Chapter 38

11 January 1 A.A.

Ri sat in the command chair and watched nothing happen. She’d been watching it for hour upon hour as being drunk slid agonizingly down into hangover. Stellar One was stable. A twenty-four hour watch was pretty pointless.

Regrettably she’d been drunk enough to suggest that to Olias. A mistake she would not repeat; he’d rewarded her with a double, back-to-back night watch. Apparently Strickland, the assistant pilot, had gone missing. She’d forwarded the data to the Icarus team for follow-up.

She tapped the main viewer on and let the image spin with the rings. The stars were swinging into view from above and shooting off the bottom of the screen a moment later. Her chair felt like it was pitching her out onto the floor. The vertigo grabbed at her far worse than when riding the lifts to the core.

Clamping her eyes shut didn’t stop the slide already begun in her inner ear until her knees hit the floor, her right one complaining bitterly, and she crumbled forward. She groped back to the chair and pressed the stabilize-image button by feel. She opened one eye carefully and checked the viewer.

Straight down a vast well, the shining disk of Earth left her standing sideways on a deck above an infinite visual fall. She jumped the image thirty degrees and the Earth became a sliver of light along the right of the viewer.

She lowered herself weakly into the chair. She swallowed hard to keep down the nutrition bar she’d choked down an hour ago hoping the belated protein would counter the hangover. It hadn’t.

A crescent moon glittered beyond the Earth’s horizon. The sun shone red and gold off the moon’s glass surface. Radiometry had revealed that a half meter of glass covered the moon where it had faced the sun that day. Even Mars was significantly brighter in the sky, when the melted face was toward them; a crystal red ruby in the sky. The iron-rich soil, fused by the bath of solar plasma, sparkled.

The Earth and its satellite were in the same position as the photograph of Earthrise from beyond the rim of the moon on the wall of her quarters. Except the moon was rising above the Earth.

Earthrise over the moon’s horizon had been her image of hope in Nara. The hope had been torn away, but she’d never managed to do the same to the picture. One day they would indeed see it from that perspective, the backside of the moon on their way to the stars. All they had to figure out was how to leave Earth orbit.

She flipped a camera aboard the last remaining satellite that had been safely in Earth’s shadow for long enough to survive and high enough to not need constant orbital corrections from Hanoi Launch. For lack of anything better to do, one of its cameras was aimed at Stellar One.

She zoomed in until the four six-spoked wheels could be seen spinning on the central axis, only the core and R5 were still. She felt a little queasy as the rings spun through a rotation on the screen, knowing she had just flipped through a complete circle even as she watched. She could make out both the Icarus and the counterbalance. She’d really have to go face Jackson and explain why she’d left his bed with no note or goodbye, but she couldn’t leave her watch duties. Maybe once she was off. Or maybe not.

The other vator on R5 had never been built at all, but that didn’t matter as there was only the one shuttle. Even if there had been the materials, there would not have been the will to finish it.

Humankind was becoming stagnant. Maintenance happened, though R3L0 was still all torn up. The response from maintenance was that a full team would show up as soon as they fixed the blowout on R2, but that wasn’t happening very fast either. Of course, R2L1 East had become quite creepy since the decompression accident. People there slipped out of sight as she approached and, she was sure, watched her carefully after she passed by.

Ri shifted in the command chair trying to get comfortable, but it was clearly designed by some masochist who didn’t want hung-over watch officers taking naps. She almost brought up a training simulation when a menu option caught her eye. She flashed up the business roster on a side viewer.

“R4U” wasn’t listed. She tried searching under “Ring Four” as well as bars, saloons, and alcohol. She finally scanned all the businesses starting with “R” and ended up none the wiser. As far as the system was concerned, Bryce’s place didn’t exist. She glanced around the command deck, but she was the only one on duty.

She searched for Bryce, but the interface wanted a last name. She didn’t know it. “Bryce the Bartender” wasn’t going to cut it. She checked the occupations’ listing, but there was no Bryce under bartender. She edged forward in her seat and called up a full listing of all personnel. She started scanning the alpha list for first names starting with “B” but stopped quickly remembering there were over ten thousand names.

What idiot had designed a system so that you couldn’t search by first name? She double-checked the R4 maintenance log, but it showed that no one had entered R4L0 other than herself.

“Liar,” she accused the listing, not that it cared.

A trick that Olias had once shown her came to mind. It took a bit, but she managed to dump the personnel data. Hundreds of columns of information listed out, but one of them was first name. A quick sort and she had it.

But she didn’t. Ri bit the inside of her cheek as she scrolled up and down. No Bryce. No Brice. Seventeen Brian’s and over thirty Bruce’s, even one Bryan, but that was no help. There was no nickname column. She dumped the data.

“Good morning, Miss Ri.”

She yelped and jerked around in the chair.

“So sorry, I did not mean to scare you. You are off.” Rajesh yawned widely before pressing his palm on the command plate and speaking in the sing-song tones that had survived on the Indian subcontinent despite the transition to Anglese. “Rajesh Menala now accepts command of Stellar One at 4:59 a.m. of whatever day this is.”

“It’s January 11th, Rajesh. Eleven days Ad Astra.”

