Above Carthage
“CAPTURED?” SAM ASKED. Tania would have, but she’d been struck speechless by Tim’s news.
His reply took a moment, mumbled, like someone talking when they didn’t want anyone to see their lips moving. “They came through the airlock in force, a compact swarmer and a dozen of their regular…security, I guess.”
“Use your weapons.”
“Waiting for the right moment,” he replied. “Swarmer is mirrored, the beam failed, sliced off a whole row of harnesses in here.”
Sam didn’t ask about the mortar. No point, Tania realized. In that cramped little transport craft the mortar would be a suicide weapon.
“Just hang on,” Tania said. “We’re coming.” She decided not to mention the reason she’d contacted him in the first place. That they needed him to come to the rescue. Tim, it seemed, had problems of his own.
Sam barked, “The ship, now!” The woman did not wait for reply, debate, or even acknowledgment. It was the only option left. She turned and jetted down the length of the station. Tania fell in behind Vaughn, with Prumble somewhere just behind. They followed Sam’s path, which she took pains to keep close to the hull despite the explosions tearing the place to pieces behind them. Sam twisted and turned, dodging protruding antennae and other equipment, uncaring if those behind her were keeping up. They had to.
Tania did fall behind, though. Her boots were intuitive in atmosphere but here, essentially falling through vacuum, she had to pulse them just so in order to dodge to one side or another. It required a different way of thinking, one that she had only limited experience with. Prumble fared no better, and soon the two of them were a hundred meters behind their more adept friends.
“They’re bringing something into the cabin,” Tim said. He’d abandoned his mumbling.
“What is it?” Tania asked.
“I’m not sure. It looks like—”
The connection ended.
“Tim? Tim?!”
No reply came. Ahead, Sam slowed to wait for her to catch up. Tania waved her on. “Get to him!”
Sam flashed a thumbs-up and really took off now, Vaughn at her side. A few seconds later, Sam’s voice filled her ears. “I see the transport.”
Tania held her breath, expecting some ominous addition, like “Or what’s left of it.” Instead Sam said, “It’s moving away.”
“Where?”
“How the hell do I know? Away. They’re pretty far already, still accelerating.”
Tania asked, “Can we catch them?”
“We’re not going to have a choice.” It was Prumble. His tone caused a chill to spike up Tania’s back. She glanced in his direction, then followed his gaze to the planetside portion of the space station, where they’d exited less than a minute ago.
Roiling explosions began to cascade through the hull, tearing chunks of it away with fire and debris spilling out through the cracks.
“Move away now!” the big man shouted.
Tania followed him, pushing the thrusters in her boots to the maximum. She could see Sam and Vaughn darting away, too, and thankfully in the same direction. She adjusted her angle to bring her on a trajectory that would hopefully intersect theirs.
Prumble’s words made sense then. “Head toward the transport,” Tania said, angling herself once more.
“No way we’ll catch it,” Sam shot back.
“No choice. The station itself isn’t going to exist in a moment. If we don’t chase Tim, we’ll be adrift out here. We have to hope at least that wherever they’re headed is someplace we can reach.” Before we run out of food, or water, or power.
Tania could see the transport now and it was still under thrust. It was trying for another Elevator. She had an idea then. “Everyone, forget the transport. Pulse toward Carthage.”
Toward the explosions.
“Why?” Sam asked. “That’s not where they’re going.”
“Orbital mechanics,” Tania said. “It’s counterintuitive, I know, but listen. We need to make our way down this Elevator, to the middle, then we cross. We might not beat them there, but we’ll have most of our fuel left.”
She’d organized and even piloted, remotely, enough cargo missions between Darwin and Belém to know the drill. Moving between two space elevators was counterintuitive, at least at first. Every station was at geosynchronous orbit by definition, and due to the forces involved you never wanted to let go of an elevator cord unless you were near its center, where everything basically canceled out.
They were near the outer end of this Elevator, and thus already being flung, albeit slowly, out into space. The transport had probably come out this far on some preprogrammed course that would see it heading off to visit the moons, or something, only to drop back toward home later. But now it was burning hard, trying to overcome that outward momentum. It was heading for the next space elevator over, if Tania’s guess was correct. The only other option was for them to keep burning and head for the planet, but that little transport did not look to be atmosphere rated.
“We need to grab on to a climber and ride it in to the Elevator’s middle.”
