The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Why had he expected any better? Was it because Wulf had invented the Lattice? Because Erling seemed to idolize him?

He sucked on his soup straw to buy some time to think.

Whatever it was, Shaw cursed himself. He’d forgotten just who he was dealing with. These were raiders. Terrorists. They’d nearly killed him (twice). They’d separated him from his wife and daughter. They’d had no qualms about sacrificing Ono, Pelier, and the hovercraft pilot. In the wonder of space, in the thrill of finding himself alive again, he’d forgotten who they truly were.

One week.

That was all he would get.

He remembered what Tranq had said in that underground sphere—“It’s not like you have much of a chance of surviving the vote when this is all over anyway.” Exactly. All they had to do was jump into his mind and they would see that they could not trust him. That he would betray them at the first opportunity he had.

But at the same time … Shaw desperately wanted to live. Ellie and his daughter were a thousand miles below him. Could he somehow make it home to them? Could he survive? Shaw’s mind was racing. It wouldn’t take much—just a good hard bump against the Orbitel’s shield, and everyone would be alerted to the presence of the
Walden
. But then what? They’d be destroyed, right? Could he get off the ship in time?

He needed some time to explore. To study his options.

“Just how many of you are there?” he asked. “Who gets a vote?”

“Eight of us,” Wulf answered. “Here on the
Walden
, I mean. We’re a small team, but incredibly effective, and we have hundreds around the world we communicate with.”

“So I need … what, four votes to stay alive?”

“Five, actually,” Wulf said, and Shaw’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Four is not a majority.”

“You’re telling me that if it’s a four to four vote, I still die?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

Shaw digested that. “Who are the eight?”

“Me, Taveena Parr here, Erling Allred, Tranq Morales. You’ve met the four of us already. Plus Kuhn Lono, Annalise Leeuwen, Jpeg Gagnon, and Helix.”

Shaw didn’t answer. He was counting votes.

“You should know that Taveena and I were the ones who pushed most strongly to recruit you. Assuming we think you’ve come around, that’s two votes,” Wulf said. Evidently Shaw’s mental math was fairly transparent.

“Do you really want to work with the guy whose job it was to defend the Lattice?” Shaw asked, looking pointedly at Taveena.

“I’m working with the guy who created it. If you can serve a purpose and help me achieve my goal—and I believe eventually you can—I’ll work with anyone.”

Shaw was once against taken aback by the calculation of this woman. He believed her. So long as he was useful, she would vote for him to live.

So that was two votes, if he could convince them he was in earnest about wanting to help.

From what he’d seen so far, he thought he could count on Erling for a third vote. Tranq wouldn’t be one of them, he was almost certain of that. That left two more votes to find.

“You should also know that the attack on the Lattice that you foiled was devised by Tranq and Helix. I would be surprised if either of them will come around to bringing you on board,” Wulf said.

“And Jpeg’s our main engineer and communications officer,” Taveena said.

Shaw shook his head, not understanding the significance.

“He was the one who should have realized that the spheres would register our fingerprints,” Taveena said. She was quiet, but Shaw noticed her fierce eyes. He thought her breath had picked up too. She was still furious.

“We
all
should have realized it,” Wulf said.

“But it was
his
responsibility,” she insisted.

They both cast looks at Shaw and then stopped. Wulf scratched at the back of his head and looked away.
No one wants to fight in front of the guest.

So Tranq, and these other two, Helix and Jpeg, were likely “no” votes. That left Kuhn and Annalise. And if he couldn’t get both of them …

But maybe he could escape before it even got to the vote. He had seven days. A lot could happen in seven days.

“I know this is a lot to take in right now, Byron. And I don’t expect you to just immediately want to join us. You’ve got a lot to learn about just how terrible the Lattice truly has been for humanity,” Wulf said. “But I want to give you some incentive.”

Wulf held up a band of metal, and Shaw felt as if his body lurched toward it. He couldn’t believe how long he’d gone without his ring, how much he’d missed it, how much he wanted to slip it on and jump.

“Tonight, I want you to get some sleep. After what you’ve just been through today, I’m surprised you haven’t fallen asleep already. But when you wake up, I’m going to ask that you spend some time with us. Get to know us. Have an open mind. If you can do that, then tomorrow night I’ll give you this.