“Thank you so very much. Like I care.”

Ri checked that she’d cleared the buffers and the log of what she’d been doing, hoping no one would check the backup layers that couldn’t be purged.

“Thanks, Rajesh.”

He smiled and then slumped into the chair she’d just vacated.

“Don’t fall asleep. Olias will be here in an hour or so.”

“Right.” He yawned and waved her toward the door.

# # #

When Ri arrived at the bar, there were two women slouched at a back table with empty beers in front of them. The dark-haired woman was barely coherent enough to tell her that Bryce had just left. The other was asleep before Ri had finished extracting the information.

She went to his storeroom, but it was sealed and coded shut. There was no answer to her knock. Ri could feel, by the prickling between her shoulders, the baleful stare of the conscious drunk. She tried thumbing in, but it stayed red. She considered only a moment before trying double-thumbing. Red again. That should open any door on the ship. But not this one. How had Bryce done that?

What was so damned important about an unregistered bartender in R4 anyway? She shook her head. It was stupid that she’d wasted this much time on him as it was. She should have simply hauled him in, gotten him registered, and gone about her life. Or she could just ignore him and let him go about his life.

Halfway back to the lift she knew she couldn’t do that. Where had he been going two nights ago in L0 when she plowed into him? And why hadn’t he shown up entering the restricted corridor? She trotted to the nearest maintenance hatch and thumbed down into L0. The long corridor was empty and silent in both directions.

When she’d run into him, he hadn’t seen her coming. She’d been running spinward, so he too must have been facing spinward.

She kicked directly into a hard run, keeping her footsteps as light as she could on the rubberized plates. Her knee hadn’t healed in a mere twenty-four hours, but she pushed through the pain.

Maybe he slept down here in the maintenance corridor at night. That was patently ridiculous. It was hard to image a less hospitable locale.

She’d sprinted fully three-quarters of the ring to spinward at her top pace. The pain in her side would have been intolerable if the pain in her knee wasn’t worse. She must have missed him. Her calves were screaming from the sustained sprint, but, on the verge of easing off, a yellow light splashed on the gray plates up ahead. It was so momentary she almost missed it. She stopped and then moved forward slowly to where she thought she’d seen it.

No one was there. It had to be one of two hatches overhead that had shone the light down. Both showed red lockout lights. She was hardly surprised when the one in the middle of the corridor didn’t respond to her thumb print. He’d tinkered with this one as well. She thumbed up through the one along the side without a problem.

It was only as she forced her aching legs to carry her up the ladder that she realized where the altered hatch led. She staggered out into the corridor outside the Arctic biome. She backtracked the hundred meters to the nearest airlock, but it was several minutes before she could bring herself to thumb in.

Her lockdown was still in place and the stupid computer still insisted she was the last one here, less than three weeks before. She dragged a heavy parka from the rack as the inner lock cycled open and the frigid air washed over her.

She stepped in and it seemed little different from the last time she’d been there. The small, dark ocean ran for a hundred meters to her right. She must have left the wave generator running as small ice floes rocked gently on the ocean’s surface. She could swear she’d shut it down from command. A false quarter moon lit the dark of the winter morning in the far north.

Ri turned away before she could focus on the outcropping where she’d found Carla’s body. Naked and frozen as solid as the ice around her with her iced-white hair showered over the rock face. She seemed to still be there, but it was simply a coating of the spring hoarfrost.

The cobble beach was heavily ice-encrusted. The cold struck through her thin ship shoes. She hadn’t taken boots, but if she cycled the inner lock to get them, she might not have the heart to reenter. Her rage had carried her this far, but it was being frozen away, shed like layers of calving glacier and she doubted if it could carry her in again.

After climbing up from the rocky shore, Ri could see the tundra spread out before her. There were no grasslands anymore. The bacteria had survived long enough to consume the detritus, but they were probably gone now too, starved rather than frozen.

Large boulders, looking exactly as if they were glacially dropped, were scattered about the field. Green and purple lichens covered many of them. Other than a few phytoplankton, they were the only life form left in the biome. She wandered through the stones and drifted to a stop in the middle of an open ring of stones. A different-colored lichen had spread over each one. Giant, misshapen marbles of yellow, red, purple, and half-a-dozen other shades stood around her.

A deep breath hurt her throat with the cold, but it was clean; not reprocessed and rebreathed by ten thousand others. It was clean in a way that neither the maintenance levels nor any of the functional biomes could emulate. She took another breath deep into her lungs and felt a layer of the brittle armor cracking off her chest and ribs and falling away.

Ri closed her eyes and—

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

She yelped and bolted to the side of the stone ring opposite the voice before turning. A heavily muffled man stood there, his hood pulled up and a large piece of wood in his over-sized hands; perhaps some of the beach’s planned flotsam. She knew those hands.

“Bryce? Shit, you scared me.” He didn’t move and Ri began to shrink from the menace of his hidden gaze.

He finally tossed the branch aside. It landed on the frozen soil with a dull thud.

“Biologics Liaison Ri Jeffers. Or should I say, Security Officer Jeffers? How the hell did you get in here?”

