“I forget my successes every day and dream of my failures every night.”
—Irfan Qasad
The feed hologram of Salman Reza showed an old woman with a sad but determined expression. She was still in the auditorium with her supporters and election workers. Kendi turned up the volume on the data pad while Ben rummaged around the guest bedroom, looking for his dermospray.
“Almost a thousand years ago,” Salman said, “Irfan Qasad left her position as our planet’s first governor. On that day she said, ‘The people have clearly decided someone else is more fit for the job.’ I bow to her wisdom. I have spoken with Ched-Pirasku and congratulated him on becoming Bellerophon’s first governor in over two hundred years. I also offered to meet with him as soon as possible to heal the divisions of the campaign and the contest the three of us just finished.”
Ben, who had found his dermospray, reached over and turned the volume back down with an angry tap. “She’s going to be upset that we weren’t there.”
“Nothing for it,” Kendi said. “We have more important things to do. You find that dermospray?”
“Yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”
With quick, jerky movements, Ben lay down on the bed, injected the drug, and closed his eyes. Kendi watched him worriedly. Ben’s face was as cold and hard as ice, and there was murder in his every move. Kendi didn’t blame Ben. Kendi himself would have given a lot to watch Sufur writhe on a spit. But the thought of gentle, quiet Ben killing Sufur turned his blood to ice.
Was there any other way to make Sufur pay for his crimes? The police and the Guardians wouldn’t touch him. But perhaps Sufur had been bluffing about that. Ched-Pirasku had been Silenced by the Despair, and it was a good bet that he hadn’t known Sufur was funding his campaign. On the other hand, the knowledge that Sufur had helped Ched-Pirasku win the governorship would create a scandal, perhaps even a recall. Kendi grew a little excited. Perhaps this would be a way to get Salman into the governor’s mansion after all. Revealing that Sufur had been involved in both Foxglove’s and Ched-Pirasku’s campaigns would destroy both of their political careers, leaving only Salman left to take the governorship.
Then Kendi deflated. Getting proof was a major stumbling block. Kendi had no doubt that Sufur’s involvement had been carefully obscured behind a dozen veils. It might take years to dig up solid evidence, and by then Ched-Pirasku would be too firmly entrenched for a recall. Still, it was a possibility to explore.
~Father Kendi, are you coming soon?~ whispered the Silent voice.
Kendi shook his head and thumped the dermospray against his arm. The whole idea of meeting this Silent again made him wary, but he couldn’t turn down the chance. At least Ben would be there. Kendi hoped he wouldn’t conjure up another sledgehammer.
Colors swirled and some time later, falcon Kendi was circling in the dry air of his hot, sun-drenched Outback. Far below, his sharp eyes picked out Ben in his explorer’s outfit. Kendi dove down to land on a nearby rock. Without speaking, he cast out his mind and felt the presence of the other Silent.
~Approach,~ he thought. ~We meet on my turf or not at all.~
The dark-haired Silent appeared in a splash of Dream energy. For a moment he wore a business suit. Then the suit flickered into a loincloth. The man, Kendi noticed with some satisfaction, wasn’t built for such attire. He had a noticeable gut, and his pasty skin was hairless as a child’s. Ben, looking handsome in his brown khakis, flashed Kendi a half-grin. The man flushed, and Kendi clacked his beak. Here on his own turf, Kendi was the more powerful Silent. The lack of clothing reminded the other man of this fact, and also kept him off-balance in case he tried anything stupid.
“We’re here,” Kendi said. “Talk. Start with your name.”
“Uh, I’m Frank. Frank Kowalski.” The tear in his scalp had scabbed over, creating a dark blotch on his head. He wore a heal splint on the finger Ben had smashed.
“What do you want, Frank?” Ben said. “Out with it.”
“I thought about what you said about Silent Acquisitions and Padric Sufur,” he said. “I started...you know...asking around and looking at stuff. Uh, I guess...I mean...”
“Today, Frank,” Kendi said. “I’m a busy bird.”
