Crescent (36 page)

It was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do.

(Part XXII)

The cavernous room rumbled with the sounds of the eager crowd even before Erick
Haddyrein’s
fans were admitted to the auditorium. Shapes could be seen moving on just the other side of the opaque flexi-glass scrim. The concert atrium and adjoining foyer were packed to capacity with Crescent residents. The corridors that fed the atrium were equally filled. Marisa watched the crowds on a security monitor. She felt measured doses of both good cheer and unease. This was a good event for the station, so long as those in attendance behaved themselves. Things had finally begun to stabilize after being out of whack for so long. Crescent’s citizens needed something good, something from the outside the station.
Haddyrein
was well-loved across the seventeen systems, and judging from the crowded concert area and the lines that marched to the auditorium, Crescent was no exception. Marisa herself enjoyed his music. Maybe not enough to have camped outside the box office months ago, but she was more than happy to check out the concert for free.

The free concert came at the cost of vigilance.

Marisa was on the clock, but she had a feeling that the evening would go smoothly enough that she could hazard to enjoy herself just a little bit. Security was thick.
Haddyrein’s
personal muscle detail supported Crescent’s staff. There was more than enough manpower to deal with anything that might happen. She rapped the faux-wooden railing with her knuckles and then looked out over the concert hall. Music thumped from massive honeycomb speakers embedded in the walls. A waving curtain of blue-green light obscured the stage from view. The shifting luminance was hypnotic. She smiled.

Marisa wouldn’t deny that she was feeling better. Her head was clear, maybe clearer than it had ever been. All the strangeness that had plagued her recently was fading fast from her memory. It all seemed like a bad acid trip. Things that had seemed so
dire,
almost seemed foolish now. But regardless of the attitude adjustment and the improved outlook, her plan was still to put Crescent behind her. She need a change, and would be off-station in two days. Gerald was leaving Crescent, too. They weren’t headed out together; per se. Shit had to be worked out in that department. But, there could be a future there. Core Sec had paid him a big chunk of change for his involvement in the successful coup, so Gerald was going to retire; hang up his wings. Good for him. Gerald had never liked space. With his bank account showing lots of zeros, he would never have to fly salvage again.

A security officer entered the auditorium through a red-lacquered door. Marisa remembered having gone through that same door not so long ago. She marveled at the distance of the memory.
It almost seems like it didn’t happen—at least, like it didn’t happen to me.

She activated her headset.

“Okay, Miguel, open the doors. Let’s let these people in before they flatten themselves.”

The man on the dance floor gave her an enthusiastic thumb up and ducked into a control booth. The big partition ascended with a whine of motors and disappeared into the ceiling, and the people began to file into the auditorium. Security checks and spinning turnstiles made the march an orderly one. Soon, the room echoed with thousands of voices. The space filled with an acrid haze of booze and cigarette smoke. Marisa glanced down at the bar that stood five meters below her monitoring platform. She would’ve killed for a drink in the name of good times and new beginnings. She couldn’t really recall the last time she had drank for pleasure. Perhaps at the end of the night, she and Gerald could find a place to grab a cocktail or two.

Yeah,
she thought, and smirked to herself,
that’d be really nice. So long as he doesn’t get too bombed beforehand.

It took more than an hour to fill the entire auditorium. So many people had showed up for the concert, some were forced to watch it on the big
holo
-projector out in the atrium. As far as she was concerned, Marisa had the best view in the house. The anticipation in the air was palpable—as if electricity arced from air molecule to air molecule, causing the whole room to buzz. She closed her eyes for a moment and savored every sound and smell. It was life. The crowd began to cheer and she opened her eyes just as the house lights darkened, filling the room with the stage curtain’s ever-changing light. The blue-green radiance bounced off thousands of glittering mirrors embedded at random in the floors, walls, and ceilings, and danced upon every surface. The photosensitive flooring swirled beneath the crowd’s feet.

The curtain shimmered out of existence.