She kept a hand on the nearest boulder, feeling the scratchy lichen which covered its surface, a thin insulation against the stone beneath.

“How did I get in? This biome is part of my job. What are you doing here? And what did you do to those hatches? And who the hell are you anyway?”

He looked at her across the space. When he took a step forward, she moved back. He was taller and had a much longer reach than hers. But that hadn’t caused her trouble in the past. She was fast and she was good, Nara and Levan had seen to that. But he was the unknown. And she didn’t want to fight.

He stopped.

Her pulse was loud in her ears. She wrapped the coat more tightly around her wishing she’d grabbed boots and leggings as she was starting to lose any feeling below her knees where the parka ended.

“I’m the bartender. This can’t be your normal rounds at 5:30 in the morning.” He jammed his hands down into his pockets.

She couldn’t see his face. The moon wasn’t bright enough and the sun wouldn’t rise except briefly at noon.

“You need to answer to me. Your business isn’t registered and there’s no one named Bryce on the rosters. I repeat, who the hell are you?”

A silence stretched between them. One so thick she could almost touch it. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Finally the shoulders of his coat slumped downward.

“C’mon.” He partially turned and nodded over his shoulder. “I have a place out of the cold.”

He waited until she began to move, then he turned his back on her and headed off toward the far west end of the biome. He weaved as if dizzy when he picked up the length of wood, a table leg she could now see, and rested it on his shoulder just like some caveman with his club.

Bryce must have rigged a perimeter alarm to have caught her entrance near the east end. Why she hadn’t thought to come armed was beyond her. She’d walked right past the weapons stowed behind the security panel inside the biome airlock.

She hadn’t thought to because Stellar One was not Nara. The ancient Ninja fighters she’d sought to emulate would laugh their heads off if this modern-day Neanderthal split her skull wide open with his length of table leg.

He halted at the biome lab built into the back corner. She stopped well behind him.

“Be it ever so humble.” He turned to her, but his face was still shrouded by the fur brim of the hood. “Will you come in?”

If she didn’t get somewhere soon, she’d freeze to death. The cold was sliding upward beneath the parka. Even though it was long on her, she was chilled clear through. A voice was yelling at her to run, but he was beside her in three easy steps before she could react. She hadn’t slept in a couple days. Nor eaten enough.

“Christ, you’re shaking so hard. Why didn’t you pull on a full suit?” He tossed his weapon against the lab wall where it thudded loudly before dropping onto the rocks.

She jumped and fought the tears pushing against her eyes.

His large hands guided her through the thermal seal and into the lab. He set her into a deep chair in front of a viewer resting on the floor. He quickly tapped a few keys on a commpad and nothing happened. He blinked hard and pressed the sequence slowly and methodically. He was drunk, or well on the way. On the third try a fire crackled into being on a viewer he’d propped up on the floor. The flame image was so perfect she could almost smell the smoke.

He stripped off his coat and hung it up. “You’ll be warmer if you take off yours. I’ll turn up the blowers for you.”

Ri shook her head. She watched the flames flash on the screen before her. A log settled in the back of the fire and a cloud of sparks rose and disappeared when they reached the top of the viewer.

He handed her a large mug with his bar’s logo on it. She watched him sink into the chair beside her and stretch his legs past the side of the viewer until it was hard not to imagine his feet being on fire.

He raised his mug. “Hot chocolate. Try it. I won’t poison you.”

She took a sip and could feel the warmth scorch a pathway to her frozen interior and settle in her stomach. Another sip and the heat began to radiate outward in pleasant waves. When she finally felt able to speak, she faced Bryce. His dark eyes watched her over the rim of his mug.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

He nodded several times. “I guess it was too good to last. Bryce Randall Stevens, Jr. at your service.”

Ri choked on her next swallow. “You’re not related to—”

“Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. The president of the World Economic Council. Prime Minister of the Earth. Right Hand of God. Chief Bastard of the Universe. He’s my mother’s father.”

“But how…” Ri set her cocoa down before her shaking hands could splash it all over. He was grandson of the man who had triggered the Crash and Smash that had ruined Japan, killing over a three hundred million and condemned her cadre to their fate.

“But how did I end up here?”

All she could do was nod.

He slid down in his chair and sipped at his mug. He licked at the foam on his lip and she realized he was drinking beer not cocoa.

“I followed one of my mother’s dreams into space. She was the best. I got sick… Drunk, if you must know. I was mechanic on one of the Earth-to-orbit shuttles. Had a trainee aboard who thought she was ready.” He closed his eyes. “She wasn’t. And I woke up just in time to watch the Earth die with them broken down on the surface.”

Ri huddled in her coat until the shivers subsided. It was ridiculous but the fake flames did make her feel warmer.

“You satisfied? Christ, I’m tired of it all. Sick of the running. Just lock me up and get it over with.”

She wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or someone in his memories. She peeled off her coat and draped it over her shoulders.

The chocolate was still warm when she finished the dregs. Bryce stayed morosely silent, transfixed by the fire’s flickering light.

She rose and went in search of a refill. The lab was neat and well-kept. A bed had been jury-rigged in the corner, probably one of the old surgery tables for emergency veterinary work. It didn’t look much used. There was no clock nearby, no terminal to read from, not a single viewer easily visible to a sleeper there.

