Bring Me the Dead, page 9
“We’re on sand, not rock,” she said. “Hm, rock only a few inches below, though. Hang on.”
She gave the maneuvering thrusters on the underside a blast, and sand flew away, leaving them much more secure on nice, hard rock.
“Okay, helmets on,” Beau said. The atmosphere out there wasn’t anything humans could breathe. “Let’s go.”
In a few minutes they were outside the shuttle. The desolate blue-gray desert all around, with the remains of the buildings sticking up in a few places, was utterly forlorn. No wonder Thut wasn’t either on the tourist trail or of much interest to academics. It had been little more than a distant outpost of the empire. The sand made walking a struggle, and both were panting as they approached the shuttle.
“No sign of weapons fire,” Marz said, looking at a scanner. “But the hull is breached. No breathable atmosphere anywhere inside the ship.”
Beau didn’t answer.
“Still no response to any hails. There’s a good chance he’s dead.” Her voice became softer, barely above a whisper. “Can you handle that?”
Beau wanted to snort and say of course he could. But he wasn’t so sure he could. He’d studied the empire all his adult life, and everyone there was dead. But the dead people of the empire were a million years gone. And in Beau’s many adventures he’d managed to avoid participating in anything that involved people dying. The only corpses he’d seen were those of relatives in open caskets at funerals. Usually elderly. There had been a cousin, Jeff, who’d drowned in a stupid accident when he was seventeen, but they hadn’t been that close.
And he was letting his mind think about anything except the prospect of finding Ki-tae dead of catastrophic injuries or asphyxiation.
“I can handle it,” he gritted out. He almost convinced himself. They reached the ship, and at least the entrance hatch was accessible. The ship was sitting nearly upright, as Beau had noted. One landing strut was busted, and the sand meant the others had nothing solid, so the ship was tilted at a few degrees off level. Most of the damage was to the engine, but there were hull breaches, the outer skin of the ship scorched around them.
“They look like explosions from inside,” Marz said. She used another of her handy lock-picking devices on the hatch, and it released, allowing them to haul it open manually. Beau led the way into the dark interior. Both turned on their helmet-mounted lights and began to search. Beau checked the cockpit with a sick sense of dread. But there was no sign of Ki-tae in there. All the control panels were dark.
“Beau,” Marz said from behind him. “I’ve got a power reading in the aft section.” He rejoined her, walking carefully on the tilted deck, and together they pulled open an unlocked but unpowered door to the aft section of the ship, which housed the sleeping quarters and the engineering section.
Marz shook her head at the door to engineering. “Nothing through there. And there’s radiation leakage. The power is coming from…” They both looked down and realized they were standing not on deck plating, but on transparent reinforced plastic. And behind it, like sleeping beauty in her glass coffin, lay Park Ki-tae. Beau gasped and dropped to his knees to get a closer look, helmet light shining into the face of the agent. He appeared…asleep. Yes, that was the best word.
“Life capsule,” Marz said, getting down more slowly to one knee. “Guess he didn’t have time to eject it before the crash. Or he got into it afterward, before the ship lost its atmosphere.”
“Can you get a read on his life signs?” Beau asked.
She frowned at her scanner. “No, the pod’s designed to protect from radiation. So I can’t scan the interior. It has power, though, so he’s got air.”
“I can see him breathing,” Beau said. He thumped on the transparent panel. “Hey, wakey, wakey, Kitty; we’ve come for that reward.”
“Have you ever tried not being an idiot?” Marz asked. Ki-tae didn’t respond to the thumping. He slept on. Marz found a cover on the floor and flipped it open. It was a control panel for the pod. She hit a switch, and the controls came to life. “Guard your eyes,” she said, and Beau looked away when she tapped a button. Light poured up from the pod. When he looked back, the whole pod was illuminated. Beau checked over the man within, looking for obvious injuries. He wore a sleeveless shirt, and his arms and hands looked battered—cut and burned. His face was smoke-blackened. There was blood on his shirt. Hard to tell anything about his legs with the black pants on, but there wasn’t any obvious sickeningly wrong angles or anything, nor a lot of blood soaked into the sheet under him.
