Outpost

  “Me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You have quite a string of enemies. Now, here you are. Sure, they could fix you up back at Transluna. Tailor a genetic regeneration program and trick your bones into growing back together. Initiate spinal cord growth, nerve renewal, and orchestrate the remodeling of scar tissue.” A pause. “But not here. Turnienko doesn’t have the technology or the specialized skill.”

  “Okay, you’ve really cheered me up. Now, get the hell out.”

  “Have you heard the saying on Donovan? That people come here to find themselves, to leave, or to die? Which of those applies to you?”

  Cap took a breath, one of the few controls he still had over his body. “You’d think it was to die, wouldn’t you?” He wet his lips. “But it was to find myself.”

  “So . . . did you?”

  Cap smiled. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  A pause, as if for thought.

  Finally the question: “You know why I’m here?”

  “I think so. If I’m wrong I’ll be disappointed in my judgment of human nature.”

  “How do you want me to do it?”

  “They’ve got me drugged. I won’t feel a bullet . . . or a blade. So, pain’s out, if that’s what you were looking forward to.”

  “Still, choose. I’m curious as to what it will be.”

  Cap flicked his eyes to the right and down. “There, on the IV pack on my arm. See the little wheel? With your thumb, spin it open.”

  “And what happens?”

  “It paralyzes the rest of me. Lungs, heart. I just fade away.”

  “Why don’t I just slit your throat?”

  “Couldn’t feel it if you did. The dramatic effect will be wasted. Why horrify whoever walks through that door next? And someone, probably Turnienko’s assistant, Felicity, will have to clean up the mess.”

  “You’d still see your blood blowing through your severed windpipe.”

  “What did Felicity ever do to you?”

  Cap swallowed hard, smiled as his visitor walked around the bed and reached for his right arm.

  “Thanks,” he whispered.

  “Call it an ultimate act of love.”

  Cap nodded. Closed his eyes, let himself drift. In moments he’d be back, floating in his vacuum suit, forever in the miracle of freefall . . .

  77

  Talina Perez sat on an angular chunk of sandstone, her gaze fixed on the fresh red mound of earth. At its head a duraplast marker read, “Captain Maxwell Taggart. Corporate Marine. Killed by Quetzal.”

  Filling her lungs with the morning, she let the gentle breeze coming in from the Gulf play with the few strands of hair that had escaped her braid. Her rifle lay across her knees. A stone’s throw away, Capella’s slanting sunlight illuminated the eastern side of Donovan’s stone monument where it dominated the cemetery.

  On the other side of Cap’s grave, ferngrass had grown thickly over Mitch’s final resting place. Earlier she’d straightened his duraplast marker and given it a pat.

  She glanced over her shoulder as Shig came striding up, his hands behind his back, the wind tousling his unruly mop of hair. The morning sun reflected his beatific smile—might have powered it, as a matter of fact. He wore faded brown overalls and quetzal-hide boots that shimmered in rainbow patterns.

  “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  Shig found his way to another of the square sandstone rocks. When the backhoe pulled them up, the operators had made a habit of leaving them out rather than have the bereaved watch a big, heavy chunk of stone be dumped atop their beloved dead. As if death weren’t enough of an indignity.

  Shig seated himself and said, “I think I’m safe. What quetzal in its right mind would brave Talina Perez when she has her rifle across her lap?”

  As if it heard, the beast inside shifted.

  “Don’t be so cavalier. We have to completely rethink quetzals—and probably most of Donovanian life. Molecular communication? Sibling relationships? A willingness to sacrifice themselves for a vendetta? The fact that I was specifically targeted and hunted down with all of Port Authority to choose from? That it figured out how to hide in the cargo so that we carried it in? We’re talking abstraction and intelligence here. Because it’s alien just means it’s going to be harder for us to understand.”

  “Let alone the fact that you have one inside you.”

  “And I want it out!”

  “Cheng’s working on that. Haven’t seen him this happy in years.”