He’d come aboard with nothing and acquired nothing. No photos, probably not even any clothes beyond a standard shipsuit. He was only supposed to be on station for a single night’s rest. Shuttle jock in transit.

The lab sink and specimen coolers had been arranged into a small kitchen. A row of mugs bearing his bar’s logo were the only ornamentation in the room. She dialed for more cocoa, filling a fresh mug for each of them and returned to the chairs.

Bryce was asleep. She set the mug on the lab stool that served as a table by his chair. He clearly wasn’t used to guests, so it took her a moment to figure out why there were two chairs. Hers was normally for his feet. She doused the lights and opaqued the windows to the chill and stark biome. Only the artificial fire now lit the room with its dancing light.

She leaned back against her coat and watched the flames for a long time.

# # #

Bai, bai, bai, bai,
Báyu, Detusku mayú!
Bai, bai, bai, bai,
Báyu, Detusku mayú!
Shta na gor—

The buzzer interrupted Robbie’s song. She continued humming as she wound a branch of her Cécile Brünner rose around the rung of the lattice frame it had been reaching for over many days. It slipped away. Not quite there but soon.

She answered the door. Jaron was there. But he never came to her quarters. He’d made it clear through his actions that he wanted nothing to do with her socially. She took small comfort that he apparently didn’t want any other woman either.

He wavered at her doorway but didn’t speak or come in. He looked her up and down and she became suddenly aware of her flowing silk caftan. The fine white sheer was more for comfort than privacy. He’d probably never seen her except in work clothes.

“What?” She was getting a little irked with the man.

He opened and closed his mouth but nothing came out. That’s when she noticed how white he was. She took his arm and escorted him to a chair. He dropped into the wicker like a rag doll as the door slid closed and shut them in.

“What is it, Jaron?” she made her voice softer.

“Did I hear singing?” his voice was weak and wandering.

“Yes, it is an old Russian lullaby I learned from my grandmother.”

“Will you sing it to me?”

She opened her mouth to refuse, but stopped. He looked as lost and desperate as that night he had wept in her arms high in the trees of the Orinoco valley. It was one of her treasured memories and some maternal instinct made her want to care for him this time as well.

“It is actually a song to an orchid. But I sing it to my rose and it doesn’t seem to mind.” She waved a hand toward the climbing rose that now filled one entire wall of her apartment with clusters of small pink blossoms.

She tried folding her hands before her, but that felt stupid. She moved to the wall of rose blossoms and then back until she stood before Jaron. She pulled over a chair and sat knee to knee with him. She took his hands and held them gently as she began to sing.

Bai, bai, bai, bai.
Bayu, orchid, little dear.
Bai, bai, bai, bai.
Bayu, orchid, little dear.

On the hillside in the spring,
Birds of heaven sweetly sing,
Seeking for their young what’s best
In the forest dark they nest.

Bai, bai, bai, bai.
Bayu, Detusku, mayú.
Bai, bai, bai, bai.
Bayu, Detusku, mayú.

Jaron looked at her. His soft eyes and gentle hands made her heart ache as they had years before during that first summer spent together in the jungle.

“We’re in terrible trouble, Robbie.”

# # #

Bryce stretched until his neck popped. Well, yet another night he hadn’t made it to bed.

He glanced at a readout. Two o’clock in the afternoon. Hours before his first customer would show up, but he hadn’t checked the vats in a while. There should be a batch ready for a decanting and the follow-up cleaning and prep for the next. Maybe he’d try something new. Perhaps he could get a couple bushels of apples traded over from Ring 2’s Forest biome.

As he rose to his feet, he heard a small sound beside him. He barely suppressed a shout. It took him a moment to recognize the woman curled up there, only her midnight black hair showing above the collar of her coat.

Security Chief Ri Jeffers. Shit. Last night. Shit and damn. He’d told her far too much. Why did it have to end, now after he’d finally dug his comfortable little niche?

Too much beer and finding someone inside his biome. That was it. Maybe he hadn’t told her anything and only dreamed that he had.

Bullshit, Bryce. Yup. That was his specialty, but it wasn’t going to get him out of this one. He reached for the mugs and was surprised to find a full one next to his empty. She’d gotten another for him. Cocoa.

And she was here. Asleep.

He hadn’t woken up to a room crowded with security guards, but rather a tiny slip of a woman asleep in his chair. A small woman who could flip a couple of battle-ready plas workers into a bulkhead wall.

He looked at her. Really looked.

And tried to gauge his own reaction, even that of his parent’s. There was a fear there. A terror of the power the Japanese had wielded at the peak of their economic might. They had ruled the world. And they had almost ruined it. Over a billion starved to death in the Financial Crash. A power almost impossible to imagine.

This woman was not Ri Jeffers first, she was Japanese first. At least to others. How did she think of herself?

