In the Company of Others (34 page)

It wasn't neutral ground, but Gail wanted every advantage in an encounter with Rosalind.

Unfortunately, being seated behind an imposing wooden desk hadn't helped. Rosalind had taken one look, sniffed, and said: “Biogen maple. You'd think Titan would have sprung for the real thing,” before taking her seat with the elegant confidence of a queen.

“The
Seeker
is a working ship, not a liner,” Tobo replied, sounding offended. Gail silenced him with a look.

It was the three of them and the 'sider—Grant leaving his people outside the door this time, but keeping a portable comm link in one ear. Gail had thought, briefly, of including Malley. But his relationship with this woman was too unknown. They didn't need complications such as had arisen on Thromberg. She'd also considered getting Forester in here—in case this was what Tobo thought, a purely internal matter. But again, there was likely history there.

Gail was interested in the future.

So, it seemed, was the leader of the Outsiders. “I'll come straight to the point, Dr. Smith, Captain, Commander,” Rosalind nodded graciously to each. “This ship is the signal from Sol System my people have been waiting for all these years. The time has come to leave our prison and reclaim our proper place.” From her, the words weren't bombastic—they sounded like statements of fact.

“A signal of what?” Gail asked curiously. “That Earth is taking an active role in restoring the terraformed worlds to the colonists? I agree, but it's only—”

“Worlds?” Rosalind's lips twisted over the word as if it left a foul taste. “We are not interested in dirt, Dr. Smith. My people are spacers, have been and always will be. We were trapped here by mistake during the immigrants' uprising—tarred by the same brush and left to rot with them on this hunk of metal.

“But we were patient. We knew Sol would reopen deep-space exploration, that the universities would again look beyond Earth's petty interests in creating replicas of itself. This ship—your ship—is proof of that. And we are ready.”

Gail recognized the rhetoric. She knew many former pilots and explorers who felt abandoned by Earth's turtlelike approach to expansion, as promoted by the Reductionist movement. It shouldn't have surprised her from Rosalind—but it did. She supposed it was because the survival of the 'siders and the station itself was so remarkable, she hadn't expected the older dream to survive as well. Then, as she looked into those cold, almost fanatical eyes, she knew her mistake.

“You say you are ready,” Gail said, careful of every word. “For what? To steal three freighters from Thromberg?”

Rosalind clicked the two wide paddles forming her right hand together. An irritated sound, Gail thought. “Theft? Merely a request for transportation. One Thromberg has agreed to—my people are replacing their crews as we speak. Feel free to ask the commander to check with one of your spy bots if you doubt me.”

“So you no longer threaten the station,” Tobo said in a relieved voice.

“Our deadline stands. It is your contribution on the line now.”

Gail narrowed her eyes. “Ours? And what might that be, Outsider?”

“You will arrange for our ships to be welcomed at the Callisto Spaceport.”

Callisto. Sol System's largest starship construction facility.
Of course
, Gail thought. For over a hundred years, eager young pilots and would-be explorers had marked its orbit around Jupiter, hoping to attend its schools—while retiring spacers who couldn't bear to be grounded drifted home to it and filled its bars and lounges with stories. If ever humanity surged outward again in earnest, Callisto would be its launching pad.

“Earth hasn't opened the blockade,” Grant said bluntly. “No person or ship originating from a station will be allowed into Sol System.”

“Ah,” Rosalind said, shaking her head at him. “Times change. Now we have a spokesperson to open that doorway. Do we not, Dr. Smith?”

Gail stiffened. “I have nothing to do with Earth policy, whatever you may imagine. I'm a scientist. This is a research vessel.” She stole a look at the wall chrono.
Ten minutes left
. “You've threatened the station. How?”

The 'sider smiled thinly. “You look at our equipment, at our dead ships, and judge us harmless, don't you?”

“No,” Gail said quite sincerely. “I don't consider you harmless in the least.”