“If you say so,” Sam said. “Feels like we’re leaving Tim behind.”
“We’re not,” she said. “Trust me.”
“I was going to say I wasn’t too bothered by it,” Sam admitted.
Tania found she couldn’t really blame her. In fact she could not explain her own sudden sense of loyalty to the young man. She may not desire his company in a romantic sense, and worried constantly about his apparent jealousy toward Skyler, but she was far from the point where she’d leave him to be a prisoner of this evil species.
“There,” Prumble shouted. “Our ride!”
Tania looked. They’d cleared the station, which burned behind them, but had not fully exploded. Not yet, anyway. Tania’s slim hope worked out. The space elevator’s thread heading toward the planet was crowded with climbers. Evacuees, most likely, all racing along toward Carthage. Prumble flew on ahead, pulsing his boots to find the right velocity. Tania more or less kept pace, and seconds later she saw Sam and Vaughn approaching from her left. They flew like they’d been born to it, and reached the nearest climber a full ten seconds before Prumble did. Tania herself landed last, grabbing on to a little groove in the hull of the vehicle. She could feel the vibration of its motors as it pulled itself toward the planet, still accelerating. Glancing back, she saw the inferno of the station they’d departed, like a nascent star trying to ignite. Huge sections now pushed away from the elevator cord, no doubt a safety mechanism to keep it from being shredded in the carnage. They’d done some damage, all right. The question was, would Tim be punished for the crime?
“Vaughn,” Sam said, “eyes forward. If this climber traverses the next station through a hole made to fit, we’re all going to be smeared on the outer hull.”
“Absolutely right. I’m watching.”
Sam crawled back toward Prumble and Tania. “Are you two okay?”
“Never better,” Prumble replied.
Tania offered a thumbs-up, which Sam acknowledged with a quick nod.
“I wonder where they’re taking him,” Sam said to no one in particular. She gazed out into space, trying in vain to see the small transport Tim had been inside.
Tania looked in that direction as well, but the tiny craft was already too far away to spot. “No way to know, of course, but I’m very worried. It’s bad enough they have him, but…God, I hope he can’t hear me right now…but I fear what he might tell them. About why we’re here, and where we’re from.”
“And what that giant thing is strapped to his back,” Prumble added. “Not his goiter, of course. I mean the aura shard thing. I’m guessing these chunks of virus repellent are a bit of a shock to them.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Tania said. “If they take it from him…and open his suit.”
“What if he’s bait?” Vaughn said from the other side of the climber.
“How do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Just what I said. What if they’re using him to get the rest of us to come to them.”
“I don’t think so,” Sam replied. “I mean, so far their encounters with us haven’t gone so well for them.”
“True,” Tania said, “but they’re adapting. Those mirrored giants…”
Prumble grunted. “Tough bastards, no question. Still, we managed.”
“And with the next thing they throw at us?”
“We’ll figure that one out, too. C’mon, Tania, we were brought here for this reason. We improvise. It’s obviously why they picked us.”
Tania frowned. “I highly doubt creativity is a trait unique to humanity.”
The constant tug of acceleration faded as the climber reached its cruising speed. Sam led the team around to the other end of the climber, reorienting them for the presumed shift to deceleration.
Tania had only just looped her arm around an antenna when it came, that sudden force of what the body thought was gravity. The press was hard, three or four g’s, she guessed. So hard, in fact, that she feared this was an unscheduled stop.
Sam and Vaughn evidently had the same concern. In unison, they scrambled to either side of the climber’s endcap and peered over the side.
“Station approaching,” Sam reported.
“How close?” Tania asked.
“About a klick,” the woman said. “I think we should go.”
“Agreed,” Vaughn said.
“All hands abandon ship!” Prumble said, voice raised but not so loud that anyone might mistake it for an actual alarm.
Sam got on her hands and knees. “Follow me, everyone. Let’s go get Tim.”
And she leapt.
Tania went after her, powering up the thrusters in her boots and matching Sam’s speed and trajectory. Their path took them clear of the approaching complex of space stations, which the Scipios had arranged in a snowflake-like pattern connected by glowing beams. Sam let their momentum carry them past the complex, diving through a gap between two segments of the bleak and complicated structures.
“Is it bad that I just want to shoot everything?” Sam asked the group.
Tania couldn’t help but smile. She’d thought the same thing, but never would have voiced it.