“You were right about Mr. Sufur,” Frank said. “He has...he has plans for Bellerophon. For the Silent on Bellerophon. Salman Reza would have gotten in the way.”
“How, Frank?” Kendi said. “You’re beating around the bush.”
Frank wiped sweat from his face with one hand. “You have to promise me something, first.”
“Promise what?” Kendi said.
“You have to promise you won’t tell anyone where you got this information. I’ll be...punished if Mr. Sufur finds out I talked to you. You have to swear on Irfan herself, or I’ll leave right now.”
Kendi raised his right wing. “I swear by Irfan herself.”
“And the Offspring?” Frank said, turning to Ben.
“I swear on my mother’s grave,” he said without a trace of irony.
“All right.” Frank took a deep breath. “Mr. Sufur is behind the disappearances of those Silent and Silenced, just like you suspected. It’s part of a project he calls the Silent Corridor.”
“What’s it for?” Ben asked.
“Remember how you guys wiped out the Collection? It bankrupted the company and—”
A—and allowed Sufur to buy it,” Kendi finished. “I know. Where is this going, Frank?”
“I’m trying to tell you. Mr. Sufur decided that SA needed to fall back on what it was good at, get out of the communication business entirely and go back to what it had been founded on—the slave trade. He reminded the board that Bellerophon now has the highest concentration of working Silent in the galaxy. With so many in one place, it would be easy to grab them and ship them back to SA Station.”
“Why not just invade?” Kendi said. “Take over like Ormand Clearwater did when he invaded back in Irfan’s time.”
“Invade with what?” Frank sat gingerly on the ground, wincing as his nearly-bare backside came into contact with the hot, uneven earth. “We don’t have an army anymore, or much of a fleet. SA can barely afford to keep the air on, let alone pay a military. Mr. Sufur’s plan was a lot cheaper, especially since the profit margin on Silent slaves is so high these days.”
“What does this have to do with my grandmother?” Ben asked.
“SA’s people have been snatching up Silent, putting them into cryo-sleep, and bringing them up into a small cargo satellite in orbit around Bellerophon. The satellite used to belong to Mitchell Foxglove, but Sufur bought it from him. Once there are enough Silent on board to justify the trip, they’re shuttled out to a ship hidden in the Bellerophon system. When that ship is full, it’ll take the cargo back to SA Station for sale. Mr. Sufur’s Silent Corridor. Right now the Corridor is feasible because Bellerophon has dismantled a lot of its military, including its fleet of ships. Senator Reza planned to increase military spending, which would mean more ships patrolling the sector. The Corridor would be discovered. So Mr. Sufur had to be sure Senator Reza lost the election.”
Kendi thought for a moment. “This doesn’t match what Su—what we’ve learned elsewhere, Frank. Sufur wants to end the human presence in the Dream, not sell Silent slaves to increase it. And why would SA kidnap Silenced humans? They’re worthless.”
“Mr. Sufur lied to the board. His real plan...his real plan is something else.”
“What is it, Frank?” Ben said in a dangerous voice. “Let’s hear it.”
“Mr. Sufur has ordered the kidnapping of one Silenced human for every Silent one.” Frank wiped more sweat from his face. “He told the board they were decoys. He said too many people would figure out what was going on if only Silent disappeared, so they’d have to snatch up extra people. And the whole thing is a decoy—for Silent Acquisitions.”
The knowledge slammed into Kendi like a gravity beam. His skin prickled and his feathers rose. “No,” he whispered. “All life.”
“What?” Ben said. “What’s the decoy about?”
“He’s planning to trick Silent Acquisitions,” Kendi said. “Isn’t he, Frank? Gretchen and all the others like her will show up positive on a gene test for Silence. They appear on SA Station, go under the auctioneer’s hammer, and no one’s the wiser. A few weeks of...creative coercion and drug therapy will ensure the Silenced themselves don’t say anything about their real condition, and the new owners won’t figure it out until it’s too late. Meanwhile, Sufur still has the real human Silent locked away somewhere.”
“And he can do with them whatever he likes,” Ben finished. “Oh god.”