A vaguely glowing fog-like haze filled the stage. The
vatter’s
equipment looked like dark, hulking beasts hiding in the murk. A green light grew from panels set in the platform, and as it brightened, a large, glass vat became apparent as the heart of the flaring beacon. The glittering liquid inside the crystal chamber scattered the light and shot it back in a thousand different directions. A beat began to pulse. More than pulse, it began to throb. The crowd swayed to the rhythm, wrapped in shifting shadows and bursts of colorful effulgence.

A shape plunged into the liquid with a mighty splash. Purple, red, and green light flared in a blinding explosion and the opening song roared across the room like a helium flash.

(•••)

“I hope this isn’t a bad time, Captain.” Crescent’s head of security stood in the open doorway to Nigel’s temporary apartment. Nigel folded the last of the few articles of clothing he had on the station and placed them in a suitcase. He looked up and smiled.

“Not at all, Captain Benedict,” Nigel said.

“I’m surprised you’re not at the concert.”

“I could say the same for you.”

“A security captain is never off duty, it would seem,” Benedict said. “There are still some matters. How do I put this? Delicate matters, pertaining to our Mayor Kendall…
 
”

“Former mayor,” Nigel interjected.

“Yes,
former
mayor. There are final matters that need to be dealt with. Ezra Kendall is not your typical prisoner,
Swaren
, and there are some things you should know. Some things you should
see
with your own eyes if you’re going to call your job here complete.”

“Things such as?”
Nigel asked, his curiosity piqued.
He stopped packing and stood, hands on his hips. Benedict shrugged and smiled.

“Not here. There is still some loyalty to Kendall in the ranks. It’s not safe to do this here.”

“Okay, Captain.” He paused. “Should we notify Belinda Michaels?”

“I’ve got someone on their way to her office,” Benedict said.

“Fair enough.
Let’s go, then.”

(•••)

Belinda Michaels sat behind the former mayor’s large desk. She had disabled the desk-embedded security feeds. The crazy, ever changing cross-hatch of images and video made her head spin. She had plenty to think about for this interim rule. Crescent had a security force; let them monitor the feeds. After all, that was their job.
Mayor Kendall must have been over the top with his paranoia,
she thought with a smirk. She fingered a control on the arm of the chair and it rotated to face the large viewport. The curtains hummed open to reveal a dense
starfield
laced with glowing, orange-red nebulosity. She couldn’t argue with the view. For the time being, it was better than Galatea’s view of the hand toss of dead rocks. With the
Habeos
gate being closed, the sentry guns would be dismantled. The asteroid field would be harvested and cleared in due time.

The door chimed, and she rotated the chair to face it.

“Come,” she said. It then struck her as strange that her personal guard hadn’t notified her of a visitor. But at that point, it was already too late. The door was swinging open.

Belinda Michaels only had time to register two things:

The way the man’s stubble looked like rust in the orange light cast by the nebula and the flare of equally orange light that sprayed from the barrel of the needle gun.

(•••)

The pounding bass tones were going to crush his heart at any moment, Gerald was convinced, but he didn’t care. He danced like a drunken idiot and loved every second of it. From his location in the auditorium, he could see Marisa on her balcony. He respected that she was on duty, so he wouldn’t bother her just yet.
Maybe after a few more frosty ones,
he thought,
I won’t have so much respect for her duty.
Until then, he was content to enjoy the pure sensory overload that was a
vatter
concert. Erick
Haddyrein
twisted and spun in the viscous liquid that filled the vat. Light poured through the chamber’s thick, clear walls in a dizzying spasm of color. Rainbow lances of photons, beginning as pinpricks, exploded from the sparkling
trodes
attached in multitude to
Haddyrein’s
nearly naked form. The beams cleaved the smoky darkness.

Thick fiber optic tentacles slithered and curled on the stage like great, glowing serpents. Liquid-filled orbs attached to their lengths pulsed in sequence. At times, the long structures would roar out from the stage to circle above the audience. If Gerald were on anything hallucinatory, he was sure he would have lost his mind by then.

