Outpost

  She sat up, taking stock of their location. From this elevation she could trace their route through the forest by the line of writhing trees stirred up by their passage. The chime was all around them, intensifying at their presence.

  “What’s that sound?” he asked.

  “Invertebrates.”

  “They dangerous?”

  “Not in these parts. But we’ve barely sampled the rest of the planet.”

  “Charming.”

  “Welcome to Donovan. Glad you came along?”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “I’m starting to like you, Security Officer Perez. And the longer you keep me alive, the more I’m going to like you.”

  She took another swig of water and capped her bottle. “Call me Tal, Captain.” Stowing it in her pack, she added, “You’ve earned it.”

  Climbing to her feet, she winced at the pain in her hip. Fingered two cartridges from her belt magazine and slipped them into the rifle to top it up. From the shadow cast by the hill, it had to be close onto sunset. Any direction she looked, her vista consisted of nothing but an unbroken wall of forest all the way back to the Wind Mountains where the high peaks glowed orange in the sunset.

  “So now what?” Cap asked, levering himself to his feet.

  She pointed to the scattering of dead aquajade trees along the rocky slope. “Cut wood. Build a fire. We’re going to need the heat, light, and defense. Not to mention a signal fire if we live long enough.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a sober look, having mostly caught his breath. “How did you do it back there? It was like you had a second sense. A couple of times, I could see you hesitate, then you’d jerk out of the way as something reached out for you. Like that gotcha vine. What was that?”

  “Really unpleasant. It won’t kill you. Doesn’t like the taste of human. But once the hooks are sunk into your skin they have to be dug out one by one.”

  He made a face. “There’s a locator beacon on the aircar, right?”

  “There is, but even if it didn’t burn up and it’s transmitting on emergency power, it’s buried in a huge mass of roots by now. Doubt it can broadcast through that kind of cover.”

  “A party is coming to look for us, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, but probably not until morning. We don’t fly at night.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She cocked an eyebrow as she gave him a wry look. “What if you go down? You want to try what we just did in the dark, Captain?”

  He pursed his lips, gave her a pensive look, and said, “I’ve got a pocket saw in my pack. How about I go cut us some wood?”

  “Stay on the bedrock, Cap. Don’t get close to rock outcrops, especially if they smell funny. Sort of like vinegar. And don’t hesitate to use your rifle.”

  He was squinting at her. “Seriously, how’d you do it? It was like you could sense the danger.”

  “Got a quetzal inside me, Cap.”

  The feel of the creature as it curled inside her was almost reassuring. But that was false security. From the angle of the setting sun, night was coming. It would be a long and dangerous one.

  33

  Kalico Aguila sat in the Captain’s lounge and rubbed her tired brow. In the air before her, a section of Freelander’s log glowed, frozen where she had paused it.

  Around her, the ship hummed, as if mocking her sense of despair.

  Volunteering for this assignment had been a long shot—a gamble that she’d calculated would pay off. She’d expected to find some sort of operation gone rogue, perhaps a Supervisor with his own private army who’d hijacked the missing ships. A world shanghaied for someone’s personal gain, but still operating along Corporate lines.

  What made Turalon different from its predecessors was that none of the other ships had carried a Board-grade Supervisor, least of all one with the discretionary powers she’d been given. Kalico had the authorization to take whatever measures were necessary to regain control of the situation.

  She’d fantasized that she would drop in with her marines, retake possession of the colony, and ship home as a hero. Right into a Boardmember’s position, and on a hot track toward the Chairman’s seat.

  Instead she had chaos. A nightmare.

  Nightmare? She hated that term. Never, in all of her life, had she been so humiliated.

  Or frightened.

  Or played for a fool.

  Damn it, she’d lived her entire life at the center of Corporate power. She’d mastered the game, learned the subtle give and take of alliances, power plays, and how to destroy an adversary. Her subtle sense had recognized those who would be successful, and she’d made herself indispensable to them. Each assignment had been a springboard for advancement. Nor had she hesitated to cut a competitor’s throat if he or she stood in Kalico’s way. Her brilliance manifested in the way she brokered her power, exerted it for the greatest gain and leverage.