But he’d gotten himself into the pod and was alive, so he was probably not too bad, Beau told himself. It irritated him how worried he felt. Maybe I’m such a nice fellow, he thought, that I hate to see even Park hurt. But it was more. The man he’d fought, the man who only a few days ago nearly broke his arm, the man who’d sicced a fifteen-hour customs inspection on him, and all he could think about was the man he’d recently kissed, even if he’d got a knee in the family jewels for the attempt.
“Okay,” Marz said. “This thing has another fifty hours, give or take, of battery power, so he’s safe for now. If we use the antigrav lifts installed in it, that will use the batteries much faster.”
“Antigrav lifts?”
“We can’t open it up. He’s not wearing a space suit. We’ll have to lift the whole pod out and carry it to the shuttle. Though I’m not sure it will fit on the shuttle. Or at least not through the hatch.” She scanned some more, checking the dimensions. “No. It won’t. Your call, Captain.”
There was a touch of sarcasm there, he thought. She was still stung by him pulling rank. He couldn’t see her face clearly through the faceplate, though.
“Call the ship,” he said. “Have them land. We can get it in through the cargo-bay door.”
“Certainly going out of your way to help this guy,” she said.
“What do you suggest? Leaving him here to die when he runs out of power in two days?”
“We could hook the pod up to a portable generator, give him weeks of time, and send a message to the authorities to come get him.”
“He could have serious injuries he might die of before then.”
“He’s probably only unconscious because the pod is keeping him that way to save power. You know the good ones can induce a form of mild stasis. He’d probably be fine.”
“We are not leaving him behind! What the hell is wrong with you?”
His shout echoed around inside his helmet, and he cursed himself because damn, that hurt his ears. And he heard the smirk in Marz’s voice when she answered.
“Just checking, Beau, just checking.”
Dammit. She still suspected him of having a thing for Ki-tae, and he was doing nothing to disabuse her of the idea. Anything but, in fact. He kept walking into every little trap she set.
She rose. “I’ll go call the ship. You can stay here. Try not to drool on your faceplate.”
“Shut up.”
“I know it’s a disappointment that you can’t breathe on the glass and draw a heart in the mist.”
“You’re so fired.”
* * * *
After the Istrouma touched down, Doug came out in a suit to supervise the process of extracting the pod, and they moved it on its antigrav lifts to the Istrouma’s cargo bay. Doug had come from the ship on the four-wheeler vehicle they sometimes used for surface travel and drove back slowly, towing the pod, while Beau and Marz kept it from drifting around too much.
It made for a strange picture, Beau thought. Like a catafalque being drawn slowly and reverently through the streets—those buildings still loomed around them. But the person in this casket was alive. Beau was determined he would stay that way.
They reached the ramp into the cargo bay and deployed the wheels built into the pod. When the antigravs dropped it to the wheels with something of a thump, Ki-tae jerked and opened his eyes. A strong jolt could break the stasis field, Beau knew, to alert the sleeping occupant of potential trouble. Secretly, invisible to the others, Beau grinned with relief.
Ki-tae stared up, momentary confusion in his eyes giving way to fear. There was nothing Beau could do to reassure him besides wave and then give a thumbs-up, trying to convey that all was well. Ki-tae grabbed at handles on the interior of the pod, and Beau feared he would freak out and hurt himself. But he didn’t. He maintained a white-knuckle grip on the handholds, and he still looked scared, but his jaw was set and determined.
They reached the nice flat floor of the cargo bay, and Beau ordered the door closed and repressurization to begin. He looked back down at the pod. Out of its housing and without its propulsion unit, used when ejecting into space, it was surprisingly low to the ground. Disturbingly coffin-like. Ki-tae was out again, eyes closed. Beau hoped this was the stasis field reasserting itself after the pod’s position stabilized.
