The Lazarus Particle (8 page)

The answer was simple: Not a very good one.

“Of course, Doctor.” She patted Fenton’s hand gently as she stood. Somehow she felt a connection with him, something more personal than just her obligation as his advocate. “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning.”

She said it as much to Fenton as to Dr. Jenner.

The next morning, Fenton was nowhere to be found.

09 • RAD SPIKE

They say the sting of rejection is worse than the bite of a thousand serpents.

Having been roundly rebuffed by the corpsman assigned to escort her back to her quarters, Xenecia could say there was some truth to that.

Not that she had any interest in the man outside of her own personal gain. Far from it. All he was to her was a means to an end. An end that now lay unfulfilled.

In the wake of that failure, confined to her quarters as she was, Xenecia was as much a prisoner aboard OS
Tau
as her once—and future—bounty.

Oh yes, for she intended to reclaim him at her earliest convenience. In that regard, the corpsman’s rejection represented only delay, not defeat. Of that much she was certain.

It was only a matter of time.

Which was all well and good, except that it left her with several intervening hours—or days, or weeks, or who knows how long…—to fill.
 

Having had some experience as a prisoner before, Xenecia knew better than most how to pass the time. Hone the body, sharpen the mind. For that she needed little more than to do a bit of redecorating. A cursory examination of the ceiling revealed the section she needed to expose. Panel by panel, she laid bare that section of ceiling, exposing sheaves of red-green-black-yellow wiring as well as the arterial network of pipes and conduits that nurtured
Tau’s
crew and civilian complement with an uninterrupted flow of recycled oxygen and water. She squatted determinedly, executing a standing backflip and coming to rest by the backs of her knees from the thickest of pipes. Without pause she set to task, crossing her arms over her chest and performing a series of rapid-fire, bat-like body lifts that should have been well beyond the limitations of the human body.

But then she wasn’t exactly human, was she?

Pulse screaming in her ears, muscles burning hot like white phosphorous, skin shining bright with sweat and renewed purpose, she didn’t so much as flinch when the door chimed to notify her of a visitor waiting outside. “Enter,” she called, all the while persisting with inhuman determination.

The woman that shuffled through the doorway just stopped and stared, transfixed. She was a mousy thing. Mousy hair, mousy face, mousy body. Not wearing any sort of military ID, as far as Xenecia could discern in the course of her nearly cyclonic calisthenics.

“Well?” she barked breathlessly in between lifts. “What do you want?”

At that, the woman seemed to snap out of it.

“Are—are you Xenecia of Shih’ra?” she asked meekly. As if there could be any doubt after the display she was witnessing.

“I am.”

“I, uh… I’m here….”
 

“Let me guess,” Xenecia interjected. Unlocking her knees from around the exposed pipe, she dropped before the mousy woman with an effortless, almost terrifying grace. “You have come to tell me I am even more fucked than I could have previously imagined. Fenton Wilkes is dead. Perhaps he never existed in the first place. Am I getting, as your people say, ‘warmer?’” With each sentence she took a step closer, until she was near to towering over the poor woman. “Or maybe this is the part where your people storm in and shoot me dead before flushing my body out the nearest airlock.” She cocked her head, hairless brows notching above the polarized lenses fixed over her eyes as she appraised the spokesperson before her.

“I’m not one of them,” she said quietly.

“Oh? Then what are you doing aboard their station?”

“I, ah, well, that is to say, I guess, that I am one of them. Sort of. I was never part of the group that sent you looking for Fenton, though.”

Xenecia snorted. “Do you always speak in such clumsy riddles?”

“Let me start over.”

“Very well. You have my full attention.”

“Thank you.” The woman breathed a small sigh of relief before continuing. “My name is Roon McNamara. Yes, I work for Morgenthau-Hale, but no, not the corporate or military branches. I’m an advocate. My department is strictly nonprofit in nature. I guarantee, I’m as unwelcome here as you are. Maybe more so. The uniformed personnel, at least the higher-ups, seem to deeply resent civilian involvement in, well, anything. And now I’ve been informed I’m not even needed here. That’s why I’ve come to you. Something doesn’t feel right to me. I think Fenton is in danger. Well, more danger.”

“Go on.”

