A/N: Well, heck, this is turning into what this humble writer cryptically terms a character-building experience. Here, now, for your edification and amusement: action, cold temperatures, hot tempers, technobabble, gore, and dubious drug references. About covers it. At a guesstimate, this is the penultimate chapter, folks. The end is in sight. Thanks for reading!
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To the best of the ability of people who weren't shipwrights or structural engineers, the repairs to the Icarus' weakened hull were complete. Exhausted, Kaneda and his team returned to the aft airlock. Kaneda was the last one in. He unclipped and pulled off his plated gloves; he unsealed his suit at the sternum and backed into one of the assist stations. As the hooks lifted away his helmet and chest plate, he took a deep breath of air fresh by comparison to what he'd been breathing for the better part of a shift and said, wearily:
"Doctor Searle, we need you at the aft airlock, please."
No response.
"Damn it," Mace said, already half-unsuited, from across the staging area.
"The feed from the comm tags might be down again," Trey offered. He was seated, panting, on one of the area's benches across from Kaneda, his space-armor off, his black bangs matted with sweat.
Mace stepped clear of his suit and went to the wall comm. "Icarus, where the hell is Doctor Searle?"
Doctor Searle is in the forward lounge, Mace.
Whitby glanced over from where she was, hunkered down near Sullivan where he lay on the deck. She was working to get him out of his suit. "Searle, you useless bastard," she muttered.
Kaneda gave her a sharp look as he joined Mace at the wall comm. "Searle, report immediately to the aft airlock."
From the second assist station, waiting for the hooks and the hydraulic lifters to dismantle his suit, Capa was watching the entrance to the staging area, the passageway leading back toward the ship's main corridor. Anyone on the flight deck would have heard the chatter on the public feed. "Mace, shouldn't Cassie be here?"
Mace rolled his eyes. "Cassie, we're back inside. If you've got a minute, Capa needs help getting undressed."
Again: no response.
"Cassie, respond, please."
Behind him, Capa was struggling out of his suit like a man trying to extricate himself from a straitjacket that was half Sherman tank.
"Cassie—"
Capa was free. Out of the corner of his eye, Mace saw him stumble when he stepped onto the deck, his legs not yet readjusted to gravity, to movement without the suit's bulk and heft. His gray t-shirt was soaked with sweat, like everyone else's, front and back. He passed Mace and Kaneda and left the staging area, heading toward the flight deck.
Kaneda took a towel from his suit locker, wiped his face. "Icarus, why are Doctor Searle and Lieutenant Cassidy not responding?"
Doctor Searle is incapable of responding, Kaneda.
"Why, Icarus?"
Doctor Searle's biofunctions terminated forty-eight minutes ago. The link between the ship's mainframe and the crew's comm tags was terminated manually thirty-five minutes ago. The communications link between the ship's mainframe and the flight deck was terminated manually thirty-four minutes ago.
Shock jolted through the collective exhaustion in the staging area. Whitby joined Mace and Kaneda at the comm. "Terminated by who, Icarus—?"
Unknown, Whitby.
Mace looked toward the main corridor. Capa was long gone. "Shit—"
He ran for the flight deck. Whitby, Kaneda, and Trey followed him.
#####
Just as he reached the flight deck, Capa thought he saw a human figure step through the pockets of shadow in the corridor ahead.
"Searle—?" he called.
The figure paused. Capa couldn't see its face. Its head turned his way, and he could feel it watching him. Without replying, it turned away and continued forward along the corridor, toward the Oxygen Garden and Medical.
Capa frowned. A shiver that he couldn't entirely attribute to the chill of evaporating sweat rippled up his spine. He turned to the entrance to the flight deck. To his surprise, the gangway was closed.
The heavy alloy door was locked.
Moreover, it was dented and smeared with blood.
"Cassie—?" Adrenaline nearly punched the air from Capa's lungs. He pounded at the door. "Cassie, are you in there—?"
From inside, muffled: "Capa—?"
