Chapter 34

1 January, 01 Ad Astra

Bryce collapsed back against the wall and would have slid to the floor if the empty beer keg hadn’t been there to catch him.

“All my hopes live on in you.” The Old Bastard had reached out from the grave to lay that curse one last time across him like the final blow in a public stoning. The one that leaves you conscious, but well aware that you are about to die. How many times had his parent told him that as he twisted Bryce’s life in his own image? Rammed his memories into his clone’s brain until there were times he couldn’t tell who owned his body, his parent or himself.

Over the last six weeks since the death of the Earth, he’d slowly carved out a place in the empty corridors of Stellar One. And now the Old Man was reaching his long arm out of the grave to grasp Bryce’s psyche once more and wrestle with it like a mad dog destroying a stuffed toy. Never letting go. Never satisfied. Even being burned along with his planet had not stopped his parent, the last and most powerful dictator the Earth would ever know.

Even from the grave, he still reached for his clone. His one great hope of living forever.

Bryce could hear the Old Man’s memories murmuring just below conscious thought, struggling to take control of a body they knew so well. The only protection Bryce had ever found against the foulness that was Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. was a careful layer of blasé between himself and the world about him. When that didn’t work, he applied a salve of alcohol that, if it failed, at least made him not care. So much.

But the Old Man was dead. That much was clear. Nothing could have survived what happened to Bermuda or Hanoi. After twenty-five years was he finally free of the bastard? After all those years of having his own memories browbeat by those implanted by his parent, had he finally found freedom?

He reached out and held onto the edge of the plas sheet that served as a bar. The spinning of the ring rolled him up one side of the craft, upside down through space and down into the great gravity well on the down side like some mad carnival ride. He tumbled like a lost game piece rattling around inside the great spinning hoop of Ring Four. Stowaway in space. Stowaway to the stars. Trapped around a dead planet but, for the first time, free.

Bryce wiped the wet bar rag across his face to clear the chill sweat and stumbled to his feet. He drew a fresh liter from the tap and knocked back a deep swallow. While one part of his mind cataloged that he’d beat back the hoppy aftertaste with this batch, the other wondered at his freedom.

Some part of him had feared that the Old Bastard was safe aboard some spacecraft and it would only be a matter of time until he showed up aboard. But only Bryce Sr. could have sent that message, would have sent that message. And he had sent it well after no craft could have escaped the atmosphere. The Lazy Jane hadn’t managed to escape even though Hanoi Launch was on the side opposite the flare’s impact. Nothing from Bermuda, ground zero for the sun’s scorching breath had stood a chance.

He was free. At long fucking last he was free of the Old Bastard. A laugh ripped out from deep inside him, a little hysterical that stepped-back part of him thought, but a good laugh nonetheless. It had taken the destruction of the Earth, but he truly was free. And he didn’t have a goddamn clue what to do about it.

“Joke’s on me once again.” He focused back on the bar, suddenly aware of his shouted outburst. But it had gone unnoticed in the general roars about the bar. In place of the wreckage of Hanoi Launch a clock now counted the last seconds to midnight New Year’s Eve.

The bar full of ag-workers waved their beer mugs and slapped each others’ backs releasing puffs of dust and dirt. Six weeks ago these had been the highest paid construction workers in all of Earth orbit. Flying high on a six-month tour. Now they worked in the agriculture bays struggling to raise the food to feed the surviving remnants of humankind.

In moments the false joviality would dissolve into the disappointment and then the anger that always bubbled just below the surface. Hell, it was right out in the open, it just hadn’t dissolved into one of the occasional brawls that swept through his bar. He began drawing beers as fast as he could, there would be a huge demand in moments. If he could meet that, maybe the crisis would pass unbeaten.

A young woman came sprinting along the corridor, and stumbled to a halt before the seething mass that was just looking for an excuse to let loose. Her brunette hair emphasized the lack of color in her face, white with worry or fear.

One more cheer swelled and faded too abruptly and the crowd as one turned to the bar. The workers grabbed their liter tankards and tossed credits like a rattle of gunfire into the brass spittoon that one of his regulars had scared up from who knew where. By the time the first tide had washed back from the bar and others were able to belly up he had caught up with the bar’s thirst and was able to watch the crowd while he poured.

His joy at finally being free was not reflected in a single face before him. They took their beer and the first half was gone before they had even turned back into the rippling mass of gray, blue, and brown shipsuits. Not a single white-suited manager, just a few greens from the jungle biome, mostly spacer orange, soiled to rust brown.

And the one black spacer off to the side. The woman remained at the outer edge, just watching. Her pale face had regained some color, and her breathing had slowed from her mad dash to arrive at his bar. But she didn’t come forward for a beer, even now that the worst of the press had abated. Instead she raised her wrist and he saw her commlink flash from yellow to green. Then, with barely a backward glance, she was gone. Well, a non-patron was certainly no concern of his bar.

His bar. His. Not the Old Bastard’s. No share of it belonged to Bryce Sr. He alone, Bryce Jr., had created it out of scrounged and bartered bits and pieces. Yes, his parent had kept close enough tabs to know Bryce was aboard Stellar One rather than sharing the fate of Cappy and his friends on the Lazy Jane. But he was dead and gone.

This was Bryce’s bar.

The tap sputtered at him and he slapped it closed. He closed the CO2 feed, wrapped the towel around the keg’s feed, and let the last of the pressure spray out its last gasp. Kicking the empty keg aside, he rolled another into place, locked it in with a sharp twist, and reopened the CO2. The first mug splattered and sprayed until the line was filled. Dumping the foam, Bryce drew a fresh brew.

A roar sounded around an arm wrestling competition somewhere in the middle of the floor. Another table he’d have to fix in the morning, it would be in pieces soon enough. Bryce held the plas mug so that the light of the corridor shone through it, a dark amber flash, like the sparkle from a single, faceted diamond revealed the clarity of the batch. No sediment swirled through the liquid. He rolled a long swallow around his tongue, a solid feel without the clingy thickness of a porter. He swallowed.

The aftertaste. Now that was a bit elusive. The aftertaste was clear, as clear and clean as the beer itself. It wasn’t the fruit that he’d expected from the rotten bananas he added late in the batch though that was there.

The aftertaste was like a breath of fresh air. It was the taste of a future laid out clean before him. Damn he was good. It would have been nice to have someone to share it with, but he only knew one person who would really appreciate it. And Perry was gone along with his restaurant in the South Pacific.

Bryce filled a few orders as the crowd settled back into its usual rowdy, drinking self. As if they hadn’t just seen the Earth ripped forever out of their grasp. As if he hadn’t just gained his freedom to run his own bar.

There it was again.

His bar.

About time he named the place.

# # #

Ri released her teams and shut down the security console. There was nothing else to do for now. The command crew milled about a bit seeking some purpose, but it was well after midnight. Now that the parties were all dying down, there was nothing much to do.

A cool breeze washed across her back and the murmurs in the room slowly faded away as if they’d all been swept out to sea in those still moments before the storm struck. She turned to follow the others’ gazes.

Chief Johnson Merkar filled the entry hatch. His immaculate orange shipsuit emphasized his role as head of all the spacers trapped aboard. The two flunkies on either side, one male, one female, looked more like over-muscled attack tanks than humans. He surveyed the scene until his steel-gray eyes lit upon the Captain and he moved forward with the rolling gait of someone now spending too much time sitting on his backside.