She was just as outcast by society because of her looks as he was by the nightmare going on in his head. The Japanese were the most feared race in history before their destruction by his parent. And here was a pureblood, walking among them. Was she aware how everyone stared after her? What they said behind her back? Why wasn’t she enmeshed in armor and cowering in some well-locked hideaway? That spoke of an inner strength and certainty he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

He reheated his mug before settling back in his chair. The coat collar had slid aside. Her fine features showed nothing of the strains she must have survived. His parent had read regular reports of the disaster that unfolded on the Japanese soil after they were driven back to their island, blockaded, and then destroyed by the greatest earthquake in history. One enhanced ten-fold upon Japan itself by his parent and a hand-picked team of specialists.

Neither Jaron, nor what he could ferret out of the central computer with forged passwords, revealed much of her past. The one startling fact was that she really had come from Japan. The rumors about what had happened behind that six-decade blockade were quite horrific. It was hard to believe that this little wisp of a woman had survived.

Jaron only knew of her passion in protecting the biomes and he had to admit that she had done as well as was possible in getting him the supplies and support he needed. Bryce suspected Jaron was a hard man to impress. But it was as if she didn’t exist outside of her work.

Her command schedule on the public postings showed that she was pulling more shifts than anyone else, not including her tours of the biomes. The most obvious problem he could see was that she apparently hadn’t eaten in months. Her cheekbones were etched in sharp relief beneath those long lashes.

He went to the kitchen and logged in as Johns; some poor sap who’d died in the initial flare while Bryce still slept. It had been a simple matter to hijack his food allotment. No one noticed that his account remained active. It was appropriate that a man who had died in the flare was feeding a man who should have died in the flare.

Bryce dialed in for John’s weekly meat ration of eggs and bacon. While the tube was delivering them, he scrounged in the cooler and found some bread that hadn’t gone bad yet. A little salt and pepper, a bit of goat cheese he’d traded for a liter of beer and he had the makings of a decent omelette. A splash of hot sauce and a few herbs from under the grow lights in the culturing tank and he was ready.

When he set the plate and a large mug of orange juice beside her, she slowly stirred awake. She unfolded luxuriously. It was a joy to watch her stretch; she unwound like a cat after lying too long in the warm spring sun. Suddenly her eyes flashed open and she pulled her coat tightly around her.

He kept his voice light as he indicated the meal balanced on the stool beside her. “Omelette, toast, bacon, and fresh orange juice. Sorry, I don’t have any jam, never thought to trade for any.”

He grabbed his own plate and slid into his chair. A fine hand slid into view and fetched a piece of bacon. Once that was gone, she reached a long, slender arm out the open front of the coat to take the plate and fork. She kept her penetrating eyes focused on him as she took a bite of the omelette.

He couldn’t think beneath that frank, unreadable gaze. He could usually at least guess, but with this woman he had no idea what she was thinking. He watched her caution dissipate as the goat cheese reached her taste buds.

“Thish is good.” She managed as she sucked in cool air. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Hot, but ish good.” She sipped at her juice. “God, that’s great. You even left the pulp in.”

They relished the meal in silence until all that was left was to wipe the plates with toast to be sure nothing was missed.

“Thanks, Bryce. I haven’t slowed down enough to taste a meal in a long time.” He saw her look around the room until she spotted the readout. “Or slept that well.”

She favored him with a smile that made him think many thoughts, none involving food or sleep.

“I have to go on shift in twenty minutes and it’ll take me most of that to get there.”

“Me, too.” It was a lie, but he didn’t know what else to say.

She gathered the plates and went to drop them into the autocleaner. He intercepted her and took them from her hands to place them in the deep lab sink.

“Never got around to recoding the usage register on the cleaner. Didn’t seem worth it for the odd plate now and then. Don’t want to show up on someone’s monitor system.”

He could feel her hesitate beside him as she held the mugs. Her expression serious, trouble he guessed, but perhaps the corners of her mouth were trying to twitch upward.

“Right.” The pieces came together in his head. “Okay, I’m an idiot. On your monitor system.”

Her laugh was merry, but she placed the empty mugs in the sink.

“Someday I’d like to know how you bypassed the locks at R4U and down below.”

That was something he certainly didn’t want to explain. Bryce Sr. had his print hardcoded into every computerized print registration system and lock made in the last several decades. And being a clone, Bryce Jr. had the same thumb, or close enough. It was just a matter of burning out the lock before the central computer registered he was anywhere near the system. Any lock always opened locally to his print.

Bryce heard her push out through the thermal seal. He grabbed his parka and followed quickly behind her to the West airlock. She cycled them through the inner door. He’d never used one of the main locks except on his trips into the jungle with Jaron. The emergency hatch he used would barely hold his long frame, this one would fit twenty people.

As she hung her coat in the locker, he cursed to himself. He’d have to cycle the lock if he wanted to get his coat back. That would leave his imprint on the system clear as anything in existence. He might not even be able to bypass the security to get through the main doors and, if he did, they wouldn’t work for anyone else. He’d found this one coat in the lab along with a woman’s set of clothes.

Who was he kidding? Ri Jeffers would lock the biome down and make sure he was registered. All the evidence implied she was pure duty and rules. And his parent had killed too many. Japan had been the least of his genocidal crimes as he sought to purge humanity of its detritus. As soon as his name posted onto the system, Bryce’s life expectancy would plummet down to hours, perhaps minutes.