“Save your ammo,” Vaughn replied.
“I am. I know. Just…thinking aloud.” Sam started to curve her path as they flew under the cluster of stations. Carthage loomed below, a patchwork of grays, greens, and milky whites.
The globe’s presence, and the coming sunrise, made it easier to spot the adjacent space elevators. Not the cords, they were much too thin to see from here, but the clustered space stations that marked their path. Somewhere over there, Tim was being held by the Scipios. Tania stared at those stations, wondering if she’d been too hard on the young man.
His actions since their crash landing had seemed so selfish, driven by jealousy. Yet she knew his heart was in the right place. She had no doubt that all he really wanted was to see her safely home, no matter the outcome of this endeavor. Viewed so, Tania could see herself as the irrational one now. Clinging to a baseless hope that Skyler and Vanessa were still out there, somewhere. She had been the one who had resisted the efforts to flee this place, and in doing so she might have doomed them all. She was the reason they were still here, which had led to Tim’s capture. Some friend she was.
No wonder he’d become so sullen and bitter. She’d built a wall, steadfastly refused to see things from his perspective and analyze the situation objectively. She’d forgotten herself. Her scientist’s mindset, the very thing Tim had known and no doubt loved about her for years now. A terrible thing to see someone you thought you knew become someone else.
“There,” Sam said, pointing.
Tania steeled herself for what was to come, silently vowing to give Tim not only the benefit of the doubt, but also the respect he’d earned as her peer and friend these last few years.
Ahead and below, another cluster of space stations grew nearer by the second. They were attached at the midpoint of the elevator cord, and not spinning. Null gravity inside, then. Tania took a hard look at the stations themselves, attempting to apply what she’d learned on the few she’d visited already in hopes of discerning their purpose. That effort was hopeless, though. The Scipios’ architectural style was functional in the extreme, but without their cultural context it all just looked haphazard and messy to her. Occasionally she glimpsed one of the stations the Creators must have built. Sleek, elegant things, though their windows were mostly dark now, and their surfaces largely hidden under the additions of their oppressors.
Minutes passed. She felt utterly exposed, adrift in the vacuum, nothing connecting her to any solid object. And yet at the same time, Tania found a sense of power in it. The feeling that she could go anywhere, do anything. Literally an entire world lay beneath her.
The stations grew slowly larger, the distances involved making it hard to judge speed. Arrival came almost out of nowhere, confusing Sam as much as everyone else. The woman overshot their target and had to make a wide loop around. This proved useful, even if it hadn’t been the plan, for it afforded the whole team a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the stations clustered here at the center of this cord.
“Bingo,” Prumble said. Everyone looked to what had caught his attention.
It took Tania a moment to spot it, but when she did she knew instantly they’d found the right place. There, tucked up against a protruding hallway, was the transport craft. It had the same designation emblazoned on the side that she recalled seeing on the displays glimpsed within. Tania activated her comm. “Tim,” she said, “make a sound if you can hear me. We’re close. We found the transport.”
A silence stretched. No reply came, not even static. She wondered if they’d already extricated him from his suit, or found a way to power it off. What would they do to him? Her mind conjured terrible images. Horrible punishments, dissection, and all because he’d wanted to leave instead of quenching some petty thirst to leave a scar on the Scipios’ apparatus.
“I’ll keep this channel open,” Tania added, aware of the bleak tone in her voice, unable to mask it. “We’re coming for you. Stay strong, we’re coming.”
“Behind us,” Vaughn said.
They all whirled.
From the direction they’d come, a dozen flares had lit up against the background of dimly twinkling stars. Engines, firing to slow the approach of what could only be a pursuit. “What do we do?” Tania asked.
“I’d rather fight them inside,” Prumble said before anyone else could talk. “They have to worry about collateral damage. We don’t.”
“Unless Tim’s in there.”
“Fair enough, but their risk is still greater.”
“Agreed,” Vaughn said.
Sam was nodding as well. Without prompting she took the lead again. Her boots flared and she took a direct path toward the docked shuttle. At the last second she pulsed to one side and flew past it, on a path parallel to the airlock tube extending out from the main station to the little craft. “Remarkably like how they approached the Chameleon,” she said, and then let off a mortar round. The projectile traced a line toward the tube, slamming into it right at the middle. There was a bright flash instantly followed by debris radiating out in all directions. Sam did not slow, did not waver. She flew right into the hole she’d made. Prumble followed her in, and Tania, without even really realizing she’d started moving, found herself flying in only seconds behind him.