His two sidekicks stationed themselves like broad-chested statues at either side of the door.

Ri had the nasty feeling that even if anyone were to brave the passage, they would not be allowed to depart.

“Ah, Captain Conrad. A fine speech. A fine one.” He shook her hand and then, without releasing it, surveyed the room again before returning his attention to her.

Ri recognized the look and could feel the anger, and shame, burning against her cheeks. The man was so arrogant that he dared dismiss the Captain as lightly as he had done to her this morning.

“That Ad Astra bit was a nice touch as well.” His gaze fixed on the chair the Captain had vacated to greet him rather than upon the woman who stood before him.

“Thank you, Chief Merkar. I’m glad you were pleased. It seemed to have been well received, especially considering the sad news I was required to reveal.”

“Ah, yes.” His gaze was fully back on the Captain. “That is what I wished to discuss with you. Now that our future is firmly locked aboard this craft, we need to decide how it might best be, shall I say, managed.”

Ri had placed the security teams in the wrong places. She should have placed them here, instead of spreading them loosely through the ship and then releasing them. If she restarted the console, how many could she still reach? And what could they do, even if they were here? Volunteers from the biomes and maintenance crews who she worked with directly. No trained personnel. And brute force wouldn’t help this situation anyway.

Captain Conrad recovered her hand from Merkar’s great paw.

“Yes, I agree that discussion needs to take place, but this is neither the place nor the time. Tomorrow there will be a meeting of all department heads and section leaders. We shall hear all voices at that time.”

“I think there are only two voices we need consider.”

“You are wrong, Chief Merkar. Good night, and Happy New Year. Sub-Captain Olias, you have the watch.” The Captain turned on her heel and made a point of exiting between the two orange gorillas rather than her private lift.

Olias rolled from the chair beside her and squared off in front of the seething Merkar. “Is there some way I may assist you, Chief?”

Merkar glared at him, but where Merkar was a big, once-strong man, Olias was a mass of muscle that stood lightly on his toes in a fighter’s poise. His slight smile twisted his scarred face into snarl. Even Merkar, though a hand taller than the Sub-Captain, could see that Olias was dangerous in the extreme. Ri had sparred with the great Commander Levan, and Olias was still someone she would not have wished to challenge.

Merkar slashed out a curse and spun on his heel. Without a signal, his henchmen slid in behind him as he exited down the corridor. After the door closed, Olias remained poised a moment longer. Then he turned to the crew.

“Drama’s over. Get along to your parties or your racks. I have the watch until four o’clock, then you’re on, Rajesh.”

The slender Indian pilot nodded and was the first to leave the room.

Ri followed the others as they drifted from the room. Olias was positively grinning. He’d enjoyed his chance to piss on Merkar’s humiliation. She couldn’t decide if she was glad to see the man knocked down a notch, or if she now had real reason to fear her next meeting with him.

The others moved along faster than she did, and in a matter of moments she was the only one left in the corridor. Without the normal bustle of the crews, the corridor was a vast, echoing space. It was all built on such a grand scale that it was easy to forget she was on a spaceship and not in one of Earth’s great supercities.

The main corridor ranged from ten to twenty meters wide and swept upward in a leisurely curve both ahead and behind. Small shops, restaurants, amusement parlors were tastefully spread along the sides. Gyms, always one of the most popular entertainments in space, had a great deal of frontage along all the levels of the ring. Great clear panels let the muscle enthusiasts and the corridor passers-by observe each others’ progress.

Ri was losing her edge. Her daily workouts with Commander Levan and the most elite guards on the planet had been replaced by a desperate need to keep Stellar One functional. Well, it was a new year and it was time she did something about it. But she didn’t want to be on display like the few muscle-bound crew working out at even this hour, striving to submerge the depression brought on by their last view of Earth.

She continued to follow the corridor through tastefully planted meeting gardens and a clutter of clothing stores. Ri lived in her shipsuit, had no need for anything beyond the spacer-black of the command crew to brush up her ego. She enjoyed her position on the crew. And especially after what Captain Devra Conrad had done to Chief Merkar, she was proud to be a part of that team. Now if only she could learn to do that herself.

Her mastery was tangential strikes. Head-on confrontation was a hazard to be avoided among the street gangs of Nara. She smiled. Nor had it worked for Merkar in the command center.

The red trimwork that indicated the command sector gave way to the green and brown of the Ring One ag-bay as she moved to anti-spinward. The central corridor now split into two narrow side corridors to skirt the massive agricultural bay that grew so much of their produce. Most of the livestock was over in R2 and R3 ag-bays, these were filled with the fruit trees and vegetables enough to supply R1 and then some. But she needed somewhere to work out, and the ag-bays would be no better than the corridors, or the gyms.

She followed the corridor as it jogged around the ag-bay. There to her left, just around the corner, a maintenance hatch was set inconspicuously in the wall. Ri thumbed through and slid down the short ladder.

The Level Zero maintenance corridor was a clutter of green and brown pipes that fed the ag-bay. Behind her she could see the red walls of the command sector. But in the center there was a clear corridor, wide enough for two maintenance teams in service carts to pass side-by-side. It appeared to travel both directions, beneath both command sector and the ag-bay with no turns or obstructions.

Ri trotted anti-spinward between the feeders and drains from the biome. She pictured all that greenery above her, reaching for the artificial lights of the manmade sky. Beneath her feet, a few meters of radiation shield, a triple hull, and the depths of space. She broke into a trot and stumbled as she gained speed, nearly tumbling to the deck. In the narrow passage, the ceiling only a few meters above her, the curve of the ring made the upward-curving horizon close and sharp. It was as if she were running uphill.

As she broke out of the trot, she felt lighter and stumbled again. Anti-spinward. Her speed was decreasing the effective rate of the ring’s rotation. Their gravity came from the spin of the ring, and going to anti-spin negated a small part of that. She slowed back to a trot and finally turned at a slow jog back toward the command sector. As she brought her speed back up, she could feel the weight increase.

Ri ran the numbers in her head. L1 was about three-quarters gee, and L0 was eight-tenths. A decent run could increase her weight as much as, she did the numbers again to make sure, at least another tenth-gee. Nine-tenths gee running uphill, or at least appearing to, the upward curve of the corridor was enough to fool her eyes and body.

And here there were no gawking crowds. No ultra-engineered gym equipment, no perfectly designed surface of the low-gee track around the outer edge of L5, barely a half-gee. Here there was nothing fancy, nothing dressed up. It reminded her of the streets of Japan.

If she narrowed her eyes, she could pretend that the scattered worklights were little more than reflections of the sun off the occasional unbroken window. The haphazardness of the pipes were reminiscent of the debris cast across the face of Nara on which she and her cadre of hunters had run so often.

If she closed her ears to all but the sounds of the wind in her ears and the slap of her shipshoes against the deck, she could almost hear their bare feet padding along behind her.

Ri leaned into the hill and reentered the red zone.

# # #

“We need to replace them goddamn it.” The drunk at the far end was roaring loudly enough to be heard half down the length of the bar.

Bryce just kept filling orders while the raving continued. He wasn’t the loudest, only the closest.

“Thish bloody crew failed. Didn’t shave Earth, can’t get us to the stars. Damned failure. Get ‘em outta there. Then we get things movin’.” His blue suit marked him as science and research. He turned on the greenie to his left.

