The Belt - Complete Series, page 25
“Get up, you’re needed. Come.” He shook her again, this time with more force.
Steph raised a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m coming.”
The transport shuttle had detached from the Hermes and burned hard for several hours. No one was allowed to speak. They could do nothing except exchange the odd furtive glance; it was the only way they had to express the utter incredulity of their situation. The captors, for their part, told them nothing save that the Hermes was no more—it had been utterly destroyed. As to the fate of Scott and Cyrus, she hoped they had somehow survived the explosion, but the pragmatist in her knew this was highly unlikely.
She rolled off the bunk and stood up. Her body ached mainly on her right side, where she had taken a blow from a gun butt after a foolhardy challenge to one of the attackers. Her jaw also ached from a punch that pretty much took the fight out of her completely. She was sure one of her teeth was broken, hence the blood in her mouth. She spat again.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her by the arm and directed her out of the room. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Goodchild, who gave her a nod as if to say, “Don’t worry, it will be okay.”
After several hours in the shuttle, they had finally docked with a spaceship. A pretty big one, judging by how long it took to transport them all to this room. They had blindfolded them by placing foul-smelling bags over their heads and tying them at the neck so they wouldn’t float off in zero-gee. But the ship had a torus, and as they moved them further into the ship, Steph could feel the gravity tugging at her body. Eventually, they shoved them all into an accommodation module, where they removed the bags. The module had several bunks, enough for them all, and sanitary facilities. But before they could adequately survey their surroundings, a new voice demanded their attention.
Standing in the doorway was a squat, rugged man of indeterminate age. He exuded an aura of authority, and the other mercenaries stood still as he entered. “Listen up. Here’s what’s happening: you’re all being held for ransom. That’s the deal here. So, settle in and behave. Nobody try anything stupid, and you’ll all come out alive.” He turned and left, followed by his men.
The room erupted into a clamor of voices as they all started to talk about what had just happened. But Steph wasn’t listening; her thoughts kept returning to Commander Scott McNabb and Chief Engineer Cyrus Sanato, and how they must have died in the explosion. She dragged her tired body over to one of the bunks, lay down, and promptly fell asleep.
The guard took her out of the accommodation module and down long, dimly lit corridors. The ship was big; this much Steph could figure just by the incline on the floor of the torus. Bigger than the Hermes. It was also very old. She could see it in the design of the interior and the worn and patched walls. As she walked, she began to think it might not be a ship but a space station. Maybe it was their HQ, their base of operations, the place where they could feel safe. If that was the case, then it must be well-hidden, far away from the main shipping lanes. She met others of the crew on the way, ragged men and women all. They gave her no heed, passing her by as if she didn’t exist.
“In here.” The guard shoved her in a new direction, through a wide door that had probably once been automatic. Now it was wedged open and looked like it had been that way for ages. The second set of doors they came to had been better maintained and seemed to work as intended. The guard placed a palm over a pad and the doors scissored open to reveal a large area that Steph recognized. Not this specific area, but others like it. It was a medbay, and like the rest of the station, it had seen better days. Most of the remaining equipment was either heavily patched or had ceased to function long ago. The PET scanner was now simply used as a table, piled high with boxes and bundles.
“Over here.” The guard guided her onward, through another set of doors to an equally dilapidated operating theater. She imagined it had been a very long time since it had been sterilized.
On the table in the center lay an unconscious man. There was an IV attached, and he was hooked up to what she assumed to be the only working life support monitor they possessed. Here, his life was displayed in multicolored graphs. There was only one other in the room along with herself and the guard: a tall, thin man, almost elegantly so. He wore a white coat that looked surprisingly clean, at least compared to the rest of the place. “Dr. Stephanie Rayman, I believe. Pleased to meet you.” He extended a hand.
Steph ignored it. “And you are?”
“Juno.”
“Juno? That’s a Belt name?” She was fishing, looking to get more out of him.
“It’s just a name.” He wasn’t taking the bait. He lowered his hand.
Steph looked down at the patient’s face. It spoke of a life lived hard and fast, with the stories of many unfortunate encounters etched in the lines and scars.
“So,” she said with a kind of matter-of-factness, “who’s this?”
“Who he is isn’t important. However, what’s wrong with him is of importance.”
Steph looked down at the unconscious form again and raised the sheet covering him. “Hmm, I see he’s had a few… modifications.” She looked back at Juno.
“Yes, exoskeleton. State of the art, I believe.”
Steph sensed a certain disdain in his voice, as if he didn’t approve of such a brutal physical augmentation. She looked up at the monitor, checking the patient’s vitals. Even from the little she had seen, it was obvious to her that this man was clinging to life. He would probably be dead soon, and as far as Steph was concerned, that wouldn’t be soon enough. One less scumbag sounded good to her.
“So, what do you think?”
Her first impulse was to tell Juno exactly what she thought, but then she considered that that might not be such a bright idea. It might be better if she went along with this charade, and then maybe she could learn something useful. Maybe she could find out who these people were and… And what? she thought. She looked down at the patient again, more as a way of buying time to think rather than any attempt to prescribe a medical intervention.