“I’ll check the transport,” Vaughn said. “In case they haven’t moved him out yet.”
The tiny shuttle craft was still connected to a length of the severed hallway, drifting away from the station proper at a slow speed and tumbling slightly. Tania glanced back in time to see Vaughn fly into the ragged end of the tube and disappear inside.
Sam and Prumble moved directly to the airlock door at the end of this part of the now-bisected hall. By the time Tania caught up to them, Sam had started cutting through. “Latch doesn’t work,” she said by way of explanation. “Bastards locked us outside.”
“Can you blame them?” Prumble asked.
Tania wasn’t so sure, but decided to keep the theory to herself. Sam had just destroyed what served as the airlock, so it made sense that the inner door would automatically lock if vacuum was detected outside.
Sam was almost through.
“Move aside,” Tania said. “That door is going to shoot outward from the pressure difference.” She flattened herself against one wall. Prumble moved to a spot opposite her and Sam took up her own place above. A few seconds later the cut was almost finished. The door began to bow, held on by only a slim bit of metal now.
“Transport’s empty,” Vaughn said. “Coming to you.”
“Watch out for the door,” Sam said. “It’s coming loose any sec—”
The circular slab tore free and shot outward, straight down the hall, missing Tania and Prumble by mere centimeters. Vaughn needn’t have worried, the tumble imparted on the transport had taken it away at a slight angle, well out of the door’s path. Tania watched him emerge from the still-attached section of tube and push free. He powered up his boots and started toward them. “Our pursuers are close,” he reported, “and coming in hot.”
Foam the color of mucus started to push out from small nozzles around the airlock doorframe. Emergency sealant.
“Inside,” Sam said. “Now.” She led by example.
Tania pushed in behind Prumble, the view of the interior obscured by his hulking form. As humans went, you couldn’t get much more intimidating than Samantha and Prumble, Tania mused. As soon as she passed the bulkhead she drifted to one side, one arm raised as if she were truly adept at such an incursion. She aimed where she looked, and only after a second, hearing both Sam and Prumble exclaim “Clear!” did she do the same.
This station was much different from the others. The layout registered first. This room was really just a large hollow sphere, broken only by a single thick column that rose up from the floor and exited at the ceiling, those directions fresh in Tania’s mind because she’d seen the planet below them upon entering, and considered that “down.” The shaft cutting through the center of the spherical room no doubt housed the space elevator cord.
The second thing she noticed was the style. This place clearly was not of Scipio design. There was an elegance to the curves, a thoughtfulness to how it flowed. Even the fact that connecting tunnels entered the sphere at seemingly random locations from all around, somehow their presence worked. It had an artful quality.
“Now what?” Prumble asked.
“Well don’t just sit there,” Vaughn said, coming in behind them. “The swarmers are right behind us.”
“Yeah, but where do we go? This place is gigantic.”
“They would have taken Tim somewhere they could study him,” Tania suggested.
“That does not help at all,” Prumble noted dryly.
“Just pick something!” Vaughn yelled, coming in through the hole carved in the airlock door.
Behind him, only seconds later, the temporary seal around the ragged hole they’d made in the airlock became a solid mass, hard as concrete. Tania heard the hiss of air being recirculated into this part of the station.
“Down,” Sam said, and was off again. She pulsed toward the spot where the column that housed the space elevator connected to the bottom of the sphere. All around it were circular openings—passages leading downward, parallel to the sheath that protected the cord.
Sam aimed toward one of them, then once adrift she spun herself around to face the airlock they’d entered through. Tania pulsed her own thrusters to move slightly to one side, giving Sam a clearer view behind them, more than happy to let her handle whatever might follow them in. She moved into the lead, nodding to Sam as she passed her, seeing agreement in those eyes. This was Tania’s mission now.
All right, Tim, she thought, where did they take you?
She glided into the tube, just meters from the shaft where the space elevator’s cord drew a path all the way to the planet’s surface. The temptation to carve a hole in the wall and dip in there, to ride that insanely long zip line all the way to the ground, nearly consumed her. Instead she focused on the chambers opposite her. Door after door, marked with symbols that her visor refused to translate. What could that mean? Words new to the Scipio lexicon? Or maybe just proper names?