“Come on, Parrot Man. You know they’re all full of crap. Earth is prolly down there all beautiful and they juss want to keep us under their control. Keep us here where they’re in charge. Protecting their friggin’ status quo.”

Bryce worked his way down the bar, wiping the surface clean with a damp bar rag. Parrot Man. Bryce should have recognized him. Just six months before, Bryce’s shuttle had brought the first load up to the jungle biome which had included this man and his parrot. They’d had to sedate the man to stop his screaming. Now he was sitting as calmly as could be at the end of the bar, his beer perhaps a quarter gone.

“Well now, Samnal. I don’t know about that. The Captain seems to be an honest woman. What purpose could be fulfilled in lying to us?”

“Purpose? I juss tole you their purposh. Theys in charge and wanna shtay there.”

Samnal turned on the ag-worker to his right and was confronted with a broad back, its owner far more intent on the short brunette he was chatting up. While the technician tried to process that there was someone in the room not listening to him, the Parrot Man took a swallow of his beer, tossed a credit to Bryce, and slid away.

Bryce dropped the warm coin into the spittoon and moved off.

The drunk swung back, the empty stool even more confusing than the indifferent expanse on his other side. As he focused down into his beer, Bryce heard him curse once more.

“Fuckin’ biome dweebs. All uselesh.”

A half-dozen orders pattered across the plas as he worked his way down the bar. Just beyond the far end a smashing redhead leaned her chair back against the wall. Her long legs were crossed casually on a chair before her. Her beer rested, half-finished, on one of the tables that had survived the night intact. A big ag-worker, covered in a liberal dusting of pollen, strolled up uncertainly on legs well softened by alcohol, and placed his hands on either side of the table. He leaned toward the redhead across its narrow surface, his loose height looming over her.

Bryce moved down to wipe that end of the bar so he could hear the pitch.

“Hey baby, how about you and me find out if I’m the right one to be sittin’ here?”

Bryce almost laughed. He’d used a lot of lines, but never one quite that stupid. At least he hoped not. One thing he’d sure learned was that “right for you” was all an illusion of false comfort. Reality was, it worked nicely until things went wrong. And they always went wrong.

To Bryce’s chagrin, the stunner kicked the chair loose from beneath her feet and managed to shuffle it around to the far side of the table. The ag-worker settled in like he’d just spiked the ball in the proverbial end zone, which he had. Once he was settled with a happy grin splashed wide across his besotted features, the redhead rose.

She winked at Bryce as she casually, out of her suitor’s view, lowered the front opening of her shipsuit revealing a startling amount of cleavage. With a turn and a forward lean that must’ve sent the man’s head spinning, she cornered the ag-worker.

“You,” she slid a long, fine finger down his cheek, “just wait here and Ms. Right-For-You might just come along. Then we’ll both know if you’re supposed to be sitting here.”

With a turn somewhere between panther and python, the redhead eased out through the crowd. A passage opening before her, brushed aside by the wave of her blatant sexuality. Just before it closed behind her, Bryce felt a chill. She had looked back at him with amusement. Had someone recognized him? What would the crowd do if they knew who his parent was? What he was a carbon copy of?

# # #

The crowd had thinned and the ag-worker was long gone, headed off to his quarters alone. Samnal snored noisily at the far end of the empty bar. Bryce had cleaned up most of the place before he noticed her return. Ms. Right-For-You. That was the illusion they all sought. That was what he should name this place. Offer them the illusion they came to find—and never would.

R4U. It worked well along with his bar being on Ring Four. Maybe he could even get someone to stamp it on the mugs.

The redhead sat with a female constructor, still in her faded spacer oranges. Welder, according to the faded patch on her arm. He was gathering empties and the line of them at their table was impressive. He eased one of the toppled tables back into place and collected a few scattered mugs from the floor.

“Shit! Ya know we had it good.” The welder with short blond hair barely kept her head aloft with the support of her planted elbow and the palm under her chin.

“We wuz pullin’ down good creds, girl. ‘Nother tour, maybe two, and I’d’ve had ‘nuf set ‘side to settle in, ya know. Find someone good for me and jus’ cruise. Now, those fuckin’ scientists. Shit. They get it wrong and now it’s all fried up and blown away.”

Bryce circled in closer and kept his ears perked.

“Would you rather be toasted? Cooked like all those poor bastards down on the rock? Come on.”

The redhead’s speech was slurred, but still careful. Her breeding showed, she wasn’t likely a plas handler, despite the claim of her patch sewn so neatly above one of her perfect breasts.

“Naw. That ain’t it. I’m glad I din’t burn, or turn into an icicle like that Arctic Lady. But shit, Emilia. This place is no great shakes either. Jus’ give me a moly torch and a couple hunnert meters o’ plas. Poetry, I’m tellin’ ya. Fuckin’ poetry. Diggin’ dirt in a goddamn box to raise goddamn food. Well it just sucks, thas all.” Her chin slipped off her palm and she was lying with her cheek just missing the beer slick on the table by the thickness of her forearm.

Emilia rose to her feet and stretched with a joint popping reach that showed off every glorious curve of her body.

Bryce knew that she was teasing him, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out why. He took the tray back to the bar. Emilia followed him.

As he loaded the mugs into the cleaner, she leaned against the bar. Less cleavage than before, but still that incredible sensuality. She glanced around, but they were the only two at this end of the whole space other than the sonorous presence of Samnal. The next nearest was her welder friend who had also just lost the battle with consciousness.

She moved in closer. Bryce found himself leaning across the plas countertop even though every alarm in his head was screaming danger.

“Hi, Brycie.” Her eyes sparkled like some little girl who’d just won the prize at the carnival. “You don’t know me.”

She laughed and danced back a step from the bar and twirled lightly on her toes. A part of him awoke. A part deep inside. A part he didn’t like.

His parent looked out of Bryce’s eyes and lust and knowledge coursed through him in a wave of heat and anger. Anger that this woman was alive and free. Only by conscious control was Bryce able to keep his hand on the bar. The demon within. The demon that was Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. wanted to reach out and snag that hair. Grab her. Control her.

“Celia.” He barely breathed her name, but she flinched like the Old Man had gotten loose and slapped her.

For a moment, her shoulders hunched and that incredible inner light switched off. She closed her eyes for a moment and then stood a bit straighter.

“Sorry, Brycie, that was stupid. I shouldn’t have said anything. Too much of your good beer, I suppose. Please don’t tell.”

It all made sense. His father’s memories of breaking Celia Wirden’s spirit was as clear as the night he’d killed her husband to gain the premiership of the Earth. She had found an escape. She’d changed her looks and stowed away on Stellar One and headed for the anonymity of space. She hadn’t reached it, but just as good for her as for him, his parent was dead beyond torturing her.

“No one to tell,” he offered. “Wouldn’t anyway.”

She visibly relaxed and, after the briefest of hesitations, settled onto one of the bar stools. He started to draw a beer, but she shook her head, then indicated a half. He slid hers across, and took a full one himself.

“You always were a good boy. And, damn, Bryce, you always were incredibly handsome.”

So easily she blurred the line between the nightmare of memories pumped into his head and the person he had struggled so hard to create. Separate from the Old Bastard. Separate from the remembered past that wasn’t his.

His hand reached out, but it wasn’t Bryce Jr. moving it, so he pulled it back. He took a long pull of his beer.

“Look, there are some things I can’t do.”