Ri stopped the cycle and ran it backwards, the chill air once again filling the lock.

When he turned to look, she stroked a hand down the arm of his coat. Her dark hand was outlined in the rich, dusky red fabric like a frail butterfly. His skin tingled beneath the fabric exactly as if it wasn’t there between his arm and her fingertips.

“This was Carla’s coat. She was tall also. She bought it and the matching thermal pants on her last field trip to Earth to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. She was my one friend aboard. She must have left it in the lab when she…”

She shivered in the blast of air from the open biome-side lock as she helped him out of it. The cold wrapped around him as his arms came free. She folded the coat and placed it on a rock just inside the door and then cycled the lock closed.

Suddenly they were standing in the empty corridor as the outer door sealed. He hadn’t even noticed the rest of the cycle. She double-thumbed the security back on.

“No one can get in except me. The coat will be there when you need it, Bryce.”

He couldn’t think of what to say as she walked to the nearest lift going up to the core. She didn’t turn or wave as she disappeared from view.

# # #

Ri entered the command center with a bounce in her step. Sleep and food had done wonders. Half through the airlock a massive paw latched around her arm and twisted it fiercely back behind her.

She leaned back as hard as she could tolerate against the pressure and used it to propel herself into a forward somersault. Whoever had grabbed her was good enough to not let go. That gave her the leverage to plant a heel sharply into her assailant’s face. He released her with a sharp cry as she dropped to all fours.

A flash of orange moved to her left. Without focusing, she dove into a roll and could feel both his knees snap as he collapsed over her. A flailing elbow caught her ribcage and she broke the arm even as the wind blasted out of her body. The heel of her hand against the second person’s chin brought him to a rest and she dragged herself free.

A quick scan revealed four more occupants. Two in orange headed her way and the massive bulk of Chief Merkar looming over the space-black blur that must be the Captain. The two goons came at her together from the front. None of the disciplined attack of Commander Levan’s troops, rather street-fighters leaping into the battle. No patterns, no predictability. But she was from the streets as well.

No chance to dodge. She sprang from all fours and drove her head into the first assailant’s solar plexus. She tried to roll right, away from the other attacker, but the grapple-like arms of the first one held her. The second had one of her legs as the first one dragged her downward, tight in his embrace, as he collapsed. With a twist, she was able to make his head slam into the floor with a sickening thud.

The last one dragged her free and threw her against a wall. Her knee screamed as it once again took the brunt of her collapse to the deck. A quick roll spared her from a stomping kick. Ri gained her feet and saw that the last assailant was one of the massively-muscled women.

They squared off and circled slowly. The woman had clearly fought a great deal, light on her feet despite her bulk. She would not be easy to take down. Ri flipped over the divider from the upper walkway down between the consoles to buy a moment. It was a poor choice as her knee could barely hold up against her landing. The woman vaulted lightly over the barrier and collapsed into a heap on the deck. At first Ri was unsure what use such a ruse could possibly have, then her mind registered the noise her ears had heard moments before.

A stunner. A stunner that the Captain was now pointing at Chief Merkar’s chest who was rapidly backing away.

“Captain Conrad. We appear to have a misunderstanding here.”

“That would appear to be the case.” The Captain was perfectly calm as she faced the Fabrication Chief.

“I don’t know why your officer found it necessary to attack my people. They were simply making sure that you and I had a quiet moment together.”

The Captain settled back into her chair and lazily set the stunner into the space within the chair arm, but didn’t close the cover she’d folded aside. The butt of the weapon remained only centimeters from her fingertips.

“Attack? I only observed their incompetence as they stumbled into one another. Why they chose to brawl in my command center is my only concern.” She glanced over the scattered bodies and then focused on Ri.

“Officer Jeffers. Your watch doesn’t start for another three minutes. You have my permission to space anyone still in this room at the start of your watch.” She closed the chair arm and thumbed it locked. She rose and stepped past Merkar toward her private lift. Before she entered the lift she turned once more to the room.

“Officer Jeffers, that pertains to anyone. Conscious or not.”

Merkar strode out offering his assistance to no one. The dazed woman and her winded first assailant dragged out the one with broken knees. His screams filled the room long after he was gone. The last one crawled, blood pouring from forehead and nose, barely clearing the doorway before the three minutes were up.

# # #

News usually traveled slowly between the rings, but the unexplained accident to four of Merkar’s goons had reached R4U within hours. No one missed that it had not happened in his R4 offices, but rather over in R1 in the Captain’s territory. It was the talk of the bar.

The patrons were split into several camps. Some of the rowdier elements were quieter than usual as they huddled about their tables, drinking slowly between quick whispers. They had counted on Merkar and now it was clear that his attempts to grab power had failed and they were unsure what to think.

Another contingent thought it was funny that anyone cared who ran this fucked-up operation.

The third group was taking any rumor they could find and doing their best to add their own hearsay to embellish it for everyone’s entertainment. Bryce was in his own group as usual, he just didn’t care. Perhaps his silent bartender was also in that group, but as Jaz rarely spoke with more than a nod, it was hard to tell.

