Force and Motion (15 page)

While no longer semicomatose, Finch had lapsed into recalcitrance. “Fine,” he murmured. “Let's.”

Maxwell pushed his hand through the suit's rigid cuff and extended his index finger, counting off. “We don't know how much of the Mother is still upstairs in your lab.”

“True,” Finch agreed. “Though we believe she was jettisoned.”

“Belief is not evidence. And we don't have any working sensors in there, do we?”

“Sabih made sure of that.”

Maxwell frowned, but did not reply. On the trek back to ops, he had been thinking about Sabih and his disastrous attempt at theft. While he hadn't known the young man well, he had never struck Maxwell as either particularly enterprising (beyond the venture capitalist model) or larcenous. Current circumstances, alas, did not lend themselves to additional investigations. One thing Maxwell knew for sure was that he wasn't going to allow Finch into the lab without being carefully supervised. As insurance, he had locked the second environmental suit into a cabinet for which the station owner no longer had the access code. “And if any remnant of the Mother is up
there, do we know if she would be attracted to this suit's energy signature?”

Finch unfolded his hands and tapped together the tips of opposing fingers. He stared into space. “We do not,” he drawled. “Although evidence indicates she is attracted to radioactive energy sources. Your suit runs on a battery with a modest energy signature. I doubt she would find it appetizing, especially with so many other tasty morsels to consider.”

As if on cue another section of the Hooke's hull changed from orange to red on the display. Maxwell felt a shudder through the soles of his boots, though, thankfully, the gravity remained stable. “So,” he said, “good news for our side. Any other bits you'd like to offer?”

“It will be very cold,” Finch said. “Do not tarry. Your suit was not meant for prolonged exposure to vacuum.”

“Noted.”

“Otherwise, my only question is simply this: What do you hope to accomplish besides determining whether the Mother is still in residence?”

“And retrieving Sabih's body,” Maxwell said.

“Naturally. And that.”

“I want to see why the radiation blast didn't fire,” Maxwell said. “I want to see if someone tampered with it. I want to see if it can still be used.”

“Really?” Finch asked, his brows knitting together. “To what end?”

“I should think that would be obvious, Doctor,” Maxwell said, standing up and lifting the recycler onto his back. “If I can, I'm going to reset it so we can fire the damned thing.”

“And kill the Mother?” Finch had come back to life again. Maxwell doubted if Finch realized it, but he was gripping the arms of his chair with both hands.

“If the opportunity arises,” Maxwell said, snugging up the straps on the harness. He mentally added,
And with a small amount of pleasure.

“You couldn't,” Finch said through gritted teeth. “You
mustn't
!”

“I could,” Maxwell said, retrieving the helmet and brushing off the last of the packing material. “And while I'm not sure if I must, I'm pretty sure it would make me feel a lot better.” He inspected the helmet's visor to see if a layer of thin film protected it. He found one, which meant the helmet had never been used. Peeling it away, Maxwell wondered how long the gear had been sitting in Zerkowski's storage closet, unused, unchecked.

He glanced at Finch, who was silently seething, and wondered if the big man's rage would get him out of the chair. Maxwell half wished it would. Though Finch probably had twenty or thirty kilos on him, Maxwell felt confident he could take him if it came down to an altercation.

Finch disappointed him by clenching the chair arms and turning back toward the monitor. Another square of the station's hull turned from yellow to orange. “We're not going to last long at this rate,” Finch said.

“Then I'd best get on with it,” Maxwell said, fitting the helmet into the suit collar. The servos meshed and he felt a rush of cool atmosphere flow into the helmet. It smelled like lavender soap. He found the communicator control on the left gauntlet and tapped it. “Is this working?”

Finch looked at him and nodded.

“Are we reasonably sure the hatch into the lab is sealed?”

“We are,”
Finch said. His voice sounded tinny through the helmet's small speaker.

“When I open that door there.” He pointed to the closed hatch that led to the foot of the short stairway. “We won't lose all the air in here? It'll serve as an airlock if I close it behind me?”

“It should,”
Finch said.
“But why would you care?
I'm the one who doesn't have a suit.”

Maxwell considered his point. “That's true,” he said. “But then I wouldn't have anyone to chat with.”