Tania realized each door had a small panel beside it, with softly glowing symbols in rhythmically changing patterns flashing across the screen.
She slowed and moved toward one, aware that Sam and the others were right behind her. Most of the words here, too, were unknown to the translator Eve had provided. But some were recognized. Tania scanned symbols and found words like mixture, and pressure, and nominal.
And another thing. What she presumed was a date, though with no concept of their timekeeping methods the numbers meant little. The word beside the date, though, that she understood well. “ ‘Departure,’ ” she read aloud.
The last thing, which the screen flashed every few seconds, was TRANSFER STATUS: PENDING.
“Pardon?” Vaughn asked.
Tania wasn’t listening. She moved to the next. And the next, and then one more. All of them had different configurations of mixture and pressure, all of them had nominal status, and all of them had different departure dates. TRANSFER STATUS: PENDING. TRANSFER STATUS: PENDING. TRANSFER STATUS…
COMPLETE.
She opened this last.
“Is he in there?” Sam asked.
For a second she thought she meant Skyler, not Tim. In truth Tania had not expected to find either one. What she did find, for the first time since coming here, matched her prediction.
“What the hell is it?” Sam asked. Her three companions had stopped in the hall, forming a line ready to fight enemies from either direction.
“An alien,” Tania said. She moved a half-meter inside. The door led into a small viewing chamber, the inside of which was entirely transparent. Thick borosilicate glass, or something like it, from floor to ceiling. And beyond, in a thick haze of violet-tinged air, a lanky alien being lay on a long bed, straps keeping it from floating about. The three-meter-long creature resembled a stick insect, yet with a bulbous head. Its skin looked almost like polished stone.
For a second Tania thought the creature was asleep, but then it moved one hand up to its face and scratched. The hand went back to its side. A very human gesture. Tania reached out and tapped on the glass. The creature’s head turned and strange eyes, great pools of black, looked into hers. Or perhaps not, hard to tell with no discernible pupils. It continued to swivel its head around, confused, she thought.
A one-way mirror, perhaps. She turned and studied the wall just inside the door. There was another control screen there, and this had more words. One said OBSERVATION MODE, so she tapped at it. The words changed to CONVERSATION MODE. When she turned back the creature had sat up, looking directly at her now. It made a sound, guttural and raspy, something like “ghvast t’yolk.”
To Tania’s surprise, her visor translated the words. WHO ARE YOU?
“What is this place?” Tania asked. “Why are you in here?”
She could see glowing symbols appear on the outside of her visor, a written translation for the alien to read. It stared at her, unblinking, eyestalks twitching.
“Uh,” Prumble said from the door. “What the fuck?”
Tania shooed him off without looking.
“Do we have time for this?” Prumble said. “I don’t think we have time for this.”
“If it’s not Tim let’s get the hell away from here,” Sam urged, farther out in the hall but no less loud for it.
The alien undid its straps and rose from its bed. It came to the glass, tilted its head slightly, and pressed one stalky finger, or maybe that was its hand, against the surface. [ERROR] CARRYING TO GESTATION WORLD. HERE UNTIL IS TO RECOVER.
“Recover from what?” Tania asked.
REJUVENATION.
“I knew it,” Tania whispered. She pushed back out into the hall and closed the door. “We need to split up,” she said to the others.
“Out of the question,” Sam replied.
“Listen,” Tania urged. “This is the Elevator they use to bring mind-transfer patients back up from the surface. This is where they recuperate before departing back to their own system.”
“You learned all that in thirty seconds?” Prumble asked.
“I learned enough,” Tania said. “There will be ships here. At the far end. Big ones. Interstellar capable, like the Chameleon.”
“What about Tim?” Vaughn asked.
Tania looked at him. “We still need to find him, but if he manages to escape, he would head there. And if they’re trying to use him to find Earth, that’s where they’ll take him.”
“You’re making a lot of guesses, mate,” Sam said.
Tania had no reply that would satisfy that. Sometimes you just knew. Like the first time she would sit before a computer interface she’d never used. Like in the station they’d destroyed, with its imprint chamber. Baffling at first, then all the little glimpsed and confusing pieces suddenly made sense.
“I still don’t see why we have to split up,” Prumble said.
Tania looked at all three of them. “This is the Elevator where transfer patients are brought up from the surface. Which means down there”—she pointed toward Carthage—“is where they perform the procedure.”