  Talina closed her eyes and rubbed her face. “It wants me dead, Shig.”

  “Yet, it saved you in the bush.”

  “Because it knew its mate was coming for me. Probably why the one out at Briggs’ didn’t kill me. It ‘read’ in my spit that I was targeted by another.”

  “Despite all of that, how are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting beside the grave of another man I loved, Shig. Enraged. Outside of feeling like something’s been ripped out of my heart and soul with rusty pliers, I’m a fucking model of beaming joy and happiness.”

  She ground her teeth as the grief knot pulled tight in her throat and the tears came.

  “I don’t know what to do.” She clenched her hands on her rifle. “Raya found the drug dial open. All the way. Max couldn’t have done that. Someone else did. Max was murdered.”

  She wiped the snot from her nose, heart hammering. “Half of me wants to find whoever did it and blow their fucking head off. And half of me wants to kiss whoever did it for . . . for . . .”

  She shook her head, finally admitting, “Shig, part of me is so relieved I can’t tell you. And that disgusts me.”

  Had it been revenge or mercy? If the latter, had it been done for his sake? Or hers? And if hers, it just added to her sense of futility.

  “Cap made a lot of enemies, Tal. When an individual embarks on the process of authentic self-discovery the people around him or her are left feeling betrayed. The person they thought they knew—and could predict and depend upon for their own needs—necessarily becomes someone different. It causes distress all the way around.”

  “Then why bother in the first place?”

  “Growth and the pursuit of enlightenment are the way of the universe. Cap Taggart took a mighty step from tamas toward sattva.”

  “What if I don’t buy your Buddhist crap?”

  “That’s Hindu.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It doesn’t matter what we deny or accept. The universe is as it is. Matter and energy transitioning back and forth. Changing relationships between particles. Whether souls are modalities or not, observation creates reality. All of which imperceptivity changes the fabric of the universe itself. So I think I’m on pretty firm ground.”

  “Charming.” A pause. “I’m tired of death, Shig. I’m tired of falling in love and losing them. I’m tired of hurting.”

  “All is dukkha. The scars will remain, and they will toughen and turn white with age. But you will heal. You’ll go on.”

  Talina rubbed the tears from her face, the breeze cooling her damp cheeks. “Turalon inverted symmetry in the middle of the night. I wonder if she’ll make it?”

  “Like Schrödinger’s cat?” He shrugged. “Perhaps. On the other hand, in a perversity of physics, if a ship appears in orbit five or six years from now, we may discover the cat lived.”

  “If it happens it’ll still be years from now. That’s an eternity on Donovan. We’d damned well better be planning on making it on our own.”

  “The Freelander cargo significantly increases our odds. Though the Supervisor claims it as her property. How she maintains her authority and defends her title will be interesting in light of Donovan’s realities.”

  “You might be letting her live in your studio, but you know Aguila’s going to be a probl
em. She’s not going to fit in.”

  “Unless she surprises me with some hidden strength of character, that might indeed be the case.” Shig spread his hands, face tilted to the sun, eyes closed as if in worship.

  “Want me to just put a bullet in her brain?”

  “Not for the time being. Though I may live to regret that decision.” He filled his lungs and sighed. “This morning I just needed a walk. Oh, and to remind you that we had a council meeting this afternoon.”

  “Council?”

  “That’s what Dan Wirth calls it. He seems to think we’re a sort of government, given that we’re striking coins and all.”

  “A government?”

  “It’s no longer just us old hands who’ve simply let things work as they may. And, to my absolute distaste, if we don’t establish and codify the way we want things to function, either Wirth or Aguila will. Each has his or her own power base, and worse, are willing to use them.”

  “Aw shit.” Talina’s gut fell. “Do I have to be there?”

  “No. But I can’t imagine you’d have been happy to learn that we met with him without your knowledge, or that you wouldn’t want to be there on the chance you might discover his hidden motives.”