  Her climb had elevated her all the way to Boardmember Taglioni’s small staff. He had used her just as ruthlessly as she’d used him. Right up to the point that she’d managed to land the Donovan assignment. Salvage Donovan, and she’d eclipse Taglioni. Actually be able to use him and his influence to unseat one of the other Boardmembers . . .

  Had this not all gone so wrong.

  “So, what are you going to do now, Kalico?” she asked herself. The Freelander log glowed eerily in the dim light.

  Kalico shook her head, wanting with all of her soul to disbelieve what she’d been reading.

  I bet everything on Donovan. Prostituted my body and sold my soul.

  Could this get any worse?

  The hatch hissed as Captain Abibi stepped in, read Kalico’s expression in a glance, and uncharacteristically seated herself in the chair closest to the door. “It reads like horror fiction, doesn’t it?”

  Kalico blinked her gritty and tired eyes, waved at the log entry. “They laid it out so rationally. Every step of their decision-making process. They knew they were in trouble. Realized that they were lost. That they didn’t have the resources to keep everyone alive, that the hydroponics would fail under the load. Starvation was inevitable.”

  Abibi watched her, expression flat, eyes emotionless. “They euthanized the transportees. Five hundred men and women.”

  Kalico clenched her fists. “Euthanized. Nice word, huh? They would have died anyway, right? The hydroponics couldn’t have supported that many people for that long.”

  “That is correct.”

  “It’s the unemotional, almost mechanical way they talk about it. Just another routine ship’s operation. Murder the transportees, freeze-dry them, and slowly add them to the hydroponics system as the organic molecules upon which it depends decayed into nonproductive elements.” Kalico made a face. “Talk about a macabre form of cannibalism.”

  “Ma’am, hydroponics—boiled down to their basics—has been a form of cannibalism since the first ships went into space. It’s just that with Freelander we have a whole new scale of selection and implementation.”

  “My God, Captain, you sound as numb and passionless as Captain Orten.”

  “Orten did what he thought was best for his ship and crew.” Abibi cocked her head, gaze hard. “So, get over the emotional indignation, Supervisor. Put yourself in Orten’s place: Things are falling apart. The transportees are turning violent, going slowly mad, and realizing they’re trapped in Freelander for the rest of their lives. There is no rescue. No hope. It’s only a matter of time before everyone on the ship turns on each other. It’s already a flying coffin. A mass grave. Everyone is going to die. One way or another.” A pause. “What would you do, Supervisor?”

  “I . . .” But no words came.

  Abibi didn’t relent. “If you order us to space, how do you know Turalon won’t find herself in a similar predicament? It’s no longer just an academic question. Who gets to li
ve the longest in hopes that some miracle saves them? Especially now that we know Freelander eventually arrived where she was supposed to. It just took one hundred and twenty-nine years.”

  Kalico felt her heart begin to race.

  Abibi didn’t relent. “If we space for Solar System . . . and it goes wrong? You might have to make that decision, Supervisor. Sitting right here. In this room. In that chair. You are The Corporation. The final arbiter of who lives . . . and who dies.”

  “All right. I’ll save the ship and crew for the longest,” she snapped. “There, does that help? Feel better, Captain? You and your people just made it.”

  Abibi stared at her, her light brown eyes oddly intense.

  Kalico thrust out a finger. “But first, we’re going to wait until Freelander is in orbit. Then we’re going to scour her from one end to the other and see if there’s anything that leads us to some understanding of what went wrong. A way of ever keeping this from happening again.”

  Abibi seemed nonplussed. “I knew Jem Orten. Smart man. Outstanding captain. His crew was among the best, too. You’ve seen the logs. They spent the rest of their lives trying to solve the problem. What makes you think you can when they couldn’t?”

