Moonsteed (16 page)

Verity squinted at the stars beyond the bridge window, scrutinizing them for hints of which one might be the Jupiter orbital complex. “
I can’t see it
.”

“
If we could see it, it would be able to see us. Try it on the scope
.”

Her hand slid to a panel on the left side of the console. When she looked, she saw it was indeed the screen and controls for the magnification viewer. An image came to her mind of Anthony Cornelian sitting at these controls, his fingers touching these switches, dials and imaging screens that hers now pressed and turned. Those same fingers now lay frozen and lifeless at the bottom of a crater back on Callisto. For an instant she felt like a trespasser--a murderer and usurper.

The screen came on, and Verity adjusted the coordinates to match the readout the course program gave as being the location of the orbital. Pinprick stars moved across the screen, leaving wavy trails of light in the scope’s image. A fuzzy grey torus appeared. Verity rotated the focus knob until it took form as a ring rotating slowly around a central axis. It looked somehow unrealistic and silly, something man-made and dwarfed by distance, laughing in the face of nature’s hideous adversity. Hanging there upon the outer edges of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, it appeared a toy gyroscope tossed from reality and left as a claustrophobic bastion of humanity in between Jupiter’s deadly radiation belt and the vacuum of space.

“
Can they see us
?”

“
Not unless they’re looking for us hard. We’ll have to hope they aren’t
.”

Verity checked the flight schematic, showing the orbiting path of the complex around Jupiter, and the projected path of the sun-yacht following in its wake. “
So, we go there on the lander, and if we don’t die there, we come back and the yacht will still be in orbit where we left it
?”

“
This yacht cost good money
.” Anthony transmitted in a tone of mock offence. “
Stop casting aspersions on it and insinuating it can’t hold a stable orbit
!”

Back in the main corridor, Verity retrieved the pieces of her armor from the locker and put them on.

“
This might be a stupid question, and I’m guessing it’s ubiquitous in the Sky Forces. I have to ask, why are you going commando
?”

Verity secured the Sky Forces standard issue bag with the computer and the other gear in it to her back, and plugged the wire from the computer into the socket in the interface shunt on her forehead. “
I forgot to bring any clean underwear. So I put the sweaty, stinky underwear in the washing machine and it isn’t finished yet
.” She gave her helmet a shove so it drifted into the lander, then took hold of the sides of the airlock door and pushed herself feet first after it.

After she sealed the hatch, she pulled herself into the pilot’s seat and fastened the belt. It took a few moments for her to boot up the flight control computer and get the trajectory plotted.

“
Here goes
,” she thought, and hit the release sequence switch. The belt jabbed into her shoulders as the sun-yacht ejected the lander from its docking slot, and stars and the pastel-stippled flank of Jupiter leapt back into the fore windows. She craned her neck to make a visual clearance check of the yacht through the upper window before pressing the switch that started the course program. The fusion engine fired with a loud roar, jolting the back of her skull against the headrest.

The stiff plates of her armor were unpleasantly clammy against her bare skin. Verity fidgeted against the G-force of acceleration pushing her back against her seat. She could feel the angular shape of Anthony’s computer inside the bag against her back. “
Will you just control yourself and stop being randy? I’m getting bleed-back off you and it’s making my armor all sticky, and it’s not a good feeling when I’m supposed to be assassinating someone
!”

“
How do you know
,” said Anthony slyly, “
that it’s not
you
who’s feeling sexy and causing bleed-back on
me?”

The fusion engine cut off and the acceleration force eased away. Verity reached over her shoulder and caught hold of a narrow strip. She yanked the long piece of material out of the bag: a tie she had taken from Anthony’s wardrobe with a piece of foil taped to the inside. She wrapped the tie round her forehead like a bandana, so the foil covered her interface shunt, and knotted the ends together. Now the ANT on the orbital complex wouldn’t detect her, but she could maintain communication with Anthony through the direct connection via the wire.

“
Don’t go broadcasting signals or doing anything stupid in there
.” She reached back to the other seat and caught her helmet by the strap.