She reached out to stroke his hand, but he shifted farther away. Her eyes narrowed, and he could see by the shift in her shoulders that she was preparing to attack the challenge of him.

His memories crowed with avarice.

Bryce moved back another step.

“I have memories.” He’d never told anyone what was going on inside his head, except one woman who’d tried to kill him while he slept later that night. Never told anyone that the world’s most brutal dictator had planned to gain immortality by moving his memories into his clone’s body and then driving Bryce’s memories out. And he’d almost succeeded. Another year, and the Old Bastard’s pet scientists could have excised all that was Bryce Jr. Then he truly would have been a younger version of his parent. But the world had ended too soon.

“Yes,” Emilia agreed. “I remember that night he did something to you. You looked horrible afterward. He was a cruel man, so we just won’t mention him.” She reached again, but it was only a token gesture. He hadn’t offered the reception she’d expected and she was still puzzling it out.

“Celia.” That got her full attention. “That was the night you figured out I was his clone.”

She nodded. “That’s where you got your fine looks. But if you think that matters—”

He pressed a finger to her lips. The soft, familiar feel of them brought a flood of remembered sexual memories to the fore. Bryce Sr. had actually seduced her, or she him. Either way, well aware that he was plunging deep inside her at the very instant her husband and his friend, the World Premier, finally succumbed to the poison Bryce Sr. had used. Bryce snatched his hand back and wiped it on the bar towel.

Celia crossed her arms around her belly and leaned back from the bar, the whites showing around her irises.

“I…” he wanted to explain. He truly did. “Just don’t come near me. There are things that you must not know. Don’t want to know. They nearly drive me insane, and I’m the one inside my head.”

He slammed back the rest of his beer, cast the mug to the floor, and stumbled to the door behind the bar. He coded it open, staggered through, and held his breath until it slid shut. Let it block out the beautiful, desirable woman who was driving his parent’s memories wild with Bryce’s denial. He leaned against the hard plas and struggled to breathe, his body burning with lust pounding up from his throbbing groin.

He could feel her still sitting at his bar, waiting for and perhaps fearing his return. To distract himself, he checked the brewing tanks he’d set up in the crammed space. The tall gleaming shapes filled the room, rich hop odors coming from the standing tank assured him that this batch was on track. The temperature was riding at just thirty-six degrees, just skin warm. That was…high? low? he didn’t even know at this moment. He looked at the hammock, but no rest awaited him there. He’d be up and back into the bar thirty seconds after he lay down.

No longer able to stand the strain, he pulled open the floor hatch and slid down the ladder into the maintenance ring. He secured the hatch behind him and even set it for a full hour’s lockdown. Even if there was a crisis he couldn’t reopen it to return to the bar. It was the least he could do to protect her. If she returned, he didn’t know if he’d be able to again win the battle with his inner needs.

He strolled to anti-spin with nowhere to go. Some timeless amount of turmoil later he arrived beneath the blue-and-white piping of the Arctic biome. Frozen to death. They’d carried the Arctic lady out of her dead biome still ice solid just this afternoon.

Hell of a way to go.

# # #

“That concludes the status reports. Any discussion?” The Captain set aside her commpad and surveyed the room.

Ri followed her gaze about the R1L3 North conference room. The sunken central floor was occupied by a large holo of Stellar One with every bit and piece in place. The remains of the unfinished R5 hung still, as if latched to the central core. The other four great spoked ring-wheels rolled in mesmerizing circles, completing a revolution once every minute. Even the antenna completed by Johns during The End could be seen on the edge of R5.

As she watched R1 flip through a full circle, her stomach flipped empathetically. At this moment command was at the top and they were all upside down in the real-time display. No sensation of that while running. No sensations at all but the wind and her breathing.

She dragged her eyes away and observed the gathered leaders of Stellar One seated in a circle. Their chairs perched in a ring a step above the central floor.

The ship’s command crew, the leaders of air, water, and maintenance divisions, the chief scientist, head agronomist, the six remaining biome leaders, and Fabrication Chief Johnson Merkar.

He had threatened to leave when Captain Conrad refused to allow his henchmen to dance attendance upon him. When she offered to run the meeting with or without his presence, he grudgingly relented.

In retribution, he had not said a single helpful word during the meeting, even when asked direct questions. His occasional sarcastic observations were ignored by the Captain, and as no cronies were there to laugh them up, they fell flat until finally the man just stewed in silence.

“Is there any way we can get the mess in R2 East cleaned up?” James Roder asked. His dark tan from the desert biome made him harder to see in the depths of his chair.

Maintenance Chief Tina Clark shook her head. “It will be a while until we get to that. First, we’re still fighting problems in a dozen other systems. Second, I’m not willing to risk essential maintenance crews until the chief of fabrication can assure me that the breech in the decompression zone from R2L2 section 14 through R2L3 section 5 have been properly resealed.”

The head of maintenance cast a tentative glance at Merkar who was busy inspecting his fingernails. She shrugged her apology to Roder, whose biome was closest to the blowout that had killed two hundred, including five from his own crew.

“I will send a team to make sure that it won’t spread to your biome.”

Roder nodded his thanks. “At least if I know that, I’ll sleep better at night.”

“Anyone else?”

Jaron, the leader of the jungle biome unlimbered himself from his chair and stepped down to stand before the holo of Stellar One. He moved about it as if studying it carefully until he stood before the Captain. He turned to face her.

Ri tried to guess what the gangly man found so urgent. He’d rarely been able to speak in her presence, let alone in front of a group. She half expected him to sidle up to the Captain and whisper his question to her so that she could repeat it aloud. But he didn’t. He stood tall before her, his Adam’s apple giving away his nervousness, but his voice was steady when he spoke.

“You have asked us to once again dream of the stars. You have asked this group to focus all of their efforts upon this seemingly impossible task. That,” he waved a hand toward the holo behind him as if they were not inside it at this moment. “That has no engines. No fuel. Nothing with which to make any form of propulsion known to the greatest scientists of the Earth, never mind our humble collection here. No offense intended.”

He didn’t quite turn to face the various scientists he had just attacked. That the chief scientist Kurt Bamker was considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of the age and had been aboard at The End apparently made little impression on the jungle man.

“First, Captain, first we must fight to preserve what we have. How many have died aboard?” He might have been asking how much milk to put in her tea.

“Three hundred and seven,” the Captain answered with an equal calm.

“How many species?” He whirled to face Ri. His voice had acquired an edge, it was clear what he cared about.

“Over a hundred and fifty, I think, across the biomes and ag-bays.” She should know, but it was such a depressing task maintaining the extinction database. And she didn’t have the training. Marcus James did, but he died on the final gathering mission for the forest-and-lake biome when the Earth burned.

“One hundred and sixty-two.” He moved around the circle until he was toe-to-toe with the ocean biome specialist. “Forty-three in your biome alone, Yerke.”

The tall, Nordic blonde hung her head until her hair slid across her broad face. “Forty-four. The last Echinarachnius parma died about five hours ago.”

Ri opened her message queue on the chair arm commpad. There it was. The last sand dollar was gone. No viable germ plasm had yet been added to the banks. There’d be no cloning. No test tube baby creatures. No more sand dollars. Ever.

Jaron had the decency to pause for a moment. She barely heard his whisper.

“I’m sorry.” They both hung their heads for a moment.

Then, as if stabbed with a cattle prod, the stick-figure burst to life and rounded once more on the Captain.

