Max smiled. He knew why she was so anxious to save the data. He was anxious for the same reason. This was her chance, and she wasn’t likely to get another one.
Once the light above the airlock doors turned green and they slid open, Korbin raced out through the mess hall like she was on fire. The next hab module they entered was Cardinal’s greenhouse. His terminal was full of data on how to grow plants on Wonderland. Critical information for a future colony.
Max watched as Korbin hurried to extract yet another data drive. She slipped it into an outer pocket in her suit, glancing his way as she did so.
Did she think he would try to stop her? He wanted nothing more than to help, but it wasn’t as though he could tell her that. Or could he?
Korbin ran from the greenhouse to Stone’s geological lab. She already had enough data, but the more the better. Stone’s terminal would have detailed info on Wonderland’s wealth of natural resources. Max followed Korbin there and watched as she removed yet another drive and tucked it into her pocket. Again, she glanced at him. “Aren’t you going to help?”
“How are you going to explain stealing those?” Max asked, nodding to her pocket.
“Excuse me?”
“You need time to copy all that data, which means you’re going to need to come up with a good excuse to hang onto those drives.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we don’t have time for this.”
“Exactly. Tell them you tried to backup the data, but there wasn’t enough time. Rig this place to blow, and no one will ever be the wiser. We’ll say those monsters must have tripped over a case of grenades. They’ll be here soon. I stole one of their eggs.”
“You stole a…”
Max shrugged. “I lost it in the jungle while I was running from them, but they obviously don’t know that. They tracked us this far, so I doubt they’ll stop until they’ve turned this place upside down.”
Korbin gave him a dark look. “You’ve put this entire mission in jeopardy!”
“What do you care? You have the data; you’ve got what you need.”
Korbin’s brow furrowed and she shook her head.
Being subtle wasn’t working with her. “You have what you need for the Confederacy. All that’s missing is the nav data from the Lincoln, and I can help you get that, too.”
Korbin’s hand drifted to another zippered pocket on her hip, and Max began to worry that she had a weapon concealed there.
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Wait. I’m on your side.”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
Could he have been wrong? No. His intel was rock solid. Max smiled. “You were the one who sabotaged the engine code. The Confederacy gave you orders to ax the mission, but it didn’t work. You’re not an engineer, and Davorian obviously knows his stuff, so he shut down the bad code before anything happened.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I have two kids back on Earth—in the Alliance. Why would I risk their futures by betraying my own country?”
“You’ve visited your kids exactly once a year for the past five years.”
“I’m a Commander. I barely get shore leave. Besides, it’s easier for them not to see me too often.”
Max shook his head. “No, you’ve been reconditioned to put group interests ahead of your own. That goes for putting group interests ahead of your childrens’ interests, too. What do two lives matter when compared with the greater good of billions? At this point, those kids are just another part of your cover. No one would suspect a mother of two of being a traitor, but you are. Your sabotage didn’t work, so you figured you could help your side by sharing the mission data. Well, here’s your chance. Steal the data and say it was destroyed.”
Thunder boomed ominously.
“At the risk of repeating myself, I’m not a spy.”
“You were undercover in the Confederacy for three years. They captured you, and you escaped. Pretty lucky for you, but I think they let you go.”
Korbin’s eyes hardened and she unzipped her pocket. “Sounds like you have everything figured out.” She withdrew a small pistol, confirming his suspicions about that pocket. He held up his hands again. “I’m sorry, Max, but this is bigger than either of us. There’s a greater good at stake.”
“I agree, so let’s trade—my life for the Lincoln’s nav data.”
Korbin snorted. “You can’t deliver that.”
“And what if I could?”
“I can’t take the risk.”
“I can show it to you.”
“How?”
“Don’t shoot.” Max slowly raised his comm band and mentally summoned one of the nav charts from the device’s memory. The chart sprang to life, projected in the air between them. It showed the Lincoln’s path through the Looking Glass.
“How did you get that?”
“How do you think the Confederacy got the nav data from our probe missions?”
“That was you?”
“I had help, but yes. You’re not the only Confederate sympathizer in the Alliance. It’s hard to badmouth a Utopian society that actually works. We’re stuck in the past, still thinking that socialism is the devil, and maybe it was back in the twentieth century, but that’s because self-interest is hard-wired into us. Ants are communists, and they make it work. There’s a reason they call us ants. Our brains have been re-wired to think more like them. We know how to put group interests ahead of our own.”
“They reconditioned you, too?”
Max nodded. An animal roar interrupted them, sounding distant and near at the same time. He looked out the nearest window, half-expecting to see a giant eye peering in. Instead he saw the headlights of the rover. “We don’t have much time,” he said.
Thud. Thud. Thud-thud-thud…
“Something’s coming!” Korbin screamed.
The floor heaved under their feet and the ceiling came crashing down. Rock samples went flying. Canvas framing poles clattered and fell in a tangled mess, some of them clunking off Max’s helmet. Hab canvas swaddled them, and Korbin cried out, either in surprise or pain. The lights were gone, and the darkness smothered. Max felt himself being dragged along, then he heard another alien roar, followed by a ground-shaking boom as the beast fell, tripping over what was left of the complex.