Prumble and Vaughn both glanced at Sam. Her face was pinched in concentration, a deep furrow across her forehead. “We should stick together,” she said after a moment.
“But—” Tania began.
Sam’s glance stopped her. “Remember when you dropped that farm platform on Russell? In Africa?”
A chill went through her. “Of course.”
“Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe Eve was testing us on that, too.”
“No,” Tania said vehemently. “They could not have known anything about that situation, or our ability to move farm platforms. And anyway, we can’t do that; it’s possible they took Tim down there.”
“We need to cover both possibilities,” Prumble said.
Tania nodded toward him. “Exactly.”
“We should go,” Vaughn said. “I mean if there’s ships above we should just go. We’ve done our part here. We pick up Tim on our way up and get the hell out of here.”
“Did you hear what I just said? We don’t know which way they took him.”
Vaughn only shrugged. “If we find him, we find him. Look, we’re not going to get many more chances. I say we leave. Get up there and find a ship.”
He was looking at Sam, not Tania. Sam moved to Vaughn, as if to side with him. Tania resolved then to stay. She was going to the surface, no matter what they decided.
But Sam surprised her, as she often had. She put a hand on Vaughn’s neck, just below the collar where the helmet attached, and drew him toward her until their visors touched. “Yes,” she said. “Get up there and find a ship. And then wait for me, you sorry son of a bitch. Leave without me and I’ll kill you myself.”
“You’re going—”
“I’m seeing this through,” she said. “But I also know if we don’t secure a vessel now they’ll block that avenue off really fucking soon.”
Vaughn searched her eyes. “I kinda wish you’d make up your mind on this. Thought we were trying to find a way out. Now you want to stay. It’s confusing.”
“This whole situation—”
“Guys,” Prumble said. “We’ve got company.”
Everyone turned. Only, the wrong way. Prumble was facing down, toward Carthage. Tania reoriented herself.
The enemies had not come from the main spherical room of the station, but from points lower. Four of them that Tania could see. Not swarmers, but regular Scipios in pale blue garb and full-face helmets. She saw what had to be weapons in their hands. The four of them were clustered around the lower end of the tunnel. Watching. Waiting.
“Feeling squeezed all of a sudden,” Prumble said through clenched teeth.
“This station houses aliens who’ve undergone the transfer procedure,” she said, puzzling it out for everyone’s benefit. “Makes sense they’d have security, in addition to ships ready to take their allies back home.”
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Vaughn asked.
“Because,” Sam said, “they’ve got us trapped and they know it.”
“We should spread out,” Tania said. “If they hit us with one of those time-compression things again…”
“Don’t stand on any plinths and you’ll be fine,” Prumble said. “I don’t think they can conjure those just anywhere.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“True. I just wanted to use the word plinth.”
Sam was still glancing back the way they’d come. “Back to the sphere,” she said. “It’s not blocked off yet. At least there we have options.”
“Agreed,” Vaughn said.
The pair began to move, as if their votes were the only ones that mattered. Tania bobbed against the wall, frozen with indecision. Any movement away from the world took them only farther from the goal.
No, Tania reminded herself. We have different ideas of what the goal is.
An odd crackle of static, barely heard above the pulse in her ears and her own breaths.
“Tim?” she asked, activating her comm. She scanned the nearby signals. Vaughn, Sam, Prumble…and a fourth. Faint, but close. Its source was automatically triangulated by Eve’s sophisticated tech. Tania activated positional iconography and swiveled about. Above, and to her left. She moved as if on autopilot, floating past Sam and the others as they took up positions around the elevator sheath. None of the swarmers had followed them into the station. The hole they’d carved in the airlock door, however, had been sealed.
“Um, Tania?” Sam asked. “Where are you going?”
She motioned for them to follow her, not wanting to speak in case it caused her to miss Tim’s voice. If his helmet was off, or damaged, he may not be able to transmit properly, but he’d sent something. Who else could it be?
Tania almost stopped then. Her breath caught in her chest. She’d been so focused on rescuing Tim, it hadn’t even occurred to her that the signal might have been from Skyler, or perhaps Vanessa. The idea made her dizzy, and were it not for the null gravity she thought she might have fallen.
“Tania?” Sam called after her. “Seriously, we’ve left enough people behind already. I’m not letting you wander off. I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here if I have to.”