“So, you’re the doctor around here?” she finally said.
“Yes and no. I’ve got some general battlefield training. They bring ’em in, and I patch ’em up. But I’m not a doctor.” He looked over at the guard when he said this last statement, like it was something he had tried to explain many times before.
Steph glanced back at the guard. He had taken a seat beside the door and looked totally uninterested in the exchange. She returned her gaze to Juno. “So why the hell should I help you? These scumbags have just killed four of my people.” She waved an arm at the guard.
Juno sighed. “Here’s the thing: You don’t have a choice. If you refuse to cooperate, then my friend over there will go back to your lock-up, pick someone out, and bring them back down here. Not somebody important—not someone worth a lot of money. Then he’ll start to inflict pain. Maybe just a little at first, but the longer you hold out, the more that pain will increase. And if they die, then he’ll start on another one.” He looked over at the guard. “Isn’t that right?”
The guard grinned and nodded.
“See? They’re all scumbags on this bucket, and they don’t give a shit.”
“They give a shit about this guy.” Steph gestured at the patient on the table.
“They sure do. So help me out here, because I really don’t want to be patching up anyone else today.”
Steph gave him a resigned look and proceeded to remove the thin sheet covering the patient. His body was thin, borderline emaciated. He had a pallid color and his breathing was shallow. But what shocked Stephanie was the spindly exoskeleton he had surgically attached to his body. This was a permanent procedure that involved the grafting of metal to bone. Along the sides of his legs, pins protruded from the skin at either side of joints that were, in turn, attached to the main exterior structure. This arrangement continued up his torso to the back of his neck, and also included both arms and hands. She had heard of these procedures, which were brutally intrusive and could not be undone. However, it would afford the user considerable speed and strength—assuming you didn’t die from the surgery.
“Jesus.” Steph hadn’t meant to say it—it just slipped out.
“You’re telling me. Some piece of work, eh?”
She examined it more closely. It had been done many years ago, judging by the accumulation of skin tissue around the pins. Whatever was the matter with this guy, it didn’t seem to stem from the exoskeleton. “How long has he had this?”
“Ever since I’ve known him. That’s a few years, at least.”
“So, what’s your prognosis?”
“My what?”
“What do you think is wrong with him?”
“Hell, if I knew that I wouldn’t be talking to you, now would I?”
“I just need to know if you’ve pumped him full of anything?”
Juno relaxed a little. He moved in closer to the table and looked down at the stricken man. “I’m just guessing here, okay? So, bear that in mind. Come around here and have a look at this.”
Steph moved over to the other side and looked at the spot on the man’s ankle where Juno was pointing. A dark red splotch bloomed from the location of one of the pins. The edges of it snaked along the tracks of several veins.
“Nasty,” said Steph.
“Any ideas what it might be?”
Steph took a closer examination. “Is this pin new?”
“Yeah, he had an upgrade a few weeks back.”
“Well, looks like a botched job. Whoever did this was using dirty tools.” She looked up at Juno. “He’s got septicemia—really bad.”
“Septa—?”
“Blood poisoning. And if he’s not treated correctly, he’ll most likely die. In fact, he could die even if he is treated.”
Juno looked at the splotch, as if the mere act of looking would effect some miracle cure. “Shit.” He stepped back and looked at Steph. “So, what do we do?”
“Normally, we’d take a blood sample, run it through an analyzer, and identify the infection biology. From that we could synthesize the precise antibiotic to get the job done without killing the patient in the process.” She looked around the operating theater. “But I doubt you have either of those machines.”
Juno sighed. “No, but we have some generics.”
“That’s a bit brutal, and pretty antiquated these days.”
“It’s all we got.”
Steph considered her next move. She could help save this man’s life, which as a doctor she was duty-bound to do. But on the other hand, she could make it look like she was being compliant while helping to dispatch this scumbag a little more quickly. Yet it would be a small comfort for what they did to Scott and Cyrus. She had to think.
“Okay, you better just show me everything you’ve got in stock.”
“Sure.” Juno seemed to brighten at the prospect of someone with medical knowledge deciphering the labels of whatever supplies this rag-tag group had in their dilapidated medbay. “Come—this way.”
They left the theater and passed into the outer medbay. The guard stood up and followed them out. “Hey, Juno?”
He spun around. “What?”
“You sure it’s wise, you know, having her poking around all that stuff? Maybe she’s figuring to pump the capt—eh, the patient—with a load of poison?”
“Hey, I’m not completely stupid. I’ve got a vague idea what most of that shit does. We’ll check it out on the data-stack first.”
The guard gave Steph a long, hard look before nodding at Juno. “You’d better be right.”
Juno unlocked a door into a small storage area. Small enough that only he and Steph could comfortably fit. The guard was left outside.
“Suspicious sort, isn’t he?” Steph nodded out the doorway.
“That’s what happens when both parents are gorillas.” He looked at Steph. “No offense to gorillas.”