“He isn’t going to kill them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Frank said. “He’s going to arrange an ‘accident’ in the cryo-chambers. All the Silent will come out of cryo-sleep with irreversible brain damage from improper thawing. They won’t be Silent anymore, and they can still be sold as general laborers to recoup costs.”
“This doesn’t make complete sense,” Ben said. “The people who buy fake Silent will raise a fuss when they figure out they’ve been tricked, and the scheme will lose money.”
“He never wanted to make money,” Frank said. His shoulders were turning faintly pink. “He’ll be able to make two or three trips down the Corridor before anyone at Silent Acquisitions figures out what’s going on, and by then he’ll have grabbed most of the Silent humans left on Bellerophon. He bails out of SA, the company takes the blame, and Sufur moves on to another scheme. Look, can you conjure me a shirt or something? I’m frying.”
Kendi considered denying the request, then settled his feathers in an avian shrug. The man had answered every question so far, and Kendi saw no need for continued discomfort. There was a slight shift of energy, and Frank was wearing a khaki explorer outfit similar to Ben’s.
“Thanks,” Frank said.
“We’ll have to stop him and his Corridor,” Ben said. “What are the coordinates for the cargo satellite and the ship?”
“That I don’t know,” Frank said. “I couldn’t find out. Mr. Sufur has other Silent besides me who run messages back to SA Station, and he uses one of them to keep track of the ship and the satellite.”
“Why are you telling us all this now?” Kendi asked. “Before you were ready to kill us.”
“I didn’t want to kill you,” Frank said. “I just wanted to get away. When we...talked that other time, though, you started me thinking and I did some asking around, and that’s when I found out what was really going on. It scares me, you know? If Mr. Sufur is going to give all those Silent other brain damage, I figure he’ll...he’ll...”
“He’ll do the same to you,” Kendi finished. “And here I thought you just wanted to do the right thing.”
Frank just shrugged.
“So why don’t you tell lots of other people?” Ben said. “Spread the word all through the Dream?”
Frank looked horrified. “Do you know what Mr. Sufur would do to me then? Brain damage would be a vacation. I only told you two because you promised to keep quiet about me. Don’t forget you swore!”
“All right, all right,” Kendi said. “Untwist your knickers. Maybe Ben and I can leak the information instead.”
“I wouldn’t,” Frank told him. “Mr. Sufur has a whole shipful of hostages. If he thinks you’re on to him, he’ll just space the people he’s captured.”
“So how do we stop Sufur?” Ben said. “We can’t get him arrested. We can’t confront him with what we know. We can’t find the ship.”
Kendi clacked his beak again, this time with sudden inspiration. “Impersonation!”
“What?”
“You—or more likely, I—could pretend to be one of Sufur’s pet Silent. If Frank here can show me who to talk to back on SA Station, I could relay a message cancelling the entire program. We’ll have to word it carefully to avoid the whole ‘can’t lie’ problem, but we’ll figure something out. After that, we grab Sufur and make him tell us where the satellite and ship are. Hell, once we get into his house, we might be able to trace its location using Sufur’s own communications equipment. And then—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Frank said, holding up a hand. “You can’t just knock on a Silent back on SA Station and start yakking away. Every time Mr. Sufur gives me messages for Silent Acquisitions, he starts with a rotating logarithmic code generated by his computer. One of the computers back on SA Station has the same program, and the Silent who receives the message first checks the code. If the one I give him doesn’t match the one Mr. Sufur gives me, the communiqué is ignored.”
“Oh, great,” Ben sighed.
“It gets worse,” Frank continued. “Mr. Sufur sends a regular signal out to both the ship and the cargo satellite. If they don’t hear from him, they’re supposed to space the Silenced and run for it with the Silent.”
“He contacts ‘certain people,’ “ Ben muttered. “God.”
“We need to get our hands on that logarithm program,” Kendi said.
Frank stood up. “My drugs are wearing off. I have to go.”
“Tell me how to contact the Silent on SA Station first,” Kendi said. “Give me the pattern.”