“We must fight to preserve what we have. All our energies,” he sent an accusatory glance at the maintenance chief, “must be applied to the survival of all the species which have come into our care.”

“Of course we struggle to preserve life. But we must also look forward to humanity’s future. There we—”

“Humanity’s future.” It took a brave man to cut off the Captain. Even Merkar hadn’t yet dared such a thing. Jaron ranted on.

“What future does the sand dollar have? Or the misbegotten travesty of genetically-engineered polar bears? We are failing those species that relied on us. That we ripped from their good, safe Earth and transported into this space vehicle. That is what you must fight for Captain. Not that…thing.” He waved a hand at the holo behind him.

Then, as abruptly as he’d come to life, he wound down. Suddenly the meek jungle man was cowed under and clearly wondering how he’d landed in the center of the room. He scuttled toward his seat, passing through the holo of Stellar One as if it weren’t there. His body temporarily replaced by the image of the whirling machine, left Ri with the impression of a man with no feelings for humanity, more mechanism than flesh and blood. He settled into his seat quietly next to Yerke, careful not to disturb her continued retreat from the human company in the room.

Into the waiting silence, the Captain at last offered some words.

“We do not, and will not ignore the survival of all species aboard this craft, both Homo sapiens and others.” She paused but Jaron offered no nod of acknowledgement.

“For the time being, I ask that you all look to your systems. We are out of danger. Let’s get a safety margin and an equilibrium established. Perhaps this will be our last loss and we may then look to a future where both the stars, and the precious burden we wish to carry to them, are within our grasp. That is all.”

Captain Conrad rose and disappeared into the darkness at the back of the conference room.

Ri watched the members disperse. Yerke left alone, though several of the other leaders hovered in her wake. Close enough to show support, but not so close in case her problems proved contagious. No one accompanied Jaron, but Ri didn’t think he’d notice the lack of mere human companionship.

Merkar glared at the hologram of Stellar One until the room was empty but for the two of them. It was like a child’s staring contest, Ri mustn’t leave until he did. But this was no game. What the man was thinking? Did she care? She’d better.

Before she could speak, he rose and circled slowly around the spinning model. Apparently ignoring her, but she knew better. Her senses were alert, triggered as they only were when hunting with the cadre or sparring with Levan.

He stopped at the end that showed Ring One. He moved his hands until they hovered above the spinning ring. Like some god who could reach out and jerk it to a halt, tumbling about all those inside. Wrenching control for himself.

“You think I should cooperate with your Captain.”

It wasn’t a question. He didn’t face her. He continued to watch the ring spinning within the curl of his cupped hands. Either a yes or no would be twisted until she was somehow wrong. Word games and political maneuvering were not her strengths. Give her an enemy, her cadre on the streets, and none could beat her. Words? Elusive, tricky, filled with double, even triple-meanings that always wandered out of her grasp.

“If you say yes, I will ask you to prove why her ideas are any better than mine. If you say no, that I should follow my conscience for the betterment of humanity, you fear what that unknown might be.” His eyes were upon her.

“I watch people. I see what you are. You are the Captain’s steel. Her sword of truth. You would die to defend what she commands. Where does that loyalty come from? Where do you come from? There are no records of you. No database entries. No history. Just your slitted eyes and dark skin. I know where you are from but not how you came to be here.”

Merkar shifted his weight, but his eyes didn’t leave her.

“You are the enigma aboard this ship, not me. I fought my way here. I dug my way out of the rubble of Darwin, Australia, ruined by the tsunami from the earthquake that destroyed your country. Orphaned at eight after spending two weeks in a collapsed building. Two weeks before any help came. We fought for food and water. Those who needed medicine were out of luck. I climbed up through the corps of the WEC by being the toughest son-of-a-bitch, and usually the smartest. I’m your worst nightmare. I’m granite. I’m iron. Tell your Captain that her damned steel blade had best take care if it doesn’t wish to get snapped.”

He glanced back at the model. The command sector passed between his hands and he smacked them together with a crushing blow that echoed about the room. Ri ducked, she couldn’t help herself. For a moment it seemed that Merkar had crushed the room.

He laughed and was gone without glancing in her direction again.

How had he known? None had been there but Ninka and the Angel-lady at the moment of her greatest failure. Ninka hadn’t survived the hour. Suz Jeffers had died with the Earth. No one else knew that she had shattered the sword of her ancestors against the iron chain confining her cadre’s leader, the only mother she’d ever known. Unable to free her from her prison, Ri had used the steel blade to kill Tinai, to release her from the torture of Diabutsu-den cadre. Her life’s blood sprayed upon the hard granite of the underground chamber.

The chair beside her creaked forcing the past aside. The Captain settled into the cushioning and scanned the empty room for a moment before facing Ri.

“He is such a charmer. Analysis, Officer Jeffers.”

Ri glanced at the other empty chairs before meeting the Captain’s gaze.

“Jaron is not a problem. He is passionate about life as well as its preservation. However skewed, he is on our side.”

The Captain raised her eyebrow.

“On the side of… I can’t think of the right word.” Why did she always demark groups into our side or not? Think Ri, you fought for your life and the life of your cadre every day until you were fourteen, that just might have something to do with it.

Then Commander Levan drove you to the limits to make you the best fighter he could. To protect a woman now dead with the world. Futile. She shook her head to clear it of the weight of her past, but it still hung heavy, heavier than any mere crushing weight upon her body could possibly attain.

The Captain watched her with raised eyebrows.

“There are those who are concerned for their own good. And there are those concerned for the good of others. Jaron MacAndrews is a great leader of the jungle biome because the life within that biome comes before all else, human or not. Preferably not.”

Devra Conrad smiled at the last.

“Security risks are those who don’t care about the greater good. We haven’t heard the last of Johnson Merkar, but I’m sure that you’re aware of that. The problem is that we have no direction. We are past raw survival. We have food, air, shelter. Now what? The real problem is how to survive until we find that direction, that common goal we had in reaching for the stars.”

“How did you come to this ship, Ri Jeffers?”

“You signed me aboard.”

“Yes,” the Captain slid down in her chair and stared out at the spinning holo that still filled the center of the room.

Ri hadn’t even known the Captain’s spine could bend, much less slouch. She covered her mouth to hide her smile.

“I signed you aboard. But why are you here? Why do you speak of a longing for the stars?”

Now it was Ri’s turn to watch the rings spin in their minute-long loops.

“I long…” for so much. “I want…” to be hunting with the cadre. Chasing down the streets of Nara, Mad Dog Cadre scampering out of their way. No one risked angering Tancho Cadre when she had led them. Their packs bulging with enough food for a month. Laughing together around the heat of the book-fed fire in their ruined bookstore that they had won with blood and cunning. To once again have Ninka and Tinai about her. She wanted to hear their laughs, their battle cries just one last time.

“I came to Stellar One seeking a new beginning.” She’d been thrown off the planet of her birth without a single word of protest. Chaff on the wind had led her here.

“A new beginning.” She tested the words, felt how the rolled across her tongue and tasted like the fresh buds of spring. “Yes. That’s it.”

“I’m glad you’re sure.” The Captain was once again inspecting her carefully. “I signed you on for my father’s sake. He sent a message saying you were the best. That’s all he said. And from him, that’s praise I certainly never earned.”

“The best. At what?”

“He never said. Just that. Levan was never a man of many words.”

Ri felt as if her gut had just been rammed through the back of the chair. “Levan? Commander Levan was your father?”