“
Don’t wear that
,” said Anthony. “
You’re going to need unimpeded use of your eyes and ears
.”

“
It’s easy to die without a helmet
.” The incident with John Aaron still remained fresh in Verity’s mind, and a sick feeling came to her stomach at the recollection of it, despite knowing John Aaron was dead and had never really posed a threat in the first place.

“
It’s also easy to die if you don’t hear your enemy sneaking up behind you
!” Anthony countered. “
Have you forgotten what the Magnolia Order taught you about that katana
?”

Verity’s fingers closed on the handle of the katana at her hip. “
The wise give life with the sword. The fool kills himself on another’s sword
.”

“
So don’t kill yourself on someone else’s sword. Or anyone else’s fist or gun, for that matter. Make sure they all kill themselves on your sword
.”

“
Are you suggesting I don’t need armor, that I just go in there wearing nothing apart from a sword
?”

“
Well, I suppose that’s a novel strategy. It might give you the element of surprise I guess
.”

Verity found a smile forming on her lips despite herself, and leaned closer to the window. Details started to become visible on the bright star ahead, and it began to look more like the image she had seen in the scope.

“
It’s not very big
,” she thought as the prow of the lander passed the outer edge of the steadily turning ring, and its perimeter disappeared behind the edge of the window. The radius couldn’t be more than a mile. “
I expected it would be bigger than that
.” Braking thrust cut in sharply, throwing her forward against her shoulder straps.

“
You’re right
.” Anthony’s transmission had a dubious tone to it.

“
There’s no way Farron can have any kind of decent-sized army in that
.”

“
We’re here now. We may as well see what we can find out about it. I take it you’ve been trained how to carry out a manual docking procedure
?”

Verity rolled her eyes and set her hands to the levers that operated the lander’s ballast valves as the static central hub of the orbital’s wheel drifted slowly in. Hexagonal nodules studded its convex surface--all airlocks for docking. One lander was already in position, the one that had left from Callisto: Farron’s transport up here.

She opened the side-valves as the lander closed the distance to rotate it so the upper section with the hatch faced the docking apertures. After using the keel valve to push the craft in, she hit the switch for the electromagnet. The cabin lurched and the sound of metal striking metal clanged through the hull. The grinding sound of the airlock flanges locking in place began, and the green light on the hatch over her head lit up.

“
Here goes nothing
.” Verity unbuckled and pushed up from the seat. She unscrewed the hatch, braced her knees against the shoulders of the chair, then, fingers tensed on the hilt of her wakizashi, threw open the door and kicked up into the unknown.

A short cylindrical tunnel with dimly reflective sides lay without. Verity released her weapon and put both hands flat against the surface, absorbing her momentum before she overshot the aperture at the end.

Cautiously, she inched to the end of the tube, her knees and feet catching the metal surface, sending dull noises echoing through the walls. She brought the top of her head out of the tunnel carefully, until her eyes were level with the rim. She looked out from a concave roof, a honeycomb pattern marking the exits from the docking apertures on the other side. Directly above her position, the central barrel of the centrifuge slowly turned, filling the air with a faint hum just within the threshold of hearing.

Peering around, she saw no evidence of surveillance or other people, so she reached out to one of the handle rails and silently pivoted over on it, until her head pointed back toward the exit. The inner door lay back, flat on its hinges. Verity hoisted it up, closing it over the aperture, and noted the number bolted to its outside surface, twelve. She turned the handle in the center to lock the door, and gripped the rail with her knees as she reached behind her back into the pocket of the bag to withdraw the piece of paper she’d written inside the yacht. She held it up to the door and pressed her thumbs firmly on the corners to fix it in place.

