Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1) (12 page)

She punched up the email connection on the local server and entered her father’s user name – easy enough, it was in every email he’d sent, and she’d gotten enough of those. Somewhat harder was the password, but even that wasn’t too difficult. She’d guessed his email password years ago. She’d never told him that she knew, and never said what a stupid password it was, even though she had wanted to so badly! Her uncharacteristic restraint would pay dividends today if he hadn’t changed the thing.

Carmen typed the password into her console. Miranda – her mother’s name, dead for ten years. But Carmen’s father had never so much as dated again, at least as far as she knew. The password was a dead giveaway. If the man ever entertained romantic notions with another woman (and she wished he would), then he would have changed the thing.

But he hadn’t. His email opened for her, and the top message was from the World Health Organization, on Earth. Complete with a whole bunch of attached folders. She downloaded them all to her console, and carefully logged out of his email. No sense leaving traces that would let him know his account was compromised.

The WHO had sent her father a wealth of examinations and data. She scanned the initial medical reports. The man – a teenage boy, really – had been found in the quarantine zone, showing some of the early signs of the illness. He’d been taken to a treatment facility, which was basically a big tent city where soldiers were escorting the sick so that volunteer medical personnel could watch over them while they died.

But this one didn’t die. He got better.

That got everyone’s attention quickly. They didn’t have any survivors from this virus. Not one person lived through it. Some people lasted a while – the longest was a few weeks. But no one got better after becoming ill. At first they thought he had simply been sick with something else. But no – when they tested his blood for antibodies to the asteroid virus, there they were.

The antibodies that no other human had been able to build, and which might make creating a cure possible. Carmen could see why her father was so excited. Almost, she could excuse him barging into her room without knocking first. This was exciting stuff. The sort of thing you pray for, as a virologist. The virulence of the virus itself was working for them, in this case. With a less lethal virus, it might take a lot longer to find someone who was immune. But with everyone who caught the virus dying, the one in a million person who was immune to the thing was like a flower growing in the middle of a fresh-cut lawn.

She opened some of the other attachments. The doctors on Earth had done their homework on this guy. They had electron micrographs of the virus trying to crack into a small sample of the teen’s blood. She watched the images flick by her screen – really, it was a collection of still images, not a video. But it played out the virus’s attempt to invade his cells. She watched as the virus effectively broke into his cell and injected its DNA. The cell followed the new instructions and started manufacturing new virus.

And then along rolled an antibody cell – which enveloped the cell and killed it. It looked like the boy had somehow gotten the lucky straw, and simply had better antibodies to deal with this thing. Which didn’t really make sense. Antibodies were created by the body as a reaction to an invader. All of the patients she’d seen had developed antibodies. They just didn’t work fast enough to stop the virus before it spread through the body, out of control. So what was different about this kid? She had a sense that the doctors who’d examined him had missed something, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

She pulled up some stills she had made, back on Earth, from another patient. This patient had died. There was the virus again, infecting the cell. The cell began making new virus, just like in the other images. And there was an antibody, swooping in to kill the infected cell and stop the virus! But before the antibody could swallow the infected cell, new virus sprouted all over the cell membrane and broke away. The cell was destroyed, but not before dozens of new viruses were released.

Carmen flicked back to the boy. She played the images one after another, chewing a fingernail. She ran both sets of images side by side, carefully matching the time stamps. One thing became very clear – the boy’s antibodies weren’t any faster than anyone else’s. So why was he still alive?

She looked closely at the cell, right before the antibody swallowed it. No virus escaped from the boy’s cell. The cell had built plenty of new virus – she could see it breaking through the membrane. But none of it broke away from the cell. It was trapped on the cell membrane!

That had to be it. The research she was reading – it was about stopping the virus from breaking free from the cell membrane. About stopping it from spreading to other cells. And this boy’s cells had figured out a way to do that. The key wasn’t in his antibodies. It was in his cells.

Now all she had to do was figure out how his cells were doing it. She sighed, tapping her fingers on her desktop. Easier said that done, with Levins in charge of the lab. He wasn’t going to want lab resources spent on anything except the vaccine they’d been working so hard on. She’d have to find a way to manage him if she was going to have a shot at working on this. But how to do that?

