I looked up and saw other droplets of it. They filled the air, drifting toward me. From the direction of the hab. My own blood turned to ice and I breathed a name. “Sophie . . .”
Imagining her up there. Dead. Victim of the monster who had gone into space with her. It made me so mad and I suddenly wanted to find the maniac who had come out here just to hurt us. The person who’d hurt my dad and nearly killed everyone else.
I’d never wanted to kill anyone before, but I did now. I hurled myself away from the handhold, grabbed another and pulled, another, another, accelerating through the still, cool air of the ship, meeting no resistance in the microgravity, dragging my hate with me.
With a bellow of rage I burst into the common room, saw two figures struggling amid an asteroid field of blood particles. Saw Sophie’s braid swinging loose. Saw hands scrabbling at a ruined throat. Saw the glint of a knife in a tight fist. Saw the locking mechanism to the command module entry hatch hanging open, wires trailing out, circuits floating free. Saw the big security airlock door gaping wide.
Saw the world—the universe—crack and fall sideways off its hinges. Sophie was there, locked in a deadly battle with Garcia, the ship’s security officer. Blood flew like red jewels. From the edge of the knife. From the terrible, terrible wound in Garcia’s throat.
I screamed.
Sophie looked past the man she had just killed and saw me. I saw her face—that sweet, beautiful face—as it really was. Not the face of my friend. Not the face of someone I loved like a sister. Not the face of the gentlest person among us.
It was the face of madness. It was the face of a killer.
It was the face of a Neo-Luddite.
A bunch of expensive tools floated around her. I saw them with a bizarre clarity. Wrenches, socket drivers, and a set of thin screwdrivers. All the tools that she had pretended not to know how to use but had used so easily. All the tools with which she had sabotaged our ship and bypassed the security on the command module. Once inside she could have fired the engines, burned off all the fuel, sent us crashing into the Muninn, or killed us all in a hundred ways. Garcia had tried to stop her, and paid for it.
I said, “No . . .”
Sophie shoved Garcia aside and he floated away, dead or dying.
“Sophie,” I whispered, “please.”
Her eyes were chips of dark ice. There was nothing in them that I recognized. Everything had been a lie. Everything.
“Why?” I begged.
She put a hand out to steady herself by the airlock. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said. “You’re incapable. All of you.”
“Tell me. Please. I have to know. Why are you doing this? What do you people want?”
She hesitated and edged closer to the entrance to the command module. If she got in there and closed the door, she could do enough damage to prevent any of us from getting down to Mars. Was that what happened aboard the Golden Dragon? I wondered. Probably.
“Tristan,” said Sophie, “I told you about the just war. I told you that there are times people have to fight, have to go to war, do you remember?”
“Of course. You said it was because of God and—”
“This isn’t about God,” she said. “This is about Earth.”
“I don’t—”
“We are failed custodians of our planet, Tristan. That was a sacred trust given to us. To mankind. It’s a common truth that our world is the gift from God, or the Goddess, or whoever you want to believe in. But the gift came with a challenge, a burden. We were to nurture and care for our world. We were supposed to be shepherds in its fields. We were never supposed to rape it and abuse it and tear the heart out of it. And now, having failed to protect our sacred trust, we dare—dare—to go and ruin another pristine world? What sin could be greater than that?”
I stared at her. “Are you serious?”
Her lips curled into a sneer. “I knew you would never understand. This is why we don’t hold press conferences. This is why we don’t issue press releases. All that matters is action. All that has ever accomplished anything is action. We are dedicated to one goal—to keep mankind on Earth in order that we humans may fulfill our sacred trust.”
“That’s . . . that’s . . . insane . . .”
For a moment I thought I saw the Sophie I knew look out of those eyes. Her sneering mouth seemed to soften, and her expression seemed to change to something else. Not love. No. Maybe sadness. Or was it pity?
She whirled around and threw herself through the hatchway. If she got that airlock closed and secured it from the inside we were all dead.
She was so fast.
But I . . .
I was faster. And the suction of air pressure from the open hatch jerked me forward. I reached for her as she tried to pull the massive door shut. I tried to grab her shoulder. Missed. Instead my fingers tangled in her hair. She was moving fast away from me. I was pulling her back with all my strength.
The sound.
Oh, God, the sound her neck made.
Please, God . . . let me forget that sound.