Outriders (37 page)

“No, shut it all down. The pod. Cut the power.”

Kev looked up at him. “If I do that, everything goes.”

“I know.”

“She’ll die.”

“Or she’ll come out. Her choice.”

Kev hesitated only for a moment, and then nodded.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG
before the cold took over. And Piper knew that was the thing that would kill her. At first, the complete darkness had thrown her, and after that she’d started worrying about oxygen levels. But once she’d thought it through, she realized that she had plenty of air in the pod to breathe comfortably for hours. More than enough time to freeze to death.

She hadn’t really thought about it before. In her mind, the pods were all dormant until someone opened the hatch on one. But of course that wasn’t true. Of course they had to run on minimal power, to keep the temperature up and the oxygen fresh. None of that was happening now. And it was taking its toll.

In the darkness, she’d managed to feel her way to a supply crate and rummaging through had produced a small light. With that, she’d located a pack of thermal blankets. But it hadn’t taken long for her to realize that even those were no match against the heat-draining power of deep space. And then she’d set her light down somewhere and lost it.

She’d been shivering so badly that she could hardly keep the blankets pulled tight around her, but oddly in the past few minutes, the shivering had stopped. Piper wondered if maybe that meant they’d turned the power back on. Or at least the temperature regulator. But it was still dark. Was that normal? She couldn’t remember when she’d gone to sleep, but then remembered she wasn’t asleep, she was in a room and it was dark. No, not a room. A pod.

It was so hard to think. Maybe she just needed to sleep. That seemed right. If she slept, when she woke up, it would be easier to think, and then maybe she could remember what she was supposed to do. The blankets were too tight, they made it hard to move and she couldn’t get comfortable. Piper unwrapped herself. She’d sleep first, and then she’d remember.

But even as she was lying on the crash couch, some tiny part of her brain screamed not to sleep, that there was something else she had to do first, and no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, she found she couldn’t. There was something about the door, it told her. Something she was supposed to do with the door before she went to sleep.

It was so hard to stand. It took so much energy to stand. And the door was somewhere over there, somewhere in the darkness. Was there even a door in space? But she wasn’t in space. She was in a room, and she had to open the door before she went to sleep.

With leaden steps and dead hands, Piper forced herself around the outer edge of the pod, feeling for whatever it was she was supposed to find. Several times she stopped, thinking she might sit down for a few minutes before she continued the search, but always that part of her mind refused.
After
, it told her,
after
.

And then, at last,
there,
it told her. There. Some kind of bar or ladder, maybe. Was she supposed to climb it? She couldn’t climb, not without her hands, and her hands were somewhere else, she couldn’t find them or remember where they were.

But that screaming part of her brain wouldn’t relent, and she fumbled with the thing in front of her. She hooked her forearms over it and under it, pulled at it, pushed at it, but nothing happened. She wasn’t even sure what was supposed to happen. And she was tired, and dizzy, and she knew if she could just sleep for a few minutes, she would be able to remember what to do.

And as she sank down to her knees, the bar shifted one direction, and there was a loud clank in the distance.

Piper, having accomplished whatever it was she was supposed to have accomplished, let herself slip off towards her well-deserved rest. But something snatched at her. Rough hands. And though she couldn’t understand what was happening now, her main thought was that whoever those hands belonged to wasn’t happy.

TWENTY

“
A
FFIRMATIVE
,
Merciful Justice
,” answered Paul, the dock’s controller. “Credentials are good, you are clear to approach. Proceed to bay Oh Three Seven, and observe station protocol while in proximity. Repeat, bay Oh Three Seven is your lock.”

Paul sat back, casually keyed in the clearance information for the approaching hauler, and checked his contact list. It’d been a busy couple of hours, but traffic seemed to be getting settled.

“Big plans for the weekend?” asked Joaquim, the other controller on shift.

“Oh yeah, huge,” Paul said sarcastically. “Lisa and I are supposed to go out to Deimos on Sunday. With her parents.”

Joaquim grunted, some combination of a chuckle and his condolences.