P
ATRICK SAT
IN the command chair of the shuttle. He’d been ordered to leave the engine hot, which meant by regulation they needed a pilot in the seat. He was stuck here, grinding his teeth together. He glanced down at his tablet. No messages. He’d tried reaching out to some of his contacts, to see if he could stop Dr. Rosa from getting him grounded. But so far nobody had responded, which felt faintly ominous.

At least the flight back to Earth had been uneventful. Rosa had stayed back in the cabin area, with a couple of crew to take care of his needs there. Patrick had stayed forward as much as he could, preferring the solitude of the cockpit. Without Amy here to fly with him, he had a lot more work to do, anyway. He hadn’t wanted to ask Amy to come – too much chance that she’d end up tarred and feathered with the same brush.

He’d landed the bird in Florida. Which was a mess, but not as bad off as Texas. It was the nearest spaceport to Atlanta, where the guy they had to pick up was located. The guy Rosa was going to pick up, anyway. Dr. Rosa had assured Patrick that he’d have a new pilot with him when he returned.

But in the meantime, he had to keep the engines warm, in case they needed to lift off quickly. The virus had spread through the Florida panhandle, and down the west coast. No confirmed cases near the spaceport yet, but people were panicking. It was messy out there, and Patrick could see a few fires burning in the distance. He wasn’t sure what was burning, but it wasn’t good.

The radio squawked. “Package is inbound, arrival in five minutes. Stay at your post with the engines hot until you’re relieved.”

Relieved. As in, replaced. So Rosa had managed to get a new pilot sent up. Damn him. “Roger,” he said into his microphone, he voice flat. What else was he supposed to say?

Patrick daydreamed briefly about just taking the shuttle away. Flying back to the moon. Oh, they’d come get him eventually. But at least he’d get to go home one more time before he was grounded. It was only now sinking in that he was done. His career in space was over. Finished with a kiss.

He couldn’t find it in his heart to be angry with Carmen, though. He knew the risks, and he’d taken the chance anyway. Truth be told, he still wasn’t sure that he missed the moon as much as he missed Carmen.

The shuttle was parked out on a huge landing strip. On the moon, he could just lift off straight up. But here on Earth, the shuttle would have to take off like a jumbo jet, gain altitude like a plane, and then go supersonic to break out of the atmosphere. Off in the distance Patrick could see the control tower, and the buildings where the spaceport’s crew worked. He saw a vehicle leaving the tower, heading toward his ship. That would be the doctor and his new pilot.

Patrick sat there, watching the car get larger through his window. Another few minutes, and it would be at the shuttle. It would drop people off…and pick him up. He ground his teeth together, wishing there was something he could do. Another glance at his tablet showed him nothing new. Nobody was going to save his ass today.

He looked back up at the car, and was startled to see that now there were two vehicles. A big supply truck was coming from the hangars to the west. Probably more gear that the doctor needed. Or maybe just random supplies that the powers-that-be wanted to send to the moon. More domes, perhaps. Whatever they were bringing, it didn’t matter much to Patrick now.

Another minute and they’d arrive. He stood up from his console and went aft to open the hatches. No sense delaying the inevitable any longer. He was more used to gliding through these passages than he was walking them, but either way he knew the route by heart. His palm-print opened the passenger hatch, hot air roaring into the cool space within the ship. The day outside was hot – Florida weather at its worst. Patrick blinked a few times in the bright daylight, trying to get his watering eyes to adjust. A black SUV was just pulling up alongside the shuttle. That would be the doctor. He squinted, and saw the big white cargo truck still making its way closer.

A pair of men in dark suits stepped from the front of the SUV. Patrick saw the bulges of pistols and raised his eyebrows. Amy was right. Things really were getting bad down here. One of the men scanned the field. His eyes seemed to linger on the cargo truck for a moment, but then they turned to him, instead.

“Mr. Wynn. I’m to escort you back to the tower after the doctor is aboard,” the guard said. “My partner will be relieving you as pilot.”