“The one who’s usually on duty is named Marina Feldan,” Frank told him. “Female, late thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, heart-shaped face, average build.” He continued to speak, and Kendi listened carefully, letting the pattern grow. Despite appearances, Frank wasn’t actually speaking—he was transmitting his thoughts directly into Kendi’s brain using the Dream as a conduit. Kendi’s mind chose to visualize the process as a man talking to a falcon in the Australian Outback. Kendi “heard” Frank’s thoughts as words because that was how Kendi’s mind interpreted what was going on. After a few moments, something clicked in Kendi’s head, and he knew he could find this Marina Feldan on his own.
“Got it,” he said.
“Then I’m gone,” Frank said.
“Hold it.” Kendi fluttered a wing. “Before you go, I want to know something—are you leaving anything out about Sufur’s plan? Is there anything you’re holding back?”
Frank took a deep breath. “No.”
“All right. You better go.”
“Just remember that you swore not to tell anyone,” Frank said.
“We won’t,” Ben said. “Just go.”
Frank vanished messily, leaving heavy distortion in his wake. Kendi shuddered. The ripples tore at his Outback, and he could feel them washing over him like liquid nausea. It took several moments for the Dream to settle down.
“Sloppy,” Ben said with disapproval.
“I don’t like it,” Kendi said.
“Me, either. He needs to practice leaving without—”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kendi said. “I don’t like Sufur’s plan. It feels like I’m missing something about it.”
“Frank couldn’t lie to us,” Ben said doubtfully. “Except by omission. And your last question took care of that.”
“I know. But the whole thing sounds...wrong to me.” Kendi clacked his beak. “Let’s get out of here. I want hands again.”
oOo
Harenn tucked the soft yellow blanket more firmly around little Evan. Ben looked down at him. Evan breathed with his whole chest and stomach, and it was strangely compelling to watch. Ara slept in her own crib nearby, tiny limbs sprawled in four different directions. Although Evan preferred being wrapped snugly, his sister fussed and cried if her blankets were tight, and she protested being put into a sling. Only a few days old and she already had a personality different from her brother’s. Ben marveled at that. He seemed to marvel a lot lately.
“So what is the next step?” Harenn asked.
“I have to access Sufur’s computer,” Ben said. The nursery smelled like milk and baby powder.
“At two o’clock in the morning?” Harenn said.
“Best time for it. The Vajhurs report that Sufur’s lights always go out between eleven and midnight, so he’ll be asleep. Lucia and I’ll break in, and I’ll swipe the logarithm generator and the coordinates for both the ship and the satellite. Kendi will get into the Dream and send a fake message to SA Station telling them to halt the Corridor program and we’ll sic the Guardians on the ship. All very simple.”
“All Kendi’s plans sound simple,” Harenn said. “But they have a way of getting out of hand. Do you think Gretchen is all right?”
“Our informant says Sufur is keeping her and the others alive for the moment,” Ben said, grimacing beneath a stab of worry. “But we have to move fast.”
“At least tell me Lucia has a spare suit for you.”
“Right here,” Lucia said from the doorway. Her tone was bright and Ben shot a worried glance at the babies. Both of them, however, had just had their second night feeding and a thunderclap wouldn’t have woken them.
“Ready to go?” Lucia asked. She was wearing her own camouflage outfit and holding a second one out to Ben. He accepted it and pulled the suit on over his regular clothes.
“How’s the loser party doing downstairs?” he asked.
“Winding down,” Lucia said. “Ched-Mulaar left a couple hours ago, and Salman went to bed not long after that. Everyone else is getting maudlin over single-malt.”
“It isn’t fair,” Ben said, fastening the front of the suit. “Grandma should have won. Would have won, if Sufur hadn’t interfered.” A bubble of anger burst over him and suddenly he was seething. “I hate him, Lucia. Maybe we’d be better off if we just—”
“Don’t,” Lucia said, pressing a finger to his lips. “I would love to see him dead, too, but I would hate to see you in prison. Ara and Evan need their father. We’re taking a big enough risk as it is.”