“One of those fly-by moon cruise things, you know. You ever done one of those?”

“Nah,” Joaquim answered. “Only time I been off-planet is twice for work, and that was two trips too many for me.”

“Lisa found some deal, I guess,” Paul shrugged. It seemed like a lot of hassle just to spend a couple of hours flying around a big rock you could see just fine from the ground. “I don’t know though. We might have to postpone it until the CMA settles down.”

He tried to sound disappointed, even though in reality he was glad to have a legitimate excuse to cancel the outing.

“I don’t think they’re putting too much trouble on outgoing,” Joaquim said. “Just a hassle for incoming.”

“Yeah, well, we gotta come back too, don’t we?” Paul replied. He was already working on the bullet points to make the same case to Lisa later.

“Hey, what bay did you send that last tub to?” Joaquim asked.

“Oh Three Seven,” Paul said.

“Pilot seems a little janky,” said Joaquim, and he pointed at the display showing
Merciful Justice
’s approach vector. The ship was still on course, but it was riding right up against the safety zone. Paul tapped the console, brought up correction numbers.

“
Merciful Justice
,” Paul said. “Correct course to one-nine, nine-seven zulu.”

It wasn’t that unusual for pilots coming out of orbit to take a couple of minutes to get used to atmospheric flight again.

“How about you?” Paul asked.

“I’m pulling a double shift Saturday,” Joaquim said. “Probably just sleep all day Sunday.”

“Lucky.”

“I’ll trade Saturday with you if you want.”

Paul chuckled. “It’s Sunday I need, buddy.”

The pilot of
Merciful Justice
hadn’t responded to the message yet, and the ship still hadn’t corrected course. Maybe the pilot thought he knew better than the controllers.

“
Merciful Justice,
we need you to correct course. Your current line is going to take you over bay Oh One Seven. Please correct to one-nine, nine-seven zulu, and confirm.”

Paul waited fifteen seconds for the confirmation to come in. It didn’t.

“Say again,
Merciful Justice
, correct your course to one-nine, nine-seven zulu, and confirm.”

The ship’s position and its projected path were both off the mark, and getting worse by the second.

“
Merciful Justice,
do you copy? You are in violation of station protocol and at risk on approach. Correct your course as directed, and verbally confirm!”

“Are they accelerating?” Joaquim asked.

“Maybe they’re in trouble,” Paul said. “Call down and tell Marni we might need a crash team on standby.”

Joaquim wheeled his chair over to another console, while Paul tried one last time to reach the crew of the ship.

“
Merciful Justice,
abort approach, abort approach! You’re too hot!”

He flipped over to the emergency channel, called down to the dock chief.

“Tanya, clear the decks, we got a burner coming in! And get a net up!”

Through the window overlooking the floor thirty meters below, Paul saw the lights flare to red as emergency procedures kicked in. Workers scrambled to clear the deck. He glanced at the display showing
Merciful Justice
’s vector, then back down at the people in the docks. Some of them weren’t going to make it. A lot of them.

“
Merciful Justice
,” Paul cried into the comms, “Abort, abort, abort!” He knew it was useless. But it was the only thing he could do.

The roar of the craft shook the control tower. And then he saw it, hurtling towards them, through the massive gateway to the docks. Paul had just enough time to think how uncanny it was to see something that big moving that fast before the impact, and the fireball, and the blastwave threw him into darkness.

TWENTY-ONE

“
W
HAT DO
you mean they didn’t stop it?” Lincoln said. Mike’s face was grim; seething anger tinged with grief and disgust.

“Docks got hit, just like we said. Might as well not have told anybody anything.”

Lincoln felt a cold shock pour down on him, as if the worst strain of the flu had decided to hit him all at once.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “Somebody somewhere dropped the ball. Warning didn’t get to them in time, or they didn’t get the right info on what they were looking for.”

“We gave them everything they needed! That was a lock!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, man. Damage is done.”