The bay door closed. The blowers started to push air back into the room fast. Beau impatiently watched the gauge in his heads-up display—data projected onto his helmet’s faceplate—that told him when the atmosphere would be safe to breathe. It stayed stubbornly on red for a long time, before crawling through orange like an ant through treacle, until it finally hit green. He popped his helmet latch at the exact second Devlin came through the door, pulling an antigrav gurney.
At last they could open the top of the pod. Devlin ran a med scanner over Ki-tae, who didn’t come around again when the stasis field was turned off by the opening of the pod. Damn.
“He’s stable,” Devlin said. “We can move him. I’ll need him on the—” Before he could say more, Beau scooped Ki-tae up and lifted him to the gurney. “Ah, thanks.” He pulled up guardrails on each side and pushed the gurney toward the door. Beau made as if to go after him, but Marz caught his arm.
“Leave the kid to work,” she said. She still had her helmet on, the faceplate open. “We’ve got a couple more jobs to do.” He looked at her, puzzled. She sighed. “I assume you’re not planning to leave our shuttle behind?”
“Ah, yeah, right.” He frowned. “You said a couple.”
“I think we should be terribly nice and bring Agent Park’s belongings from his ship.”
“Good idea.” Beau grinned. “Who knows what items of…sentimental value he might have there?”
Chapter 11
After they brought Ki-tae’s stuff aboard, they dumped it in a heap on the floor by the shuttle hatch. The ship was climbing back into orbit and heading for where King’s information said the clue to the artifact’s location would be.
“I’m done,” Marz said, shaking her hair out after taking off her helmet. “I want a long hot shower and some sleep.”
Working in space suits for several hours was exhausting, and Beau felt the same way himself. “What about searching this lot?” He waved at the duffel bags and other things they’d brought from the wrecked Dragonfly.
“It’s not going anywhere,” she said. “Shower, food, and sleep. Then search.”
“Okay.” They finished doffing the suits and put them into the lockers, where they’d be sterilized and have their onboard supplies topped up again and systems tested and diagnosed. Beau hadn’t skimped on the crew’s space suits. That would be like penny pinching on a cheap parachute.
They showered and then ate together in the mess—everyone else was busy elsewhere—mostly in silence, too tired to chat. After that, Marz left for her quarters. Beau said he was going to his too, but he found himself taking the long way around, via the infirmary.
Ki-tae was sleeping, hooked up to an IV, while Devlin pottered about, watching over his patient.
“How is he?” Beau asked. He worried that Devlin would say Ki-tae was badly hurt and should be taken to a hospital. Because that would delay their mission. Yes, that was why it worried him.
“He’ll be fine,” Devlin said. “No broken bones or internal injuries. Mostly minor cuts, bruises, some burns. He has a mild concussion, and the pressure in his head was elevated a little—which is why I’m keeping him unconscious. But it’s already reducing. As soon as it’s normal again, I’ll take him off the sedation, and he’ll wake up.”
“Great. Ah, I mean, yeah, great work, Dev. Call me when he’s likely to come around, would you?”
“Will do, boss. Are you going to get some sleep? You look beat.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
He took one last look at Ki-tae. His face was clean, the smoke washed off. He wore a clean white hospital robe. It served to emphasize his paler than usual skin, its rich, light golden-brown color washed out. A few white butterfly bandages closed the minor wounds on his face and hands. Okay, enough ogling. Beau left and ten minutes later was asleep in his bed.
* * * *
Four hours later he was awake again, disturbed by some nightmare he couldn’t remember. He tried to sleep again, but in the end he rose, slipped on sweats, and decided he might as well do something useful with his time.
He grabbed a mug of coffee from the galley and went down to where they’d left Ki-tae’s gear in the shuttle bay. The first thing he checked was the staff. The wood was worn smooth and shiny by Ki-tae’s hands. He’d been using this one since Beau met him. Since before that. Beau stroked the sleek surface before considering the weight and checking for anything strange. Like a seam where there shouldn’t be one. He tried to twist it at various points along its length. Nothing. It was genuinely solid wood.