Ben set his jaw, tried to swallow his anger. “I know. I’ll keep myself under control.”
He and Lucia slipped out of the makeshift nursery and crept down the hallway toward the rear of Salman’s house. Up here the house was quiet, the lights mostly off. They passed Salman’s room, and for a moment Ben felt like a teenager sneaking out after his mother had gone to bed. They reached a rarely-used guest bathroom and set the lights to a dim glow. Lucia pulled a rope ladder from the towel cabinet.
“A little low-tech, isn’t it?” Ben said.
“No-tangle static rope, ultra-light polymer rungs, gravity hooks to hold it in place,” Lucia said, opening the window and flinging the object in question over the sill. “Seems fairly high-tech to me. Put up your hood and shift your suit to shadow.”
Ben obeyed. His camou-suit swirled into a non-pattern of gray and black. Cool spring air wafted through the open window from the darkness beyond as Lucia boosted herself feet-first through the window.
“It feels wonderful to move normally again,” she said, and vanished out the window.
Ben counted to ten, then swung his legs over the sill. His feet, clad in soft-soled shoes, found the rungs by touch, and he quickly climbed past the first story to the platform below, where Lucia waited. Night animals chirped and peeped in the tree around them, and a dinosaur grunted in the forest far below. The platform ran all the way around Salman’s house and only yesterday would have been patrolled by bodyguards. Salman, however, had decreed that ex-candidates didn’t need much in the way of special protection and had given most of her guards the night off. Kendi was supposed to keep Lars and Tan busy. Exactly how, Ben didn’t know, but he trusted Kendi to come up with something.
Lucia jerked the ladder, and it dropped silently into her arms. They trotted to the corner of the house, where a mid-sized talltree branch stretched away into the night above them. Lucia flung the top of the ladder upward while keeping hold of the bottom. It rushed upward like a finger stabbing the dark and thumped softly against the branch. Lucia yanked hard, but the ladder stayed put. With a nod to Ben, she scurried upward. Ben followed, and a moment later he was standing on the talltree branch. Balancing carefully on the rough bark, they made their way to the trunk and used the ladder again to clamber down to the bridge that connected Salman’s house to the other talltrees in the neighborhood. Ben kept a nervous eye out. The guards weren’t exactly their enemies, but they’d definitely try to keep Ben and Lucia from going out alone, and this wasn’t a mission either of them felt they could share. Everyone seemed to be inside the house, though, and Ben felt a little foolish at the elaborate precautions they had taken to avoid notice.
Once they were far enough away from the house, the couple changed their suits into a drab green (Ben) and a boring brown (Lucia). They dashed down to the monorail station, boarded a deserted train, and rode in silence to a stop not far from Padric Sufur’s house. By now it was almost four-thirty. A quick run brought them to Sufur’s house. The entire neighborhood remained dark and quiet as they crept up the stairs leading to his platform. Lucia halted and took out a small scanner before they reached the top. Ben stared at the house and felt a sudden urge to charge into it and beat Sufur bloody. No more shattered statues—this time he could take the real man apart, bone by bone. The power of the emotion rocked him and he trembled like a tree in an earthquake.
He tried to focus on Ara and Evan, on how much they needed their father. Kendi had been right—it wasn’t up to Ben to meet justice out to Sufur.
The hell it isn’t, he thought. He killed Mom. My kids will never know her because of him.
Ben stood there, caught between conflicting impulses. Lucia’s scanner beeped.
“No external security measures that I can find,” Lucia whispered, jarring him back . “In fact...” She crept to the top stair, edged close to the house, and ran the scanner over one of the windows next to the front door. “We’re lucky. The alarm system doesn’t seem to be active. He must have forgotten to set it before he went to bed.”
“Yeah,” Ben said warily. “Lucky. You know what my mom used to say? ‘Luck means you get to choose your own casket.’ “
“Do you want to leave?”
Ben thought about it. “No. We need his computer.”
