The Hunt for the Halifax Fox, page 15
Voice casual, Rox asked, “What else can you do with the Drift?”
“Nothing much,” said Ashrael.
“Hm.” Rox drummed her fingers on her thighs. “So... you’ve seen the Arcadia Planitia footage, I assume. Look, I had to ask,” she added. “Did you actually roll your eyes at me?”
"First of all, no, I can't do the things the first Drifters did. And the Arcadia footage is a deepfake. I mean, come on. You think Drifters got inside enemy soldiers and exploded them?”
"Right. Like I said, I had to ask.”
With an uncanny ability to disappear in plain sight, Ashrael brought to mind a prey animal from one of the Earth documentaries, caught outside its burrow, but camouflaged and so still you could walk right by it. For all Rox knew this could be common among Drifters. Disappearing in plain sight might be a transgenerational response to being a collective target for fear, misunderstanding and scientific obsession. Rox studied the Drifter before her, the dark circles under her eyes, the way the clothes hung from her limbs like washing out to dry. She was nothing like her terrifying forebears.
But Lord, don’t get her cornered. She may not be like the first Drifters, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. That devious counter-blackmail had happened so fast, Rox’s brain had gotten whiplash. Now, Ashrael was watching her warily, as if reading her expressions. Rox slapped her palms against her thighs and pushed away from the bed. “Right. Let’s get you settled in a cabin.”
As she led the way out of the infirmary, Rox made a mental note not to underestimate this woman.
Whatever the hell the Clearwater fuckery was about, she was sure of one thing: she needed to untangle herself from Ashrael Eli. Deposit her in the Jupiter Range, wave a cheery goodbye, and never, ever see her again.
* * *
Late that night Rox reclined on her bed, flicking her utility knife open and closed while she contemplated the concept of “wholeness.” She’d always scorned it as a religious believer’s nonsense. And yet, she couldn’t come up with another word for how she felt.
At first, she hadn’t noticed the change in her. Gone were the irrational rages, fugue states, and trips to the infirmary to fix broken bones. Instead, her mind was knife-blade sharp. It was as if disparate parts of herself were knitting themselves back together, creating a version of Roksani Price better than the first.
Then again, she’d slipped up and allowed Ashrael to blackmail her. Maybe not so much a knife-sharp blade.
She had gone over every option. If she didn’t take Ashrael to Sol, she was screwed. If she didn’t keep Ashrael alive, she was screwed. She’d considered taking her link away until they made it to Jupiter, but number one, that would never fly with Jos, who was her second in command, and number two, Ashrael could gain access to the Halifax AI and submit that tip-off straight from the ship. If she forced her to take the information out of the queue, Ashrael would just submit it again.
You’re a mercenary. Kalashnik’s face appeared in her memory. You could kill her.
Rox was no prey animal with a shadowy burrow and harmless secrets. Her hidden world was a monstrous cave, and the thing that lived there coiled and writhed in unseen depths. You could kill her.
“No, I could not,” she said. She banished Kalashnik from her mind. She stashed the knife in a side pocket on her mattress, drew the restraint band across herself and latched it before pulling up the blanket. They were in no immediate danger of losing simulated gravity, but better safe than floating down the hall in her sleep. “Light to zero.” She relaxed into the cushioning embrace of her mattress and closed her eyes.
Her mind drifted to the lab on Clearwater Station. She saw the cutting-edge tech, the state-of-the-art equipment. Even as wealthy as Varga was, his mark alone couldn’t account for it. She’d lied to Kalashnik about Ahmadi’s inside scoop on government-funded Drifter research, but with a war for resources looming, could it be that a determined government really was trying to weaponize the Drift? Was that what was happening to all the missing Drifters?
The freakshow ones under the protection of the entertainment companies, gone. The rich ones with private hired security, gone. Even in those places where they lived relatively openly within their accepting communities, Drifters were vanishing, leaving behind loved ones who blinked back tears on the social boards as they begged for any information.
Rox had never thought much about those vanished Drifters. The edges of reality began to blur. Her breathing slowed.