“You can see what’s going on at the Lattice Installation, watch your own funeral, or—of course—visit Ellie.” Wulf put the Altair ring back into his pocket. “I want you to win this vote, Byron. If time with the ring will show you that we are trustworthy, I’m willing to do it. I just ask that you have an open mind.”

Shaw wasn’t sure he’d be able to fall asleep, but that proved to be a short-lived fear. Within two minutes, he was fast asleep and as dead to the world as he’d been in his coffin.

When he awoke, he had no way of knowing how long he’d been asleep, but he felt like he’d never slept so long or so deeply in his life.
How could being dead be so exhausting?

Shaw rested his eyes again, and was seriously thinking about falling back asleep.
But what if I have slept for days? I’ve just slept away time I could have been using to either escape or convince these people to trust me.

He undid the belt on his bed and pushed up, enjoying the sensation of freefall. He spun himself to a sitting position and put his feet on the sticky floors. He practiced rolling and unrolling them off of the floor. He noticed a few food bags floating in his room. Water, soup, and some sort of bean thing. He devoured them as fast as he could.

Once done with those, he felt ready to face the world, and Shaw followed the sticky floors into the great room, as he’d come to think of it. The chairs were gone, and the air was full of people. Taveena, Tranq, Wulf and a small woman Shaw hadn’t met yet were floating in the middle of the room, apparently wrestling with each other. Erling and three others were on the floor, watching the action unfold.

Erling saw him first. “Hi, Byron!” he called. He waved, and Shaw raised his hand back to him.

“C’mon up, Byron!” Wulf said. “We almost have Tranq!”

“He can’t compete! He wasn’t here when we started!” Tranq said. “And you don’t almost have me.” Tranq pushed his legs off of Wulf and he jetted forward into a small woman. Wulf sailed into the wall, and Tranq was now in a wrestling match.

The other woman was pulling on Tranq’s arms, trying to loosen his grip on Taveena.

“Get in there, Shaw,” Wulf said.

Shaw didn’t know the rules and wasn’t sure he wanted to play. But an opportunity to get the best of Tranq was too tempting. He jumped off the floor and aimed for the mass of whirling people.

In mid-air, Shaw plowed into Tranq’s midsection, knocking his grip loose from Taveena. She back-flipped away, slipping out of Tranq’s hold.

“Nice move, Taveena!” Erling called from the sidelines. But Taveena’s momentum was pulling her away from the action, slowly moving her toward the wall. Shaw guessed that would put her out.

Shaw felt Tranq’s arms bear hug around his chest and squeeze. He flailed his legs, looking to get some leverage. He suddenly realized what a bad idea this was—he’d just woken from the dead and now he was trying out his first fight in micro-gravity.

Shaw couldn’t get leverage, so he slammed his elbows back into Tranq’s stomach, and felt the grip loosen around his chest. He ducked out of it, but remembered the lesson of Taveena not to get too far away. He grabbed Tranq’s leg and managed to get behind him. Climbing his backside as fast as he could, he got his feet up on Tranq’s lower back. Looking up, he saw that Tranq was wrestling with Kuhn.

“Stay back, Shaw! I got this,” the woman said.

“Stop saying that, Kuhn,” Tranq said, although he was having a hard time getting an advantage against her. The woman’s nimbleness was an advantage when he couldn’t get any leverage against her. She kept spinning and turning out of his attempted grips. As long as he didn’t get a strong hold, she was keeping a step ahead of him.

Shaw looked up and saw Taveena, who was still fighting to get back and avoid the wall. He saw his opportunity.

“Coming your way, Taveena,” he called. Shaw bent his knees and then pushed hard, sending Tranq and Kuhn flying in the opposite direction. Shaw went sailing through the air with the same force as Tranq, but as he passed Taveena, he grabbed her extended hand. She spun him, and his forward motion was transferred into a spin between the two of them. They rotated in place, but they didn’t move any closer to the wall.

Tranq and Kuhn had no one to stop their momentum, and they landed against the giant sticky wall of the great room.

As soon as Tranq hit, everyone started clapping, even Kuhn.

“When did Space Melee become ‘Gang Up On Tranq?’” he grumbled.

