Red Planet Run (4 page)

We drew pistols and slapped ammopaks into the pistol butts. “Loading.”

“Lock ’em down.”

“Locking.”

“Let’s go.”

We followed Perry across the hangar and up a set of rudimentary rungs carved straight up the face of the rock. Ceres, as the saying went, had enough gravity to keep your feet and your food down provided they started out that way; still, in p-suits and carrying weapons and first-aid equipment, most of us were out of breath when we emerged on the planetesimal’s surface.

The landing site was one of many spaced evenly about the leveled plateau. The berth itself was functional, not fancy, defined by a series of concentric rings and tie-downs at intervals around the outermost circle. In the half-dawn, half-dusk of Sol’s distant light, I could see six or seven other ships.

I had time to make out the bulky, utilitarian lines of a SeaLandSpace freighter berthed at Dock Four before Perry swore and ran forward. Beyond her moving figure I could see other, smaller figures climbing the hull of the ship. One of them stopped to look back, a rifle rising in his hands.

The trouble with landing sites is they’ve been leveled and flattened within an inch of their lives, which is good for setting down a spaceship safely but not so good for finding cover when someone is shooting at you. A thin beam of red light sliced through the rock in front of me. I ran after Perry, bouncing with every step, hoping my next one wouldn’t hit with enough force to send me into orbit.

A figure in a black pressure suit materialized out of the ground and tripped me as I went by. I went down hard, bounced twice, and hadn’t even stopped moving before I found myself rolled to my back with a knee on my chest. The knee shifted and his helmet bent forward as he looked down.

A click sounded in my ears, followed by a voice I didn’t recognize. When the words registered, I looked up into eyes with no iris, pupils dilated and black, and so cold I shivered inside my p-suit.

“Well, well, well,” the voice purred. “Star Svensdotter in person; what an unexpected bonus.”

I heaved beneath him. A gauntleted hand smashed into my visor. Miraculously, it held, but my ears were ringing and my vision was blurred. “Now, now, now, mustn’t try any of your shenanigans, darling Star; you’ll make me angry.” He chuckled beneath his breath, a sound so horrible and so seductive that I couldn’t move.

“How shall I kill you, hmmm?” His voice came clearly over the ringing in my ears. “Shall I rip out your oh-two connector?” I felt the pressure of a hand behind my shoulder. “Or I could unlock the ring on your helmet.” Something fiddled with my neck ring. The chuckle again. “But no, I think I prefer the direct approach.”

My vision cleared enough to see the fisted gauntlet rise, and I heaved again, trying to get my legs up to where I could snag his head, my arms immobilized between the weight of his boots and the bulk of my suit. The fist smashed into my visor. My ears rang with the sound of the blow, and the faceplate misted over as the waste system began leaking, but the visor held.

“Kwan! Are you on this channel! Kwan, answer up!”

The gauntlet, raised to strike again, paused. “Kwan, we are leaving! Move your ass, dammit!”

I felt the vibration of a drive powering up beneath my back. The gauntlet descended again, and I came alive enough to twist one arm free and block the blow. “Another time, darling Star.” He was laughing, face split wide in a feral, manic grin as he leapt to his feet and bounded off; graceful, bouncing strides that carried him quickly to the ship. He hurdled the rapidly reddening circle surrounding the stern and caught the sill of the hatch with his fingers. Rough hands pulled him in the rest of the way. Those same hands shoved out two other figures, and they fell helplessly into the ship’s exhaust.

“No!” I stumbled to my feet, only to be thrown back by the blast of the exhaust as the ship lifted up and out and away. On my back, I stared up as the ship arced above Ceres, into the vast blackness of deep space, until it faded into a cold light to match the distant stars burning their icy brands into the universe’s hide, until it faded from sight altogether.

I was afraid to move, afraid that either I was broken or my suit was. “Star? Star!” My sister’s voice came thinly over the headset. “Star, where are you?”

“Charlie?”

“Star! Where are you?”

“Over here.” I looked around and found a marker. “By the Dock Three marker. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, how are you?”

“I’m all right, I think.” I moved a hand, an arm, a leg. My fists still clenched, I still felt my toes; the telltales inside my helmet were green all the way across, although I didn’t see how they could be. Even the mist was clearing from my visor, or maybe it had been my vision that had fogged up.