He put it aside carefully and started in on the rest. He emptied the duffels and pawed through clothes, checking pockets, checking for signs of hidden pockets in the lining. Checking the heels of shoes for hidden compartments. He found Ki-tae’s terminal, but they already had the data copied from that. It asked for a passcode when he activated it. There wasn’t much sense in his trying to enter it even if he knew it, because the terminal would be keyed to Ki-tae’s biometric data. Still…almost playing, he entered BEAU.
INCORRECT CODE.
There goes my ego. He turned back to the other items.
In the end his assumptions that he’d only find something useful in a hidden pocket or some other type of concealment proved false. He found what he didn’t know he was looking for in a folder of documents.
It was a printout, and he recognized it because he’d printed it himself. Sometimes he found it easier to push bits of paper around a table when he and Marz and Reynolds were working on the clues to the artifacts they sought. This was one of those pieces of paper. And it showed where they were heading right now.
Beau stared at it, rocked back on his heels.
What the actual fuck? How had Park got this?
He tried to remember which session this paper had come from. Had it been before they boarded the transport? In which case Ki-tae could have sneaked aboard the ship and found it. No. He remembered it from a planning session aboard the transporter ship, in the sitting room of his suite. Could Ki-tae have broken in? No reason to think not. Every reason to think so. Because if he hadn’t, then someone in his crew had taken it out of that room and given it to him. The information Ki-tae—a cop, when you got right down to it—needed to not only track but ambush them.
No. Ki-tae had to have been in that room. He had to have. But that would be an illegal search, wouldn’t it? And he was such a by-the-book guy, it didn’t seem like something he’d do. He had to ask himself the question. Could one of his crew be working for Ki-tae? Hell, could one of them be an undercover agent, waiting for Beau to take them on an entirely illegal mission?
Not Marz. He’d known her too long. He’d met her family. She’d surely not betray him. She was his best friend. The professor? What if she regretted her choice to give up her academic post and go adventuring? What if she was currying favor with the Institute to get her job back?
What of Doug and Devlin? Both had come to him in answer to an ad. What if one of them was a plant? But Doug had been with him six years. Who’d work undercover that long? Devlin was more recent—they’d had a different medic before him. But even he’d been part of the crew for nearly two years.
Okay, this sucked. A lot. But however this paper had gotten into Ki-tae’s hands, it proved that his mission was indeed to track Beau and catch him in something illegal. Searching for an artifact wasn’t illegal. Selling this particular artifact to King wasn’t illegal because it wasn’t protected—since so few seriously believed it existed. So if they took Ki-tae along for the ride—and Great-grandma POTUS was quite right about keeping your enemies close, where you could see the bastards—and conducted all their dealings legally, Ki-tae would have nothing on them, however this worked out, and would have to go home with his tail between his legs. An attractive thought.
Meanwhile, Beau would have to figure out how to unmask a traitor on board. If there was one. He went back to his task of searching but didn’t find anything else of interest, so he shoved everything messily into duffel bags, picked up the staff, and climbed the ladder back to the main deck.
He startled Devlin when he walked into the infirmary carrying a big stick. Maybe he’d been walking too softly.
“Oh!” Devlin looked up from bending over Ki-tae. “You made me jump. I thought you were sleeping. You need me to give you something?”
“No, I’m fine.” Beau eyed him narrowly, making him look nervous.
“Ah, right. Was there something—”
“How’s Park?”
“Good. His brain’s back to normal pressure. He’s in natural sleep at the moment. He might wake up anytime.”
“Okay. Why don’t you go grab some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on him.” Devlin hesitated. “I’ll call you if the med scanner so much as chirps.”
“Okay.”
Devlin tidied up some things from his desk, locked them in a drawer, and left. Beau made sure he was gone, closed the infirmary door, then went looking for something he knew Devlin would never approve of him using.
* * * *
Ki-tae woke to dimmed lighting, warm blankets, the soft pings of medical equipment. And restraints around both wrists. He came awake fast when he tried moving his arms.