Lucia took Ben around to the house’s back door, where she pulled a lead from the data pad clipped to her belt and plugged it into a flat rubber square the size of a postage stamp. She pressed the rubber square over the thumb plate by the front door. Lights flickered busily on her data pad.
“What’s that for?” Ben whispered.
“Lockpick. It picks up latent prints left by the last person to thumb the plate and uses to recreate an acceptable print. The lock should open in—” There was a click, and Lucia cautiously pushed the door open. A whiff of cooked sausage drifted out. The darkness gaped like a pit. Ben stared into it. A monster lived in there. A monster who ate sausages for supper and slept in a fine bed.
“Mask,” Lucia said, pulling hers up over her face. Ben copied her. He didn’t like the suit. It seemed like he could feel his skin flakes gathering beneath the fabric and skittering around like dust mites trying to escape. Lucia moved to enter the house, but Ben made a snap decision. He grabbed her wrist.
“You stay out here and keep watch,” Ben said.
“But—”
“Stay out here, Lucia,” Ben said in a low, icy voice. “If I make a mistake, there’s no reason for both of us to get caught.”
Lucia looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Ben took a deep breath and entered the house.
oOo
Lucia dePaolo watched Ben go, not at all certain she had made the right decision. It was hard for her to refuse Ben anything. He was the son of Irfan, and although constant contact with him had proved to her that he was an ordinary man, she still felt the occasional thrill of awe. And she had born his child. Irfan’s child. Vik’s child.
Lucia’s hand went to her neck, automatically feeling for the figurine of Irfan she had worn as long as she could remember. It was no longer there. She had removed it the day she had learned about the lawsuit. Lucia no longer prayed to Irfan twice each day, had disabled the timer that reminded her to do so. But she hadn’t gotten rid of her personal altar to Irfan either. Irfan was still a serene, wise, and powerful woman, still an incarnation of the divine. But her Church...her Church had tried to take Lucia’s child away. That she could not forgive.
Lucia hadn’t spoken to her mother since Ara’s birth. They hadn’t exactly argued when they parted. Mother had simply kissed the top of baby Ara’s head, touched Lucia’s cheek as she done since Lucia was a child, and left the hospital. The family hadn’t tried to visit Lucia, hadn’t even called. True, the birth had only been a few days ago and they knew Lucia had plenty of help with Ara. But there seemed to be a chill in their silence.
Maybe Lucia was reading too much into it. The Church had been absent from her life for only a few months, and she was long used to her family’s loud, near-constant presence. The lack of both boomed through the silent days like a thunderstorm. Once it swept through, things would go back to normal, except that Lucia would never set foot in a Church building again. That made her sad.
The house in front of her remained silent. Night lizards chittered in the trees and a few early insects buzzed about. Lucia kept a watchful eye out, but the neighborhood slept, completely oblivious to the presence of Padric Sufur and to the people breaking into his house. In the darkness it seemed like Lucia could see the faces of Finn and Leona Day. She started to say a prayer to Irfan about their souls, stopped herself, then finished it anyway. The Days, whatever their crimes, should have their path to the afterlife cleared. Lucia doubted she would say anything if Padric Sufur were to die.
“n alarm whooped inside the dark house. Lucia jumped as sirens sounded in the distance as if in answer. Ben burst out the door, data pad in his hand. The sirens grew louder.
“Run!” Ben snapped, and Lucia obeyed. They fled down the stairs and along the walkway. Lucia’s mouth was dry and her heart was pounding. What had gone wrong? Ahead of them, Lucia saw a police scooter zipping toward them on the walkway, lights whirling like angry whirlwinds. Ben leaped over the railing, and Lucia dove after him. They both landed on the safety net underneath. It stretched like a spiderweb but didn’t break. The scooter zipped past them overhead. Ben and Lucia skittered along the stretchy strands until they came to a walkway intersection. Ben reached up and grabbed the edge of the walkway, hauling himself back onto the boards by sheer strength. A moment later, he reached down and hauled Lucia up like she weighed nothing at all. Lucia felt the power in his arms and upper body. For a moment she felt a little flushed and she fully understood the attraction Kendi had for Ben. Then they were running down the dark walkways again. Behind them, police lights converged on Sufur’s house like wasps dive-bombing an invader.