I pushed myself up to my feet. I saw a pressure suit approaching and took a step in its direction. Something tripped me and I almost fell. I looked down to see a human hand, extracted somehow from its p-suit gauntlet, lying palm up on the surface of Ceres. Its blood had boiled away in the vacuum, and all that was left was crumpled skin and bones, a withered claw frozen forever in a futile clutch at something it would never grasp, now.

I heard another voice over my headset. Perry. “What was the cargo? What was that freighter carrying?”

Kevin answered her. “Oh-two, nitro, and the big H.”

A silence, then Perry’s voice again. “Everything they need to make water and air. And sell it.”

“Oh yes.” Kevin, grim. “They knew what they were after, all right. Buena Suerte makes this run once a month to Piazzi City Utilities.” He paused. “At least, they did. I don’t know if there’s anybody left back on Buena Suerte to continue the practice.”

Perry sounded tired. “Sandy, this is Perry. Which Guard has the Buena Suerte beat?”

“Kamehameha’s already on his way.”

“Alone?”

“Dila’s meeting him there.”

The pressure suit moving toward me got close enough for me to see Charlie’s face behind the visor. She followed my gaze to the hand at my feet, and immediately began looking for the rest of the person. She found him, twenty meters away. He wouldn’t be needing the hand.

On her way back, Charlie found the suit sealer where I had dropped it. “We won’t be needing this.”

I looked across the field at the two charred lumps, all that remained of the two crew members tossed into the exhaust. “I guess not.” My stomach turned, but my p-suit had taken enough abuse for one day. I managed not to puke until I was back on Outpost.

I cleaned up and joined Perry in her office, where I found her assigning patrols with darts thrown at the Guard roster. I ducked out of the way just in time. Neither of us laughed.

She sighted in on a last dart and let fly. “Good, Klell takes the Sutter cluster. That should do it, Archy. Post the assignments.”

“It’s done, Perry.”

“Thanks, Arch. Austin out.”

Perry wasn’t as calm as she pretended; I saw her hands shake as she collected the darts and put them away. I stood where I was and we stared at each other in bleak silence.

Into it she said, “I’m resigning my post with the Star Guard, Star. I’ve already talked it over with Ursula. She’s ready to take over, and she’ll do a good job.”

It wasn’t what I’d expected, and I was caught off balance, not knowing what to say. “Perry, I—is it what happened today?”

“No.”

“Is it the pay? I can—”

She gave a brief smile. “You know it isn’t. What with the bonuses you keep throwing at us, I’ve got more banked on Terranova than I can ever spend.” She grinned unexpectedly, a mischievous grin I’d never seen before on that terrier-like face. “But I’m going to try.”

Some people you can buy with more money or authority; some you can sell on the importance of the job itself; some you can flatter with inflated estimates of their ability. Perry Austin wasn’t for sale and was beyond flattery, and if she thought the job important, it was a matter of little more than holding the door and getting out of the way. Once the job was finished, it was again a matter of holding the door and getting out of the way. Perry had been a pilot with STS and with the Department of Space, and had pioneered the return of the Big Dumb Rocket. Crip, my chief pilot, had lured her to the Belt because she’d never been there before, and she convinced herself to stay when she and Ursula Lodge and Caleb Mbele O’Hara had conceived the notion of a Star Guard, an asteroidal answer to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 1.8 A.U.’s out from the Klondike.

Perry was one hell of a starter, but not much of a finisher. It was a wonder she’d sat still for as long as she had. If you could call patrolling millions of klicks of Asteroid Belt sitting still. I don’t waste time fighting battles I’ve already lost. I sat down, more heavily than the half-gee of Outpost required. “Where are you going?”

“Back to Luna, for starters. I’ve been on the net to Deke at SSI. We’ve already started preliminary design on a ship.”

“And when you get it built?”

She shrugged and grinned again. “I was at JPL when the Odysseus II pictures started coming in. Ever since, I’ve wanted to see one of those Ionian lava volcanoes up close enough to singe my eyebrows by. I talked it over with Tori Agoot at Maria Mitchell Observatory; he thinks he can get funding to underwrite part of the trip as long as I promise him pictures and data.”

“They going with you?”

“Who?”

“The Smith triplets.”

Perry looked surprised. “Of course.”