  Kalico had no answer. Instead she slapped a hand to the long-distance telemetry controls. The holographic display shifted, showing a background of a thousand stars with a yellow pip to mark Freelander’s position. She was still too far out to see, even for Turalon’s advanced optics.

  For the first time in Kalico’s life, she found herself adrift; she had no clue as to what her next step would be. Or even if she would ever dare to leave Donovan. It was a new and frightening calculus.

  34

  Fire popped as Cap lay back on the uncomfortable shale. Talina Perez had warned him about lying on dirt, about the kinds of creatures that could come crawling out of it. Especially slugs, though they preferred wet or even damp soil.

  He studied Talina where she sat on a sandstone boulder. The fire played a dancing game, bathing her smooth cheeks, the thrust of her nose, and her fine forehead in flickers of yellow. The woman’s ink-black hair seemed to absorb the light, as if drawing from the source of the illumination.

  Max Taggart had to admit, he’d never imagined that a woman like this one existed in the whole of the universe.

  And to think that but for a turn of chance—and my own ignorance and stupidity—I might have shot her dead.

  God, there were times he wondered if the universe didn’t continually play him for a fool.

  “What if there had been no hills?” he asked. “No stony outcrops to run to?”

  Talina gave him a sidelong glance, a faint smile on her lips. “Got to climb. The roots will kill you, but the branches are safe. At least with regard to the tree. There are other creatures up there that will get you. Not much study has been done on the forest or what lives in the branches. Then there’s gotcha vine, you’re screwed vine, chokeya, and cutthroat flower that live up there. Got to keep your eyes open.”

  “Where do you get these names?”

  “What else would you call them?”

  “And you people choose to stay here instead of space with Turalon?” He tried to make sense of it, to come to grips with the reality of the place. Death seemed to hang like a film in the very air.

  “You talking odds, Cap? Or quality of life? If it’s odds, I gotta tell you, the ships haven’t been doing so well lately. We’d have to figure the numbers, but thousands are missing and presumed dead in all those vanished ships. Sure, Turalon made it this far, but if Mekong is any indication, you’ve got no guarantee you’re making it home again. And if you don’t? How you going to die? Slow starvation in a failing ship? Or does it just happen all at once? With a big bang. And you’re gone. Floating in whatever reality those ships invert to.”

  She gave him a ribald wink. “Me, Cap? I’ll take my chances here.”

  He nodded, took a deep breath of the scented air. The burning aquajade wood had a resinous essence, an odor somewhat mindful of hickory, cinnamon, and mesquite all mixed together.

  “All right,” he admitted. “The idea of spacing back on that ship scares the shit out of me. Not that I liked it all that much on the way out, either. Two years is a long time to be confined in a warren like that.”

  “What if it turned out to be the rest of your life? Like it popped back into space somewhere in the flat middle of nothing. Hundreds of light-years from the nearest star system. Generators failed. Just Turalon all alone in the middle of the empty cold and black.”

  “You trying to make a point, or just be damned depressing?”

  She laughed. “I’m just saying that living is a dangerous business. But look up there. A hundred billion stars, the Milky Way glowing white and luminous as you’ve never seen it from Solar System. Those black patches are concentrations of dark matter, the patterns and constellations all different. I know where you came from, what you came from. I’ll take my chances here.”

  He stared out at the dark forest, heard a low and melodic hooting, almost a song coming from the trees. “What if no one comes looking for us? What if we’re on our own here, Talina? We’re surrounded by forest. What’s next?”

  She pointed. “That river we were following? It’s over there to the north. Might take us two days of hard traveling, humping butt over the roots until we’re exhausted. Then we rope up into the branches, rest, and go arboreal. We’ll need to make scaffolding to sleep on at night. Periodically drop to the ground and hump butt some more when the branches don’t go our way.”

  “And when we’re at the river?”