"Cass, what's going—"
The door opened. Capa stepped aside as it swung back on its heavy hinges. Cassie pulled him inside, tugged the hatch closed after him, and recoded the lock. Barring was with her. Both of them looked terrified.
"He's alive," Cassie said. "He's up. He's moving—"
"Who's alive—?"
Cassie's dark eyes were brimming with tears. Capa cautiously touched her cheek; she tentatively touched his chest. She moved nearer, and, sweaty t-shirt or no, he put his arms around her.
"You're safe," she whispered. She held on to him tightly. "Thank God, you're safe—"
Capa asked, more gently: "Who's alive, Cass—?"
"Pinbacker," Barring said. Her voice was flat. "Searle is dead."
A banging at the door. The three of them jumped. "Capa, damn it—!" Mace shouted from the other side. "If you're in there, open up!"
The door opened to an announcement from a breathless Trey: "Searle is dead."
"I already said that," Barring muttered.
Cassie surveyed the newcomers. "Where's Sullivan—?"
"He's dead," Kaneda replied.
"Oh, my God— How—"
"Suit fire," Mace replied, watching Capa re-close the door. "Brainiac stood by and let him burn up."
Capa flinched as he turned to rejoin the group; he wouldn't meet Mace's eyes. "By Christ, Mace," Whitby growled, "I will box your fucking ears."
Mace opened his mouth to respond—
"Lieutenants. Both of you," Kaneda snapped. "Ingrid, Cassie: Pinbacker is mobile?"
"Yes." Barring spoke. "He killed Searle; he left Medical with Searle's body— I think. He asked me if I was an angel; he said I would know where he was taking Searle. I—I didn't know what he meant—"
Mace stopped just short of a snort. "What did he give you? Searle. Did he give you anything for your eyes—?"
"Yes: he gave me something. Yes: I was afraid. I still am. You think that makes me delusional—?"
"I never said—"
"Fuck you, Mace."
"I heard him, too," Cassie said. "He chased us here—"
Kaneda interrupted: "You heard a voice through three inches of heavy alloy. Might it not have been Searle? There's a problem with the comm tags; perhaps Icarus misidentified—"
"With all due respect, sir, I should know Captain Pinbacker's voice."
Her tone was harsh enough to pre-empt argument. She looked at Kaneda expectantly. The others did, too.
"We need to find them," Kaneda said, finally.
#####
Cassie and Barring remained on the flight deck, behind the re-locked door, guarding the helm. In Medical, Kaneda and the others found only scattered instruments, broken glass, and blood. Trey was the one to think to check the log on the auto-doc.
He was also the first to comprehend what the Heller program meant for Pinbacker— and how it traversed the line between conventional and ethical medical procedure.
"The neurological damage is irreversible." He scowled as he read the transcript and medical coding scrolling up the monitor on Searle's desk. "Basically, he's like someone on PCP. We hit him, he doesn't feel it. And his strength is amped about two hundred percent because he can't hear the limitational cues from his own body."
"PCP—?" Whitby asked.
"Animal tranquilizer," Trey said. "Has the opposite effect on humans. Popular in the late twentieth, early twenty-first century."
Mace leaned in for a closer look at the log. "And you know that how, Trey?"
"I was a hacker in a former life. We have an intimate working knowledge of stimulants."
"If he is mobile, and if he is mentally unstable, why not just lock us out?" Kaneda asked. "He might have sealed the airlock and simply waited for us to run out of oh-two."
"Maybe he's still at the planning stage," Mace offered. "Maybe he doesn't quite have his shit together."
"He's always been one to preserve his human resources," Whitby said, softly.
"Meaning—?" Trey asked.
"He's a compassionate man. On top of that, he's a pragmatic leader. There's a cost to losing qualified personnel. Whatever his goal is, he might be trying to achieve it with a minimum of casualties."
"That makes no damn sense," Mace said.