“When you kept winning on your own,” Kuhn said, throwing an arm around him.

Shaw looked to Taveena and smiled. “Call it a tie?”

But Taveena was already spinning, and Shaw felt the yank on his arm. He’d been too focused on Tranq, and was surprised when she released him. He didn’t have anything to stop him from smacking into the cold glass window.

“I play to win,” Taveena said, the only one remaining in the center of the room.

Shaw choked down a reply and pushed off the glass toward the floor with his already-chilled fingers.

He landed and watched Taveena wriggle her way toward the floor. He was momentarily hypnotized by the amazing configurations of fat rolls as she moved.
How was it that there were so few fat people in his daily life, and out of a crew of eight, two of them were fat?
Did they not have access to the treatment while they were in hiding?

The small woman named Kuhn was drifting toward Shaw.

“Little help?”

Shaw reached up his hand and pulled her down to the floor.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling wide. “That was a great move there. Especially for a newbie.” She didn’t let go of his hand, but shook it instead. She was incredibly small, and incredibly gorgeous. Was she Thai? Nepalese? Hawaiian? He got the vague sense of some sort of Asian descent, but he couldn’t even begin to guess from where.

“Byron Shaw,” he answered.

“Kuhn Lono. Looks like you’re on the mend. You looked terrible when you came in to watch the launch.”

Being dead will do that, Shaw thought, but didn’t say it. Should it come to it, he needed this woman and Annalise to be on his side. He returned her smile. “Amazing what a little sleep will do.”

“A
little
sleep? You’ve been out for almost forty hours,” Wulf said as he landed next to them.

Forty hours?
Shaw’s smile fell from his face. “Well, I’m glad I made it for the end of the game, at least.”

“We play every few days when we’re in orbit. Keeps the muscles working and the blood pumping.”

Tranq neared the two of them, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of him without acknowledging either of them.

“Looks like Tranq’s not happy I beat him,” Shaw said to Kuhn, unable to help himself.

“If you hadn’t beat him, Taveena and I would have,” Kuhn said, slapping Tranq on the ass as she passed. “You’ll get us next time, Tranquility!” she called.

Tranq’s body stiffened as he walked, but he kept going and left the great room.

“
Tranquility?
” Byron laughed. “You’re not serious, are you? I figured Tranq was short for an old tranquilizer dart or something.”

Kuhn laughed. “That’s what he wants you to think. But it really is Tranquility. And his brother’s named Bliss. Tranq’s just too macho to go by a name as girly as Tranquility.”

“Tranquility,” Shaw repeated, laughing and shaking his head.

“I’m the only one who can get away with calling him that,” Kuhn said. “He thinks hitting someone my size would be unsporting.”

“He’s afraid that you’d kick him out of bed,” Wulf said.

Kuhn laughed. “I’m going to make sure I haven’t bruised his ego too much. Night, all! And nice to meet you officially, Byron.”

“Likewise,” he said, as she left to join Tranq.

And that was that. If Kuhn and Tranq were an item, what chance did he have of convincing her to vote for him? The odds were already stacked against him.

He was dead in seven days—
no, five days!
He’d slept through the first two.

“Heads up!” Taveena landed near him, her feet catching on the sticky floor. From across the room Erling threw her a towel. It glided through the air—not falling in a graceful arc, but moving straight across the room parallel to the floor. Shaw still had a hard time getting his head around the physics of a weightless environment.

Taveena grabbed the towel out of the air and dabbed at her forehead. Shaw awkwardly smiled and they stood for a few seconds in silence.

“I’m glad you joined in,” Taveena said. “It’s important to get as much exercise as you can when you’re in orbit. There’s also some pills we need to get you started on.”

“Feels like I’m back to normal again—I’m glad everything works. Even if I made things a little worse with Tranq.”

“Don’t worry about him. He knows it’s a game. Before we picked him up, he spent a year in prison for playing football,” Taveena said.

“Ah. One of
those
guys.”

“Said the boxer,” Wulf added.

“I only boxed a couple times without headgear, and that was before it was illegal,” Shaw said defensively. He saw Wulf smile and realized that he was razzing him. “Sorry. It’s a sore subject.”

“Well, that’s why he’s here,” Taveena said, back to business.