by David Ryker
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m saying that you can’t be in those kinds of situations and not develop a keen sense of empathy,” he said. “And instincts. I think you know there’s something wrong on this station.”
Immediately her mind flashed to her meeting with Farrell and Kergan. The warden’s insane grin, Kergan’s attitude. The odor of piss. But that didn’t mean an inmate’s conspiracy theory was true. There could very easily be another explanation.
Couldn’t there?
“You need to be specific,” she said dismissively. “Oberon One is the first of its kind, a prototype. It’s not exactly a prison and it’s not exactly a mining facility. It’s something new and unique, which means there are going to be bugs. Hitches in the system.”
Quinn frowned. “I think more than a few people at the top of this place have gone insane,” he said. “Is that specific enough for you?”
Chelsea felt her stomach drop. If Quinn had experienced something similar, it meant she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it anymore. But she wasn’t going to just jump into something without analyzing the situation first.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
He told her about the experience the Jarheads had had on the surface, and the two times when they’d endured horrifying visions. He told her that three Yandares had also undergone the visions, and that two of them had been taken away afterwards, virtually comatose.
“That’s insane,” she breathed. “What could possibly cause shared delusions like that?”
Quinn glanced at the door that led from the infirmary to the corridor beyond.
“Is this place secure?” he asked.
“Of course. Inmates have a right to privacy when they’re being treated.”
“Good. Because whatever it is that caused this, it’s coming straight from the top. Kergan for sure, and Ridley. Tait, Holden. Even ones that normally are easygoing, like Boychuk, are suddenly acting distracted and talking strange.”
Chelsea peered at him, not wanting to let on just yet how keen her curiosity was becoming, not to mention her anxiety. It was clear Quinn had seen the same things she had.
“What do you mean by talking strange?”
“Saying things like ‘I’ll kill you.’ There’s a theme of violence throughout all of this.”
He recounted to her what Kergan had said, casually ordering them to kill each other before the visions hit.
“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. Maybe not the specifics, but you’ve seen it, too.”
“Let’s say that I have,” she said warily. “What do you expect me to do about it? Oberon One is a private facility, and the warden has all the authority here. I don’t even have the ability to declare him unfit for duty on medical grounds. Outside of the Shanghai Treaty, Farrell is the only law here.”
He fixed her with a look. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Doc. We both know that your last name makes you a lot more important than anyone else on this bucket.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way it is. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if your family had an ownership stake in SkyLode.”
Chelsea struggled to keep her surprise from showing on her face. Quinn was even sharper than she’d given him credit for.
“What difference would it make?” she asked. “I, personally, am still an employee.”
“Yeah,” he said with a wry grin. “An employee who could get every other employee fired, if not arrested, with a single commlink call.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “That’s not going to happen, Quinn, especially not on the say-so of an inmate.”
He stared at her for a long while, and she returned the look in defiant silence. Finally, he heaved a sigh.
“All I’m asking is that you think about this,” he said. “Whatever’s going on here, it isn’t good for anybody. I don’t know if it’s drugs or some sort of behavioral experiment, or something else entirely. All I know is that every instinct in me is screaming that something is very wrong here and that we’re all in danger.”
Chelsea felt the urge to just nod and agree, tell Quinn that she was on the same page and that they needed to do something about it. But another part of her, the part that had driven her to forge her own path in life, fought back against the urge. Rational thought was needed here.
“I’m not going to buy into any conspiracy theory just yet,” she said. “I’ll agree to keep my eyes open. That’s it. If I think it needs to go beyond that, I’ll contact someone in authority. That’s all I’m going to commit to right now.”
Quinn rose from his bed and got unsteadily to his feet. “I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“You might have a concussion,” she warned. “You should probably stay here.”
He grinned. “Not a chance. You may not believe in conspiracies, but I sure as hell do. Unless you’re going to order me to?”
“Go ahead.” She shrugged. “Suffer permanent brain damage, it’s no skin off my nose.”
“Doc, if I’m still walking and talking after everything I’ve been through, I highly doubt a concussion is going to slow me down.”
“Whatever.” She tapped her wristband. “This is Bloom in the infirmary. Inmate Quinn is ready to be escorted back to his cell.”
There was silence for several seconds.
“Duty officer?” she asked. “Who’s in charge?”
Another long pause before Iona Ridley’s voice came on.
“Just send him on his way,” she snapped. “Tell him if he tries anything, I’ll kill him. Ridley out.”
Quinn didn’t have to say anything as he walked out of the room and into the corridor beyond. He simply raised his eyebrows and looked at her with those blue eyes, which seemed lighter now against the dark purple bruises that had blossomed around them.
Chelsea continued staring at the door long after he’d left.
Chelsea’s personal commlink rode the same wave as the one used by the inmates, but it was more powerful and didn’t suffer the same problems with power and reception that theirs did. So when she called her father that evening, his image was clear enough that she could easily make out the cavernous living room behind him, easily a hundred times the size of her own cramped quarters.
