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Chapter Two

Riordan didn’t have time to panic, even if he’d had the tendency to do so.

The laser range finder reinitialized. The distance to the ship was ticking down by only two meters per second and there were still two hundred and twelve left to go. Which meant he hadn’t noticed drifting a further one hundred meters from the hull during his EVA. That small a number normally wouldn’t have mattered at all. But now, with lethal rads sleeting in . . . 

Caine glanced up at the tether’s data-flow icon: red. Zero connection. And therefore, zero chance that the reel’s retraction motor would reengage.

But that wasn’t Riordan’s biggest worry. With the tether now fully fried, he wouldn’t receive the burst of static that would have been his final warning: thirty seconds left. And—maybe—fifteen more.

Riordan pulled the tether’s slack toward him. His mental calm started spreading into his body: a familiar response to situations where foresight and preparation had been overtaken by events. As he coiled the drifting loops around his left arm, he double-blinked through two screens to bring up the HUD’s target-tracking mode. He double-blinked again to designate his target: a featureless part of the hull flanked by the air lock on one side and the tether well on the other.

With the last loop secured, he unfolded a small manual grip from the integrated control unit on the EVA pack’s belt. He expelled all the air from his lungs, and as he squeezed the grip’s activation trigger, he whispered, “One-one-thousand.”

Riordan had never pushed the Dornaani EVA pack’s thrusters to their rumored limit and was suddenly glad he’d prepared himself for the results. The kick was sharp and hard. All at once, the ship seemed to be rushing toward him.

“Two-one-thousand.”

The tether between him and the hull tried to curl and trail behind, but he kept circling his left arm to gather it in. The motion rolled him off his vector. He double-blinked at the crosshairs already painted near the air lock, attempting to force the system to realign him more rapidly.

“Three-one-thousand.”

He was now coming in too fast, but the danger of doing so was less than that of coming in too slow. The hull seemed ready to engulf him, looming in all directions at the same time like an impossibly burgeoning monster. He snatched the coils of tether close to his chest and released the thrust trigger.

As he did, he double-blinked on the crosshairs—the pulsing box around the target point vanished—and then blinked at the automatic deceleration icon as he kicked slightly upward.

Two klaxons began whining in his helmet. The first indicated there wasn’t enough distance for the EVA pack to counter-boost to a safe contact velocity. The second warned him that his current feet-forward attitude reduced his maximum counterthrust; the nozzles couldn’t gimbal far enough while his body was perpendicular to the side of the ship.

Riordan glanced down between his feet. The hull leaped up at him as he forced himself not to brace his knees. He wrapped the last length of tether around his left wrist, and tried not to anticipate—

The impact slammed his organs downward. His knees and hips felt as if a hammer had been swung up against each one separately. Caine hadn’t expected a perfectly squared landing, but he was already veering to one side.

Vision greying, he bounced off the hull, spinning to his right—until his left arm was almost wrenched out of its socket, wrist strangled by the tether he’d snugged around it. But that searing pain meant it was doing its job: keeping him close to the hull by limiting the slack in the line. It also brought Caine swinging back in toward the ship. He purged his lungs just before he hit again.

The suit’s automatic kinetic resistance helped soften the impact; it was merely stunning instead of incapacitating. Riordan came off the hull much more slowly, and as the rapid decrease in motion put some slack back into the tether, he slipped the coils off his wrist.

Head ringing, Caine pushed back against the grey haze crowding the edges of his vision and fixed on a single thought: to keep clutching the larger loops of the tether close to his chest. When the peripheral dimness began fading, he reached over, got his right glove around the line, and began hauling himself hand over hand to the air lock coaming, just three meters away.

Caine toggled the manual air lock release, watched as the unpowered iris valve dilated with maddening slowness. He swam through the widening aperture as soon as it was large enough, intending to shelter in the lee of the bulkhead’s heavy shielding.

But a slim, space-suited figure was already in the air lock. It caught him as he entered and pushed him swiftly into the corner he was already heading toward. The figure reached over to ratchet the iris valve’s priming mechanism, and finally triggered the manual seal. The pie-slice sections reversed into a slightly faster contraction as the circle of stars peeking through its center shrank.

The figure leaned its helmet against his: it was Pandora Veriden. She was smiling. “You still had eleven seconds, boss,” she shouted through their abutted faceplates.

He smiled up at her. “And then fifteen more. Let’s get inside. We’ve got lots to do.”

***

As Riordan drifted out of the air lock, he removed his helmet . . . and Dora switched into her favorite mode for caring interaction: remonstration. “Damn you for cutting it so close, Captain Courageous!” She looked away. “Sir,” she added.

Caine smiled at her. “Well, I didn’t cut it that close.”

She managed not to smile back. “You got a strange definition of ‘close,’ Boss.”

Ayana Tagawa was waiting just outside the small EVA support locker in the corridor. “Luckily, the CME surges are building more slowly than Eku first projected.”