"He's basically a walking corpse," Capa countered. "He's just been subjected to what amounts to experimental neurosurgery. His judgment is very likely impaired."
"Impaired judgment. So speaks Doctor Asperger."
"Shut up, Mace," Whitby said, wearily.
"Maybe he's afraid to attack us in a group," Trey offered.
Whitby shook her head at him. "He's not afraid of us. He's planning something."
"What?" Mace asked her.
"When I can read his fucking mind, I'll let you know, won't I—?"
"He killed Kirbuk," Kaneda said. He waited through the long moment of stunned silence that followed. "He's capable of, and willing to commit, murder."
"Not willing," Whitby said. "I won't believe that."
Kaneda looked at her coldly. "Consider yourselves warned: the man is dangerous." To her, and to the others, he announced: "We'll split into teams; we'll find him and Searle."
#####
Kaneda and Capa were to move forward; Whitby and Mace were heading from midships aft. They armed themselves with tools from midships storage. Mace and Kaneda took meter-long hooked pry bars. Whitby had an EVA grappling hook and her boot knife. Capa looked uncertainly at the two-foot-long crescent wrench in his hands.
"What do we do with Captain— with Pinbacker, once we find him?" he asked.
"Ask him to to submit to chemical and-or physical restraints in Medical," Kaneda replied.
"And if he refuses—?"
"You hit him before he hits you," Mace said. "You hit him, and you keep hitting him, until he goes down and stays down." He looked to Kaneda. "Right—?"
Kaneda frowned. "Right." He turned to Trey. "See if you can get our internal comms restored, Trey."
"From Comms or from the flight deck?"
"Coward," Mace said.
"Yes, I am."
"From the flight deck," Kaneda said.
"Thank you, sir." Trey glared at the wall behind Mace; without another word, he went to join Cassie and Barring.
#####
Through forward storage, the forward airlock: nothing. Kaneda and Capa entered the payload via the public gangway. They found blood on the floor of the entryway, on deck of the electric lift, splashed in sticky drops along the catwalk leading back to the forward lounge. The silence of the great gray space seemed that much heavier, pressed in on Capa almost like the blackness beyond the bulkheads, against the counter-pounding of his heart. He could hear himself breathing almost as if he were still in his EVA suit, even as the space around them swallowed the sound of his footsteps and Kaneda's.
They entered the hallway running parallel to the forward lounge. To the wall ahead of them, angled back from the lounge doorway, a wedge of white glare had branded itself. Bits of ash floated between the light and the surrounding shadow. Capa suddenly found himself fighting an urge to gag. "What's that smell—?"
Kaneda went to the wall comm to the left of the lounge entrance. "Icarus, window at forward lounge: filter to, and lock filter at, sixty percent."
Yes, Kaneda.
The light from the lounge dimmed. The triangle-shaped brand remained, smoldering, on the wall. Kaneda looked cautiously into the lounge. Capa joined him. The air was thick with ash and smoke, the smell of burned carpeting and plastic. And something else, like badly charred meat.
Before the wall-wide window, the dimmed red-black fury of the sun, lay the burned remains of a human body. Capa, staring, took a step forward. The sole of his tennis shoe sizzled on the deck. Kaneda pulled him back.
"Searle," he said.
Before Capa could react, a man's voice said, from no more than ten feet away: "It was all he ever wanted, wasn't it—?"
Kaneda brought his pry bar to chest level, placed himself between Capa and his former captain.
Who continued, quietly, as he advanced: "— to know what it felt like to be consumed by the flame—?"
Like magic, a trick of the smoke or the light. Capa couldn't see where Pinbacker might have hidden himself. He seemed to manifest from the shadow at the end of the hall.
"Are you so afraid, Akira?" Pinbacker nodded toward the pry bar. He approached them casually. Kaneda and Capa backed away. "Were you planning to fight me with that? It's too clumsy to be an efficient weapon, and you know it."
"Come along peacefully, Daniel, and there will be no need to fight."
"Very well. A dying man should know when he's beaten."