“How dreadful for you,”
Finch drawled.

Maxwell walked to the hatch, all the while trying to find his balance. The suit's joints were stiff, and he felt like he might tip over at any moment. He tapped the door's control stud, half expecting it to beep at him ominously, but, no, it swooshed open with only a small pop. He glanced back at Finch to make sure he hadn't collapsed. The station owner was still upright and alert, watching Maxwell attentively.

Suddenly, Maxwell felt very exposed, very at risk. If Finch could somehow seal the door behind him, then he would have to . . . do what? Maxwell had the environmental suit. If he must, he could figure a way out of the lab and back into the station through one of the many,
many
gaps in the hull. He might have to contend with the Mother in some fashion, but there was no proof yet that she . . . it was dangerous as long as you weren't housing a radioactive power source.
So, things are going my way,
Maxwell concluded as he mounted the stairs.
Nothing to do but recover a body and fire a small thermonuclear device. Janitor's work, really.

Reaching the top step, Maxwell stopped and considered his options. Firing a thermonuclear device might be a bad idea. Considering the creature seemed to like radiation.

He stopped in front of the door and pondered, but then decided he wasn't required to make a decision at that moment.

Light. He would need light. Feeling foolish for not checking it earlier, Maxwell found the control stud for the torch embedded in the suit's right gauntlet. It lit up, seeming unreasonably bright in the narrow space. He touched his helmet about the faceplate and felt another lamp, but couldn't find the control switch to turn it on.
Probably won't need it
, he decided, though he didn't like the idea of having to hold up one arm all the time to see where he was going.

He laid his left palm on the door and felt the chill of vacuum radiating through it.

When Maxwell tapped the control stud, once again his expectations were defied, and the door silently swooshed open.

Emergency lights cast long, distorted shadows. Maxwell moved his arm back and forth, looking for familiar shapes. He hadn't visited Finch's lab often, so he wasn't sure which console contours were correct and which had been disrupted or distended by the Mother's escape.

The tank. He knew the tank was in the middle of the room. Sabih had been there when he died. He would
use the tank to get oriented. Maxwell half turned and extended his arm to frame the tank in the beam from his torch. He expected to find nothing more than a frame with cracked sides and the frozen remains of the Mother smeared against the inner walls, but such was not the case.

“Finch,” Maxwell whispered. “It's still here.”

“You'll have to be more specific, old man.
What
is still there?”

“The Mother,” Maxwell said, speaking louder. Why shouldn't he speak in a normal tone of voice? It wasn't like there was atmosphere to carry his voice. Or like it would be able to hear him even if there was. “It's still here. Floating. How is that possible? Shouldn't the liquid have been sucked out? Shouldn't it be frozen?” Other questions rose up out of the murk of his mind, many of them quite logical and sensible. His calm state of mind was surprising, considering how completely and totally disturbed he was feeling at that moment.
Starfleet training is still holding strong,
a distant part of his mind said.

Finch did not reply immediately, though Maxwell heard him breathing deeply, just shy of panting.
“It's possible,”
he said finally,
“that Sabih reprogrammed the environmental controls.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don't know,”
Finch said.
“One cannot predict the actions of a criminal. Or the young. Can you describe her condition?”

Maxwell rolled his eyes and thought,
Yes, it's a blob. Next question?
But he knew Finch was asking for actionable information, so he tried to comply. “I don't really know what it looked like before, but it's floating in the
middle of the tank. Tendrils are moving slightly. Some of them are pressed up against the walls of the tank. Wait . . .” He stepped closer and shone the torch onto the face of the transparent surface. “What's the tank made out of?”

“A form of transparent aluminium.”
Finch pronounced the word like a British person would.
“Reinforced with ceramic fibers. Very durable. Why?”

“It's cracked,” Maxwell said. “But the cracks are very fine. It seems to be exerting pressure against the cracks. I think I see . . .” He had to move at a forty-five-degree angle away from the surface of the tank wall and shine the light from above to make sense out of what he was seeing. “There's something coming out of the tank: a thread or fiber of some kind.” As much as Maxwell hated the idea of moving closer, curiosity had gotten the better of him. He shifted his stance and lifted his right arm at an awkward angle.

The knuckles of Maxwell's gloved fist brushed against Sabih's face.