Patrick nodded. He had expected as much. The other guard went to the rear door of the vehicle and opened it. Dr. Rosa stepped out, holding one hand at his brow to shelter his eyes from the sun. He saw Patrick and scowled, looking away quickly. Rosa reached back inside the vehicle to assist someone else out.

It was a kid. A teenager, anyway. Kid looked as frightened as anyone Patrick had ever seen. His eyes darted about like a scared bird. Rosa was saying something to the kid, hopefully something reassuring. It seemed to work, whatever he said, because the kid slowly eased his way out of the SUV.

Patrick heard the sound of a diesel engine shifting gears, and looked back over at the cargo truck. It wasn’t downshifting to stop, though – it was still accelerating!

Time seemed to slow down for Patrick. He sprinted down the ramp and grabbed Rosa by the arm. The guards seemed confused. Both pulled their guns, one aiming at the truck, the other at Patrick.

Patrick yanked hard, pulling the doctor away from the SUV. He heard gunfire, and pain lanced through his left leg. It crumpled under him, but he doggedly hung on to Rosa’s arm. He wasn’t even sure why he was trying to save the man, except that he knew he meant the world to Carmen, and she meant the world to him.

He hit the ground hard on his left side, the doctor landing on top of him. All his wind left him in an instant. Things started moving at twice normal speed, then. He could barely keep up.

The truck plowed through the space where Rosa had just been standing and smashed into the side of the SUV. The SUV may have been armored – probably was. But the truck had the advantage of mass. The SUV’s window’s exploded in showers of glass. There was a sound of rending steel, and the SUV came apart under the impact, chunks of steel flying about like enormous shrapnel.

Patrick levered himself up onto an elbow. “Come on, doc!” he shouted over the noise. “We have to get onto the shuttle!”

He forced himself back to his feet. His left leg was screaming at him every time he put even a little weight on it, but he hobbled to the ramp and started hopping his way up it. Rosa was right behind him. A glance over his shoulder showed him carnage. Men were jumping out of the truck. They had weapons – assault rifles. The guards went down in a hail of bullets. The kid Rosa was escorting made a sharp yelp as the rounds hit his body, and Dr. Rosa looked back at the sound.

“No!” The anguish and horror in that one word were terrible to hear. Rosa stopped in his tracks, his hands flat at his sides.

“You can’t help him! Come on!” Patrick shouted, grabbing his arm. Just a few more steps and they’d be aboard. The engines were still hot. They could get away.

He turned to run those last few feet, but someone fired a rifle at the ramp in front of him. He stopped in his tracks, raising his hands slowly and turning around.

“Careful!” said one of the armed men. “We need him alive.”

“Who are you people?” Patrick asked. There were six of them, all armed. All white men, youngish. None of them were wearing uniforms. Just jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers. The one who’d spoken had some boots on, sunglasses, blond hair with a scruffy beard, and a southern accent. They didn’t look like terrorists. They looked like desperate men.

“You cretins,” Rosa said. “You killed him.” He shook his head, looking down at the still form of the teen laying on the ground. “The one hope we had, and now he’s dead.”

“We need both of ‘em alive, boss?” one of the gunmen asked.

“Yeah, the one bleeding there is the pilot. The other one is the doctor. We need ‘em both,” said the guy in sunglasses. “Get the others out of the truck.”

Two of the men went around to the back of the truck and opened the doors. There were people in there? Patrick winced, partly from the pain in his leg, which was getting worse. And partly at the thought of being in the back of that truck when it impacted the SUV. It would not have been a fun place to be.

His eyes got even bigger when he saw who was coming out. The first to step down was an old woman, holding her forehead. Blood dripped through her fingers. Behind her were more people, all banged up. He thought he saw one broken arm there, but mostly just a lot of bruises. Women, children, and the elderly. That was the cargo the truck carried.

Patrick felt the ramp tilting under his feet. He reached out to the rail to steady himself before he fell. But then his left leg wasn’t supporting him anymore, and he half-fell anyway. Why did his leg hurt so much? He looked down. The sleek silver cloth was stained a deep red. Shot. He’d been shot, that’s right.