“Commander? That’s about a dozen ranks too low. The most decorated man in the WEC. Ever. He led the entire fighting corps until about five years ago. I heard that one day he just quit. Hadn’t heard from him personally for nearly a decade until he transmitted that one message. ‘I send you the best.’ That was all.”

Captain Conrad faced her and leaned in, all sense of relaxation gone from her rigid frame.

“The best at what? That’s my question, Officer Jeffers. I need a great deal of best at the moment.”

Ri could still feel the thousand bruises she’d received while sparring with him. The one man she’d never been able to outsmart, despite years of trying. Never good enough. Never meeting his standard.

“What was it like to be his daughter?”

“That is not an answer.”

Ri looked into the round, blue-gray eyes. As implacable as Commander Levan’s, they demanded. Why hadn’t she recognized those same eyes before?

“I don’t know. I fight well. I’m very hard to kill.” She choked on her own words but couldn’t look away. “I just kill everyone around me, especially those I love most.”

At last she hung her head. Tears stung at her eyes and she blinked them back. Stare at tight fists. Hard center. Tighten the center. Wrap the pain up in layer upon layer of black cloth. Black like the night the Ninja had ruled. Black like the pit of her soul.

“Ri.”

She couldn’t respond.

“Officer Jeffers!” The command snapped out with the drill sergeant manner that Levan had used when he was most frustrated by her. She snapped to her feet and managed to resist the urge to dive away and run. There’d been no escape from Levan’s retribution if Ri showed the slightest hint of cowardice.

The Captain stood before her, eyes as hard as crystal boring into her.

“I need you to fight, Officer Jeffers. I need you to be the best. You are the one who knows the ship. Did you know that you are the only member of the command crew to go past Ring Two in over a month except during emergencies?”

“Ma’am. No, Ma’am.” She shook her head still unable to release her body from its strict attention.

“I need you to fight. Fight for our lives, for they are in the balance far more than either of us imagine. Not only our two mortal bodies, but that of every member who remains in the circle of humanity.”

She reached out a hand so that it almost brushed the spinning rings of Stellar One just as Merkar’s had moments before. But with caress rather than greed.

“You are hereby charged with fighting for our lives, with full authorization of the Captain. I will trust my father’s judgment in this matter. Whatever it takes, you must do.”

The Captain walked around the model, despite its ephemeral existence, and exited the room without looking back.

Ri watched the rings swing through turn after turn. The never-changing rhythm relentless rather than soothing. Hadn’t the Captain heard her?

She’d always killed those she was meant to protect.

# # #

Jaron stepped out of the lift and headed for the jungle. Ring Four wrapped about him like a cocoon. He never felt like himself when he had to journey all the way to R1, even the smells there were wrong. The ocean biome added a different flavor to the air in R1 than his jungle did here in R4 despite the filtering. There was a richness, a solid texture to the air. Perhaps it was the additional oxygen the huge biomass of his jungle supplied to the station. Though at the moment, it smelled more like stale beer.

The bartender was standing in the middle of his bar. The various tables and chairs had been resurrected from the New Year’s battering they had taken the previous evening. He stood, arms crossed, before a clear expanse of wall.

A single light had been twisted to shine there and three characters had been scrawled across the beige surface, “R4U.” The “R” and “4” had been mated together, but the blocky letter “U” didn’t flow properly. Though Jaron could see many sketches across the wall, none of them worked.

“Make it fly.”

“What!” A marker flew from the bartender’s hand as he turned and it landed near Jaron’s feet.

Jaron jumped back and almost turned for the jungle, but then, he had drunk the man’s beer the prior evening.

The man moseyed over to retrieve the marker from beneath a table. He straightened up and looked at Jaron. He was tall and quiet, leaving space for Jaron to regather his thoughts. But his original point eluded him.

“Make it fly?” the man prompted gently.

Jaron swallowed hard to clear his throat, he’d already talked more in this afternoon’s meeting than he typically did in any single day. Except when he was talking to his assistant Robbie about the jungle.

“Have you watched the parrots fly?”

When he shook his head, Jaron couldn’t help himself.

“Haven’t you been in my jungle?”

Again the silent negative. What did he have to say to this man? One who hadn’t even bothered to cross through an airlock only a few hundred meters away. He was turning to leave when the man mused quietly.

“Make it fly.” He turned back to the wall and erased his latest attempt at the final letter. With quick, bold strokes, he turned the upstroke of the U into a sweeping parrot’s wing. Poised at the top of the downstroke for launch, feathers formed quickly, cupped downward to catch the most air. The pinfeathers spread wide. He painted in the first letters with a bold red and was working his way up the majestic wing before Jaron found his voice again.

“Yellow band across the middle, blue out to the ends.”

With barely a nod of acknowledgement, the bartender continued, switching colors at just the right moments. Climbing on a chair to reach the high end of the wing. When it was done he moved to stand beside Jaron. For a long time they observed his handiwork in silence. The winged “U,” twice the height of the “R4” rose nearly to the ceiling to catch the air. There was a liftoff and hope.

“Thanks, that was making me a bit crazy. I meant it as a joke. But seeing it there, it might be something else. C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer.” As he moved to the bar, Jaron heard him as if whispering to himself. “Hope. Now there’s a new idea.”

It was late afternoon, the meeting in R1 had taken forever, and he was eager to get back to the jungle. But his throat was dry. Another species had died aboard, gone forever. He’d almost managed to forget that.

Jaron followed the man to the bar. He slid a cool mug across the plas.

“I’m Bryce.”

“Jaron.” He sipped the cool liquid which soothed his parched throat like an afternoon rain pattering into the thirsty jungle soil.

Bryce kicked a keg into place and leaned back against the wall behind the bar.

“Tell me about your jungle.”

# # #

The bar throbbed with humanity by the time Jaron left. Bryce had tried to continue their conversation about the variations of the jungle trees’ reproductive cycles, but the calls for beer finally overwhelmed him.

As Jaron departed, the bartender waved and Jaron was a bit surprised to find himself waving back. He was the only one headed away from R4U, he’d forgotten to ask what it meant. Another time.

Singles, couples, small groups all streamed toward the bar as he headed for the jungle. He thumbed through the double airlock.

At the head of the ramp he stopped to breathe in the rich scent of the vegetation. The healthy jungle. He could tell just by the smell that they’d succeeded in creating a stable environment in the unlikely place of a giant plas room in space. A hundred meters wide, half that tall, and four hundred long. Four-and-a-half hectares.

The jungle reached up with the curve of the ring until the green canopy seemed to flow onward forever. Except for the discontinuity where the upward curving jungle was cut off by the artificial sky of the inner hub, they could have been standing in the Venezuelan wilderness he had left just six months before.

This jungle averaged only six percent less biomass per hectare than mother nature’s finest. And they’d only lost four species during The End that had killed the Arctic and damaged the Ocean. Regrettably, he’d lost his bats. But increasing the parrot population and the night-time moths had replaced the pollination niche his bats had carried out. The change troubled him, but it appeared to be working.

He reached for a commpad from the rack and glanced quickly down the reports. Robbie was meticulous about keeping the daily logs and he could see at a glance that she’d kept the crew right on top of the work despite his absence. The team researching pollination viability showed a high success rate, still a few percent below what the bats might have achieved, but well within tolerances.