Usually the bar was an amusing jumble of different conversations, but the evening’s sole topic was becoming tedious. Bryce poured himself a beer and then drew a round for one of the tables. He delivered their order, cleared the empties, and tossed their credits into the jug. He’d long since paid off all his bribes for hardware. He paid for water, power, and supplies with a trade for the results of his brewing. He doubled Jaz’s salary. Other than a small stash, he dumped the rest of the money into the recycler. He couldn’t think of a better use for it.

He began emptying the cleaner and hanging the mugs on the racks he’d scrounged after he’d seen the Desert Pub setup. Worked pretty well.

It was interesting to contrast the anonymous woman sitting in the dark corner of the Desert Pub with the woman who had spent the night nestled into a soft parka by his fire. One had been elegant, remote, even dangerous; the other gentle, beautiful, soft…and just as bloody dangerous. She was security, worse, the Security Chief.

What was he doing even thinking about her? Bryce Sr. had plenty of thoughts about security forces being so far outside the system they enforced, that their own ideas took on the reality of law. It certainly explained much of the military corruption and coups over humanity’s history. Stellar One’s head of security also had a primary duty to the ship and her Captain. All deals about hiding his identity would be out the window at the first inconvenient moment. And she knew where he hid.

A loud snap drew his attention. Sharp pain followed close behind. He looked down at the shattered plas mug in his hand. He dumped the pieces into the recycler. The long gash on his palm probably needed a quick graft but he hadn’t figured out how to circumvent the autodoc and its autologging of DNA to update medical records.

It wasn’t all that bad, anyway. Sort of. He wiggled his fingers, at least they all still worked so nothing vital had gone astray. He wrapped a bar rag around his hand, finished emptying the cleaner, and kicked it closed. He wondered if the dent had been there before.

He could see Jaz watching him out of the corner of her eye. Her dark skin and dark clothes almost made her invisible in the dim light behind the bar.

“I’m fine.”

She remained as still as her shadow.

“Honest.”

She turned to face him fully. Looked down at the bloody bar towel wrapped in his fist.

“Uh-huh.” She took a fresh towel and wandered out to clear a few of the tables that had opened up.

Damn her for being right.

When Jaron sidled up to the bar with the large woman hovering at his side, Bryce cleared a couple of stools with a bribe of a free beer. Maybe Jaron could make him feel a little less stupid, he’d liked solving Jaron’s CO2 problem. No one ever tripped him up. Except the diminutive head of security; the one person he should be sharpest around.

“You look terrible.” Jaron was pale and drawn. His bloodshot eyes were emphasized by the dark rings beneath. The woman, Robbie, that was it, hovered about him like a mother unsure of her child. Neither touched the beers he slid before them.

There was a call for a refill, but they’d just have to wait until Jaz got back from collecting empties. That might teach her, though he had no idea what.

“I continued my observations after I left the bar last night.” Jaron’s voice was little more than a whisper. “We are in much more trouble than you suggested.”

“Hadn’t realized I suggested that. But I guess I knew it.” He hunched his shoulders but couldn’t shake of the tingling feeling between them, as if a target had suddenly formed in the center of all their backs.

“I spent last night mapping Homo sapiens. There are some strange things going on here. Robbie and I have been trying to figure them out, but now we’re stumped. You’ve been observing the species longer.”

Robbie eyed him suspiciously. Clearly this wasn’t her idea.

“First, you can’t just map Homo sapiens. Humanity isn’t some discrete biome all nice and neatly bounded.”

The woman’s frown deepened. “But it is. Think about it from a biologist’s point of view. Yes, it is larger than any of our biomes, but with an area of only 1.5 square kilometers per ring, it is far smaller than any ‘natural’ biome that existed on Earth. For that matter, six square kilometers is barely a third the size of Luna City…before…well, before…”

It was nice to see that she was human. He decided to rescue her.

“Okay. You made your point. We’re a biome. A human one. So what’s to study?” Bryce Sr. thought it was the most important study there was, but the Old Bastard and his human genome data were a bloodthirsty pair and anything that smacked of that attitude made Bryce very cautious.

“We’re quite sick, you know.”

“And the rest of us are crazy. Make your point, man.”

Robbie rested a possessive hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go ahead, Jaron. You’re the one who said he could help.”

Jaron slipped a commpad from his hip pouch and placed it on the bar. He pushed his untasted beer aside to make room.

“Northeast levels one through four have been abandoned to dust.”

“Colonists never came aboard.” Bryce worked to hide his smile from the scientist as Jaron’s shoulders sagged at such a simple explanation.

He made a note before continuing.

“The ag-workers are far more consistent about their gambling and sex than their work.” Jaron looked at him expectantly.

“No one seems to be starving. How much food is being recycled versus what is being produced?”

Jaron tapped in a few queries and frowned. “That’s awfully inefficient.”

“No lack of food?” Bryce cocked his head to see the display. About thirty percent recycled, that was inefficient. It was four times his loss per keg to foam, spills, and such. That was even including the free beers.

“No lack of food.” Jaron reset to an earlier screen. “But their behavior is deplorable.”

“Whose behavior is deplorable?”

Bryce tried to hide the flinch at the sound of that voice.