“Meaning?” Dora asked testily.

“The total REM dose was lower than anticipated.” Ayana smiled at Riordan. “You remain under the hazard limit, Commodore.”

Riordan heard a hanging tone at the end of her reassurance. “But . . . ?”

Ayana shook her tightly cropped bangs: a sign of her reculturist “Neo-Edo” upbringing. “Because surges have slowed, the CME’s peak will not pass before our descent window opens, but during.”

“So we’ll have to start as soon as we arrive in the deorbit envelope.”

She nodded. “Which occurs in four hours.”

Duncan Solsohn’s voice came out of the open equipment locker behind her. “It’s either no news or bad news, these days!” He floated into the corridor. “Good to see you all in one piece, sir.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming you are, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your, eh, unorthodox return to the ship: we heard it through the hull.” Duncan grinned at his own wild exaggeration, but also scanned Riordan for signs of injury.

“The spy lies again!” Dora exclaimed, even as her own eyes roved across Riordan.

Duncan shook his head. “Dora, all of us are spies, according to our detractors back home. But for now”—he carefully removed the helmet from Caine’s hands—“Eku needs this . . . well, an hour ago.”

As Duncan started drift-walking toward the bow, Caine called after him: “Inventory done yet?”

“Taking it to Colonel Rulaine right now.”

“Is he still on the bridge with Eku?”

Duncan grinned. “Just went back. He was wringing his hands back here with the rest of us until Dora got you inside.”

Veriden made to move forward as well. “And I’m bringing Dr. Baruch back here.” She stared defiantly at Caine’s quizzical look. “You need to be checked out. Right now.”

“As Ayana said, I’m fine.”

“I’m not worried about the rads, boss. Like Spy-Guy said, you hit the hull hard. Too hard.”

Riordan shook his head firmly. “No; don’t take Newton away from rousing our three cryo-sleeping beauties. But I give you my word I’ll go to him. Assuming you give me a sitrep on the way.”

“Deal!” Dora launched herself toward the bow with a smile that could have been relief, victory, or both. “Just keep up, yeh?”

***

Bannor Rulaine swam around the coaming of the bridge’s double-sized entry. Jammed half open during their seizure of the ship, it was going to stay that way until the power came on again—if it ever did. He followed along the curve of the interior bulkhead, gliding from handhold to handhold until he reached a much narrower hatchway leading off the bridge: access to the captain’s ready room.

However, their abductor Hsontlosh had transformed it into his private stateroom, probably because he wanted the bridge’s bulkhead-rated doors between himself and the passengers he was secretly betraying. A loji cocoon-hammock floated at the far end of the compartment, which had been outfitted with a bewildering array of electronic devices; in places, they almost touched the overhead. Bannor understood the function of roughly half of them. Well, almost half. “How’s it coming, Eku?” he called ahead.

Eku’s head rose, eyes cresting the back of a large control screen slaved to the compartment’s stand-alone computer. The human factotum sounded as frustrated as he appeared. “It is coming very slowly,” he sighed, then sank back out of sight.

Bannor released a sigh of his own as he pushed himself into the ready room. In his twenty-three years in the Special Forces—most as an officer—he’d frequently worked with civilian insurgents and collaborators. Most of them eventually embraced the military need for quick, concise, and pertinent communication. Eku had not; he seemed temperamentally incapable of it.

As Rulaine drew abreast of the screen, he finally discovered how Eku had managed to power Hsontlosh’s computing suite. The housing of the closest emergency light was open and a power cable snaked out of it to connect to the multi-plug supplying current to the active machines. Well, if Eku can hotwire a computer, maybe there’s hope for him yet. “Caine is back aboard. Not a lethal REM dose. It’s unlikely he’ll even feel any effects, given the Dornaani prophylactics.”

Eku paused for a moment; his shoulders slumped in what looked very much like nerveless relief. “I am very glad to hear that.” He expelled a long sigh, straightened to readdress the computer controls—and winced; the movement had jostled his splinted arm. As he shifted it to a more comfortable position, various data streams on the immense semi-holographic screen swirled, reconfigured, and began sorting themselves into serried ranks. “Do you have the data crystal from the commodore’s suit?”

“It’s on the way, I imagine.”

Eku’s spine stiffened. “So someone else is coming here?”

Bannor frowned. “Yes. Why?”

“I have something to show you, Colonel. Just you.” Eku’s fingers and eyes moved rapidly across the input controls. “It took a long time to access the deepest level of Hsontlosh’s private data. It is taking almost as long to copy it all.”

Bannor peered over the factotum’s shoulder, understood exactly none of the swirling objects, symbols, and sigils. “How much are you trying to download?”

“As much as possible.”

“That’s not very precise.”

The factotum’s tone was sharp, focused, even tense. “There is no way to ascertain which files might be important. Many are clearly written in a cypher. Others might be.”

