No Man's Land Page 17

  “Any station, Sergeant Keller, over.”

  Nothing.

  I make a tour of all the ports, hunting the telltale indicators of a moving ship: the red gleam of an engine burn, the flash of its hull, the sudden occlusion of stars or a dark speck swooping down above a cloud. I see nothing, but my wound-up guts refuse to unwind. What in hell is that vibration? It occurs to me that my faithfulness to duty won’t mean squat if the station power plant blows up. Suddenly I’m not tired anymore.

  I try the scanners, just in case, but the screens stay stubbornly dark. Oh, this is so not good. My squad cannot be traitors. Ari survived the “accidental” plague that wiped out Tel Aviv. Miyoshi—it is not Miyoshi. We once floated around in hell together. I saved his life once. He saved my sanity afterward. It cannot be Miyoshi, but his name gives me hope. If I can get to him, I’ll have a rock at my back no one will ever budge, even though we are no longer lovers. All those generations of samurai—he does not know the meaning of budge.

  I touch the helmet comm and try to reach Nguyen in the next pod, fragile-looking, deadly little Nguyen with his coal-black hair and ice-white teeth and red, red heart. If anyone in the outfit is cold-blooded enough to betray the rest, it’s him, but if there’s any one of them I’d turn loose in a dirty fight—it’s him.

  “Nguyen?” I whisper. I am startled when his voice comes back, equally quiet.

  “Sarge?”

  “Have you got comms?”

  “No. Did you get that flash?”

  “Yeah. Any ideas?”

  “Many.” In my mind I can see his smile, friendly as a gargoyle and twice as evil. “Is your pod shaking?”

  “Like a recruit. I’m going down to see what’s happening. Cover me with your pulse gun.”

  “Yes.”

  Never a waster of words, Nguyen. I hang back until I see him open his exterior hatch and a white-suited arm appear before I pop my own. No puff of oxygen hisses dramatically into space; the pods are not pressurized. Nothing in here can burn if it’s hit.

  Except me.

  I try to will the hair on my arms to lie down. Way down deep in the storage holds of my memory I dog the hatches tight on images of space-suited figures burning like medieval torches in the corridors of the Freedom. Firefights in space really aren’t pretty. You suit up against hull breaches, you try to focus on the job, you hope you don’t end up floating around watching your cruiser get decimated. You zoom the corridors past burning friends to try and do their job and yours when the shit hits the fan. You develop a love/hate relationship with oxygen. You—Oh, hell. Why didn’t I just take the offer when PatForce told me I’d been through enough, that I could transfer off the line to Io and teach newbies how to survive up here? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Pat-ri-ot. That’s me.

  The hatch opens into yawning nothing; the pods are supposed to be exited with the arm retracted, but the designers factored in maintenance and glitches. I grab the first handhold on the upper side of the arm, horribly aware of the plasma popgun in Nguyen’s pod and his pulse pistol tracking me. One millisecond burst from either and my body will join the rest of the space junk orbiting Earth until my personal orbit finally decays, a little mummified thing in a tattered suit waving endless cheery hellos to the people I was supposed to protect. But I hand myself down grip by grip to the maintenance hatch in the empty well where the pod arm folds up, and no shot burns its way through my suit to light up the oxygen inside. I hunker down in the well with just my head in the line of fire and signal Nguyen that I’m safe.

  “Get back in the pod and cover my post while I check this out. Over.” He can’t cover it all, but hopefully that blind side will not stay blind for long.

  “Roger, out,” comes his voice in my ear. I watch him retreat into the pod, and then grimly contemplate the hatch at my feet. I have not yet set my magnetized boots on it; the clunk would be clearly audible inside. I opt for stealth and awkwardly crab my way around, thinking about whizzing along in space at seventeen thousand miles an hour with no tether. It’s not the first time, but I have never much cared for it, and I make sure that I punch in the correct code.

  The hatch slides smoothly aside. The dark well of the airlock never looked less inviting, but the weird vibration spurs me onward. Sentry outposts are not built for anything but stolid, unadventurous orbit; their engines fire only in emergencies or for stabilization. This tremor reminds me of a cruiser at max velocity, shaking her tail off in pursuit of a Worlie raider.