Max listened to the sound of his breathing reverberating inside his helmet; then came more roaring sounds as the monster began thrashing, trying to get back up. They needed to find a way out before it accidentally killed them. He activated his headlamp and sent a private comms to Korbin. “You okay?”
“I’m… fine,” she managed.
He looked around, casting twisted shadows in all directions. She was lying beside him under a pile of fist-sized rock samples. Max slipped out from under a bird’s nest of bent framing poles and looked around for an exit. The complex hadn’t completely collapsed, but there was no way they’d be able to make it to one of the external airlocks. They were going to have to cut a way out, but with what?
Max waited a second longer, wishing for an exit to appear. There came another roar, and a giant billowing slit opened up right in front of him. “Let’s go!” He said, lunging for the opening before it disappeared. He reminded himself to think positive.
Max heard Korbin cursing over their private comms channel, and he turned to see her collapsed and struggling to regain her footing. Her ankle wasn’t cooperating. He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet. “Come on!”
Her leg buckled once more. “I think it’s broken!”
Max grimaced. “Lean on me.” They hobbled away with the hab complex twisting and bucking around them as their attacker continued thrashing on the ground. The tear in the hab canvas billowed wide, and they stumbled out. Max risked a look over his shoulder. The complex looked like a collapsed circus tent, but it was still more or less intact. The crew would find the missing drives as soon as they went back to a
ssess and repair the damage. He stopped hobbling, a frown creasing his brow.
“The captain’s trying to reach me,” Korbin said. “I’m going to tell him where we are.”
“Don’t answer yet. We need to go back in!”
“What? Why?”
“They’re going to figure out what we did! The habs are collapsed, not destroyed.” Max watched the thrashing monster. Hab canvas flapped and billowed. Max wondered how they were going to get back in with that dino in there. Then a pair of blood-red laser beams lanced out of the darkness, converging on the fallen beast. It screamed and lay still.
Problem solved.
“It’s too late,” Korbin said. “We’ll find another way to get the data.”
Max wasn’t ready to give up yet. He wished for a solution to present itself. Abruptly a bright golden glow appeared in the center of the ruined hab complex, illuminating the white canvas from within. That radiance grew steadily, and he smiled.
“It’s on fire…” Korbin said.
Max nodded. It made sense. Someone shot a pair of high-powered lasers into a pile of combustible material. He couldn’t have planned a better solution. Yet another coincidence on Wonderland—or maybe this time it was Fate.
Turning to Korbin, Max said, “You’d better give me the drives. I’ll hang onto them for now.”
He saw her eyes narrow suspiciously behind her helmet. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you need an excuse for why you didn’t answer the captain’s call. We’ll say you were unconscious. No one’s going to doubt that you could have bumped your head, but while they’re examining you, they might discover the drives in your pocket. No one will bother examining me. I’m not hurt.”
“Fine.” Korbin unzipped her pocket and passed him all four of the thumb-sized drives. “Now what?”
Max’s comm began beeping with a call from Lieutenant Stone. He ignored it. He’d say he was too busy fleeing from the blaze. “Now, we go announce our return from the dead and tell everyone the bad news about the mission data.”
“What if they find something in the wreckage?”
“They won’t. Trust me.” Not if Maximilian Carter has anything to do with it, he thought.
CHAPTER 30
Present Day, May 18, 2791
(Earth’s Frame of Reference)
Catalina paused in mid-sweep of the grand ballroom-sized foyer of the Waltons’ home to wipe the sweat from her brow. The Waltons’ sweeper bot sat neglected to one side of the room beneath an antique chair. The bot had broken down twice this week, and this time the failure was permanent until spare parts could be found.
Unfortunately for Caty, whose job it now was to sweep every nook and cranny of the twenty-seven thousand square foot home, manufacturing sweeper bot parts was a low priority. Every spare scrap of metal was spoken for with government contracts, and every 3D printer and automated factory in the western hemisphere had been commandeered (somewhat illegally) to produce components for new starships. War had never been a bigger business, and the Alliance’s cherished free market was starting to look dangerously like a command economy.
Caty stretched her aching arms, and her comm band trilled with an incoming call, giving her a welcome excuse not to go back to sweeping just yet. The caller ID said the call was from Lieutenant Muros from NAS Lemcroft. Caty’s jaw went slack and her eyes drifted out of focus. The last time she’d heard from Muros was when she’d found out that Alexander’s ship had gone down with all hands on board.
“Hello?” Caty said. Her hands felt cold, her entire body stiff.
“Caty, are you sitting down?”
“No.”
“I’ll give you a moment.”
Caty eyed the antique chair in the corner of the room. What if it broke? She imagined sweeping floors for the next twenty years, and decided not to risk it. “I’m sitting,” she lied. “What is it?” Her heart played a staccato in her chest.