He was standing up, his head canted at an awkward angle. Sabih's eyelids were open, the muscles around them twitching, but the eyes looked like frosted glass, discolored by broken and distended vessels. His mouth moved slowly, soundlessly.

Maxwell stared. He imagined he could feel the young man's breath through his gauntleted hand, though, of course, that was ridiculous. There was no atmosphere, no medium for breath to move through, and no heat to be transferred.

He watched Sabih's lips as they moved over and over
again in the same pattern, even though no other part of him moved. He looked, Maxwell decided, like a marionette, one controlled by an amateur puppeteer. Maxwell took a cautious step away, the better to see the nightmare.

Poor, dead Sabih's lips and tongue kept making the same movements over and over, slowly, but precisely. Connections clicked into place inside his head. Words were shaped.

Let.

Me.

Out.

Chapter 14

One Month Earlier

Wellington, New Zealand

“T
o old acquaintances,” Nog said, lifting his glass.

“Not forgotten,” Jake replied, and tapped his glass against Nog's.

Despite the fact that (or possibly because) he had spent much of his youth working in a bar, Nog had never developed a taste for alcoholic beverages, though he had never lost his love for root beer. On the occasions when Nog visited Jake Sisko on Earth, his old friend always made sure to lay in a couple of cases of the soft drink. If the two of them ever wanted something a bit stronger, they would mix in a bit of
sanar
, which, his uncle (who was a bit of a snob on such matters) used to say, was nothing more than Terran vodka, but with none of the complexity. Neither Jake nor Nog cared. It was the inebriant that the two of them had first shared as boys, and the ceremony of its consumption meant a lot to them. They clinked their glasses together and the ice cubes jingled merrily.

Both smacked their lips, admired their frosty tumblers, and settled back into their chairs. They grinned at each other, but neither spoke for a time, not wanting to spoil the moment. Finally, Nog couldn't resist and exclaimed, “Happy New Year!”

Jake smiled like he had won a bet and said, “And to
you.” For more than a decade, assuming they were in the same sector of space, Nog and Jake made it their practice to seek each other out on the turning of the Earth year and toast each other.

“To twenty-three eighty-five,” Jake declared, taking another sip of his drink.

“Good riddance,” Nog added.

“Really? That bad?” Jake set aside his beverage and eyed the spread of snacks he'd prepared, a cross section of goodies that both men had either tolerated or enjoyed for the other's sake since they were boys.

“That bad,” Nog said, scooping up a handful of pistachios and cracking the shells. He wasn't crazy about pistachios, but enjoyed the cracking.

“The station opened.”

“And the president was assassinated there.”

“Garak became castellan.”

“And Doctor Bashir was court-martialed.”

“He saved the Andorians.”

“Only by doing something so illegal that we don't even know what it is.”

“But . . . wait. Never mind,” Jake said. “No matter what I say next, you'll think of something terrible to counter it.”

“Probably,” Nog allowed, brushing the wisps of pistachio shells off his uniform. “It doesn't take much to think of bad things.”

Jake studied his friend out of the corner of his eye. “Or one bad thing,” he added. “The one you're not telling me about.”

Nog didn't reply, focusing all of his attention on the
snack selection. Korena had raised a rueful eyebrow at the glaringly mismatched items before slipping out of the house to visit some friends.

“Or,” Jake continued, “
can't
tell me about.”

Nog shrugged, picked up his drink, and sipped it.

“Ah,” Jake said. “Okay. Must be pretty bad.”

“Pretty,” Nog replied.

“Did something you regret?” Jake asked. “Or . . . ?”

“
Almost
,” Nog said, feeling like he was skirting the edge of the permissible. “But close enough that I felt . . . what's the right word?”

“I'd say
rattled
covers it.”

“Right.
Rattled
.” He nodded. “I'm rattled.” He shook his empty glass, making the ice tinkle. “I'm also empty.”

“The mixings are over there,” Jake said, pointing at a low table where bottles and a bucket of ice were artfully arranged. “Korena set that up for us.”

Nog went to the table, splashed liquids into his glass, studied the color, and adjusted. “She's too good for you, you know.”