And, of course, the patronizing look on his face was clear as a bell, too. Oscar Bloom was never one to hide his feelings. With his power, he didn’t have to.
“Darling,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise. If I’d known you were going to call, I’d have looped your mother in. She’s at the club.”
Which means she’s in the bag, Chelsea thought bitterly. Mom always enjoyed a drink or six after a rousing game of backgammon.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I actually just needed to talk to you.”
“That sounds dire,” he said warily.
Chelsea held in a sigh. He was taking a shot at her, letting her know that calling him just to talk was so out of the ordinary as to be suspicious. It had been the hallmark of their relationship since she was a young teen and had started taking her own path in life instead of the one he’d mapped out for her.
“Nothing sinister,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you about SkyLode. What do you really know about it?”
He looked at her for a long time before answering. “I know two things for sure. One, it’s very profitable, and two, you live on their deep space mining facility. Does that answer your question?”
“No.” She was already beginning to think this had been a mistake. “Do you know anything about how they chose the warden, Sean Farrell?”
“I’m a shareholder, dear, not an executive. I don’t care about how the company is run, I only care about dividends. Why do you care all of a sudden?”
“No reason,” she lied. “Just… some issues with the way things are run here, that’s all.”
Her father surprised her by
smiling. “Well, saints be praised! You’ve finally seen the light! Now you can finally get back to Earth and get on with your life!”
“What are you talking about?” But she already knew, and it pissed her off.
“I was wondering when you’d finally realize you weren’t meant to be someone else’s employee, Chelsea. To be honest, I’m surprised it took you six months. But it doesn’t matter, you’ve come to your senses. When is the next supply ship scheduled to arrive? You can get on the return flight. We’ll set up a floor for you in the Tower.”
“I’m not quitting my job, Dad.”
His expression dropped. “What? I don’t understand. You just said…”
“I said I had issues with how they run the place, not that I’m giving up on it. Issues can be addressed. Problems can be solved.”
“Problems.” Now he looked like his usual self again: stern and ready to argue. “Let me guess, these issues you’re talking about have something to do with how they treat the workers.”
“They’re not workers, Dad!” She took a breath to calm herself. “They’re inmates. Prisoners. They don’t get paid for their labor.”
“Of course they don’t. You just said it yourself, they’re prisoners. They shouldn’t be paid, they should be punished. You know what those people did to end up on Oberon One as well as I do.” He shook his head. “This is just like the war all over again. Always finding someone to save. You’ve been like this since you were a child and bringing home stray dogs you found when you snuck off into the lowtown.”
Lowtown was a Tower euphemism for the slums that teemed below the smog banks. Chelsea had indeed rescued dogs as a girl and brought them back to their suite of floors in the Hong Kong Tower where they lived. Her father acted like he’d had to personally care for them, instead of leaving it entirely to the staff.
She scowled. “I know you think empathy is a character flaw, Dad, but I don’t. I know perfectly well that the inmates earned their one-way ticket here, but that doesn’t mean they should be mistreated. They’re human beings.”
Her father stared silently for several moments. She could almost see the wheels in his head spinning out counter-arguments furiously, but finally he seemed to calm down.
“I think you just made my point for me,” he said.
“I’m not getting you,” she said, arching an eyebrow.
“You want to change things for the better, right? Of course you do, it’s your nature. And I’m not a monster, I want to see prisoners treated humanely, too.”
More humanely than banishing them a couple billion miles from Earth?
“So we should do something—” she began.
He held up a finger. “Let me finish. You can make a difference. Just come back to Earth and run for the Senate, and you can make the world a better place for everyone. General Drake told me personally that he thinks you could eventually succeed him as tribune.”
And now the other shoe finally drops.
“How do you always manage to bring things back to politics?” she asked, exasperated.
“Look, Chelsea, we all indulged you when you decided to enlist because we knew it would be easier for you to be elected if you were a veteran. It’s expected of candidates.” His brow furrowed. “And we pretended to understand when you felt the need to go galavanting into actual war zones. We told ourselves that you were helping people, although God knows there were plenty of others who weren’t the heir to a Global Family fortune who could have done the same thing.”
“Goddammit, Dad—”
“But signing up for a prison in space was the last straw. You’ve done whatever the hell it was you thought you were doing, Chelsea. It’s time to join the real world and fulfill your responsibilities as a Bloom. And frankly, I’m tired of the leers at the club when people talk about how my daughter is floating around Uranus surrounded by desperate criminals. It’s sick.”
Chelsea would be proud of herself later for not reacting, and keeping the rage welling inside her at bay—at least for the moment.
“This conversation is over, Dad,” she said evenly. “To be honest, I don’t know when we’ll speak again.”
With that, she ended the connection. The last image was a look of shocked indignation on her father’s face. A few moments later, she was screaming into her pillow.