  “Chabacho trees have pods about midway up. I haven’t seen it done, but I’ve heard tell that split in half they make a kind of canoe. Might be another three or four days’ float west to the mouth of the Briggs River. We should find their homestead another couple of days’ walk north in one of the tributary canyons.”

  “Just like that?” He thought he sounded trite.

  She arched a slim eyebrow in return. “Pretty much. If something doesn’t eat us on the way.”

  Cap threw his head back and laughed. “And we thought we were going to intimidate you with a handful of marines?”

  “You don’t know how close you and the Supervisor came to dying that day.”

  “You saved everyone’s ass.”

  “I wasn’t any hero. I had the damnedest urge to let Step and the crowd kill you all. But it would have been stupid. On Donovan, stupidity is a death sentence.”

  “Is that why you killed Clemenceau?”

  “Now, that man was anything but stupid.” Fine lines appeared in her brow as she frowned. “He wanted me on that survey trip. There was a reason it was only the two of us. I wasn’t supposed to make it back. After he’d taken his sample that day, he took the lead on the way back to the aircar. A gesture meant to reassure me that he trusted me to have his back. And damn him, he knew me. Knew I wouldn’t back-shoot him.”

  She was shaking her head, eyes fixed on the distance.

  “Was there really a nightmare?” Cap realized the answer was important to him.

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled. “I even warned him. Said: ‘Supervisor, you might not want to take the straight route back. Too many mundo trees that way.’”

  Her expression hardened. “See, whereas he knew I wouldn’t shoot him in the back, I knew that he’d disregard any advice I gave, figuring it was a trick to put him at a disadvantage. Of course he took the direct route under the mundo trees. He was happy enough to have me lag behind, too. He wanted to get to the aircar first . . . and to that pistol. The one he’d taped to the bulkhead inside the door while I was out securing our landing spot when we first got there.”

  “So you knew there was a nightmare?”

  “Too many bones on the ground. He was a town guy. Couldn’t read the signs.”

  “Isn
’t that cold, Tal? Letting him walk into a mess like that?”

  “Cold, Cap? As cold as stepping into an aircar door, tearing a pistol loose from tape, and shooting your security officer in the face before flying back to Port Authority to report that something in the bush got her?”

  Again the slight shrug of her shoulders. “As it was, I looked him right in the eyes when I shot him. I might have hated him, but I couldn’t leave him to that kind of fate.”

  “Shit on a shoe, how did it get that poisonous?”

  “He was losing control. The Corporation was light-years away. Donovan was subverting people, seducing them away from the rules and regulations. Instead of adapting to the new conditions, his solution was to clamp down. Tighten his authority. Punish any infraction.” She paused wistfully. “I killed people on his orders.”

  She smiled grimly and tossed another piece of wood into the fire. “I went along at first, green as I was, indoctrinated by my years of Corporate training. He used me, and when I finally realized I’d killed the wrong people, that was the final straw.”

  “What you just told me, that’s a death sentence, you know. Doesn’t matter that you were acquitted. That’s new evidence. A confession to a Corporate officer.”

  “What are you going to do about it, Captain? Take me prisoner?” She offered her wrists as if for manacles.

  He thought back to their flight through the forest. Had it been him, alone, he’d have died within minutes at the aircar, milling about stupidly as the roots closed in. And even if he’d had the sense to run, how far would he have made it? A hundred meters? Two hundred? Images of the gotcha vine, the sidewinder, and all the other dangers she hadn’t named came back to haunt him.

  He rubbed his tired eyes. “Stupidity is a death sentence on Donovan. Those are your words. I’m tired of being stupid. Tired of being a Corporate stooge. Raya Turnienko told Kalico and me that you’d never killed a man who didn’t deserve it.” He paused. “How do you tell the difference?”

  “Raya lied. On Clemenceau’s orders I killed two men who just wanted to go home. I’d like to think that after that, I never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.” Talina took a deep breath, and he tried not to notice how it emphasized her figure. Silly man, he’d never be worthy of a woman like this.