Steph fought back a smile. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she cast her gaze around the shelves and lockers. They seemed to be well-stocked with painkillers and sedatives, all generic. Boxes of bandages and wound sealant were stacked up floor to ceiling. These were battlefield supplies, maybe stolen from some mining base where these sorts of injuries were all too common. But none of this was going to help the guy in the exoskeleton. His war was on the inside and, without some pharmaceutical assistance, he was going to die. She’d also begun to realize that he was probably the captain of this bucket. The guard had let it slip, but he had simply confirmed her own suspicions. That’s why he was so important to them. But this now posed a dilemma for Steph: How would a group like this behave without the leader? Assuming he died. The recent actions must have been sanctioned long before their captain became incapacitated, but who was running the show now, and what was their plan?
She could answer none of these questions, and in many respects, it didn’t matter. Assuming they were being true to their word, then they would all be released unharmed if and when the ransom was paid. Her head hurt just thinking about it all.
She picked up a vial of a powerful antibiotic. “Here, start with this.” She handed it to Juno. “It needs to be intravenous.” She looked at him. “You can do that, can’t you?”
“Yeah, I think I can manage that.” His reply was tinged with sarcasm.
“Good. Half of that now, the rest in four hours. Also, get him on a ventilator and oxygen, and for God’s sake don’t sedate him again.”
Juno gave her a look like a schoolboy that had just been found out. “How did you know?”
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Okay, but he can be a bit hard to handle.”
“Just do it.” She cast her gaze around the inventory again. “Got any more?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well find it, because you’ll need to keep pumping it into him for the next 90 hours or so.”
He nodded and started rummaging through the shelves. As soon as his back was turned, Steph took her chance. She had spotted some cyclophromazine already preloaded in micro syringes. This was a powerful sedative—in small doses. In larger doses, it was deadly. She reached out and palmed several of the packets, shoving them into her pocket just before Juno looked up again.
“Okay, looks like we have six more vials.”
“Well then, you don’t need me anymore?”
“Eh, no. I should be okay from here.” He nodded to the guard outside. “He’ll take you back… and thanks for the help.”
Steph looked at him for a moment. “Go screw yourself.”
11
SCRATCHERS
Scott’s oxygen-deprived brain began to revive on the journey back to the research station. By sheer blind luck, the base had been occupied, and so they had been saved from an almost certain death. But as his mind cleared, he began to wonder just who these people were. They weren’t scientists, that was for sure. So, what were they doing there? He had no answers, and he couldn’t talk to Cyrus about it for fear of being overheard by Spence and Wolfe. Nonetheless, he and Cyrus were alive—for the moment, at least.
When they finally arrived back to the base, they were taken to meet Dogg, the leader of this band. He sat behind a long, narrow table, flanked by two others. Food was brought in, comprised of simple ration packs. Both Scott and Cyrus found that they were ravenous, and gladly accepted the food.
“So,” Dogg started, “your colleague here tells me that your ship—the Hermes, no less—was destroyed?”
Scott wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, the whole episode is a bit hazy, since we were trying to escape as it was happening. But as far as we can tell, they took the crew and passengers hostage and then set explosives to blow up the Hermes.”
“Any idea who would want to do that, or what they wanted?”
“Nope, none. Your guess is as good as ours.”
Dogg inclined his head like he was considering something. “Who was on board?”
Scott glanced over at Cyrus, trying to get a clue as to how much the engineer had already told these guys. “We were ferrying some people to a UN special session that’s taking place in Jezero City on Mars. We were stopping off in Ceres’ orbit to pick up a few more when they attacked.”
Dogg leaned in and gave Scott a hard look. “You didn’t answer the question. Who was on board?”
Scott wondered what sort of vibe he was getting here. It wasn’t too friendly, but it wasn’t overtly threatening, either. “Regina Goodchild, head of the Council of Europa. Some others I don’t really know, and I think we were supposed to be taking Chancellor Bezzio of Ceres on board, so he might be there, too.”
Dogg sat back in his chair and gave whistle. “That’s quite a passenger list. Some very high-ranking people there.”
“You need to get the word out. Get to the authorities in Dantu, let them know what’s happened.”
Dogg raised a hand. “Woah… just hold up there a minute. Firstly, my guess is whoever needs to know about this incident already knows. Second, we don’t exactly want to be advertising ourselves to those who might not like us using this facility without asking first.” He glanced from Spence to Wolfe, and all three started laughing.
“I don’t think they would take kindly to that.” He leaned forward again. “Which brings us to what to do with you guys. You see, you’ve put us in a rather awkward position.”
Scott stopped chewing. “We’re just glad to be alive.”
“I’m sure you are, but now we have a problem. Somebody might start looking for you. Someone might spot a crashed shuttle out there in the crater and reckon it could be worth investigating.”
Scott and Cyrus remained silent, waiting for the hammer to fall. Dogg waved a hand around. “Then again, we have to consider that we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, Commander Scott McNabb.”
Scott wasn’t sure if he was following this; maybe his brain was still oxygen deprived. “Eh, how so?”