  “Damn you, are you always right?”

  “Only perceptive.”

  78

  Dan brought his own cup of coffee laced with a shot of whiskey. He nodded at Step Allenovich, who was headed the other way, a use-scarred rifle hanging from his knobby right hand.

  Making his way down the hallway, he had to admit, the world was looking up.

  Entering into the conference room, it was to find Shig Mosadek and Yvette Dushane already seated across from each other at the far end of the table. Their own coffee cups—apparently the only symbols of office—rested on the scarred wood. In the center, on a hot pad, was a steaming two-liter pot of black coffee.

  “Well, good to see the both of you,” Dan greeted. “Quite the day, huh? Turalon’s spaced for home, her holds packed with plunder. Wonder what the Boardmembers are going to say to that when she docks at Transluna?”

  “They’ll erupt with a thousand exclamations of glee, no doubt,” Yvette told him coldly. “So just what, if I might ask, goaded you to call this meeting?”

  Dan seated himself, flipping out a coin as he did so. “A 100 SDR gold piece? Seriously?”

  Yvette stared coldly at him, as though it bore no need of response.

  Shig picked up the coin and studied it in the light cast by the window. “Excellent detail, don’t you think? But then, you wouldn’t know, having never seen a mundo tree.”

  “Where’s the gold for all these coins coming from?” Dan asked, as if an afterthought.

  “We surely didn’t hand everything over to Aguila.” Yvette continued her cold stare. “For a time, Brian Malverson was the richest man on Donovan. Took him twenty trips—and that was when the heavy-lift trucks were flying—to haul all of his gold into Port Authority. It’s stashed somewhere safe.”

  “To be credible, a bank must have a reserve.” Shig spun the coin around his fingers, and with a flip of the wrist, made it disappear. “You’ve forced us into a market economy. The old hit-or-miss barter system was strained as it was. The yuan and SDR notes were wearing out. With titles and deeds guaranteed—not to mention used by people such as yourself for collateral—we couldn’t very well expect people to trade a stack of chamois hides for a house, could we?”

  Dan cocked his head. Even as he formed a reply, Talina Perez entered, walked past him without so much as a look, and propped her rifle against the wall as she took a seat next to Yvette. From her belt pouch she produced a collapsible cup and dipped up coffee.

  She wore her old black, patched-up uniform. The knife and pistol at her hip added to the menacing and deadly air she projected. But look at her face, and it was to see a woman tortured with grief.

  Good.

  He’d wondered if Cap Taggart was just a fling for her. A short-term sack partner. One of the few men she didn’t completely intimidate. As threatening as she was, it had to be hard to find a man who could keep it up long enough and vigorously enough to ring her pelvic charms.

  Given the red-eyed and haggard look, the tension around her mouth, she’d really cared for the guy. That brought a smile to his lips. Suffer, bitch. Suffer.

  He pasted a happy smile on his face, saying brightly, “Good. We’re all here. I guess we can get started.”

  “Started with what?” Shig asked, and with a snap of his fingers, the coin appeared as if by magic. Good trick, that.

  “We had a potential problem with the transportees. Disgruntled, disillusioned, incipient revolt, blood in the streets, remember?”

  “Which I believe you said you were going to handle.” Yvette stared at him over her coffee cup.

  “Misters Oman and Paloduro demonstrated a change of heart.” Dan caught the coin when Shig flipped it his way.

  “Haven’t seen them around,” Shig noted. “My sources tell me that their successors have had a parting of the ways, that many are unsure what to do.” He smiled. “And then there’s the Supervisor. She’s a new piece to the puzzle. She’s insisting that as The Corporation’s Supervisor, she still has their contracts.”

  “Yes. A complication, wouldn’t you say?”

  “The problem isn’t the woman,” Yvette said in velvet tones overlaying steel. “It’s her marines. I can only speak for the three of us, but we’re not going to stand in their way if they start combing the streets for transportees. That’s their business and hers.”