“They said he had a seizure.” Roon shook her head. “I don’t buy it. He was perfectly lucid when I talked to him, then this morning he’s laid up in sickbay, slurring and garbling his speech like a zombie. That, and he has this huge bruise on his chest like someone injected him with something. It doesn’t add up.”

The skin around Xenecia’s lenses creased thoughtfully. Perhaps even in contrition. “I will admit to striking him to subdue him for capture, but the bruising on his chest… no, that does not make sense. It certainly was not there when I checked him for hidden weapons or transponders afterward.”

“Exactly. I think Morgenthau-Hale is up to something. I think Fenton discovered something so important they’re willing to take it from him at all costs.”

“Assuming you are correct, what would you have of me, advocate?”

“I want to hire you.”

“And how do you know I am available for hire?”

The advocate made a
tsk
ing sound. “You said so yourself not two minutes ago. ‘You have come to tell me I am even more fucked than I could have previously imagined.’ I’m guessing that’s because the review board denied you the bounty and the life bonus, right?”

“Supposing they did.”

“
Supposing they did
, then you’re out everything. All that time and effort. But supposing I’m willing to pay out, say, every credit I have to my name, then you’ll at least have made
something
out of it.”

“How much?”

“Eighty-two thousand, six hundred, and eighteen credits. Like I said: Every single one I have to my name.”

“That is a fraction of what I was promised,” she scoffed.

“It’s your choice. You can take nothing from a broken promise or you can make the people who broke it pay.” Roon folded her arms across her chest. “Either way you’ve got five seconds.”

From behind the polarized inscrutability of her lenses, Xenecia studied the advocate woman for the full five seconds. For such a short, soft woman, this Roon McNamara certainly drove a hard bargain.

“Time’s up,” Roon said. She slapped her sides and turned to leave. As she did, she muttered, “Guess I’ll have to find someone else. I hear Quint Samuels is making a remarkable recovery. Maybe he’s in the market for a fare.”

It was a shrewd gambit on her part. Xenecia knew Quint was in no condition to hunt. She had seen as much for herself. Even so, the thought of Quint or anyone else stealing another fare from her was enough to override all sense and reason. “Stop.”

Roon stopped just short of the door. She allowed a single beat to pass before turning back to regard Xenecia stolidly.

“If I accept, how do I know you will pay out?”

“Two things. First, if you pull this off—that is, if you get Fenton and I to safety— you’ll have earned it and then some. I know what I’m asking won’t be easy, and I know it’s worth a lot more than I can offer.”

“And the second?”

Roon made a face somewhere between a smirk and a scowl. “Based on what you did to Fenton just to catch him, the last thing I want is to get either of us on your bad side.”

“Fenton was not on my bad side. He was just a job.”

“My point exactly.”

“Ah.” Xenecia flashed a humorless smile, showing more teeth than mirth. “Very well. I shall take your fare.”

They shook on it, Xenecia’s grip nearly grinding to dust the bones in Roon’s hand.

“So, okay… now what?” Roon wondered.

“Now, we think of a plan.”

“We? Because I don’t think Fenton has a lot of time. When I went to visit him in sickbay this morning he was gone. Dr. Jenner wasn’t on duty and I didn’t ask anybody. I thought it would be better for him if I didn’t.”

“Good thinking. And, yes, we. I will need your help as surely as you need mine if we are to pull this off.”

“Okay.” Roon fussed with the hem of her jacket, suddenly looking a lot less composed. “Do you—do you think they’re torturing him?”

“Almost certainly. All the more reason to do what needs to be done as quickly as possible.”

Roon shivered, suppressing a frown at the thought. “I think I’m probably going to regret this, but what needs to be done?”

“I am going to need a distraction.”

“How big of a distraction?”

“Big enough to buy me time to break into the ship’s armory and retrieve my mare’s leg.”

The advocate woman looked nonplused by the statement, as if she knew the words but couldn’t place them in context based on their proper meaning.

“My carbine,” Xenecia clarified. “A kind of shortened rifle, but modified. It is very valuable to me, as well as entirely necessary to ensuring our safety.”

“Oh.” Roon’s mouth twisted around itself thoughtfully. “What about a fire?”