  I take a deep breath that hisses in my ears as I let it out, and lower myself into the airlock. The little glow-light above the controls is out, which does nothing for my nerves; I draw my sidearm with my right hand and work the controls with the other. As the outer hatch closes behind me, I try to flatten my suited-up self against the bulkhead. Anybody shooting into the airlock really can’t miss.

  The inner hatch slides open. Light spills in, blinding me for a second. Quickly, I dive through, putting all those hours in the weightless gym playing dodge’em to good use. The narrow corridor beyond is empty. Hoyt, if he is alive, and not a traitor, will be in the control room at the heart of this armored tub.

  There is no access to the control room in this section, just a narrow gray corridor running beside the food storage and galley. I shove off toward the nearest section seal, still spurning the deck. Weightless is faster, quieter. And I do not remove my helmet, in case the traitor has played a really nasty trick and depressurized the whole outpost. If a Worlie cruiser is on the way, the suits have enough air to sustain his—her?—miserable turd life long enough to thumb a ride back to Luna Station, there to rejoin the rest of the loonies trying to turn Earth into one big happy family.

  The section airlock is sealed, which just winds my guts up tighter. Laboriously, I key it open and make sure it cycles before opening the far hatch. The next section is all power generation behind blank gray bulkheads, humming quietly on my right. The sound in my helmet reassures me that there is still air in these corridors. I seal this section behind me too.

  Beyond the third airlock I stop dead in sorrow, staring at Hoyt lying half in and half out of the open inner hatch to Number Four pod. Hawk’s pod. Now I know why it hung. Hoyt, suited up for action, lies in halves, his torso wedged against the bulkhead, his legs--I peer through the hatch--missing, but blood clings like liquid jewels to every surface. Hawk’s pod arm has vanished along with Number Four stabilizer and the outer hatch. Someone blew the bolts anchoring the arm, venting this whole section.

  Good thing I didn’t take my helmet off.

  Hoyt’s open brown eyes stare at me through his faceplate, not bewildered or surprised, but accusing. “Don’t look at me,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, Danny. Dammit, I’m sorry!”

  I hardly know why I’m apologizing. I have lost so many friends I can’t remember them all. But I really liked Hoyt; he was so steady, so good to talk to about things that didn’t involve guns and space and out-of-control politics. We only talked about how we ended up here just once, when he was a little drunk and missing home.

  “Evil is just good run amok,” he told me, with that earnest, owlly stare you get after too many honest-to-God beers, not the non-alcoholic swill that passes for entertainment in One World zones. “M’dad told me that, Sarge, and ’strue. All those good intentions...” He faded about then, but I never forgot a truth pulled from the booze, pondered through many hours in many pods since, watched by the white eyes of space.

  Whose good intentions are sabotaging my team and the only place we have to stand until a PatForce cruiser can get here?

  I sidle through the inner hatch and survey the damage. The missing stabilizer accounts for the vibration; the others are trying to compensate. The outer hatch quivers in my sight, framing only stars. The arm is gone but it doesn’t mean Hawk is, too. She hates spacewalks but she’s tough; she’ll do whatever she has to if her orders are to take this place out. Come to think of it, that gung-ho streak of hers has always grated on my n
erves, so at odds with her china-doll face.

  I check the setting on my sidearm and click it up a couple of notches.

  Scenarios tick relentlessly through the fog of exhaustion whiting out my brain. Was it suicide, homesick farmboy? We’ve been on duty forever. We were down to counting the minutes until our rotation Earthside when the word came down last week that Southern Hope was damaged in a firefight with our relief aboard. Now we simply wait, watching unreachable home spin below us and wondering if our boots will ever touch solid ground again.

  Wary of the hatch standing open so innocently, I examine the inner panel in mounting rage. Someone has wired every function into the door controls. Hoyt must have tried to close the outer hatch and triggered a lethal trap. I picture him diving for safety, and feel sick.

  “Sarge?”

  The whisper in my helmet startles me half out of my skin. I flatten to the bulkhead, my heart stuttering in shock. Little Jordan Keller is going to die of heart failure before the bad guys get her, at this rate.