  “Which,” Shig reminded, “I believe might include you. Or don’t I recall a clause allowing The Corporation to reassign a transportee to a related field?”

  Dan grinned. “If she had anything related to a dead cow, I might consider it. Alas, even if she did, I’d have to decline. So many things on my plate these days. All those minor irritations like Paloduro and Oman. Word is that they’ve opted to explore distant fields. Doubt they’ll be causing any further trouble.”

  Shig replied amiably. “My sources tell me they disappeared the night the quetzal got in.”

  “Maybe it ate them.” Dan let his smile beam.

  At that, Perez swiveled her head and shot him a deadly look. “Not even slightly funny, mister.”

  “Sorry, Security Officer.” He let his eyes narrow in reply to hers. “Perhaps the boys just wandered off. I hear we’re still missing three marines, too. And, now that Turalon is gone, we’ve got bits and pieces of her crew showing up by ones and twos.”

  Dan gestured. “You people putting in a claim for them? Leaving them for Aguila? Or calling them free agents?”

  “Free agents,” Yvette snapped.

  “Okay, fine by me. Let them make their own ways.” He cleared his throat. “Some, however, have already entered into agreements. I’ve got paper on them. Signed of their own free will and accord.”

  “What kind of paper?” Talina asked darkly.

  “A contract, security officer. A legal contract. For labor. Nothing else.”

  A chill eased up his spine on mouse feet as she glared at him. That alien blackness filled her eyes. It was all he could do to keep from raising his hands and backing away.

  “A contract is a contract,” Shig agreed. “As long as there was no coercion.”

  “I may be many things, but I’m not stupid. No coercion. And I have witnesses to that fact.”

  “Good.” The way Yvette sighted at him over her coffee cup was eerily similar to how she’d be squinting over pistol sights.

  The cold death in Perez’s eyes tickled the fear instinct in his gut.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I think I need a breath of clean air.”

  Everyone in the room watched her rise, grab up her rifle, and walk from the room. Nevertheless, she pinned him with her eyes the whole way.


  Relieved, Dan took a breath and said, “In summary, I think we’re in pretty good shape. With Turalon gone, a lot of the uncertainty went with it. I don’t see any problem keeping a lid on the remaining transportees. Unless the Supervisor wants them.”

  Yvette said, “Get between her and them at your own peril. As for us, we’re going to declare ourselves neutral.”

  Shig told him. “There will be enough other problems as the new reality sinks in. Hopefully we can continue to find areas of mutual cooperation.”

  Wirth got to his feet, gave them a salute with his coffee cup. “Always a delight to do business with you.”

  He thought of Perez, of the look she’d given him. You got what you had coming to you, you alien-infested witch.

  As he exited into the hallway, he was already planning. Not a word had been said about the method of Paloduro and Oman’s disappearance. He liked how the triumvirate worked. Approved of a “no questions asked” policy. They were all complicit now.

  So, they have a cache of gold? They’re starting a central bank and minting coins. Aguila is going to enforce contract on the transportees.

  “How do I profit from this?”

  God, he loved opportunity!

  79

  The whole thing was by chance. Trish had seen Talina as she emerged from the admin dome. She knew that walk. Tal was a woman on a mission. That she cycled the bolt on her rifle as she left, checking to ensure a round was chambered, bespoke the ominous.

  Trish chewed her lower lip for a moment, frowned. Putting Cap in the ground had hit Talina hard. But, damn it, Donovan wasn’t a forgiving place. It wasn’t like Talina Perez hadn’t buried a man before, and this one would have ultimately suffocated her.

  Shit, she’d really loved him.

  Wonder what that’s like?

  Nevertheless, Trish cut across behind the equipment shed, hurried past the parts depot, and rounded the corner just in time to see Talina climbing the roof access ladder to the assay office. Even as the athletic woman stepped onto the roof, she was unslinging her rifle.