The Colonists (The Movement Trilogy) (4 page)

The operative nodded her head. Yes. I know her well.

Ansel said, She might be important. Who is she?

Did you lose your hand in the war? the operative asked.

Ansel nodded, and continued to eat. The woman, he said.

Do you remember the spaceport sabotage?

Olympus, he said. It was the closest the rebellion got to the inner circle. Yes.

The woman in this photograph is Hatsuye Hayami, the operative had said. She was the rebellion's answer to a deep-cover operative. The spaceport was her.
 

Demolitions specialist?

Hatsuye could blow up a moon with a cup of coffee, the woman said. Specialist would be an understatement.
 

Is she here?
 

She was. You missed her by a few months, though. And if she was traveling with someone else, I certainly never saw her. I could ask around.

Do that, Ansel had said.
 

One thing you should probably know about Hatsuye, though.
 

What's that?

Rumor is she's wired.
 

Wired how?

The woman said, She has several prosthetics. They're not quite as sophisticated as yours, but they're better than average. Right hand, entire left arm. One of her legs. I forget which. She's practically half-machine at this point. They say her prosthetics are wired, that she's always got her finger on the trigger.
 

She's a walking bomb.
 

Essentially.
 

Lovely.

Seven years, always months behind her.

And now she was dead.
 

He wonders if Hatsuye Hayami met a similar fate. And if so, why hadn't she blown up the entire station?
 

Ansel sighs and takes off the skullcap. He winds the cord up, and sets it aside with the screenview.
 

Bring honor to the council
.

Kill them, in other words.
 

Kill them all.

He hasn't killed anyone in years. Since before starting this mission, in fact.
 

He wonders if he'll remember how.

•
 
•
 
•

It's nearly six a.m. when he drifts to sleep.
 

The footsteps wake him up.
 

Unlike the ones earlier, these footsteps don't fade away.

These slow, and stop.
 

Ansel can see a disturbance in the thin reed of light below his compartment door.

He rolls over in bed and searches the bedside shelf in the dark. He finds an earpiece and puts it in.
 

Test, he says.

Quietly, in his ear, he hears a neutral-gender voice respond.

Test successful.

There are more shadows in the hallway now.

More soft steps.
 

Ansel prepares himself.

•
 
•
 
•

The door holds when they kick it in, so they kick it more, and harder. It's metal, but flimsy, and there's enough flex for someone to cram a steel bar into the gap. Someone leans into it, and the bar turns, and then the door pops open with a metallic ring.

Ansel doesn't say a word as the men rush into his room.
 

Nobody hits the lights.

The engineers are backlit by the hallway. They're surprisingly quiet as they grab Ansel and yank him from the bed. The crowd separates as two of the men take him by the arms and drag him roughly down the corridor.

The silence makes it weird.
 

Ansel is used to this sort of thing, but usually the attackers talk shit, or yell.
 

This is weird.
 

He expects a beating, but that isn't what happens.

The men pull him down hallway after hallway until they come to an airlock.

Captain Karkinnen is waiting.

We'll see how long that reach is now, the captain says.
 

Ansel says, I probably can't talk you out of this one, can I.

The captain shakes his head.
 

You're not just a mining station, are you.

The captain shakes his head again.

You're rebellion, Ansel says.

Karkinnen smiles, and one of the men laughs.

You're a long way from home, Council bitch, says an engineer.

Ansel doesn't take his eye off of the captain. That's why you killed her, isn't it. You knew who she was all along.

But the captain doesn't say a word.
 

You killed her because she was Council royalty. Did you still rape her first?
 

Shut the fuck up, says another man.

I've already filed my report, Ansel says. The
Nebulae
is on the Council's radar right now.

The captain shrugs. That's alright. Every dog has his day.
 

Ansel looks around. Nearly every engineer on the ship seems to be here.
 

Test, he says.

What? says the engineer. Ansel recognizes him as Jonah.

Test successful.

What now? Ansel asks. You're going to throw me out, just like you did her? Does that make you feel good?

We thought about keeping you, the captain says. Start a line for you, just like we did for her.
 

You're not attracted to me, Ansel says. Shame.

The captain's smile turns malicious. He steps back and says, Suit him up.

•
 
•
 
•

Captain Karkinnen taps the faceplate.
 

You hear me? he asks.

Inside the space suit, Ansel nods.
 

We had a spare suit lying around, Grant says. Used to be hers, actually. Don't need it anymore. Thought it might be nice to let you think about things while you're out there. Try to imagine what she thought, out there alive for all of two seconds. Imagine that fear. Then hang onto it awhile. Choke on it awhile.
 

Ansel smiles. Pretty interesting plan, he says.
 

We like it, says Jonah.
 

The captain scratches his red beard. We're gonna leave you to it now. You can hang onto something if you want, but I hear the depressurization packs a wallop. Might pull your arms right off. You don't want a hole in your suit.
 

No, I guess I wouldn't, Ansel says.
 

He's curiously unafraid. Every operative prepares for this moment from their first day of training. Ansel never really thought that it would come, but now that it's here, he's calm.
 

You've got four hours of oxygen on your back, Grant says. That ought to be plenty of time to make your peace.

Peace with whom?
 

Oh, you know. God, or whatever you believe in.
 

What do you believe in, Captain?
 

The captain leans in close. His breath fogs up the faceplate.

I believe we're done, he says.