Her mind took her now to Silus Station. Ashrael on the ground at Kalashnik’s feet; their moment of eye contact. Ashrael’s silent plea: Don’t do this to me. And the ice-hearted look Rox returned, the cruelest of lies.
A necessary lie. I had to make it look convincing.
She had imagined herself as Varga. She’d conjured inside herself a soulless murderer, and she’d shot a defenseless, bound, terrified Drifter. It had been so easy.
You're a mercenary, whispered the dead Kalashnik.
Her body dissolved into weightless sleep. You could kill her.
She stood in darkness. Her mag boots anchored her to the decking; her arms floated at her sides in the microgravity. Stretching forward with her hands, she felt sightlessly along a doorframe for its control panel. The door slid open, and she walked across the threshold.
She stood at the bottom of a hole, deep beneath the surface of an asteroid. Its rough walls slanted upward, opening wider like a funnel until they became a vast cylinder—a mining pit, so deep she couldn’t see the top of it. Floodlights set into the walls cast a wan yellow light, but the color palette that dominated was the rust gradient of iron ore. Chestnut, copper. Burnt sienna in the shadows; bronze where the light fell on horizontal planes. Rox gazed across the expanse in wonder. It looked as if a giant hand had painted a canvas in the brown shades of her own skin.
The shush of ventilation and rough hiss of hydraulics sounded like ocean waves breaking on separate shorelines, each distinct rhythm warring to dominate. Far across the pit, extraction equipment moved along the wall. To her left, a dozen doors had been cut into the rock. She went to the nearest of them and looked inside.
She moved to the next room, and the next. Each held a metal mortuary table. Each table held a person, secured in the microgravity by a sheet that latched along the table’s edges. Each set of glassy eyes was fixed on the point where she stood, as if the person had died waiting for her.
One of the bodies looked as if it had been unearthed from the asteroid itself, its skin wearing a layer of matte rust red like a funeral shroud. The break in continuity raised the hair on the back of her neck.
Bending over the supine form, she licked her thumb and drew it across the forehead. Layers of dirt began to come away, revealing skin as pallid as glacial ice in the light of a moon. She gripped the cuff of her shirt against the heel of her hand and pushed it across the forehead, over the cheeks, across the bridge of the nose. As the cloth scraped away layers of grit from dead flesh, the grimy, rust-streaked face constricted, and the eyes squeezed tight.
That seemed wrong. The dead didn't feel pain; they felt the warm, soft arms of perfect gravity. Even Drifters on metal tables. Right?
Wasn't this the afterlife?
The lips parted. The torso arched off the table, the face contorted in a rictus of agony, and the corpse screamed.
Rox put her hands over her ears. I didn't do this to you!
Now she was the one on her back, looking up at a different expanse, an artificial dome of sky. She was on the planet Belenus, in the city of Baringer Heights. She felt herself lifted, moved, carried deep underground. The strangers carrying her between them stopped again to adjust their hold, their hands slipping on her blood-slick skin. Bullets were searing valleys and holes through her flesh, burrowing to the bone. I’ve paid my debt. The entry wound in her belly became a gaping mouth, its tiny, horrid teeth red with her blood.
Rox woke, yanked off the restraint band and fell out of bed. “Light to sixty,” she rasped. In the washroom, she dispensed water and put her wet palms on the back of her neck. Standing over the sink, she watched the slow drain of water into the recatch tube. She looked in the mirror, and for a moment, she and her reflection regarded each other. “What the hell was that about?” she said.
You could kill her. She shook her head. She only ended a life when there was no other choice.
You could. You have.
“I never killed a Drifter.”
Not directly.
“I paid my fucking debt,” she growled. In her reflection, she glimpsed the scarring on her reconstructed shoulder. She pulled her shirt to cover it. A detail of the dream returned to her—Isak Varga, in orbit far above Belenus, waiting for the shipment he would not receive.
* * *
Rox had gotten Ashrael settled in a cabin, had given her a tour of the Halifax, and had told her she was free to go wherever she wished to on the ship. She didn't figure she was going to go wandering around looking for conversation. But neither did she expect her to hide from everyone, all the time. Rox guessed that she was as nervous about seeing the crew as they were at knowing there was an Actual Drifter on their ship.