He followed them out onto the catwalk, and the three of them began the long trek back to the payload entrance. Captors and captive kept their distance. When they reached the junction where the catwalk split toward the control room and the public gangway, Capa was possibly fifteen feet farther ahead of the other two. At the widening of the juncture, Kaneda, tired of walking backward, possibly lulled by the placidity of his charge, maybe out of simple weariness, stepped aside to let Pinbacker pass.
Capa, glancing back at them, saw something glint in Pinbacker's right hand.
"Kaneda, look out—"
For the rest of his life, he would wonder whether he would have been wiser not to shout when he did. Kaneda was only slightly startled, if at all, but it was enough. He brought the pry bar around in a block a second too late. With the scalpel he held in his right hand (Capa could have sworn the man was holding nothing when they left the hallway to the forward lounge— a most horrible thought, and one coming far too late now: he'd had the scalpel concealed beneath the skin of his forearm), Pinbacker punched him, a quick series of blows, one, two, three, to both sides of his neck and the base of his throat. Both arteries and the trachea. With his left arm, he knocked the bar aside when Kaneda swung it. Capa thought he heard a crunch of bone. Pinbacker barely flinched.
"You should have brought a knife, Akira."
It took only seconds. Blood was spurting from Kaneda's neck. He windmilled the pry bar, swung the razor-wedge hooked end at Pinbacker's gut. Pinbacker sidestepped. He caught Kaneda from behind, by the shoulders, and slammed his chin into the upper bar of the guard rail. A grisly crack. Kaneda crumpled to the catwalk.
"It's still my command, First Officer Kaneda," Pinbacker said. He picked up the pry bar, straightened, and looked toward Capa.
Who in that second regained his mobility. Whose body at that moment chose poorly between "fight" and "flight" and decided to charge the burned monster on the catwalk, that engine wrench swung back shoulder-high like a claymore or a baseball bat.
Pinbacker punched him in the stomach with the blunt end of the pry bar. He brought the hooked end around and down and pulled Capa's feet out from under him. Capa went sprawling. The wrench left his hands and spun off into the air past the railing of the catwalk. The back of his head hit the guard rail; stars sparked behind his eyes. He heard a distant clatter as the wrench landed in the payload.
#####
She was too newly blind, and far too bitter a pragmatist, to believe any nonsense about loss of sight sharpening one's other senses, but Barring, stationed near the wall comm on the flight deck, could swear her left leg was now longer than her right. "Are we listing—?" she asked.
Before Cassie could respond, Trey called from the comms station on the upper deck: "Cassie, I've got a bank of black screens here."
As he spoke, the U-bank of monitors around the cockpit went blank. Cassie for a moment stared at the screens, feeling as blind as Barring. In her right hand, the ship's joystick suddenly locked in place.
"Going to emergency power," she heard herself say. Her hands uncovered and flipped switches. "Autopilot is down. Losing pitch and yaw. Switching to manual."
Two joysticks, bolted in place by hand. Two pedals, swung out and locked. Rudimentary assistance from hydraulics and from the ship's low-level navigational system. A combination of not inconsiderable physical effort to follow, if she was to control the ship. That, and skill, and a certain amount of prayer.
"Icarus, inform Captain Kaneda— damn it. Trey, do we have an auxiliary feed? Can we call out—?"
"Yes."
"Barring: inform Captain Kaneda that we're losing primary systems. Helm and communications are failing—"
Trey descended from the upper level, went to navigation. "Top-level navs are down, too. Bringing up feeds from base-level sensors—" He paused, sniffing, frowning. "Is it just me, or is the air going stale—?"
He looked, as Cassie did, to see the row of red lights at life support. Trey left navs, went for a closer look.
"We're losing atmosphere," he said. "Oxygen is venting from the garden directly into space."
"Barring," Cassie said, "inform the crew at large: core mainframe shutdown. Repeat: we are experiencing a core mainframe shutdown."
#####
"Jesus," Whitby whispered. "How'd he do it—?"