“Better patch him up, doc,” said the sunglasses man. “He dies, so do you.”

Strong hands were there, probing the wound. Patrick screamed in pain.

“I need the med kit from inside,” a voice said. Patrick couldn’t tell who it was. His eyes were closed.

* * *

P
atrick came to with a start
, feeling like liquid fire was burning its way through his veins. He sat up fast, breathing as hard as if he’d been sprinting, his heart pounding a mile a minute.

“What the hell?” he managed to gasp out.

“Sorry,” Dr. Rosa was kneeling beside him. “They said I needed to wake you up.”

“Drugs?” Patrick asked. A glance down at his leg was more than he really needed. Rosa had cut open his pants leg and put a dressing on the wound, but there was a lot of red on the cloth and on the dressing. He’d lost a good deal of blood.

Rosa nodded in reply. “You’re going to really feel it later,” he warned.

Patrick looked around. Two gunmen stood nearby. He realized he wasn’t on the ramp anymore. They’d moved him inside the ship, and they must have sealed the hatch. Of course they did. The spaceport would have sent reinforcements to take back the shuttle. So why hadn’t they?

“They’re using us as hostages,” Rosa said. “They said they’ll kill us if the men outside assault.”

Now that was a credible threat. They weren’t going to risk Rosa getting killed, not if they thought they could negotiate. “So what do they want?” Patrick asked.

“We want you to take us to the moon,” said the sunglasses man. Only now, he didn’t have his glasses on anymore. Somehow, his face looked familiar, but Patrick couldn’t place him. “We knew they’re preparing to evacuate key people to the moon base, keep ‘em safe there until the good doctor here completes his miracle cure. We’re just making sure that our people are among the key people.”

Patrick levered himself up into a sitting position. “And what makes you think that I will take you there?”

The man laughed, and leaned in close. “I could always shoot you in the other leg. After all, you don’t need your legs to fly this shuttle, do you? But right now, I just need you to negotiate our takeoff with the tower over there.”

Patrick closed his eyes. He was stuck with these people. No easy way out of this one. Earth wasn’t going to risk attacking the shuttle, not at the cost of losing Dr. Rosa. So he wasn’t going to get any help from outside. He looked over at Rosa, who seemed a little pale, and had to stifle a grin at the man’s discomfort. There was a certain pleasurable irony in the fact that he now held in his hands the life of the man who’d tried to destroy him. But it was a short lived humor. He couldn’t let Carmen’s father come to harm before, outside, and he could no more allow it to happen now.

He reached a hand up to his captor. The man took it, and Patrick used the arm to pull himself up to his feet. “If we’re going to be shipping off together, could I have your name?”

“Most folks call me Ed.”

“I’m Pat. Shall we?”

“Oh, after you,” Ed drawled, grinning and waving him ahead.

Patrick limped up the hall toward the cockpit. He popped the hatch and stepped inside. Ed and one of his men came in right behind him, making the space a bit cramped. He sat down, sighing with relief as the weight came off his wounded leg. Whatever Rosa had given him was dulling the pain some, but his leg still felt like it had a hot poker stuck in it every time he stepped.

“If I just take off, they’re going to shoot us down,” Patrick said.

“With the doctor on board?” Ed scoffed. “Don’t worry. I want you to talk to ‘em anyway.” His voice sounded calm, but Patrick could see him sweating.

Patrick turned back to his console and keyed the microphone. “Tower, this is Patrick Wynn, over.”

“Wynn, what the hell is going on over there?” The voice replying was authoritative and loud. Sounded like someone in the military. Probably an officer. They tended to talk in that tone of voice.

“Well, sir, the shuttle has been taken by six armed men, accompanied by some noncombatants,” Patrick paused there to see if Ed reacted. He’d just handed his team some valuable intelligence about his captors, but Ed didn’t seem to realize that he ought to be objecting. Good enough. “Dr. Rosa and I are alive. The rest of the doctor’s party is dead. Our captors want to lift off.”