The lights went dim and the sound died.

A muted click came from the speaker system and then the music started again. Notes screamed from the speakers, the pitches high and ugly. Gerald pressed his hands against his ears. Something had gone wrong with
Haddyrein’s
gear. The
vatter
himself looked panicked inside his glass chamber.

The
trodes
on his body began to pulse madly.

And then
Haddyrein
writhed as if he was in pain. The speakers howled. The bass notes were a low rumble that sounded like the very end of the world and the auditorium shuddered with each thunderous pulse. Gerald turned to move for the doors, but the rest of the concert goers, stricken with panic, had the same idea. The crowd ripped down the security check points as if they were made out of cardboard. As unpleasant as the sounds coming from the speakers were, Gerald figured getting trampled to death would be even worse. He jumped behind one of the sidebars for cover. A bartender crouched there, her arms over her head protectively. Black mascara streaked her powder-white cheeks. She stared at him wide-eyed. He put a hand on her leg and mouthed
everything is going to be all right.
If he believed that, though, he wouldn’t have been cursing himself for not having left Crescent that morning. She held out her hand to him; a set of earplugs sat on her open palm. He took them gratefully.

(•••)

“This way, Captain
Swaren
.”
Benedict opened a narrow bulkhead that marked the end of an even narrower passage. Nigel looked at Benedict uneasily. Three officers from Captain Benedict’s own personal company had escorted them to the remote location. The officers stepped through the bulkhead first. Nigel took that as an encouraging sign that nothing deadly lay in wait on the other side.
No need to continue your paranoia,
Swaren
,
he thought to himself.

“After you, Captain Benedict,” Nigel said, turning to face Crescent’s head of security, only to be caught square in the chest by Benedict’s outthrust hands. Nigel tripped on the door’s raised threshold and he fell through, landing on his back with a jolt, his chest still stinging from the blow. He scrambled to his feet and lunged for the door as it swung shut, but was rewarded only with cold metal on his palms. Nigel stepped away and
unholstered
his sidearm. Around him, the Crescent security officers had their weapons out and were speaking to one another in clipped, nervous chatter. The officers had no idea what was going on, either.

Nigel surveyed the cavernous hangar. Large, metallic cargo crates were stacked one atop the other. Benedict was watching them through the small glass porthole in the bulkhead, but he would not make eye contact.

A light came on up above and Nigel lifted his eyes to see people filing onto a glass-enclosed observation deck. The lanky shape of Crescent’s former Mayor Kendall was unmistakable. Kendall approached the glass and waved. His voice echoed from the hangar’s PA system.

“I was afraid we wouldn’t get the chance to say good bye, Mr.
Swaren
,” Kendall said. “After all we’ve been through during the course of your
visit, that
would have been a damn shame.”

Nigel said nothing.

Kendall sighed. “
Swaren
, I know about your little station in
Tireca
. It will never replace Crescent. You and I both know that asteroid field will never be safe to mine. And without precious minerals, that station will never get finished.”

“Where is Belinda Michaels? Is she safe?”

“She is in good hands, Mr.
Swaren
,” Kendall said. “Is she safe? Not likely. Goodbye, Mr.
Swaren
.”

A klaxon filled the chamber.

The hangar doors rolled away on their tracks and air began to roar out into space. The vacuum plucked away cargo containers like they were pills in a pillbox. Nigel skidded along the floor on his back. Two of the officers were sucked, flailing, out of the station. The remaining officer was gripping a handrail and screaming in terror. She had the prettiest auburn hair Nigel had ever seen. Nigel continued to slide. He managed to roll over onto his stomach and tried to clutch at the deck grating as it blurred past him. Several of his fingernails tore free and he cried out. Nigel knew he was moving too fast to get any kind of purchase—he was more likely to lose his fingers entirely. His shoes were pulled right off his feet. It struck him as both absurd and mortifying. The officer with the pretty hair was brained by an
untethered
storage crate. Her grip fell slack and she slid past him.