She and Mace had searched the Oxygen Garden and the physicists' office. They'd checked midships storage, stopped again in Medical and the Earth Room.
Now they found the ship's mainframe hanging like a crucified man a meter above its tank of coolant.
On cue, Barring's voice spoke from the wall comm: To all crew: we are experiencing a core mainframe shutdown. Repeat: we are experiencing—
The comm went dead. Whitby found she was holding her breath. Or she thought she was: the air was growing heavy. Her lungs were working harder to draw it in, push it out. She stood beside Mace, both of them watching the coolant drip from the exposed mainframe.
"Fuck," Mace said. "Fucking bastard." He stepped onto the ladder leading to the gantry above the coolant, started to climb. Whitby started, moved, grabbed him.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"We have to get it submersed."
"Without a suit? Are you insane, Stephen—?" She held onto him, back of shirt, muscled upper arm, until he came back down. "If it's been high and dry for more than five minutes— and it obviously has— the fucker's cooked."
"Then we have to swap it out."
"Yeah, we do. With the proper equipment. In suits."
By chance or intention, the safe containing the spare parts for the mainframe stood unbreached at the rear of the parts locker. Perhaps Pinbacker hadn't had time to crack the passcode, known only to Mace and Cho; perhaps, in his madness, he'd overlooked the safe entirely. When Whitby found the environmental suits intended for work in the coolant tank, she knew how clearly he'd been thinking.
Up the arms and legs, across the chests and backs, the suits, all four of them, had been slashed through.
"Looks like it's gonna get cold," Mace said. He took the second-best suit for himself, offered to Whitby the one that looked least damaged.
"Gloves and goggles." Whitby zipped herself up. "At least he didn't get those."
"What do you think? Ninety-second shifts?"
"Yeah. You can't take it, you tell me. I've got more cold-water experience than you."
Mace checked his tool belt. "Thought you were going to tell me you've got more body fat than I do."
"The only one on board who has less body fat than you, Stephen, is Capa, and the boy's a bloody skeleton."
Mace looked at her, met her eyes. Looked as though he might reply. Then he took her by the jaw and kissed her, open-mouthed. Whitby kissed him back, stunned but not too stunned to respond, her hands going to his sides.
"While I can still feel my lips," Mace said, when they parted.
"Likewise. Don't bend the pins," Whitby added. Mace climbed the ladder to the gantry, and she handed him up the first of the parts they would need to swap out. She was shaking.
She hoped he couldn't tell.
#####
A gift from the ship's designers: replacing the mainframe was a relatively simple process, as far as computer repairs went:
Unbolting the frame holding the damaged components. Detaching the data couplers without damaging the pin slots. Swapping in new frames, new couplers, without damaging any of ten dozen wire-thin pins, said pins being a seemingly undying holdover from the data cables of the first PCs, a century back. Then waiting to see if the new equipment and the old system would be on speaking terms. Icarus had her own secretive procedures in case of emergency: at the moment of catastrophic system failure, she locked away her core functions in localized redundancies as best she could. Getting her to trust her replaced components was the trick. Not unlike a body accepting or rejecting a new organ, or an amputee doubting the strength of a prosthetic.
A simple process up to that hold-your-breath waiting point, yes, with the proper equipment. At their most-intact best, the worksuits were intended for full immersion lasting no more than ten minutes. Human flesh could withstand exposure of no more than thirty seconds before hypothermia began to set in. Much to Mace and Whitby's credit, the repairs took a mere sixteen minutes.
Five ninety-second exposures to the coolant apiece.
#####
He was stronger than she was. Simple fact. He dragged her from the coolant when she couldn't find the strength to drag herself. She lay beside him on the gantry, both their bodies spasming with cold. Pain shook from her lower spine on out. She could feel the ice encrusting her face.
"Look—" Mace panted.