They found a shadowy stairwell, and ducked into it to catch their breaths. Lucia pulled off her mask and changed her suit from swirls of gray and black into its simple, nondescript brown. Ben’s suit shifted into drab green as he removed his own mask. Lucia took Ben’s hand and leaned her head against his shoulder as they moved unhurriedly away, a couple out for a very late stroll. Lucia’s heart beat like a triphammer.
Serene must you ever remain, she told herself. Serene, serene, serene.
Her heart slowed, and the police lights and noises faded in the distance. Lucia released Ben’s hand. They passed under a rare streetlight and Lucia saw his face. It was set in a grim mask.
“What happened in the house?” she demanded.
“Not here,” he said. “Home.” And he refused to say anything more.
oOo
The darkness was freezing. Gretchen Beyer shivered and tried to reach for the covers. Her hands wouldn’t respond. She tried again and managed a twitch. The cold was so bad, it felt as if her bones would shatter like brittle icicles. With a small groan, she wrenched her eyes open. A translucent barrier curved just above her nose. Disorientation made her head swim and her teeth began to chatter. Where the hell was she? The last thing she remembered was ...
Her apartment. The man and the woman. The fight. The dermospray. A spurt of adrenaline cleared her head and gave her energy enough to press her hands against the plastic. It came to her that she was lying in a cryo-unit, a coffin-sized tube designed to put the inhabitant into frozen hibernation. By all rights, she should be asleep. So why—?
She pushed, and the lid opened, giving her the answer. The unit hadn’t been closed completely and therefore hadn’t activated properly. The bone-cracking cold made her entire body shiver like a spring leaf in a blizzard. Gretchen gathered herself and forced her shuddering muscles to half-roll, half-heave her out of the tube. She flopped unceremoniously onto hard ceramic. The floor was probably cool, but to Gretchen’s half-frozen body, it felt deliciously warm. She pushed herself to hands and knees and managed a look at her surroundings.
She was in some kind of cargo hold. Plain gray walls stretched up to an equally plain ceiling. Five other coffin-like cryo-units were lined up on the floor, taking up most of the space. Gretchen was kneeling next to one of them, and it exuded a wonderful warmth. Gretchen clung to it, a baby huddled against a mother’s breast, until she stopped shivering. She stood up and noticed for the first time she was barefoot and dressed in a white jumpsuit she had never seen before. Clearly the dark-haired woman and the blond man had brought her here, but why? And where was “here”?
A quick check told Gretchen the other five units were occupied. She thought about waking the other people—victims just as she herself was—but decided against it until she knew more about what was going on. She padded noiselessly over to the windowless door and pressed her thumb against the plate. To her surprise, it slid smoothly open. Her kidnappers must not have expected anyone to wake up and try the door.
The gray corridor beyond was lined with doors but otherwise empty. More cargo holds? Gretchen eased down the hallway, heart pounding at the back of her throat. She needed to find a weapon, or maybe a communicator. Her earpiece was gone, of course, even if it had enough range to reach anyone. Gretchen’s stomach tightened. This place felt like a ship, or maybe a space station. If that was the case, she could be light-years away from help.
Story of my life, she thought. Okay, girl—keep moving. You can’t be the only person on board.
The corridor ended at a larger doorway which opened at Gretchen’s command. The space beyond boasted a set of elevator doors and a ladder that lead upward through a hole in the ceiling. Letters marched across the elevator: LEVEL 3 SAT 7395-A5-11. A tiny bit of relief touched Gretchen. She was on board a satellite, probably in orbit around Bellerophon. Worse than being on the ground, better than being on a slipship. If she could find a shuttle, or a way to call for help—
The elevator doors slid open. Gretchen leaped for the ladder and scuttled upward. The rungs bit into her bare soles like hard fingers. Human conversation floated up to her from below.