Jake lifted his half-empty glass in acknowledgment. “Punching out of my weight class.” He took a sip. “I recommend it, by the way.” Nog was certain his reaction was being carefully recorded.

“I'm sure.”

“Having any leanings in that direction?”

Nog settled back down in his chair and stretched out his legs.

“Nog?”

“Hmm?”

“Leanings?”

Nog didn't know how to reply. This wasn't like his classified work for Active Four, the Federation black ops team. He
knew
what he wanted to say about that incident, but Nog also knew he shouldn't and wouldn't. He knew his friend's casual question about potential relationships was meant to sound boyish, even silly, but Nog felt his tongue swelling up in his mouth and his shoulders tense. Finally, he said, “It would be nice, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards these days.”

“No prospects?”

“Oh, well, sure,” Nog said. “Prospects. Always prospects. The station is busier than ever and you know . . . the uniform.”

“It's very flattering.”

“It is,” Nog agreed. “Remind me to tell you later about this little Arcadian I ran into last month.”

“Little?” Jake asked.

“By Arcadian standards, yes.”

“Okay. Though I gather that's not your point.”

Nog looked at his friend—his oldest, closest friend—and then looked down into his again-empty glass. His ears felt warm. He set the glass aside, suddenly mindful of the too-many beings he had watched drown their sorrows (and their cerebral cortexes) at his uncle's bar. He looked back up at Jake, who was leaning forward, a slight frown on his face. He hadn't bothered to shave that day (or maybe the one before), which, Nog thought, must be one of the perks of being a writer. Or maybe Korena liked her husband with a little stubble.
Before I leave,
he thought,
I'm going to have a long talk with her. Every time we see each other, I say that and yet it never
seems to happen.
“No,” he said. “Nothing to do with leanings. Just frustration. Just . . .” Nog thought,
No one to talk to,
but then, in a fit of generosity, decided this comment might make his friend feel guilty. And he didn't want Jake to feel guilty, and most certainly not about following his dream, finding a life, or falling in love.
Why should anyone ever feel bad about that?
And so he said, “Not enough time. Too much work! And no one to complain to!” He laughed and thought it sounded like a pretty convincing laugh.

Jake laughed too. Rising, he walked over to the table and poured himself another drink. “Sounds like you just need someone to hang out with,” he observed and then, as if struck by inspiration, added, “Hey, what about the chief?”

January 9, 2386

Hangar Deck

Robert Hooke

Fortunately, the evacuees
had left the Hooke hangar doors open. If they hadn't, O'Brien wasn't sure what they would have done. Maybe he or Nog could have raced ahead of the slowing transport and found a manual override, though, naturally, there was no guarantee that there
was
an override or, if there was, that it would still function.

As it turned out, using the thruster packs to brake the
Wren
hadn't been as difficult as O'Brien had imagined. He might have even been able to guide her in using only
one pack, given that they got lucky and approached the station on the side with the hangar door and not the other. Luck might have gotten them through.
But probably not
, O'Brien admitted. Without Nog, the
Wren
would have been doomed, and O'Brien would have been faced with the painful choice of abandoning her or dying along with the researchers.
Does he know that?
O'Brien wondered, and then conceded,
He probably does. He can do the math as well as I can.

The transport's port nacelle scraped against the edge of the hatch. O'Brien watched flakes of paint and hull plating flutter out into space. Peering past the ship's stern, he saw a couple of flares from Nog's thruster as he brought the
Wren
to a gentle stop, her bow barely bouncing off the rail at the back of the hangar.

Nog glided into the hangar and grabbed one of the security railings.
“Go ahead, Chief.”

O'Brien, positioned beside the hangar controls, slapped a big red button. He was momentarily surprised by the wave of nostalgia that washed over him for times in his life when important bits of machinery were controlled by big red buttons.

To the chief's surprise, the hangar doors silently slid shut. Overhead lights brightened. As soon as the hatches met and a seal was established, atmosphere hissed into the hangar. Artificial gravity activated and O'Brien's feet touched the deck. Sitting down clumsily, he slapped the harness buckles and gasped gratefully as the thruster's weight dropped away. A second thud made the deck shudder: Nog had likewise freed himself.