“Good,” Rosalind replied. “Because the hearts of our ships still beat. And you should appreciate what power that puts in our hands.” She lifted hers in emphasis, probably very aware of the contrast between their grotesque replacements and her long, graceful arms.

The translight drives
. Gail didn't need Tobo's gasp or Grant's step forward to tell her the stakes had just risen. Even if their fuel cones were essentially spent, there would be enough power remaining in the initiation matrix of any of those derelicts to put a substantial hole in the station.

If they all went at once
—Gail didn't need to do the math to know the resulting force would send Thromberg wobbling, jarring the station from its orbit. A choice of deaths: starvation if the station was pushed too far from the sun to collect sufficient energy to sustain it, or radiation poisoning, if the station moved too close. Both of those endings assumed the hull of the abused station remained intact—otherwise, a moot point, since everyone would already be dead.

Evacuate?
Gail thought desperately.
Even if there were enough ships, where could they take the people?
No wonder Thromberg was silent. Their fate was in her hands. They had nothing left to bargain with and every reason to fear.

“You want the impossible. Thromberg may have given you ships,” Gail said, “but I can't open the blockade to any ship—anyone—from a station. Sol System—Earth—fears the Quill.”

“The Quill.” Pure scorn. “That old, tired song.”

Had she found an opening?
Gail spoke cautiously: “Yes, the Quill. And if our mission is successful, which I believe it will be, it won't be much longer before the terraformed worlds are—”

“Show me a Quill,” Rosalind interrupted coolly.

Gail blinked.

Rosalind leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Go on. Show me one. You can't, can you? That's because they are all dead. You know the only thing dangerous about a Quill? What happens to anyone who owned one!”

“Fournier.” Gail felt pieces dropping into place. “You're Stuart Fournier's daughter,” she breathed in amazement, remembering the incident. “The deep-space explorer who—”

The 'sider sat erect again, knees together, shoulders back, and stared at Gail with cold, hard eyes. “Captain Fournier. The explorer thought missing, who brought his ship limping home after three long years. Only all hell had broken loose and he didn't know why. Do your records also tell you that when he arrived home, with his Quill around his wrist as always, he was burned alive by a crazed mob?

“You'd think we'd learn from the past,” Rosalind continued. “But it's a human failing, isn't it? As is wasting time.” The 'sider made a point of checking her wristchrono. “You have five minutes left, Dr. Smith, before my colleagues lift from Thromberg—safely, if the station has been diligent in undocking procedures. Fifteen minutes more we grant you, in which to guarantee their deserved welcome at our home port of Callisto.” She paused, then added: “Don't think we'll hesitate, Dr. Smith. We are dying—two a month, five, soon it will be more. Our time has already run out, Dr. Smith. We are not prepared to be patient.”

Gail tilted back her head and regarded Rosalind Fournier. Brilliant, angry, full of purpose. She
knew
this woman—not her personality or history, of course, but what drove her. They might have taken different paths to this place and time, but they were uncannily alike. Like Gail, what mattered to Rosalind wasn't power itself, it was achieving her goal.
By whatever means
.

Gail was familiar with that trait as well.

“I have a counterproposal, Rosalind,” she said almost cheerfully. “May I call you Rosalind?”

“MR. MALLEY?”

Malley started at the low voice in his ear.
Damn.
He'd dozed off on the stool, a useful skill when there wasn't much streaming down the recycling floor, but hardly what he'd planned to do here.

He looked around almost frantically. The voice was Benton's. The lab tech stood a little distance away, as if his jump awake had surprised her, too. Otherwise, nothing in the lab seemed to have changed. Sazaad—

“Mr. Malley?”

The stationer stood up and made himself stretch, leery of moving too quickly after being in one position for so long. “Yes, Benton. I'm awake,” he told the tech, still scanning the room.

He should have looked at the tank first, instead of last. Sazaad was there, Philips at his side, busy with something at the far end. “What's he doing?” Malley demanded, not bothering to keep his voice down.