•
 
•
 
•

Ansel stands alone in the center of the airlock.
 

Pressed against the inner windows are the faces of the engineers. They're wild faces, wearing the expressions of animals.

So this is the rebellion, Ansel thinks. A pack of angry dogs.
 

Then someone pushes the button, and the outer doors open.

•
 
•
 
•

The force causes him to black out for a moment.
 

When Ansel wakes up, he panics.
 

Not because he's in the black now, just one more body caught in orbit.

Because he might be too far away from the ship. It hovers above him like a soaring scarab, receding quickly. Lights wink on and off around the airlock door as it closes. The crew has moved to the viewport in the mess hall, gathered around the captain, a small red figure standing in Ansel's favorite spot.

Ansel takes a deep breath.

Detonate, he says.

For the longest moment of his life, nothing happens.

•
 
•
 
•

The
Nebulae
was a familiar station to Ansel when he had boarded. Satellite-class, mining specialty. The station looked like a large beetle, with wide, insectile arms that sprouted from its sides.
 

Onyx operatives were well-versed in common ship models.

Learn your environments well, Mirs Korski had taught his men. You will spend the rest of your life in the black, on freighters, on private ships, on space stations, on colony stations. When you board, know your exits. Know the weaknesses. Know the blind corners and dead alleys. Never be caught unawares.

Always be prepared
.

Ansel's specialty was demolitions, too.

When he boarded a ship this far from Council space, at his first opportunity, he installed voice-activated charges.
 

A ship like this had all sorts of fragmentation points.
 

Ansel had chosen the one in the bunk rooms.
 

It was easy when the ship was empty.

•
 
•
 
•

Come on, come on, he thinks.
 

He opens his mouth to give the command again, certain he's too far out of range.

And with a tiny burst of light, the ship comes apart.

The men in the window are thrown to the floor.

One figure remains, and Ansel imagines that it is the captain.

He watches as the ship unfolds like origami.
 

Hatsuye Hayami could not have done a better job, he thinks.

All it ever takes is a small charge.
 

You just light the fuse, and sometimes the rest takes care of itself.

The ship pulls apart like a puzzle.

Ansel watches as the men spill into the black.

Just like Evelyn.
 

•
 
•
 
•

Hours pass.
 

The ship is in torn and scattered pieces high above him. There are sparks. Lights flicker and go dark. Fires start and are snuffed out by the vacuum of space. He has drifted far enough now that he cannot pick the shapes of the men out of the wreckage.
 

Everything looks so small now. He's tired of looking at the ruins.

He tries to roll himself over without starting a spin he can't stop.

A slow turn, some counter-motion, and then he's looking down at Triton. It's a pitted, cold rock. It looks like an unsplit melon.

If you've seen one moon, you've seen them all.

But beyond it, the great blue planet rises. Its surface is an oil painting, deeply saturated, rich with swirling cloud rivers and bottomless gaseous canyons. He imagines trailing his fingers in it like a man in a sailboat. What a nice sensation that must have been once. Ansel has never seen an ocean, has never been in a boat.

It's a beautiful view. A man could die happy after such a sight.

Ansel does.

TASNEEM

What do you mean, it's jammed?

I mean, I'm pretty sure our signal is being blocked. I don't know. What do you want me to --

Tasneem leans over the Tarae's workspace. Listen closely. If our signal is jammed, then that means we've been found out. If we've been found out, then we'll probably be dead inside of an hour. That includes you, I should add. These won't be pretty deaths. They won't be calm. Have you ever had your eyes scooped out? No, of course not -- look, you have two very nice eyes, right there. So take a deep breath, look closely at that data, put your thoughts together, and then give me the right answer to my question: what's the status of our broadcast?

Tarae's skin has gone clammy. She nods, and turns back to her workstation.
 

Tasneem waits while the woman studies her screen.

She's nervous, the poor thing
, David says.

She'll get over it, Tasneem thinks.
 

You can't just terrorize the volunteers, Tasneem.
 

She'll get over it, David.
 

Tasneem taps Tarae on the shoulder. I'm still here, in case you had forgotten.

•
 
•
 
•

So. Not jammed.

Not jammed, Tasneem thinks. And a good goddamn thing, too. I wasn't lying to her about what happens if we're discovered.

The eyes thing might have been a little much
, David says.
Tarae is a quality pilot, she's a great navigator, but she's not acquainted with broadcasting, Tasneem. She's not a communications specialist. She'll learn.

She got the point, though. They'd do bad things to her pretty face.

Have you considered moving us out of the belt? There's too much interference here. It's no surprise the signals are getting disrupted.

Tasneem walks purposefully across the deck and takes the stairs quickly. The asteroid belt is good for cover, David. You know that.

Well,
David says,
that's only sort of true. It's also the most likely --

The most likely place for us to be hiding out. Yes, I know. But you're smart enough to know how hard it'll be for them to find us out here, David. If they're even looking.

I'm confident they're looking.

So am I, Tasneem thinks. Which is why we should stay here.
 

Forever? Or for now?

For now, Tasneem thinks. We don't talk about forever.

•
 
•
 
•

Tasneem walks into her quarters, pulls the heavy door shut behind her, and falls across the bed. She buries her face in the quilt, and sighs with pleasure at the warmth her breath creates.
 

Sleep would be so nice, she thinks. The broadcast is out. We're dark. I could sleep for --

A light tap on her door interrupts her.