This airlock has an outer door fault and has been reported

Please do not attempt to use

A single pole with ladder rungs stretched from the middle point of the concave honeycomb of airlocks to an indentation in the center of the centrifuge’s rotating wall about ten feet in diameter. Verity used the rungs on the edges of the airlock doors to swing herself hand over hand over to the ladder, and scrambled down it. As she drew closer to the cylindrical hole in the wall, she began to make out details in its sides. Four holes had been molded through the solid metal at ninety degrees. Two were narrow, with ladder rungs curving out and riveted to the exits, but the other two had wide openings that flared backward against the direction of rotation, funneling into reflective depths stretching away into an invisible darkness.

“
It’s a chute
,” Verity thought, pressing her insteps into the pole to take the strain off her arms. Above her head, the pole of the ladder disappeared into a hole in the rotating hub. “
It must run all the way down one of the spokes to the habitable rim
.”

“
How are we going to check what’s down there? That it’s safe
?”

“
I’ve brought a fiber-optic periscope,
” Verity considered
.
“
But it’s probably not long enough, and I won’t be able to run it down with it rotating like that
.” She tried to follow the motion of the apertures as they turned past her, but the muscles of her eyes hurt from looking side-to-side. There wasn’t really any option: she would have to go and hope no one was at the bottom to notice her arrival.

“
Don’t go shouting ‘Whee
!
’ as you go, or they’ll all hear and we’ll get captured
,” said Anthony.

“
Stop treating me like I’m a kid
!”

“
You are a kid
.”

“
I’m a sergeant in the Sky Forces
!”

“
The Sky Forces are just a whole load of kids playing with their space toys
.”

Verity trod the edges of her heels on a rung and pivoted herself back by leaning away from the rung in her hands. She fixed on one of the chute entrances as it rotated slowly past, timing it so she released and leaned in, pushing off as the chute came around to meet her. The rotation ran the sloped wall into her chest, and immediately she began to slide headfirst down the pipe. She put one hand down to the hilt of her katana, her other arm bent up to guard her face as she slid faster into the unknown.

For what seemed a long time she fell in darkness. The angle of the wall decreased, and before she realized what was happening, light appeared ahead and she shot horizontally into an annex. The first thing she saw before her eyes had even adjusted to the light was a padded wall and a pile of cushions hurtling toward her. She yelled out, managing to twist to her side before she crashed into them.

Verity rolled onto her knees, reaching for her katana, but the annex was empty. A windowed double door led to a lobby with a metal staircase. She got to her feet and looked through. Nobody there. The stairs brought her down to another double door, leading to a corridor, that stretched away in both directions. The curvature of the ceiling was ever so slightly apparent, more obvious in the distances where perspective drew the walls together.

She stepped over to one of the other doors leading off, and chanced a look through the window. It appeared to be a science lab with glass and metal apparatus on the benches, far wall lined with fume cupboards, sinks and electrical appliances everywhere. The other doors nearby were also laboratories, and each door had a number. Farther along the corridor she came across doors labeled
freezer
and
centrifuge
room
and
autoclave
.

“
Anthony, do you know anything about what sort of science goes on in these labs
?”

“
Could be biochemistry of some sort. Can’t rule out genetic engineering. Looks as if they’re understaffed, unless they’re all on lunch or at a meeting
.”

Footfall and voices became audible from somewhere in the corridor ahead. “
Why’d you have to comment on that? That was just tempting Sod’s Law, and now we’ve got company
!”

Verity scoped a nearby window, not entirely sure the room behind was empty and not having the time to risk making sure. She threw it open and dived behind some lab coats hanging on hooks beside the door, and waited in a stink of chemicals and men’s armpits as the footsteps and conversation grew louder. The sounds reached a crescendo and began to recede again, and Verity relaxed from her stiff, flattened posture against the wall.

“
What exactly are you planning on doing
?” Anthony asked.

“
I’m going to find Farron and kill him like I was told
.”

“
You were also told to destroy his research. You think these labs contain his research
?”

“
I don’t know. The Magnolia Order’s intelligence says he’s breeding some kind of army. If the rest of the orbital complex looks like this, then taking into account the space needed for the ordinary atmosphere machinery and stuff that’s needed just to live in a place like this, there’s not room for an army on it
.”