Benton raised her own voice. She sounded, and looked, angry. “Dr. Sazaad has taken it on himself to disconnect Mr. Pardell's life support.”

Malley was across the intervening space, with his new knife across Sazaad's throat, before the Earther could do more than turn, wide-eyed. In the next instant, he'd wrapped his other arm under and around Sazaad's so he could press the man's head forward while pinning him against his chest.

The Earther wisely chose not to struggle, since the hold gave him the option of severing his own neck or feeling Malley snap it, but he sputtered indignantly: “Get this lunatic off me! Guards! Guards!” The guards in question had moved closer, but showed no interest in interfering.

Malley put his lips to Sazaad's ear. “What are you doing to Aaron?”

“The man's dead. Dead! Dead! Dead! You are wasting my time—there's nothing on the cog—nothing! Let go! Guar—”

Malley flexed the arm providing leverage against Sazaad's spine. There was a most satisfying creak.

Philips was hurriedly reattaching tubes and cables to the exterior of the tank, Benton coming to help.
Sazaad must have been pulling them free at random.
“Is Aaron all right?” Malley asked the tech.

“How can you ask if a corpse is all right?” shrieked Sazaad.

“How can you keep talking if I cut your throat?” Malley thought it a reasonable question, but the man turned into a limp weight and slid bonelessly out of his grip. Getting the knife out of the way just in time, the stationer grabbed for a new hold, sure this was a trick, then realized the Earther had fainted. Malley let him drop.

“We've been trying to get orders, Mr. Malley,” this quietly from one of the FDs. The techs both nodded. “But the brass has been tied up with some crisis—”

Malley hardly listened, too intent on looking for any sign Aaron had been harmed.

The bubbles restarted within the liquid as the techs continued restoring the systems. Nothing else seemed to have changed.

Was Aaron's face more shadowed along the cheek and around his eyes, as if bruises were starting to show? He should have black eyes along with everything else
, Malley thought in helpless rage. There'd been a big enough pile of bodies on him—and hardly gentle treatment to get him here. Purple smudges on his arms and thighs marked where the remote handling arms had gripped to move him. His chest rose and fell—
was it as strongly as before?

“Malley. Aisha's on her way to the lab. She'll check the life support and go over what Dr. Sazaad has done.”

“He's fading,” Malley heard himself say.

There was a sarcastic mutter from the floor: “Maybe Aisha could try a defib—but, oh, I forgot. He's dead.”

Defib?
Defibrillator. Malley had watched the doctors restart his Uncle Roy's failing heart, seen for himself the limp body arching up, falling back, then the triumphant announcement of a pulse. “Would it work?” he asked out loud.
Was it that simple?
he asked himself.

Benton answered, her voice gentle: “Your friend's heart is beating just fine, Malley. The shock from a defib wouldn't help.”

He didn't need courage
, Malley decided, nodding an acknowledgment even as he flexed the fingers of his right hand.
Not if he understood what went on inside Aaron at all.
What Malley needed was a completely calm state of mind.

That being unlikely any time soon, speed was the thing.

Without hesitation, the stationer plunged his bare hand through the warm gel until his fingertips touched—

As Malley instantly yanked his arm away from the consuming pain, his legs collapsed beneath him. He tried to hold on to the side of the tank, but there was no strength left in his body. The room whirled into the darkness of his nightmares. . . .

As he passed out, Malley hoped he'd been right.

“THERE'S been an incident in the lab.” Grant's whisper tickled her ear, reminding Gail for no reason of Malley. Then she processed what he'd said and went cold to her core.

Somehow, she managed to keep her expression set to polite interest and her mind focused on her negotiations with Rosalind Fournier.

For they were negotiations, plain and simple. Gail had been right—given a tidier alternative, the Outsider leader was willing to listen. The ultimatum's deadline came and went. Whether the 'siders had ever been prepared to turn their ships into doomsday weapons, or if it was all a bluff . . . Gail didn't want to know. She did believe Rosalind perfectly capable of anything necessary.
A refreshingly straightforward attitude.