Whitby heard a crackling as she turned her head. To their left and down, lights were flickering from red to yellow to green on the mainframe monitoring panel. They'd done it. The bastard was fixed. Now she and Mace could have a rest. A well-earned pause. Just a minute or so, even thirty seconds, eyes closed—
"No. Fuck—" This was how it happened. Freezing to death. First chill, then stupor, then the letting go, as someone— who was it? Some bloody American, some monosyllabic bloody spinster, decades ago— once said. Great pain and formal feelings—
Whitby forced herself to sit up. The ice pulled her back; she felt the suit rip from her shoulders, a snapping of icicles from her hair, from her joints. "St-stephen, c-come on—"
He didn't respond. He was looking up at the shadows on the ceiling. In the light from the coolant tank, his eyes were a perfect sapphire blue.
Whitby couldn't see his chest moving. Despite the chill of the air and his body, she couldn't see his breath.
"You bastard. You great— No. No—"
She slapped him, hard. She bunched the fingers of her frozen right hand into a fist and punched him in the jaw.
"Wha-" Mace coughed, shuddered, glared at her. "What the f-fuck—"
"I said come on."
She dragged herself to the ladder, climbed halfway down, fell the rest of the way. She pulled Mace down after her.
"You stand, Mace. You stand up. I can't carry you the whole way—"
They had maybe two and a half legs between them. The coolant on their skin was still doing its work: the frost was still spreading down, deeper, into their muscles. Whitby pulled Mace as he pulled her, toward the door to the mainframe room. On the far side, she stopped, and, by necessity, he did, too. Together they shut the hatch; with impossibly shaking fingers, Whitby entered a lock code.
"I-if you forget," she stammered, "it's my last wreck. The c-coordinates. Richie'll know."
"G-got it."
They passed the flight deck without calling for help. They reached the showers at a crawl. Those extra percentage points of body fat, that extra experience in the hell of cold water: Whitby dragged herself and Mace into a stall, reached up, twisted the tap handle.
She held him; she rubbed his shoulders and torso as the water rinsed away the coolant. He did the same for her. They were still shaking too hard to stand.
"I'll give you a proper warm-up later, Mace, I swear I will—"
"I— I might hold you to that."
"You'd better."
Mace staggered to his feet, offered her a hand up. Whitby took it. They stood a minute longer in the spray, still shivering, still exhausted, but no longer dying.
"Let's check in at the flight deck," he said.
#####
A slow quiet chiming. A ringing of metal on metal, an echo of same.
"Do you know what our mission is, Robert?" Pinbacker asked softly.
Capa opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on the catwalk. He'd blacked out for seconds, maybe. It couldn't have been more than that. Two meters from the soles of his shoes, Pinbacker was settled, relaxed, on his haunches. He had the pry bar in his right hand, and he was tapping the blunt end absently against the guard rail; the bell-like echo drifted off into the payload.
"To restabilize the atomic reaction that powers the sun." Capa pulled himself up until he was half-sitting. Beyond that point lay dizziness. "To save the world."
"You're thinking of your own life," Pinbacker said. "Your career and research. Possibly the family you'd have with Lieutenant Cassidy. You have to look further than that."
"What could there be beyond saving all life on Earth?"
"The end of suffering, for humanity and all living things, everywhere."
Capa slowly drew away. "Who told you this, sir—?"
"God. It must have been— He's shown me: it starts with me. I'm dying, but He's taken away my pain." He unfolded his legs, stood. For a moment, he looked away; he closed his eyes, drew a deep, slow breath, sighed it out into the stillness. "Angels came for me. Golden angels of the sun—"
Cautiously, Capa got to his knees, braced himself to rise. "That was Kaneda and Whitby and Mace, sir."
"Of course." Pinbacker opened his eyes. "In the end, Robert— I'm sorry: this is difficult. I've come to think of you almost as a son. What I'm trying to say is this: your services, for purposes of this mission, are no longer required."
He moved too quickly. For his size, for the awful damage to his body. He swung the pry bar up, brought the hooked end slashing down toward Capa's chest.