Jos, however, was suddenly absent from shared meals and poker games. Rox didn’t want to be the stalker ex-girlfriend, but she finally had the ship’s AI give her his location history. He had been spending much of his spare time in the infirmary, which was, as it turned out, where Ashrael had been spending much of her spare time. Maybe he’d skinned his knee.
She did love that about Jos, though. It didn’t matter who or what you were, if he liked your personality, he’d be your friend, and probably also want to sleep with you. End of story. She had to try to talk sense into the rest of their skeleton crew. Val was just as unglued about being near a Drifter as they had been about being near Rox's dog, though when pressed for a reason, all they could offer was, “Because she’s a Drifter.” Mar-Sadiqa was afraid that Ashrael may not have told the entire truth about her “powers.” Hachi had nothing to say.
After four days without a single Drifter sighting, Rox was beginning to wonder if Ashrael was even eating. She didn’t want anybody dying of starvation on her ship. So, on the morning of the fifth day, she marched into the infirmary with a purpose. “Come with me,” she commanded. Ashrael’s brow furrowed. “Will you please come with me?” she asked.
She strode down the corridor with Ashrael in tow, taking the lift to the kitchen. Mar-Sadiqa, Jos and Val lounged around the table, talking over mugs of ranna. Rox planted herself before them with her hands on her hips. “Okay. Ashrael here...”
Ashrael was not here. Rox looked back to see the Drifter hovering awkwardly outside the door. Rox pointed to her, then to the ground by her side, then thought she maybe should have invited her instead of ordering her like a child, but Ashrael shuffled into the room. Val stiffened. Mar-Sadiqa found the dregs at the bottom of her cup worthy of close inspection. Jos got a charming, Jos-style grin on his face and spoke to Ashrael in Sign. Ignoring the interpretation fed through her implants, Rox imagined what he was saying. Hello, attractive Drifter friend who I hope to sleep with. How are you?
Ashrael signed back. Oh, you know, hiding from the crew because they're afraid of and or hate me. Rox pulled a seat out from under the table, anchored it and gestured for her guest to sit. She poured two cups of ranna, took the seat next to Ashrael, and spread her hands on the table.
“Okay, we’re going to cut the bullshit now. Our resident Drifter is not going to float through your cabin wall and kill you in your sleep. Nor is she going to blow up the ship with her mind. I assume that you realize this.”
Val gave Ashrael a side-eye of apology and a one-shoulder shrug. Mar-Sadiqa tried to melt into the floor. Ashrael put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands.
“Ashrael,” said Rox, “you’re not going to do those things, are you?” Ashrael shook her head without lifting it from her palms. “This is the same Ashrael you knew before. From now until she leaves us, Ashrael is our ship’s doctor. Treat her like you’d treat any crewmate. Except not like Kalashnik.” He was a lecherous bastard who everyone had avoided. “Jos, please give Doctor Eli’s link a proper AI assistant, and DO NOT boobytrap it with poetry.”
She was born to be a captain.
***
As they made the trek toward the Cruach Cluster, the crew processed events and mourned their lost crewmates, each in their own way. Mosi told long-winded stories and wrote songs about them. Jos rated them one to ten by level of sexual appeal. Val, a master at breaking into locked rooms, began appearing in dead peoples’ clothes—this despite their previous rule prohibiting such violation. Garzia’s sealed crate of Europa stout was also mysteriously breached, and the crew toasted him with it around the poker table. The rhythm of voyaging between destinations was a familiar one, but for their smaller number, and the silent, watchful passenger they agreed to draw into that rhythm.
The only exception in this agreement was Hachi. When he and Ashrael happened upon each other, he matched his silence to hers. His perfunctory attempt to follow Rox’s order—to be “less menacing”—still ended up making Rox’s skin crawl. She had to reassure Ashrael that she was safe around him. She thought it was true. She hoped it was true; she had no patience for worry, but she didn’t recognize this side of Hachi.