“I made a mistake, Caty. There were two ships called the Lincoln—a destroyer class, and a battleship class. The battleship was the one that we lost, but the destroyer is still listed as active. I looked a little deeper, and your husband’s name shows up on the roster of the destroyer, but not the battleship. He could still be alive.”
Caty shook her head, hot tears sizzling down her cheeks.
“Caty?”
“How could you make a mistake like that!” she burst out.
“I…”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I’m very sorry. I really—”
Caty ended the comm call there and stood glaring at her comm band. Stupid woman. Some distant recess of her mind whispered to her that maybe the lieutenant wasn’t the only one she was mad at, but she wasn’t ready to listen yet.
Six hours later she was walking back from the bus with David, listening to the sound their feet made in the hard-packed mud. After the night they’d spent together a week ago, Caty had explained that she still needed time to get over Alexander. David had accepted that, but not happily. Now that she knew Alexander might still be alive, she would need more time than ever. Closure had come and gone, leaving a trail of guilt and a gaping hole in her chest.
Caty’s comm band rang. It was probably Mrs. Walton. The band went on ringing, and David glanced at her, his bushy eyebrows lifting. Feeling suddenly annoyed at him, she answered the comm just to avoid a conversation about why she wasn’t answering it. This time she didn’t even bother to read the caller ID before answering. “Hello?”
“Caty, don’t hang up.”
Muros. The name burned like acid in her brain. “Why not?”
“You don’t have to forgive me.”
“I know.”
“Well, there’s a message here on file from Alex, addressed to you. The date stamp is from over a year ago. Do you want me to send it to you?”
Caty gaped at her comm, unable to believe what she was hearing. A message.
“Caty?”
“Was that message before or after the fighting concluded in orbit?”
“Ummm… after.”
“So he is alive.” Caty pretended not to notice the cold look of betrayal on David’s face.
“That’s looking more likely, yes.”
“Send it. Thank you, Muros. This doesn’t make up for anything…”
“No, I know.”
“But thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The comm call ended from the other end and Caty was left sharing an awkward silence with David as they walked the last block to their home.
“He is alive.”
No Spanish this time. Caty couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. “Yes.”
“When did you find out?” he asked, turning to look at her. His eyes were like stones.
“Today.”
He nodded, looking away again. “Then you were not lying about needing time.”
“No. I wasn’t. I felt like I cheated on him with you. Now that he might be alive, I feel more like that than ever. Being with you was a mistake, David. I’m sorry.”
David stopped suddenly and grabbed her roughly by the arm. His eyes were wide and flashing, his breathing fast and shallow. She could smell the alcohol on his breath, and for the first time it really hit her that he always smelled like alcohol. “Te equivocaste?” He all but spat the words at her.
“David. I’m a married woman.”
“You’re with me now! He left you here! ¡Yo te cuido, yo te acompaño!”
She shook her head. “I’ve never led you on, David.”
“No, ¡solo te acostaste conmigo como una cualquiera!”
Caty blinked. Was he really calling her a whore? How dare he! She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “You knew my situation from the start. I never led you on. You took advantage of my grief when I thought Alexander was dead. If anything this is your fault.”
David’s jaw clenched, and all of the light left his eyes.
Slap!
&
nbsp; Her cheek exploded with fire, and David shook a finger in her face. “¡El culpable eres tu!”
He stalked away, leaving her stunned and trembling with a mixture of fear and rage. She stood there frozen, watching until David walked around the block and out of sight. He’d hit her… she couldn’t believe it—the man who’d been her guardian for more than a year had just assaulted her.
It was only a slap. He’s been drinking. His feelings are hurt.
No. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to make excuses for him. Wrong was wrong. The adrenaline left and the pain in her cheek intensified. Caty felt light-headed and nauseous. She sat in the grass beside the footpath with her head between her knees.
After a while, she recovered enough to wonder about the message that had caused the fight. She checked her inbox on her comm band and found a message from Muros with Alex’s message attached in a video format. She opened the file for playback and immediately saw Alexander’s face projected in the air above her wrist. Her heart leapt into her throat, creating a painful lump to compete with the fire burning in her cheek.
He smiled briefly. She smiled back, imagining he was really there to see it. She reached out with one hand to touch him, but it passed straight through the hologram and out the other side, causing a fuzz of static to wash through his features.
“Caty, by now you know more about what’s happened than I do. I hope to God you’re somewhere safe. As for me, I’m okay. The Lincoln is well on her way to her destination, but there’s a lot they didn’t tell us about this mission. I don’t think I can say much without this message getting edited all to hell before it reaches you, but due to reasons I can’t discuss, I’m not going to be able to keep contact with you. I’ll still record messages every day that I can, but you probably won’t get them for a long time. It’s going to be years before we see each other, Caty—at best. I’ll wait for you, just as I promised, but if you can’t…”
She saw him swallow visibly, and her entire body went cold once more.
“Above all, I want you to be happy. Whatever that means, I won’t hold it against you, okay? Keep yourself safe. I love you, Caty. Te amo.”
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 23