Lincoln looked down at the display blinking in front of him, waiting for him to put the final few slides together on his report on the Flashtown hit. He’d just spent the past three hours writing up why the mission had been a success, with actionable intelligence coming as a direct result.

“Casualties?” he asked.

“Deaths in the twenties,” Mike said. “Maybe as many as a hundred wounded. They’re still digging out, though. Numbers are gonna get worse.”

“What’s the news say?”

“Freak accident. Hauler came in too fast, they think the crew blacked out on the way in.”

Lincoln shook his head and got to his feet, leaving the debrief incomplete and, for the moment, forgotten.

“Where’s Thumper?” he said, “I need a line to NID.”

“Mess, probably,” Mike said. “Last I saw, she and Prakoso were headed to get chow.”

Lincoln nodded and exited the compartment, headed towards the mess deck. He was just about to climb up the steep stairs to the deck above when Thumper came hurtling down, sliding along the rails on her hands like a true sailor. He caught her arms when she hit the bottom to keep her from crashing into him. Her eyes were intense, like she’d just been in a fight that wasn’t over yet.

Someone from a nearby compartment shouted, “Shipmate! This ain’t a playground!” but neither Lincoln nor Thumper paid any heed.

“They took Prakoso.”

“What?” Lincoln said. “Who?”

“Self and a couple of his spooks. Marines have him under guard.”

“Self is here?”

She nodded. “Don’t know how long he’s been on board, or how much longer he’ll be here. Asked me to find you, though.”

“Good,” Lincoln said, trying to keep his emotions in check. “I have questions.”

Mr Self was waiting for them in a small briefing room up on the command deck. He was leaning against the table in the front row when Lincoln entered, but as soon as he saw them, he stood and held up his hands, placating.

“Before you say anything, you have to know I wasn’t even supposed to come along for this,” Self said. “I felt like the least I could do was give you a familiar face to punch.”

The admission of the situation didn’t soothe any of Lincoln’s anger, but it was at least enough to keep him from choking the man out on sight.

“If you two don’t mind, could you give us a minute?” Self said, waving a finger vaguely at Mike and Thumper. “I need to talk to your CO alone.”

Mike and Thumper held their ground, but grudgingly retreated at a nod from Lincoln.

“We’ll be right outside,” Thumper said.

Lincoln watched over his shoulder until they were out and the door was closed, then turned back to face Self.

“You’ve got ten seconds to explain before I invite Sergeant Coleman back in and turn her loose on you,” Lincoln said.

“I’ll take five,” said Self. “NID’s got enough to move on, we’re taking the lead.”

“Yeah, sure, that makes sense,” Lincoln said, spitting the syllables. “Especially with that real bang-up job you did stopping the attack we warned you about.”

“You did your part, captain,” Self replied. His quiet composure made Lincoln even angrier. “You should feel no sense of guilt or responsibility.”

“We gave you everything!”

“You did, absolutely,” Self said. He gave it a moment before he gently added, “Except… for the faction responsible.”

“You didn’t need it to save those lives!”

“That’s true, you’re right. We didn’t. But ultimately, without that knowledge, the folks upstairs at NID decided it was best not to act on the intelligence you provided.”

Lincoln was stunned by the revelation, shocked to the point of being unable to respond. Genuinely at a loss for words. He’d assumed there’d been some kind of screwup, some miscommunication, or too much bureaucracy. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might have been a conscious decision to let the attack through.

“If they know we’ve got a line on them, they’ll change tactics and we’ll lose the precious few threads we have. This isn’t a new concept, captain. You’ve studied military history. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. A shock, perhaps. Certainly. It’s difficult for all of us. But, grim as it is, these are the mathematics of war.”

Lincoln leaned against the table, then turned and sat on it, hanging his head as the emotions and thoughts hurricaned together. He was too clouded, too overwhelmed to have any answer.

“If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t a total loss,” Self said. “We were able to pull out our key personnel, under cover of a shift change.”

A humorless laugh escaped Lincoln’s mouth.

“
Key
personnel?” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to raise his head and look at Self yet. “And how many people did that leave behind?”