomorrow, the hunt expands to something they call a mod-pheasant. Rachael is hoping to domesticate the species, breed, and collect eggs. Everyone else is hoping for barbeque and something to eat all the bugs.”

  “I thought there were no birds.”

  “None that fly.”

  At the same instant that the lab in Tokyo ignited, the paired-quantum photo cartridge transmitted the same level of energy across the link. The millions of superheated particles exploded outward from Yuki’s left shoulder pocket, just above the elbow. She had no way of knowing what had happened, but a scream tore from deep inside her.

  Mercy could smell burning flesh. Without thinking, she removed her own jacket and knotted the sleeves above the gushing wound. Pale-faced, Mercy noted shrapnel pieces in her friend’s neck, jaw, and breast. Blood globules spurted away to dance around the room.

  “Auckland!” Mercy keened as she pulled out her multi-tool, useful for wire stripping and screw tightening. The engineer snapped out a tiny blade, moved her friend’s hand, and cut the shredded jumpsuit sleeve away so the doctor would be able to save Yuki. Hearing her friend’s panicked runaway-train panting and seeing her wild eyes, Mercy said, “Shh . . . he’ll know what to do. We’re going to take care of you.”

  Popping his head from his bedroom, the groggy doctor mumbled, “What?”

  Seeing modest Mercy with bare arms was his first indication that something was dangerously wrong. The red mist hovering around her hands caused him to launch across the room. “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. She had her quantum camera in there.”

  The doctor ordered, “Hold her arm tightly. Give me your pliers. Have they touched anything since decontamination?”

  “No.”

  Removing the biggest shard, he gaped at the improbable wound. The reddening of the skin was still expanding. Yuki’s face was a rictus of pain as she tried to claw at the injury. He held her right arm back as he shouted, “Lou. Cold packs. Park! Bring my bag with the morphine, and then get the surgical box. I need every sterile clamp and sponge we have.”

  Red shouted, “Mercy, there’s smoke coming from your room.”

  “You check on it. I’m holding Yuki together.”

  Auckland cursed the blood mist. “Help me drag Yuki into the kitchen.”

  Red flew to the single girl’s dorm. “Someone’s luggage is on fire.” They heard beating, following by a hiss. “Sorry, toothpaste and food goo splattered over everything.”

  “I’ll help you take the bag down to the showers to clean it off,” said Zeiss. “We need to find out what caused this.”

  Meanwhile, Auckland gave Yuki pain medication to knock her out while the others strapped her securely to the table. While waiting for the ice pack to slow the burn progress and encourage clotting, he patched the obvious bleeders. Mercy did little more than hold the woman’s hand.

  When the patient was stabilized, Auckland confessed, “Whatever it was cooked her bicep and half the tissue around your lab coat. In another two months, I might be able to operate and save this arm. Right now, it’s such a bloody mess I’m not sure if she’d survive an amputation.”

  Red came back up from the cleansing tubes. “Um . . . every part of the magic Mori camera melted down.”

  “Thank God she wasn’t snapping another photo at the time, or carrying the equipment in her chest or hip pocket,” Mercy said.

  “Spontaneous combustion?” asked the doctor.

  “Z says all the camera components melting at once probably means a two-way quantum transfer of heat energy from Tokyo.”

  “Another bloody atomic bomb?” Lou asked.

  Hyperventilating at the possibility of over thirteen million deaths in his homeland, Sojiro tried to drop to the flo
or to avoid fainting. In zero g, however, his feet slowly floated off the floor, and he ended up staring at the ceiling.

  “I don’t know!” Red shouted back. “We’ll watch the tape later.”

  “Where is Z?”

  “Keeping the door open to a new chamber. That room we couldn’t access in the bathroom level? It’s open now. There’s a gel bed inside, and the gold-paper sign says ‘emergency stasis.’”

  The astronauts looked at each other. Mercy said, “Yuki was an acrobat, a performer. I say we save her arm if we can.”

  Red threw her support behind the snap decision, “Sensei hasn’t steered us wrong yet. All in favor?”

  Zeiss voted yes by radio. Everyone else raised a hand except the doctor, who agonized over the risks.

  Sojiro tipped the scales when he announced, “The shuttle is moving closer. We have to accelerate now, or they might catch us.”

  Auckland conceded. “Mercy and Park, help me move her to the stasis chamber. The others have more immediate problems.”

  Lou, reluctant to leave his newest girl, ignored the order and carried Yuki to the cleansing tube. Park remained behind to help squeeze out a little more speed from Sanctuary.

  The men wrestled the injured woman into the gel outline.

  The stasis chamber felt cold and dampened sound. “We’ll rescue you as soon as we can,” Mercy promised.

  Auckland pulled Mercy back into the main tube. “The tourniquet causes more damage the longer it’s on. If we’re Han Soloing her, it should be as soon as possible. How do we close the chamber?”

  The question had been to Zeiss, but Mercy answered. “Snowflake, close stasis and activate.” A panel slid up from the floor and snapped seamlessly into the gap. The moon symbol overhead turned silver. She stared at the wall for several moments until the doctor pulled on her bare shoulder.

  “We should clean the blood up before it lands on an instrument panel.”

  After everything that happened in the war—moon base, her parents, and her best friend exploding in front of her—the thought of cleaning up after it all finally made her cry. Since Lou was fairly useless from shock as well, Auckland left Red to comfort the sobbing woman and cleaned the debris on his own.