Jaron knocked his commpad against his beer and both flipped off the bar as he spun to face Security Chief Ri Jeffers.

In a blur of motion, she dodged the beer and caught the commpad. Damn, she was fast. She retrieved the empty mug and set both on the counter. Reaching over the bar, she pulled the towel off Bryce’s shoulder and wiped the stool before tossing it into the puddle on the floor. But the way she moved gently onto the now dry stool made it only too clear what accident had happened to Merkar’s goons. Four of them disabled, that would take some serious doing. What was she, this slender beauty?

“How about a pair of fresh ones, Bryce? And what did you do to your hand?”

Jaron and Robbie looked quickly, they hadn’t even noticed the red-soaked rag he still clutched.

“Slipped.” Then he clamped his jaws shut to keep from making another idiot statement in this woman’s presence. He’d probably explain that he was the world’s dictator reincarnate from the grave. They really didn’t need to know he was a clone, but who knew what he’d blather out in her presence. He set the two mugs on the counter and faced her.

She raised her eyebrows at his answer, but that was all he was damned well going to give her. She turned her attention to Jaron, though he could feel some of her attention remained upon him.

“Whose behavior is deplorable?”

This cold, hard stranger had nothing to do with the shy and quiet woman he’d cooked for this morning. She couldn’t.

Jaron stammered for a moment, but Robbie’s squeeze on his shoulder calmed him down once again.

“Last night and today, I have seen:” he consulted his commpad, “seven fights, three of which drew enough blood to endanger life, and thirty-four games of chance, primarily cards. Quite arcane when compared to the entertainments sitting idle in the L2 and L3 malls. I observed approximately the same number of people arguing about sex as I saw publicly in the act; thirty vs. twenty-seven. All of this during normal working hours.”

“You’ve been busy, my friend.”

Jaron smiled at him. The only surprise to Bryce was that the numbers on sex were so low. Of course, Bryce Sr.’s statistics were not based solely on public displays. The fighting about it versus doing it ratio was also a bit high.

“And you’re studying this because?” Ri leaned in past Robbie to try and see Jaron’s data.

Bryce took a breath and let it out slowly. Perhaps Jaron would keep her attention away from whatever reason had really made her drop by.

Jaron nodded toward Bryce. “We were debating the observability of Homo sapiens in a quantitative fashion. I have been studying humanity as a species.”

“Why only Ring Four?”

“It is where my jungle is. It was also a readily available community. I did try to look up the statistics for inter-ring travel but couldn’t find it.”

“On a typical day it is below one percent. The peak was four percent, a bit over four hundred individuals, but that was before The End.”

“You just happen to know that,” Bryce tried for a scoff but failed.

“I’m the Security Chief. It’s part of my job.” Her flat gaze told him just how stupid his remark had been before she turned her attention back to Jaron.

Bryce glanced around, but the bar was fairly empty. He took the opportunity to wrap a clean white towel around his hand which had finally stopped bleeding. Mostly. There had been something of an exodus at Ri’s arrival. The feel of the air was altered on a room-wide scale when she was in her serious, security mode. At the moment the temperature was near Arctic and falling. Or maybe the others had also concluded what had happened to the four goons. Or rather who had happened to them.

Jaz was mainly busy fetching empties from abandoned tables.

“Well?” Ri prompted the jungle man.

Robbie answered for him. “Other than the abandoned sectors of the northeast sector, that’s about it.”

There was something in his eyes… Bryce leaned one elbow on the bar top.

“What happened there?”

Jaron looked like a gasping fish too long out of water. Ri glanced at him as Robbie wrapped a concerned arm around his shoulders.

Bryce leaned his forearms on the edge of the bar and folded his hands on the damp, cool surface.

“Just say it slowly.”

Jaron’s face was as white as the bar towel around Bryce’s hand. And the scientist was sweating in the cool evening air that whispered down the halls.

“There was a door.” He glanced behind him. Then looked at Robbie who clearly hadn’t heard about this.

“Sealed. Northeast. L1. Around 55 or 60 degrees. Can’t miss it. Just follow the tracks. In the dust.” His hands were shaking where they clasped the commpad.

“What happened that frightened you so much?”

Jaron sat bolt upright. “Frightened? I’m a scientist. I was observing. Two set of footprints in the dust. Two went in. Only one left. And inside…inside…” he huddled back down.

“Inside there was nothing.”

They all sat there in silence for a moment.

Robbie placed a hand on Jaron’s shoulder causing him to leap from his chair.

“I think we better go check in on Harold and the other birds.”

He nodded but it wasn’t clear he’d registered the words.

Robbie began leading Jaron down the corridor away from the jungle, toward the lift back up to their quarters. Bryce could see Ri ready to leap in with one more question. He laid a hand on her arm and shook his head.

She frowned but kept her peace until they were out of sight. He could see her assessing him carefully, like some crime scene she had just happened upon. The charm and energy of last night’s flirt, the peace of this morning’s companionship were nowhere to be found as she confronted him across the bar.

“How did you know he hadn’t told the whole story?”

He was sick of trying to be careful around her. Around everybody. He wiped the counter and moved to help Jaz.

“I’m the bartender. It’s part of my job.”