“Not big enough. Shipboard suppression systems would take care of it.”

“Oh. Hmm…” Fixing her hip, Roon glared down at the deck beneath her feet.

“It needs to be something that will clear a large portion of the ship without provoking a large-scale physical response,” Xenecia explained further. “We will need the corridors as clear as possible if we are to properly manage this. We can minimize contact by means of a strategically plotted route, but the odds of going unchallenged, especially after we rescue your Fenton, are exceptionally slim. Small engagements will not present a problem, but if the entire crew becomes alert to our intent, there is virtually no chance of succeeding.”

All at once, the answer leapt up at Roon from the floor she was so thoroughly bullying with that punishing stare. “Quarantine!”

A serpentine grin slithered across Xenecia’s lips. “Quarantine. Yes. That should do nicely. Expected response time?”

“They’ll start with the command decks, then work their way through the rest one by one. Depending on what kind of threat is detected and how disciplined the hazmat team is, it could take anywhere from two minutes to twenty. The average is something like twelve minutes for a station this size.”

“Good. More than manageable. Quarantine it is, then.” After all, the hazmat team would have to cover each deck section by section, room by room. Roon and Xenecia would use that protocol to their advantage, making a predetermined beeline from the station’s armory to its interrogation facility. There, they would take custody of Fenton and proceed immediately to the flight deck. The only question that remained was, “How do you intend to induce such a quarantine?”

“Do you know what this is?” Roon produced a slim, vacuum-black tablet device from within the clutch she carried with her.

“Of course, I do. It is a flexpad.”

“Do you know what’s
inside
it?”

Xenecia shook her head. She was a huntrex, not an engineer. Her tools were her instincts and the modified mare’s leg carbine she intended to liberate from the station’s
armory.

“Never mind,” Roon finally said. “Technically I don’t either. I went on a couple dates with this Free Planetary Pilgrims guy a few years ago. He went on and on about all the toxic chemicals used in mass-produced data devices, among other things. He used to work at one of the major producers until he ‘saw the light’ and ‘broke through his own paradigm.’” Roon made a curdled-milk face, as well as the appropriate air quotation marks where necessary. “Anyway, apropos of nothing. The point is, if we shred this thing into as many pieces as possible and introduce it into the ventilation, it should trip the atmospheric integrity alarm, right? Then everyone—literally, everyone—has to scramble to their preassigned posts, help each other into their suits, double check that there are no exposed seams… hell, we’ll get twelve minutes easy, if not more.” Roon met Xenecia’s deadpan stare with wild-eyed intensity for one beat. Two. Three. Then her face crumpled under a mask of uncertainty. “Right?”

“I have gone along with worse plans,” Xenecia allowed with a frightening smile. “Give me the device.”

Before Roon could object, Xenecia took possession of the flexpad. She considered it for all of a moment before shredding through its ruggedized alloy casing as if it were nothing more than tissue paper. From within the casing the supposedly toxic guts of the thing spilled out around their feet.

Cracked circuitry and fractured fiber optics. A mutilated motherboard. Any number of nontoxic parts.

Nothing, absolutely nothing they could make use of. Roon was caught halfway between cursing and crying out when Xenecia looked up from scouring the pile.

“Hello, what have we here?”

Xenecia held up a small piece of the motherboard. A matte black chip roughly the size of a small tooth sat in its center. The more Roon appraised it, though, the more detail her eyes began to pick out. Specifically, the gauzy halo surrounding the tooth-like node that shifted from egg-white to ochre to halcyon.

“Roon, look away!” Xenecia ordered.

Roon did as she was told, blinking fiercely as the regular color spectrum reasserted itself before her eyes. “What the hell?” Rubbing at her eyes, she made her way to the washroom to rinse them out. “What was that?”

“That,” Xenecia said as she admired the sliver of motherboard from behind her polarized, socket-tight lenses, “is a very radioactive battery source. Looks like your friend Mr. Free Planetary Pilgrim was right on at least one count.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know if we survive this.” Roon peered through loosely splayed fingers at the prize Xenecia held in her hands. “Oh my—that thing was inside there the whole time?!” She dropped her hand and stared down the length of her body as if she expected to start erupting in tumorous growths at any moment.