He slid the pad down into a thigh pocket. His machete hung alongside the lock, instantly identifiable from the others by the immense wear on the leather harness and the wooden handle. Everyone else had plas blades, he was the only one who still swung metal. His feet echoed strangely on the ramp until he reached the jungle floor and moved out onto the yellowed soil and the muffling carpet of decomposing leaves. Before he moved under the edge of the trees, a shot of blue and red fell upon him from the sky.

Harold backwinged to brake his plummet, his wings arcing so like the bartender’s drawing that it was uncanny.

“Har-on! Har-on!” The scarlet macaw shuffled foot-to-foot across his shoulder and attempted to preen Jaron’s hair but actually was hurting a bit in his excitement. He hated it when Jaron was gone during the day. The night too for that matter, he often slept in their old tree from the true jungle to keep the bird company.

After he’d rubbed Harold’s belly and calmed him down, Jaron waved him aloft. Harold protested until Jaron pulled his machete out of its sheath. The parrot knew better than to hang about when there was clearing to be done.

Robbie always left the outer loop trail for him. A colony of Rosalia scattered up the nearest tree chattering the whole way. The golden tamarins were thriving aboard ship; they made incredible leaps in the lighter gravity of the jungle’s upper stories. They had adapted well from their Sumatran jungle.

It had been a delicate task blending the Earth’s various jungles into a single biome as Robbie had insisted, but it was working. He stopped and watched the ballet, more graceful than any mere human dancer, until the tamarins were out of sight.

He swung the machete free and moved toward the trailhead. Had to keep after this jungle or the trails disappeared in a fortnight, just like its Earthly predecessor. Yet another mark he’d designed this biome well.

His blade caught the evening sun as he swung it aloft. Harold called from somewhere far above as Jaron slashed down through mango leaves encroaching on the biome’s path. They dropped to the trail and rustled underfoot as he chopped at an overzealous liana vine. For Robbie, he avoided the ones with epiphytic orchids. She was partial to them. The rest of the crew, even the best ones, were not as careful. He preferred to clear as much of the trail himself as possible.

The sweat began running down his face and he let the flash of the rising and falling blade take him. All of the other biomes had to worry about composting properly. Here, in the dark of the jungle, he just let the cutoff drop to the ground. It would rot quickly enough there releasing its rich, rotting scent. Not the smell of dead flesh, but rather plants; biomass composting to feed other plants with new life. It used up a great deal of oxygen for the composting, but his thriving jungle produced over twenty percent of the ship’s oxygen supply despite that.

He ignored the readouts along the route. They told him far less than the tangy scent of sap flowing from fresh cuts along the trail. His towering trees and their wildlife had survived another day. He knew the other biome leaders always walked their environment as well. The meters and vid-relays never told you what you needed to know. The best way to monitor was standing amidst the wildlife, wrapped in its smells and the moisture of the air.

Jaron was sweating heavily by the time he reached the center of the biome. A huge spray of yellow flowers each the size of his head bordered one side of the small clearing. He cast his blade, point first, into the ground and plunged his head into the small river to drink deeply. Purified to almost tasteless with each passage around the jungle, here at the center, it had leached enough minerals to taste a little of rivers he had followed for his years alone tramping through the Venezuelan and Brazilian jungles.

Sated, he dropped onto one of the arching tree roots. Eighty-six meters tall, this proud Berthalletia was the pinnacle of the highest sub-biome aboard Stellar One. This emergent was the king of the skylite superstory of the tropical jungle.

Despite the engineer’s protests, it had been necessary to convince them moving this and other full-grown monsters was crucial to the entire skylite ecosystem. Unlike the Cebia in the first load, this one alone had required an entire trip of the shuttle to move it. But they’d done well despite their griping, it had grown over a meter since planting.

A rustle sounded nearby pulling Jaron’s attention sharply back to the jungle. He couldn’t identify the species; something like a wild pig though he knew there were none aboard. Then he heard the string of curses growing steadily louder along with the crashing sounds.

Samnal, the bioengineer, stumbled out of a thicket laying about ineffectually with a machete. Jaron rose to leave as the man, drenched with sweat, dropped down on a fallen log across the small clearing.

“How can you stand this place, jungle man? I can’t even breathe in here it’s so damn humid.”

Jaron looked at the opening Samnal had slashed through the heavy undergrowth and then at the open trail he’d just finished clearing a few meters to its left.

“There are easier ways if one has patience.”

Samnal mopped at his dripping brow. “What’s that?”

Jaron shook his head. “Never mind. What are you doing here?”

“Can we be monitored?”

He allowed the sounds of the jungle to be his answer. The cicadas’ chirrup and a screeching argument among the parrots, his Amazona autumnalis colony by the call, made enough noise that a whispered conversation was not even possible.

Samnal scowled at him with his dark eyes as he pushed a hand through his curly hair. “Okay, have it your way.” He glanced around the clearing before continuing.

“I made a strike at Conrad.” He suddenly grinned broadly.

“To what end?”

“Give me a break, jungle man. You don’t like her any more than I do. You don’t like her ignoring your plants and I’m sick to death of being stuck in a tin box circling a dead planet. C’mon. Admit it. She couldn’t care less about the biomes as long as she gets to breathe the air. We need someone in charge who pays heed to what we’re doing here. ‘Let’s dream of peace and the stars, Ad Astra.’ What a crock. We need to get moving. Tons of people are so unhappy that they’ll flock to any side that is not ‘Captain Devra Conrad commanding’.”

Jaron leaned forward. “Your last idea was to kill her. Tell me you have conceived a wiser plan this time.”

“Plan? Hell. Designed and done.”

“Designed?” Jaron tried to think of what he was missing. He’d never understood how Samnal’s mind worked. He always seemed to have so little basis in fact.

“The dogs.”

“What?”

Samnal ignored his scowl and laughed at him. “Time to come down from your trees, jungle man. Check your commpad.”

Jaron pulled it from his thigh pouch and tapped a query for current ship news. A chill ran up his spine as a single headline flashed across the screen.

“All dogs dying.”

He scrolled down the article. An unknown disease had slayed every member of the family Canidae over the last two hours. Actually the article just said “dogs and foxes.” Autopsies were in progress.

Samnal rose to his feet and strutted across the clearing to Jaron. “Don’t you see? Everyone’s beloved pet suddenly dies in one night. Who are they going to blame? ‘Captain Devra Conrad Commanding,’ that’s who. Her power is undermined. Now, with her position weakened, in we go to save the day.”

He slapped Jaron hard enough on the shoulder to make him stumble forward. “Pretty good one, wouldn’t you say?”

“How did you do it?” Jaron fought to keep his voice steady, to not spit in the man’s face.

“Simple virus. Waterborne, so it got them all at once throughout Stellar One. My first plan was to induce massive production of free radicals inducing exictotoxicity leading to cell suffocation. But then I stumbled upon a method of inducing apoptosis by altering the checkpoint gene to…”

“Apoptosis. I don’t care about programmed cell death. What did you do?”

“My virus checks for the canine luteinizing hormone gene and if it finds it, bang, triggers organism-wide apoptosis and the dog falls over dead. Very efficient. Elegant, if I say so myself. And no, it can’t mutate. I engineered in a checksum. If there’s any variation in the virus it turns inert and dissolves into harmless bits of nucleotide. Slicker’n parrot snot.”

Jaron staggered away to avoid being sick. He faced into the jungle and tried to let the sounds of his parrots wash over him to warm the cold chill in his heart. But there was no future for the canines. None.