  “Say again, over.”

  “It’s Miyoshi. What’s going on? Over.” The soft Japanese sibilance is so quiet I can barely hear it, but relief washes over me in a flood. I have been, I realize, nursing a secret dread that maybe Hawk’s pod took out Miyoshi’s on its way to nowhere, or that whoever killed Hoyt has shattered my rock.

  “Miyoshi, Keller. Come inside. Now. Over.”

  “Roger, out.”

  No questions, no doubts. I know without seeing it that he is already popping his hatch open. Hikaru Miyoshi, have I told you lately that I love you?

  I push off toward the next section, hurrying to reach his hatch before anyone else can. He’s had my back for so long; I’ve got his. Real simple.

  “Sarge, Miyoshi. I have a prob—”

  His voice cuts off. I am at the section seal; for a second I debate the wisdom of opening it, but Miyoshi has been with me since before the Freedom went up. I trust him. I trust him! I cycle through into still another empty corridor, twenty meters of gray walls and black floor. I launch myself from the airlock and make like a bullet to the arm access halfway down on the left. It’s closed but the lights are blinking red above it. The outer hatch is open. Somebody is screwing around out there.

  I reach to close it, my gloved fingers clumsy on the control pad. “Miyoshi, Keller. Where are you?”

  “On the arm. I—Sarge!”

  “What?” I scream, but no voice comes back. Instead, a massive hum groans through the whole outpost: power sucking into the conduits feeding the guns as the generator spins up. Someone is firing, but who?

  “All stations, report!” I am screaming, but it is lost in the sudden whang! Clang! BAM! as junk impacts the outer hull. The hull breach alarm starts to shriek. Instantly, I kick off from the bulkhead in a desperate grab for an emergency handhold, in terror of explosive decompression in this section. I have done the surprise spacewalk, thanks, and once was enough.

  “Which one of you crazy bastards fired at the outpost?” I scream into my helmet mic, but only silence comes back. Dammit, what is causing these intermittent outages?

  The section does not decompress. The clanging and thumping stop. I cling to the handhold, unable to pry my hand loose for a whole minute. Miyoshi’s out there! I tell myself, and it is that which finally unclamps my fingers.

  The light over the access is still red. I don’t care. If someone is in the well it can’t be for a good reason. I key in the code to close the outer hatch and wait for the lights to turn green. For ten endless seconds I think the outer hatch is jammed and the lights will never change, but then the red goes out and I pull myself out of the line of fire, keying the inner hatch open with my free hand.

  I expect the white gleam of someone’s suit; what I get is a blank silver face with a spooky blue glow behind it. “Gren! What are you doing here?” Gren should be in a pod halfway around the station, watching for Worlie cruisers.

  Then it jolts home. Hoyt, dead. Hawk, missing. Miyoshi in trouble. The pod guns can be test fired from the well....

  “What did you do?” I scream. My sidearm is already in my hand; I point it at Gren’s horror of a face, but before I can blow that bag of spare parts to atoms Gren throws itself backward out the hatch. I am so mad I almost go after it but some fragment of sense kicks in. I end up clinging to the access yelling every obscenity I know, venting ten years’ worth of coiled-up scared all at once. But then something huge and white jumps up right in my face and I throw myself backward, spinning out of control. If I connect with something I’m going to rip hell out of my suit, and more visions of things I don’t want to remember flash through my head.

  I manage to grab a handhold. Movement outside jerks every reflex I own; I hit the emergency override that disregards objects in the opening and snatch myself downward out of the path of any aimed shot from outside. The hatch slams shut, but not before I catch a glimpse of something pale floating outside.

  “Eat vacuum!” I scream, even though Gren will never notice; it spends half its time floating around the outpost doing exterior maintenance. But my nerves badly need venting and I have deprived myself of the more satisfactory method of shooting that android piece of junk full of holes.

  From the corridor I code-lock the access to my command code. Gren will have to propel himself around to the next one, but I am already shooting myself toward the section seal. I have interior lines and a full head of anger. I make it through the seal and see the hatch still closed, and feel my lips stretching in the hellacious grin I thought had been lost forever with the Freedom.