Even more disquieting was the extent of the change that had overtaken her during the past year. Slate Kalashnik’s words returned more than once as she stared out into the darkness of her cabin: I’ve seen the things you’ve done. You’re a mercenary.
She was no mercenary. Life had hardened her, sure, but when Jos and Hachi joined the crew, she’d begun breaking free of the walls confining her to Ahmadi’s brutal world. What Kalashnik had seen during the past year was the growing sickness. She’d be tasked with delivering the Provinces’ verbal threats to the leaders of its territories, and would return to the ship dodging shock blasts, with no memory of what had occurred.
What did it have to do with Clearwater, and Varga? She’d had Jos try every trick he knew to extract the file Ahmadi had given her, but the link was damaged too badly. Like Ashrael’s ID implant, it would take military tech to untangle it. She tried to let it go.
At the end of a long repair shift with Val, Rox dragged herself toward her cabin, shading a hand over her eyes. Ashrael kept turning up the lights and forgetting to bring them back down after her. “Halifax, switch the day cycle light back to sixty after every time Ashrael Eli passes through. Including now.” Ten steps later, the lights came back up. “Ow! What the hell?”
Ashrael jogged up to walk beside her. “Can we talk a minute?”
Rox slowed. No, said her head. “Oh. Uh, sure. I’m heading to my cabin. That work?” She slowed her strides so Ashrael could keep up. “Hey, while I have you. You’re a doctor—I’ve been having this recurring... feeling. Like a tug in my gut, or... I don’t know. I’m not sure I can describe it.” She could, but the right words were in Cangali and involved spiritual nonsense. “It doesn’t hurt, it’s just really strange.”
“Things have been stressful. It’s probably a response of your sympathetic nervous system.”
“I considered that, maybe anxiety, but it’s different. It’s not exactly... uncomfortable.” Not that she was going to try to explain this, but the fact was that in an odd way it felt good, like it connected to this sense of reintegration, of oneness, that seemed to be growing in her. How could she describe feeling whole, without saying the word “whole” and sounding like her mother? She did not want to sound like her mother.
It felt good in other ways, too. She waved a hand. “Yeah, probably nerves.”
Once inside her cabin, she gestured for Ashrael to take a seat on the bed. Rox arched her back in a stretch, groaning. “I don’t understand how joints can get sore in low grav.”
“Aging,” said Ashrael.
Rox frowned at her. “Just how old do you think I am?”
Ashrael tilted her head and regarded Rox with pursed lips. “Forty-eight standard.”
“I’m only forty-four! You’ve got me four years too close to my eventual death.”
“We all start to ache eventually.”
“The Callic don’t ache ever. Last I heard I had grandparents who still worked out on the mining rig. Even the un-Callic half of me is not nearly old enough for arthritis. Is this why you wanted to talk to me? To get a head start on being one of those non-genest elders who only talk about their back pain and hemorrhoids?”
This wasn’t so bad, being around Ashrael. Rox kicked off her boots, crossed to the cabinet where she kept her liquor and sleep pills, and pulled out a bottle and two shot cups. “Martian sweet potato vodka. Mars’s one redeeming quality.” She handed a cup to Ashrael. “What did you want to talk about? Besides getting old.”
“I want something to do.”
“You’re our doctor.” Ashrael shrugged. “No work for you? There’s the hangnail Val won’t stop biting and then complaining about. And the infirmary could stand to be reorganized.”
“I did. Twice.” She corrected herself and held up three fingers.
“How about helping Val with repairs?”
“I tried. They told me to get lost. I think I broke something important.”
Rox chuckled. “You’re lucky they don’t want you. Val’s a brutal taskmaster. I almost wish they hadn’t been promoted to Senior Mechanic, though Willow was a plank and I like Val.” Rox sat in thought, then tipped back her drink. “How about you learn about port imaging?” she asked hoarsely, refilling her glass. “I could use another set of eyes on the sensors when we cross the Caballus Port. Plus, it’s a handy skill to have on a crew if you plan to keep traveling.” Ashrael considered this. She downed her shot and held out her glass.