Capa rolled off the catwalk. Caught the sharp metal edge with his fingertips— thought, in a second: roughly a six-meter drop; legs: relax, relax, Jesus, relax the knees-— let go, and fell.
A shock, ribs compressing lungs, as he hit the deck of the payload. A sharp twinge of pain from his left ankle. The inner door of the payload control room was at a diagonal from where he was, maybe thirty meters away. From the catwalk, straight on, a turn to the right, and then down the stairs, it was roughly fifty. Capa rolled to his feet and ran for the door.
From behind and and above him, he heard the sound of running footsteps on the catwalk. Then nothing, then a grunt of landing, and then the footsteps were running directly behind him.
#####
He reached the door to the control room. Coded the lock. Opened the door, slipped inside, shut it.
Five digits in to the eight-digit code, the pry bar rang against the door's far side. Capa thought he saw the door itself buck on its hinges. He punched in the last three digits and crossed the control room to the door leading back to the ship. Another blow to the far side of the inner door. Capa got himself back aboard the Icarus. He locked the control room's shipside door, and he ran for the flight deck without looking back.
#####
"You goddamn coward," Mace said. He and Whitby were soaking wet and shivering and nearly as stoked on adrenaline as Capa was. They'd saved the ship from mainframe failure; they'd nearly frozen themselves in the process; and Cassie and Barring and Trey were hanging back, regarding them with a sort of fear-tinged awe.
"I tried to hit him," Capa said. He was still catching his breath. "He was too fast—"
"You left Kaneda to die."
"He was dead already."
"You just stood there and let Pinbacker kill him."
"Like you care."
Mace hooked his right fist at Capa's jaw. Capa sidestepped it. He caught Mace's wrist, bent his arm up behind his back, and shoved him face-first into the nearest bulkhead. Mace twisted in his grip, snarling in surprise and pain—
"I'll break it," Capa hissed at him, wrenching his arm. "I've had enough. I'll fucking break it—"
"I'll kill you. You fucking bastard—"
No one moved to intervene.
"We really don't have time for this, Mace," Trey said. "Later. You can kill Capa— hell, you can kill me— later. Just wait until we do what we came to do."
"I'll do that. I'll kill him. Don't think I won't."
But Mace's expression was less filled with anger, his body less tense.
"Are you boys quite finished?" Whitby asked.
Capa looked at her, looked back at Mace, held on.
"Let him go, Robert," Cassie said quietly. "Mace, don't you touch him."
Capa released him. Mace rubbed his twisted arm. They took a mutual, wary step away from each other.
"So," Whitby said, "what's on our to-do list...?"
"Finish routing primary functions back to the mainframe." Mace cleared the last of the snarl from his throat, looked to Trey. "Can you do it?"
"I don't know."
"That's not the answer we need, Trey."
Barring spoke: "I can help."
"You can't even see," Mace said.
"Really, Mace? I hadn't noticed."
"Help how?" Capa asked.
"Base-level language. You get stuck, Trey, you read the code to me. Read it. We can work through it together. I need something to take my mind off how scared I am. We get in behind the higher-level programming. Come up through the subsystems. You should know this, Trey—"
"The system watching for attacks from the front, not from behind."
"Yes. Exactly."
Trey shrugged. For Barring's benefit, he added: "That sounds doable."
Mace nodded. "Okay. Helm, life support, and comms. In that order." He looked to Capa: "Can Pinbacker hack the payload from the control room?"
"No. The payload is on its own mainframe. Functions are currently routed to the flight deck."
"Can he otherwise damage the payload from inside?" Mace asked, tightly.
"No. Even if he had weeks, it would take more explosives, and far heavier equipment, than we have on board."
"Alright: third question." Mace folded his arms against his chest. "If we can't restore computer-assisted navigation, can we make the launch?"
"I'd be working from raw sensor data," Trey said. He turned to Capa and Cassie. "Once I fed you the coordinates, it would be up to you two."