Thumbing the catch on his helmet, O'Brien listened
to the suit shutting off the flow of air into his helmet. He lifted it away and inhaled deeply, gratefully, smelling lubricant, the sharp tang of liquid fuel, and oxygen that had been recycled one too many times through an inferior scrubber.
Heaven
, he thought.

Struggling into an upright position, O'Brien walked ponderously over to where Nog still lay and extended his hand, proffering assistance. “Could have been worse.”

Nog puffed out his cheeks and rubbed his brow with his gauntleted hand. “Speak for yourself, Chief. I was almost out of air.”

“Huh,” O'Brien said, “it must have been low to start. I still have a quarter left.”

“No,” Nog said. “It was full. I checked it. I, uh, just breathe heavily.”

“Right.” He decided not to pursue the point. “Let's check on these folk.”

As they crossed the deck to the
Wren
's primary hatch, both men tapped connection points on their sleeves and left bits and pieces of their suits, the parts they needed to interface with the thrusters, in their wake. Without discussion, both had decided to stay in their suits, helmets clipped awkwardly on their backs.

“Were you able to stay in contact with the pilot?” Nog asked.

“Nita wasn't the pilot,” O'Brien said. “But no. The signal kept dropping out. Last I heard from her was ten minutes ago.”

“No damage to the hull,” Nog said.

“Not on this side either,” O'Brien agreed. “But the hole wouldn't have to be very big to . . .”

“I know.”

They both knew. Death by decompression or suffocation was a death in fear and darkness—not an end that O'Brien would wish on anyone.

They checked the hangar deck's interfaces. “Power's on,” Nog said, studying the compact display. “And it seems to be interfacing with the
Wren.
”

“Open her up,” O'Brien said, adding a silent benediction for the passengers and crew.

Nog tapped a control (not a big red button, alas). The
Wren
did not respond immediately. O'Brien sensed a shudder in her frame, as if the ship was considering whether to wake or crumble into dust. Instead, the hatch popped, releasing a burp of stale air, but not opening completely. “Give me a hand with this,” O'Brien said. Nog knelt low for maximum leverage. “Okay, heave.”

While the door didn't slide open easily, neither did it fight them. “No lights,” Nog said, and flicked on the small, bright torch on his suit's left wrist. “Interior hatch.”

A second hatch had opened just enough for them to grip its lip, but it resisted more than the first. O'Brien worried that decompression may have warped the frame, but then remembered the puff of air.
Could have been caught between the hatches
, he thought, but then decided he needed to take control of his imagination.

The interior hatch slid aside, but reluctantly. “It's not warped,” Nog said, huffing. “It's more like something is holding it on the other side.”

“Wait,” O'Brien gasped. “I think I know what this is. Hang on.” He pressed his mouth to the narrow gap and
said, trying to project his voice without shouting, “Can anyone hear me?”

He tilted his head, ear close to the gap. Muffled shouts and expletives. “There's someone alive in there.”

“Why can't we open the door?”

“Someone gummed up the works.”

“What?”

“Well, webbed it up.”

“What?” Nog repeated.

“Help me move this just a bit more,” O'Brien said, ignoring the question. Answers would be forthcoming soon enough anyway. He hoped.

Both engineers shoved at the door, Nog cursing under his breath as he tried to avoid being stepped on. O'Brien knew he was being clumsy, a combination of exhaustion and the bulky suit causing him to flail when he knew he should be trying to think strategically.
What time is it?
he wondered.
How long have we been here?

It moved a few centimeters, enough so that the light from Nog's torch illuminated the space just beyond the hatch, a space filled with white threads. O'Brien cautiously pushed a finger into the cottony mass. “Ginger and Honey have been busy,” he murmured.

“What?” Nog asked. He was, O'Brien thought, sounding progressively less patient.

“The spiders, uh, the arachnowatis . . . Nita's creatures,” O'Brien explained. “I think they may have filled up the passenger cabin with . . . what should I call it? Uh? Webbing?”

“Really?” Nog said, though he had lost the impatient
tone. “Interesting . . . but
why
? They're not planning to, uh, you know . . .
eat
them?”

“No!” O'Brien exclaimed, yanking his hand away from the hatch, his long-dormant arachnophobia flaring to life. “I mean, of course not. I don't think they even eat . . . living things.”

“They don't,” said a muffled voice.