Of course. When Crip had signed Perry on I’d thought they’d be company for each other. Instead, the day after Crip moved in with Mother, the Smith triplets, John, Joseph and, yes, James—three very large brothers from Orem, Utah— moved in with Perry, a conclusive demonstration of why I have no future in matchmaking.

So there went four of the Star Guard’s most experienced veterans at one whack, one of them a founding member, three of them in the first draft of trainees. “Wonderful,” I said. Perry looked a little flattened, and I said, infusing my voice with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, “Wonderful, Perry. Of course I’m sorry to lose you—all four of you,” I added a trifle grimly, “but your own ship? Your own itinerary?”
Your own harem?
I thought, but didn’t say. “There’s no way you can pass this up. Hell, I envy you. Have fun.”

“I intend to.” She gave me an appraising look. “You should try it yourself one day.”

Her words were such a strong echo of the conversation in the O.K. Corral that I was immediately suspicious. “Has Helen been talking to you?”

She looked startled. “Is Helen here?”

“Yeah, she—forget it; it doesn’t matter.”

Perry put a hand out. “I’ll miss you, Star. Working for you has been an education in how to get things done. I’ve learned a lot, and I feel like I’ve made a good friend. Thanks.”

I took the hand and tried to smile. “That means something, coming from you. Thanks.”

We shook on it. “Now, about this mess.”

“Who were they?” I sat down across from her. “Do we know?”

“I’ve got an idea.” She nodded at the dart board. “It’s why I’ve got Klell out in the Sutter cluster. There’s been a bunch causing trouble out there for the last year.”

“I know. But not like this.”

“No,” she echoed. “Not like this.” She looked at me, transmitting a sheer, scorching, all-encompassing rage all the more impressive for its dead-calm certainty. “We’ll catch them. I swear to you, Star, my last official act as head of the Star Guard will be to bring you their heads on a fucking platter.”

I summoned up a smile, a weak one. “I know.”

Perry knew me pretty well. “What is it?”

I was silent for a moment. “One of them had me down. He was just about to punch my faceplate out when I heard someone call his name.”

She sat up. “You were on the same frequency?”

I licked my lips. “He read mine on my chest readout and switched over. He recognized me, Perry.”

“And?” she prompted.

“And I don’t think he liked me much. He had a good time discussing various ways to shuffle off my mortal coil, until somebody on the ship got the right channel and told him they were taking off.”

“Did you get his name?”

“The other guy called him Kwan. Mean anything to you?”

Perry put her feet up on the desk, clasped her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling, a frown on her face. After a moment she said, “Archy?”

“Yes, Perry?”

“Access Holmes for me. Scan for William Kwan.”

“You got it. Kwan, William, born Beijing, Terra, 1976, entered Patrol Academy, 1994, sworn in 1998, posted to Orientale Base, G.C. Lodge, commanding, also 1998.”

I jerked upright. “What?”

“I’m not finished, boss. He made PFC half a dozen times and was busted back down to private every time, for everything from fighting in ranks to insubordination. This guy wasn’t exactly Sergeant York.” Archy paused. “This is the best part. Kwan was one of the Patrolmen on liberty on Terranova that day at Kate’s.”

A chill feathered up my spine. The memory, seventeen years old, was still painful, and still painfully clear. “You mean Kwan was one of the soldiers who raped that girl?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute, Archy,” I said sharply. “Those Patrolmen, with the exception of the sergeant who was executed a week later, were sentenced to life at hard labor in Luna Maximum. It was the last right thing Grayson Cabot Lodge the Fourth did in his life.”

“Kwan escaped. Ten years ago, with a dozen others. A Volksrocket disappeared off its launch pad that night. They must have come out here.”

“Bingo,” Perry said, frown clearing.

“Son of a bitch!” I rose and paced, furious. “So that’s how he knew who I was!”

“Yup. You remember him?”

I paused, and shook my head. “Uniforms is all I remember. They all looked so neat and so sharp for having gang-raped and then beaten someone senseless. Talk to me about Kwan out here.”

“I didn’t know it was Kwan until today, and most of the rest is rumor. Over the past seven years there have been a series of attacks on some of the more isolated Belter claims. The claims are stripped of anything useful, everything else is destroyed, and the claim abandoned. The attackers have been pretty thorough up to now; there usually aren’t any witnesses. But about three months ago—you hear about No Return?”