  “Miyoshi! Hawk!” I yell into my helmet mic. To hell with radio procedure. “Are you out there?”

  Nothing. Cursing Gren’s hashing of the comm circuits, I lock down the access and take stock of my position. Section 6. At the end of the corridor near the seal is the inner door into the operations center. I eye it, then the access, then the seals. The single viewport on the station is down there too, wedged between the section divider and the pod housing, shedding eerie Earthlight onto the operations hatch. I start to shove off toward it, intent on seeing what can be seen of the pods and Gren. But the hull breach alarm is still whooping; if I don’t get it locked down none of this will matter. I slap the ops hatch open, eyeing the four-meter tunnel between the outer hex and the inner core. It is intact; the green tape remains of Ski’s forlorn Christmas tree flutter on the wall in the air displaced by the hatch closing. I float past it, remembering how we laughed at him and then refused to take down the only festive thing in the whole damned place afterward. I remember us singing Christmas carols as I open the inner door.

  A long, incredulous wail of rage rips from my throat. Ops looks like it’s taken a direct hit from a cruiser, but this damage was done from the inside. A pulse gun up close on critical stations. The panels are in pieces. It will take days to get them back online. If we live long enough.

  God damn it! I just want to go home! I want to feel dirt under my feet, gravity cradling my body, the delicious, dizzy certainty that when I fall there will be something to catch me. Even after the rescue ship plucked Miyoshi and me and the seven other Freedom survivors out of the void they didn’t take us Earthside. Too far, then. Now we just have to wait our turn. But our turn to go home never seems to come. It’s been ten years since I touched Earth; I am losing it, that visceral memory of having a place to go to that doesn’t move, doesn’t disintegrate in white fire. I am forgetting the feel of solid ground underfoot and the scent of living things in my nostrils and the touch of sunlight filtered through atmosphere. I am slowly being stripped of the place I fight for. God, God, God, I don’t want to die in space, floating endlessly in a dead outpost, as weightless as a politician’s promise.

  I pry my clenched fists open and force myself to look at the mess. “Figure it out,” I whisper into the silence. “Take care of your people.”

  One of the boards still works, flashing red on Sections 2 and 3. Their pressure reads zero, but the section
seals are holding. I silence the alarm and take a quick look at the other boards. For a miracle the pod controls are working, but someone has shut them down. I start to restore power, and hesitate. Will that just give somebody a better shot at the rest? Hawk’s pod is gone. From the sounds of it, someone fired at Miyoshi’s. I try to remember whose pods overlook his.

  “All stations, this is Alpha. Report, over.”

  Nothing. I mutter a few well-chosen words and try to think. I am so tired! Days and weeks and years of this endless watch, running on adrenaline, watching the world tear itself apart over ideas, has turned my brain to vacuum. I close my eyes, wishing for a time machine to take myself to some century that never heard of space flight, longing for green hills and heaviness in my bones and my old room at home and—

  My eyes snap open. My room had been full of antique crap left by generations of my ancestors, including a box full of parts my dad once dared me to make into something useful. The result is now sort of a family heirloom, Jordan’s radio, which wasn’t really a radio, but could actually pull in nostalgia broadcasts. I know how to get comms up.

  I start scrounging for parts, jerking open bins to find spares still snugged neatly into their straps. Our saboteur makes mistakes. Encouraging. I abandon neatness and start jamming stuff together. I work facing the hex access, turning now and again to look at the hatch into the living quarters that take up the other half of the core, convenient access in emergencies, just another problem right now. Time ticks like a bomb in my head, counting down to some ending I know will be bad.

  The silence creeps up my nerves. I want—I need—to talk to my squad, to reassure them, to find out what is happening outside. Who fired? At what? My gut tells me somebody took a potshot at Miyoshi. Likely his pod is gone, or the arm, and probably him, too. Tiny voices of grief wail in the back of my mind but my hands work like automatons, divorced from the reality of dead friends. Hate crawls to the fore and stays there, fixating on a blank silver face and a squat android body.