"We could do it." Capa looked at Cassie. "We're quite capable of coordinating our efforts."
He touched her with the calm light of his eyes. He was no longer afraid. A blush edged up Cassie's cheeks; she smiled for him, just a trace. "Yes, we are."
"Fine." To her and Capa, Barring and Trey, Mace said: "Lock yourselves in."
"What about you?" Cassie asked.
"Obvious, isn't it—?" Whitby replied. She looked from Cassie to Mace. "We're going to find Pinbacker."
#####
He was heading back to check the security of the mainframe room and the engines. She was going forward to see whether Pinbacker had, in fact, left the payload. "The mainframe," Mace said, before he and Whitby split up. "Comms, helm, life support. Three primary functions."
"It's a level-three drill."
"He's testing us."
"Or is he—? What's he really up to?"
"If I find him, I'm not going to ask. Are you?"
"He wouldn't expect us to. Stay sharp, Stephen."
"You, too."
#####
The irony: here they were, playing barge-boat to a bomb whose blast could destroy a dozen Jupiters, and they hadn't a single traditional weapon on board. No firearms, not even stun guns. Normally, Whitby appreciated the wisdom of the mission psychologists in not adding lethal gadgets to an already potentially deadly mix of tension, irritability, and months of tedium, especially in a pressurized environment. She was, in any case, and despite her military background, no great fan of guns. Still, now, checking the ship's darker corners as she moved forward toward the payload, armed with a knife and a clumsy metal bar, chilled and wet and long overdue for food and sleep, she was sensing the limitations of her offensive capabilities.
The door to the payload control room was locked and undamaged. The public gangway stood open. She stepped inside. Nothing moved. The great gray silence of the solar bomb was as cool as the interior of a cloud. She turned to leave.
There was a bloody handprint on the inner side of the door frame. She paused, listening, then stepped through the gangway, back into the corridor of the ship. Ten meters ahead, she saw that the light for the lock of the door to the forward storage hold, which had been glowing green when she passed by a minute or so ago, was now red. She turned her knife in her hand so that the ball of her thumb was pressed to the butt of the steel handle. A close-combat grip, one suited to quick slashing.
She sensed rather than saw the movement behind her. So quick. Half a breath. A lacuna in her left-side peripheral.
A punch to her gut.
The pry bar slipped from the fingers of her left hand, fell with a heavy clang to the deck.
Pinbacker's right hand was over hers. The blade of her knife was buried in her midriff.
He had his free arm, his left arm, around her. He was holding her close. Whitby felt more shock than pain, more betrayal than shock—
"You thought we might have had a future together, didn't you? I thought we might, too." His voice was a dry murmur. The strength left Whitby's legs. Her torso shifted in Pinbacker's arms as she slumped, and the twist of the blade brought tears to her eyes. "But not in this life, Loinnir."
He rested his cheek against her hair, whispered in her right ear: "I'm sorry."
She tried to formulate an attack. Mustered her energy. Boot heel to instep, back of skull to chin or jaw, left hand clawing at cheek or neck or ear. He held her, patiently. Waited for her to admit, silent but for her ragged breathing, what he must have known the second the steel pierced her skin: she was so very fucking tired, so very mortally hurt, and she hadn't the fortitude. When she dropped to her knees, he went to the floor with her, still holding her.
"Don't fight it, love," he said, gently.
Easy to obey. Easier than it had ever been. She was exhausted. She heard the blade of her knife ring like silver on the deck, and she was looking inward. Seeing him a year ago, maybe more. Lieutenant Whitby, could you join me in the forward lounge, please—? The warmth in his eyes as he turned from the wall-wide window to look at her—
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Pinbacker waited until she went still. He took her back to the payload and cut the comm tags from around her neck. Then he returned to the forward hold. He still had much to do.
The crew was not the mission. The ship was not the mission. The payload was the mission. He had great faith in his people. As long as the payload was intact, they would find a way to succeed.
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As long as the payload was intact.
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