She picked the tunnel closest to the virtual marker hanging in front of her, projected on the inside of her visor. Another long, tubelike corridor that curved gracefully upward to bring it parallel to the elevator cord. More doors, just like the other tunnel.
But here, there floated a glowing marker just inside one of them. Tania kicked off from the wall and flew toward it. “In here,” she said. Then, with the comm active, “Tim, can you hear me?”
No response.
The status display beside the door did not read TRANSFER PENDING or TRANSFER COMPLETE, but HOLD AND OBSERVE. She opened the door, surprised that the Scipios had not yet locked the whole place down, until she remembered their distinct lack of security. Complacency had that effect, she mused, and in a way she felt glad that Eve and her kind had failed for so many years to penetrate this far into the system.
Again the small alcove of glass, and the small chamber with a single bed. Tim did not lie on it, but rather sat, helmet in his hands, held close to his face like a bowl. Helmet in hands, she thought. Exposed to the air. She couldn’t see his back to tell if his aura shard was still strapped there, but it didn’t appear so.
Oh God.
Tania turned to change the glass from observation to conversation mode, only to stop with her finger just millimeters from the display. Tim was speaking, and for a second she thought he could see her, that his words were meant for her. That he was talking to her through the comm. But no, her comm was silent. He was talking to his helmet.
“…chose me, Skyler. She chose me! And I decided it was time to go.”
Skyler?
A garbled response, familiar, too quiet to understand.
Tim squeezed the helmet so hard his knuckles turned white. “No, we don’t. We owe them nothing, less than nothing. The only reason I agreed to come was for her. That’s how we’re different, you and I. You put this ridiculous mission first, allowed her to tag along. Endangered her. I came to protect her. To find the chance to get her away from this wretched violence.”
He’s talking about me. Tania shifted, uneasy. Inside her warred the emotional fallout of knowing Skyler lived, and that Tim was able to speak with him.
Unless the virus had infected him. The way he held that helmet, it looked as if he were speaking to it, not to whomever might be listening through its comm. Tania moved from side to side, looking at his neck for the telltale signs of rash that appeared on those with the SUBS virus back home. She saw nothing, but of course SUBS had been an invention of Eve’s, meant to simulate how the Scipio technology worked. As of yet she had no data-point for what, if any, symptoms or effects the real thing conjured.
“I’m telling you this…” He paused, swallowed. For a brief instant his eyes went to the glass. A mirror to him, Tania reminded herself. Tim studied his own reflection for a time. “I’m telling you this because we failed. The others…the others did not make it.” Tim stared into his own reflection as he spoke, his eyes like two stones. “I don’t know why Eve gave me the ability to communicate with you. I’m not sure why she’d trust me with that, but I did what I thought was best.
“You should focus on the mission now, Skyler. Forget about us. Do what you need to do, but forget about us. It’s all over now.”
His head slumped to his chin then, and he let the helmet go. It drifted, slowly, about the small chamber.
Tania fought back tears. She fought the primal urge to rip this man limb from limb. She wanted to fire her beam weapon straight at his face, let it bore through the glass and then him, melting the mind of the person who could betray her like this. Betray all of them.
She whirled and tapped the conversation mode button on the wall, ignoring the blank stares of Prumble, Sam, and Vaughn, who she hadn’t realized were clustered behind her. “I’ll handle this,” she said to them, and closed the door.
Tania turned around. Tim still had his head lowered. The helmet bobbed gently off the glass in front of her, started to float off to one side.
“Why?” she asked. Her voice sounded like someone else’s. Like a person capable of the worst imaginable things. Was she capable?
Tim didn’t seem to hear her at first. He didn’t move at all. But then his face slowly came up and he met her eyes. Just for an instant. He could not hold her gaze. He may have been able to stare into his own reflection, but he couldn’t face what he saw in her eyes.
“Why?” she asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“When did you know he was alive?”
“Does it matter? The mission is a failure. I only wanted to get—”
“When, goddammit.”
Tim scowled. “Soon as I woke up.”
Tania bit back the flood of pure rage welling inside her. He’d kept this from them, and advocated they leave. She rasped, “And Vanessa?”
He said nothing.
“Tim.”
“I haven’t heard from her. I swear it. Tania, look, I only wanted—all I ever wanted—was to—”
“Enough.”
His mouth clapped shut.