“Okay, but that still doesn’t tell me why you’re trying to download ‘as much as you can.’”

Eku sounded like he was shooing away a gnat. “That is the implicit requirement of the commodore’s instructions.”

Bannor frowned again. “I thought he only needed you to collect information about the ship’s transit path up to our mis-shift.” For all the good it will do us, with a dead ship and completely unfamiliar starfield.

“Yes, and that has been accomplished. But he also tasked me to download everything I could find that might pertain to Hsontlosh’s betrayal: specifically, his plans and any coconspirators or accomplices.” He continued working, then added, “That required scanning through the readable parts of Hsontlosh’s log.”

“And?”

“And it contains . . . other important information.”

Bannor frowned. “Will it affect our mission?”

“Eventually, yes.”

Damn it, Eku! “I’m asking about the immediate mission: making and surviving planetfall.”

Eku hesitated. “No, but the commodore might want to be apprised of this information, even so.” He turned just enough to glance at Rulaine from the corner of his eye. “It concerns the fate of his wife.”

“Firstly, Elena is not Caine’s wife. Secondly, we don’t have the time to—”

Eku sighed, toggled a control.

The diagrams on the screen were abruptly replaced by mad waves of curlicues and spots: a document in Dornaani script. “I don’t read Dor—” Rulaine started.

Eku tapped another key. English was superimposed over the alien characters in bright red. Before Bannor was aware of doing so, he had read the first line:


The human female’s subsequent demise has not altered our—


Rulaine looked away, but not before his much-vaunted peripheral vision registered a few words and phrases that were even more grim. As if it might help unsee them, he half-covered his eyes.

“There is more,” Eku murmured after a terrible silence. “I can only conclude—”

Bannor looked up sharply, found and held Eku’s surprised stare with his own. “No. Don’t tell me.”

“But—?”

“Eku, you need to wake up and understand exactly where we are, right now.”

“Our position—”

“Eku, stop. You need to listen—no; you need to hear me. We are in a dead ship above a barren planet. In four hours, we have to get down to it or die trying. Keep hammering that into your head until it hurts, until you can focus your mind on that and only that.” Rulaine leaned back, crossed his arms. “Now, what you’ve learned about Elena: is there anything we can do about it?

“I cannot be sure, yet.” Then he shook his head. “But certainly not from here.”

Bannor nodded. “Then you’ll have plenty of time to tell me—to tell us all—if we survive. And if we don’t, it won’t matter.”

“What won’t matter?” Duncan’s voice asked from out on the bridge.

“Anything other than getting down to the planet,” Bannor answered casually.

“No argument there!” Solsohn agreed as he worked his way into Hsontlosh’s lair. He whistled appreciatively. “Damn. Looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory.” He handed Caine’s helmet to Rulaine, who passed it off to Eku. The factotum’s fingers were immediately busy extracting its data crystal and accessing its processor.

Duncan inspected the tangle of wires and interfaces that had previously powered the charging frame for one of Hsontlosh’s two very deadly proxy robots. “So the proxrov recharging rig was removable, after all?”

“With some ‘persuasion’ from Yaargraukh,” Rulaine smiled, glancing at Eku: the factotum was already scanning data from the helmet’s crystal.

Solsohn huffed out an ironic laugh. “Yeah, Hkh’Rkh can be pretty persuasive when they want to be. All three meters of ’em.”

“They’re only a little over two,” Bannor corrected.

“Guess you and I met very different ones on Turkh’saar.” Duncan looked around. “So was it difficult to get into the evil mastermind’s sanctum sanctorum?”

Rulaine shrugged. “Since he kept everyone off the bridge, he left it unlocked.”

“Cocky bastard,” Duncan sneered.

“More likely he was simply contemptuous,” Eku muttered with a hint of asperity, “and therefore, incautious.” He gestured toward the screen; four rotating images of the planet were draped with aqua lines connecting different strings of white or yellow guidons. “The suit’s data was not corrupted. The automated descent package is calculating optimal vectors. Final planetary values are being compiled now.”

Bannor clapped Eku carefully on his good shoulder; he started anyway. In response to the factotum’s concerned surprise, the commando muttered, “That’s just a gesture of approval. Carry on.” He pushed himself away from the firm-chair he’d been using as a zero-gee anchor. “Is Caine still back at the air lock?”

Duncan shrugged. “Might be. More likely he’s with Newton and the sleepers by now. At least that’s where Dora made him promise to go next.”

“You coming?” Rulaine asked as he drifted toward the hatchway.

“Nah, I’m going to stay here for a minute and watch the pretty pictures.” He nodded at the descent trajectories. “Helps me believe we’ll get down in one piece.”

Bannor nodded, swam out of the ready room, and made sure neither of the other men could see his face as he silently replied:

Wish I was as optimistic as you are, Duncan.


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