A...re-check the units and then transfer everything to the ship within the hour.” Gretchen recognized the voice of the dark-haired woman. “Then we hit slip.”
“Shit. How are we supposed to keep to that schedule?” It was a male voice, not one Gretchen could identify. “We’ve been pulling double shifts for three days now and I’m sick of hanging out on the stupid satellite with nothing to do but work.”
“Welcome to life at Silent Acquisitions,” the woman said. “We love our job.”
“I just better be loving my bonus on this one. I haven’t seen my wife in—”
The voices cut off as the door slid shut. A chill slid down Gretchen’s spine. Silent Acquisitions. Padric Sufur. God damn it! She should have killed him, no matter what Kendi said.
Grimly she climbed the ladder. If she was on level three and the emergency ladder only went up, the satellite was a small one with only two more levels above her. Experience told her the command center of the satellite was probably on the first level. She hurried as best she could, but her muscles were still twitchy from the aborted cryo-sleep. In her mind, she saw her captors checking the cargo bay and noticing her cryo-chamber was empty. Any moment they’d raise the alarm. Her lungs worked hard in her chest as she passed the second level and finally reached the first, emerging into the elevator bay. The double doors leading out of the area had actual windows in them. Trying to keep her breathing under control, Gretchen sidled over to the exit doors and stood with her back flat against the wall next to them. The only sound was the soft hum of the ventilation system. A line of exertion sweat prickled her hairline. First she had been too cold, now she was too hot. Holding her breath, Gretchen eased an eye around the edge of the window until she could peek into the room beyond.
It was a large, round chamber ringed with workstations. A man sat at one of them. His back was turned, but even from behind Gretchen recognized the blond man who had delivered the balloons. Gretchen’s thoughts raced. The other two would probably discover her absence in a few seconds. She had to act now.
Gretchen thumbed the plate and the doors slid open. The blond man didn’t look up from his board. Gretchen rushed across the room at him.
“That was fast,” the man said, tapping at the panel before him. “Or did you forget something?” He spun his chair and saw Gretchen charging him. “Oh, sh—”
Her fist drove straight into his midriff, cutting off the expletive. She followed with a hard left to his jaw. The pain in her hand was mitigated by the satisfying crack the blow made as it connected. He keeled over and spilled groaning out of the chair just as an alarm blasted through the room. Gretchen ran back to the doors and slammed her hand against the plate.
“Lock!” she shouted, and the plate turned red, indicating obedience. The idiots hadn’t bothered to program the satellite’s systems to respond only to authorized personnel, probably because they hadn’t figured anyone would escape the cryo-chambers. Their mistake, her advantage. Gretchen sped around the outer ring of workstations, scanning each one. Where the hell was the communications board? The alarm continued to blare. She got almost all the way around the outer wall before she found it not far from where the blond man wretched on the floor. Gretchen kicked him.
Someone pounded at the doors. Gretchen wasted five precious seconds orienting herself to the unfamiliar comm board. She slapped a control and was gratified to see the panels spring to life with blue and green lights.
Glass shattered. “Get away from there!” shouted the dark-haired woman through the broken window.
Gretchen found the regulator, spun it to the emergency frequency, and tapped the control to open the channel. “Emergency!” she barked. “I need help. I’m on board satellite number—” What the hell was the number? It was on the elevator door. She fumbled before her Silent memory training took over and the number popped into her head. “Number seven three niner—”
The panel exploded in a shower of sparks. Gretchen leaped backward and spun around. The dark-haired woman was aiming a portable gravity beam at the board, presumably the same one she had used to shatter the window. She aimed it straight at Gretchen. Before Gretchen could react, a green beam slammed into her. Gretchen flew backward, crashed into the wall, and slid to the floor. Her entire body went numb, but she retained consciousness. The blond man staggered to his feet and stumbled over to her. Blood streamed from a split lip. Gretchen tried to move, but her body refused to respond. She felt consciousness slipping away.
“Bitch.” The man spat blood. “I’ll feed you through the meat grinder.”
He drew back his fist, but Gretchen was already out.