Who was this man? How had this side of him come to the fore? Had it always been there, lurking beneath that innocent youthful veneer? She felt sick. And so tired of this. “Where is he?” she asked finally, when she could make the words come.
Tim took his time replying. Perhaps concocting a lie. Perhaps even now, exposed as he was, trying to salvage something. She wanted to leave him there, to his fate, or kill him herself, but not until he told her what she needed to know.
“Last chance to redeem yourself, Tim,” she said, her voice flat. Controlled. “Tell me right now what you know, or never speak to me again.”
He kept his jaw firmly shut. A silence of stubborn misery filled the space between them.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Did you really think this was the right thing to do? That no one would find out?”
“Forget it,” he said. The defeat in his voice so thick she could barely understand him. He straightened up a little. “I made a mistake.” He pushed off from the bed, then floated up to the glass and placed a hand on it. “I’m sor—”
“No. Don’t you dare say that.”
Tim bit back the rest of the word.
“What did you tell them?” she asked. “About Earth. About us.”
“The Scipios?” he asked. “Nothing. They haven’t asked. Put me in one of those time bubbles and the next thing I knew I was in here. He’s on the planet, by the way. Skyler. That’s where he crashed. Said he found the city where they do the mind transfers.”
Right below us. Tania swallowed hard, fighting to still her trembling body. They were so close, and had almost gone the wrong way. “And Vanessa? Is she there, too?”
“I swear I don’t know. I’ve had no contact with her.”
“Tim,” she said very patiently. “Can you put me in touch with them? Can you transfer that ability to me?”
He thought about it without looking at his helmet. That meant he already knew if it was possible. He was simply deciding if he should…“Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll relay it to—”
“Not good enough,” she said, sensing his gambit. “Not nearly.”
“If I give you that, you’ll have no more need of me,” he reasoned, voicing what she’d already sensed. “It’s the last thing I have. Without this I am useless, expend…” The word trailed off. He stared at her now, with none of the affection present before. He was sizing her up as an enemy.
“That’s not true,” she tried lamely.
Tim’s gaze went distant. He twisted, slowly, and grabbed the helmet. Pulled it on. Glowing icons began to shuffle around on the inside of his visor.
“There,” he said. He popped the helmet back off, scowled at her.
Tania saw a message pop up. A transfer of access.
“Another gift for you,” he said in a ragged, defeated voice. “I’m always doing things for you. Story of my fucking life.”
“Tim,” she tried. “I never asked.”
“ ’Course you didn’t. Your mind was always elsewhere.”
“That’s not fair.”
He slammed a balled fist into the glass. “Don’t talk to me about fair.”
“What do you want from me, then? An apology? As if I’m the one at fault after what you—”
“Goodbye, Tania,” the young man said.
There was a flash from the mortar tube on his back. The blur of the projectile, and then ferocious light blotted out the entire chamber. A whump of the blast, and then the awful splatter of Tim’s body. Not vaporized, but torn asunder. Tania recoiled. The possibility of her own death from this lunatic action, and the others behind her, had no time to even register because the barrier held, containing the explosion without so much as a crack.
In the blink of an eye Tim became no more than a smear of red and gray on the inside of the glass.
Tania remained twisted away, arm thrown across her eyes, unable to turn back and see.
Two awful thoughts warred in her head. That Tim had done this at all, and also the possibility that he’d meant it to kill them all. That he’d still intended, in that final morbid action, to take her with him.
Hands at her back. Prumble or Sam, pulling her. Voices in her ears. Prumble’s. “We’ve got to go. They’re coming. They’re…Oh shit, Tim.”
“Fuck him, he’s gone.” Vaughn talking.
“Get behind me!” Sam.
She felt Prumble’s arm slide under her arm and around her chest, pulling her to him like deadweight. The movement of flight. The sounds of battle.
Go down.
Go down.
Go DOWN.
Skyler. “Go down,” Tania said.
“What?” Prumble asked.
Tania ignored him. She accessed the comm, direct link. Skyler’s name there, and Vanessa’s, where they hadn’t been before. Screw it, she thought, and selected everyone. “Skyler,” she said. “Skyler? Can you hear us?”
A second passed. And then, incredibly, his voice. “Tania?”
She burst into tears. “It’s really you.”
“Tania, what…Where are you?”
“We’re coming, Skyler. We’re coming.”