“No more dogs. Ever.” He spun to face the man. “You idiot. You know that Stellar One is a closed environment. No great Mother Earth to purge the bad bugs. Why do you think Yerke didn’t use chemicals to fix the diseases that killed fifteen percent of her ocean? Did you think about that?”

“Jesus, Jungle Man, what sort of an idiot do you think I am? I know that toxins bioaccumulate in the food chain. We use the chemicals anywhere and we’d eat them way too soon. No dissipation. No dilution. But not this time. I engineered this bug to clock itself out of existence in two days.”

Samnal grunted. “Never liked the damn things anyway. But there’s no problem. We have plenty of their genes in the storage banks, all breeds. I checked them just this morning. We just cook us up a batch of puppies when we take over and we’ll be god damn heroes. Hit people close to the heart. Win their minds through their love for their pets.”

“The stockpiles were infected as well. You idiot.” Jaron tried to swallow. Tried to make his mind work. There must be some way he could fix it.

Samnal ceased his damn one-man march and stared at him, clearly angry that his miracle had not received a joyous welcome.

“What do you mean?”

“No dogs. You checked the freezer bay after you released the disease, didn’t you? Were your hands wet? Did you sneeze on the tube stoppers?”

The large man shrugged but kept his peace. Jaron pointed to the bottom of the article on his commpad which noted the non-viability reading on all the dog ova in storage.

He felt some satisfaction as Samnal’s face went white and he wiped his hands on his pants. “Damn. I should have watched for that. Every time they test a tube, they’re pushing in the virus that kills it.”

“Was there anything else you miss—” Jaron was cut off by a loud beep, first from the pad and then from the ship’s announcement speakers buried somewhere in the jungle sky.

“Medical Warning!” flashed on the screen.

“May I have your attention!” As the command rang out, the parrots screamed in alarm which set off the monkeys and then every other animal with a voice in the jungle. They continued their harangue against the voice from the sky. He would have missed the entire announcement had it not been repeated on the commpad screen.

“This is Captain Devra Conrad, commanding. Warning! Do not, I repeat, not touch the deceased dogs. Whatever has happened to them is causing violent miscarriages of human fetuses in all women who have touched the corpses. Thirty-four have already been reported, including five deaths to late-term mothers.

“If you have an animal corpse to be removed, Security Chief Ri Jeffers has mobilized her crews in isolation suits. Wait for them. Do not, I repeat, not touch the dogs’ corpses. Captain Devra Conrad, commanding. Out.”

Jaron spun on Samnal who stumbled backwards over the log. “I don’t understand how…”

The parrots were still screaming and wheeling through the sky. Jaron had to yell to be heard.

“It jumped species. It jumped to humans through your waterborne vector and attacked the human LH.”

“No, I watched for that. Couldn’t happen.” Samnal was sweating heavily as he concentrated.

“Well, something did.”

Samnal’s face went white and his eyes opened wide. Jaron felt sick. There had been another error.

“I forgot to block for cross-reactions with CG. There’s a similar DNA sequence in the human chorionic gondadotropin gene which specifically maintains pregnancy. Damn.”

“No. Dogs. Ever.” Jaron had to spit to clear the bile from his throat. “And people are dying. It did not need to mutate, it kills fetuses exactly as it is. They’ll all be dead before your precious two-day clock runs out. Samnal. Your name will go down in infamy as the first mass murderer of the new age.”

An Amazona autumnalis dove into the clearing still screaming. Samnal stumbled into its path. Another cry and it pulled sharply upward. A talon left a bloody stripe on the bioengineer’s cheek. Its screeching, unmelodic call echoed like a siren about them.

“Why did you come to me, Samnal? You had to log in the door to enter here. We’re the only two in the whole biome. Why did you lead them to me? I had nothing to do with it. The troops could be here any minute. They’ll kill me. Just like my parents. My sister. They’re coming!”

He didn’t remember pulling the machete from the ground, but Samnal backed away from him quickly. The man tried to raise his own blade but Jaron slashed at his arm laying it open to the bone. Samnal’s blade dropped from his limp hand as he screamed. He turned to run and Jaron slashed open his leg.

He stood over the gibbering man as he crawled into the jungle. Jaron wanted Samnal to die as horribly as his sister and mother and brother and father. They both cried out with each fall of the blade.

Samnal in terror.

Jaron in his past. “Murderer. Traitor. Idiot. Pain. Fool. Death.”

Jaron’s scream rose until it ripped his throat and made no more sense than the parrots.

# # #

Robbie thumbed into the jungle and noticed that Jaron’s blade and hers were missing from the rack. Nobody else ever took hers, it was too heavy for the other workers to swing for any length of time. She grabbed one of the common blades which felt like a steak knife in her hand, jammed it sheath-first into her belt, and trotted down the ramp.

At the edge of the jungle she hesitated, noting the fresh-cut outer path that she’d left for Jaron. He always liked to think there was something here that only he could handle and she made a point of leaving it for him. The fastest way to find him would be to follow this path until she found him at the end of it, but for some reason she swung the other way and plunged down the path toward the central clearing.

As she jumped over the stream, a flash downstream caught her attention. She dug in on the landing and turned back. Jaron stood thigh deep in the water well down from the path. He leaned forward, washing his hands even though they looked perfectly clean. But his shirt, his face, his hair was soaked in something dark. Something red. She plunged into the stream and rushed to him creating a wave of water to both sides.

“Jaron.” Robbie shook his shoulders before he focused on her. “Jaron. Are you hurt?”

His eyes wandered to the machete at her waist and then drifted back to her face. That he looked her directly in the eye told her how far in shock he must be.

“I’m fine. All clean. See?” He held up his hands. “Nice and clean. All washed away.”

Scooping handfuls of water over him revealed no apparent damage.

“Whose blood is this?” She put a large hand over his mouth and pinched his nose before ducking him under the water. The blood streamed away from his hair but nothing sprang anew from his body when she dragged him back into the air.

“All washed away. All clean. No problems now.” His wandering eyes focused on her face again and something behind the facade broke.

“Christ, Robbie, he killed all the dogs. The entire genetic family of Canidae gone with a single stroke.” Tears rolled down his face as he wept for the animals.

“Who? Jaron. Who did this? Where is he?”

He waved a hand downstream.

Robbie pushed him to the bank and sat him on the sandy verge. “You stay there, okay?”

He nodded and Robbie splashed downstream. If whoever did this wasn’t dead, she was going to tear him apart with her own hands. She didn’t dare leave Jaron for long in his current state, but if someone was suffering out here, she had to get them medical attention.

Commpad. She slapped down into the water and dragged it free as she continued to wade along.

“Medical team to the jungle biome. West entry, follow right-hand path to the stream. Jaron McAndrews in need of treatment.” At the acknowledgement, she rammed it back into its pouch with a splash.

The jungle was silent except for her wave-churning progress. This was too far, she must have missed something. The water, the water about her was murky, but not with the silts that she’d been kicking up. Something colored the water, the way it had colored when she’d dunked Jaron.

Robbie turned back upstream and in moments came upon what had once probably been human. A mass of slashed meat and bone lay in the foliage leaking its last blood into the running water. Buried deep in the flesh was a blade, one that they all knew.

The wooden handle of Jaron’s steel blade showed the pattern of his fingers, outlined, Robbie was almost sick, in the victim’s own blood.