“What’s wrong, sir?” Ridley asked.
Kergan simply smiled and tapped the screen in front of him to end the recording. They were on the station’s bridge, which was usually empty unless there were maintenance issues. Kergan had made it his base of operations over the past few days, as it was centrally located. The gravity was lower here, which made movement easier, and, conveniently, it was also the communications hub.
“Nothing, Iona,” he said. “I just intercepted a transmission between Chelsea Bloom and her father. They had a very interesting conversation. I’m afraid we may need to address the situation soon.”
“Do you want me to kill her?” Ridley asked with a pathetic hope in her eyes.
Kergan sighed. “No, Iona. Of all the people on Oberon One, you are not to harm Chelsea Bloom. Do you understand?”
She looked down, crestfallen, and nodded.
“I had hoped you would stop talking that way by now,” he said. “I suppose I might have to let you kill someone soon, just to stop this obsessive behavior.”
Ridley brightened and raised her head again. The smile on her face was almost as wide as Senpai Sally’s, even without the surgical enhancements.
21
The dried goop holding Quinn’s nose in place was just thick enough that it showed up as a hint of a shadow in his peripheral vision, and it bugged the hell out of him. But as he sat eating his breakfast slop twenty-four hours later, he supposed he should be thankful that Schuster’s attack hadn’t done any more damage.
It was the first time he could remember that the four Jarheads hadn’t all been together at the same table for a meal. He glanced over briefly at the three tables taken up by members of the Southern Saints, and saw Schuster sitting across from Ruiz. They locked eyes for just an instant before going back to what they were doing.
“I suppose this means we owe those bastards now,” Maggott griped.
“Quinn saved their leader’s life in the gym,” Bishop pointed out. “I’d say them acting like they took Dev under their wing and playing go-between is the least they can do.”
“I just wish we knew what was going on,” said Quinn. “I assumed they’d put Dev in a new cell after our fight, but I figured it would be with the Saints. I didn’t expect Sloane to give him a bunk in engineering and order him to be there all day except meals. Makes it a lot harder to meet up for debriefings.”
“It’s more o’ the same what we were talkin’ aboot,” said Maggott. “Guards just nae givin’ a shit about whether the inmates are secured or not. Tha’ canna be a good sign.”
“Which is why we’re lucky we got the Saints and Yandares on board when we did,” said Quinn. “Without that, we might have been in the middle of a riot right now. They would have seen what was going on as weakness on the part of the guards and tried to take over.”
“Wasn’t luck at all.” Bishop raised his steel cup of what passed for coffee on Oberon One in a toast. “It was the brilliant leadership of Napoleon Quinn, former Marine captain, former gunnery sergeant, and current—I don’t know, rebellion leader guy? Is that what we’re doing here?”
“Damned if I know,” Quinn sighed. “I’m taking this one step at a time. Still have no idea if I managed to convince Bloom of anything other than the fact I’m losing my marbles.”
A few minutes later, Schuster picked up his tray and rose from the Saints’ table before strolling over to the bussing station and dumping it with the rest of the dirty dishes. He spared one more glance at the Jarheads before heading out the mess door and back down to engineering.
Quinn caught Ulysses’ eye soon after and they exchanged a nod. They would meet up in the gymnasium at 1400 h
ours and talk about what Schuster had told them. Judging by the somber look on his face, Ulysses didn’t have anything particularly good to say.
“He don’t know what the hell Sloane is buildin,’ he jes knows it ain’t anythin’ good.”
Ulysses and Quinn eyed each other warily as the spoke, making sure to keep up the pretense of animosity for the benefit of Tait and Holden, who were in the mezzanine. Maggott and Bishop were working with the cable rowing machines while Ruiz did chin-ups near the lower-gravity center, the only place he’d be able to accomplish such a feat. Other Saints were scattered throughout the different stations of the gym while Sally and her Yandares did their usual gymnastics.
“That’s all he said?” asked Quinn.
“Sump’n ‘bout a theoretical element from another dimension. I dunno, man, I’m gettin’ it third-hand from Ruiz, remember. But they gonna hit up you Jarheads and Sally for the team to go down to the surface n’ get it.”
Quinn chewed on that. It was all the people—that he knew of, at least—who had experienced the visions and not disappeared. That had to be significant somehow.
“Ah’m goin’ on this thang, too,” said Ulysses. “No way Jarheads and Yandares are doin’ anythin’ that the Saints ain’t.”
“Absolutely not. I think there’s a reason for who they chose, and I’m betting if you volunteer, they’ll refuse. Besides, I need you on board the station with the Yandares.”
Ulysses’ glare was unsettling, and not just because he had no eyebrows.
“First of all, son, you don’t give me orders,” he said coldly. “I ain’t no Marine. Second, what the hell makes ya think I’m gonna do anythin’ with them fuckin’ Yandare psychos?”
Quinn nodded. “You’re right, I don’t give the orders. I apologize.”
