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  “And what are you going to do?” Yvette asked.

  Already thinking of who had guns, how many rounds of ammunition were left, and how many would stand and fight if it came down to it, Trish felt queasy as she said, “Some of the things we’ve done? Clemenceau? Title and deeds? There’s a good chance The Corporation is going to be pissed off when they find out. So I guess I’ll prepare for a war if we have to fight one.”

  She was nineteen after all. People her age had been fighting wars for most of history, right?

  Shit, tell me I’m up for this.

  5

  The captain’s lounge barely measured up to the name. A person could hardly “lounge” in a space that seated six around a small central table. The holographic wall on one side conformed to Turalon’s curving hull, while a dispenser in the back provided drinks and limited food.

  Max “Cap” Taggart had always considered a summons to the captain’s lounge to be an imposition on his absolutely meaningless schedule. As one of the Supervisor’s three staff, he was expected to be present. As the man in charge of Corporate security and its detail of twenty marines, he mostly sat through the droning meetings, saying nothing, bored out of his skull. The only consolation he got was watching the minutes tick off, realizing he was being paid a small fortune with each flash of the passing seconds.

  Cap padded down the command level corridor. Most of the ship was constructed of sialon—a supertough ceramic alloy of silicon, aluminum, oxygen, and nitrogen. He was tired of sialon. As he passed the hatch, he glanced in at astrogation. Nandi sat with her head bent forward to allow her to monitor the holographic displays as she interfaced with the ship’s guidance.

  Their routine sexual liaisons weren’t anything serious. She didn’t really have much in common with him. Nor did she hesitate to mention that she was in love with an astrogator on Freelander—the ship that had undertaken the previous passage to Donovan’s World. There just weren’t many options for command staff to fulfill their sexual needs—and she’d just come off a bad experience with a transportee.

  Cap sighed and continued on his way, passing the engineering hatch and taking a sip of coffee from his zero-g cup. Coffee remained life’s single constant—though he wondered if the taste was the same, given the quality of the water now running through the ship’s recycling systems.

  At the lounge hatch, he knocked on the sialon bulkhead and looked inside.

  “Come in, Cap,” Board Supervisor Kalico Aguila called. She was seated across from Captain Margo Abibi at the far end of the small table. Information Officer Nancy Fuloni sat to the captain’s left, her eyes fixed on a scrolling holo screen projected from the table.

  Apparently it was going to be a small meeting, for as he entered, the door swung shut behind him.

  Board Supervisor Kalico Aguila met every criterion for a bright, ambitious, rising star. The ultimate Corporate warrior, superbly versed in the cutthroat politics waged by the high and mighty. Word was that Aguila was ruthless when it came to her rivals, coldly competent, and without scruples when it came to advancement. One by one she had destroyed or broken her competition as she rose through the ranks to finally secure a position on Boardmember Taglioni’s small staff.

  In the halls of power she was both feared and respected, hated for her methods and admired for her successes.

  She also fit the definition for the old term “eye candy,” definitely nice to look at with her wealth of gleaming black hair, remarkably blue eyes, and sculpted cheeks and nose. It was hard to tell—given the high quality of healthcare for which she qualified—but she looked to be in her late twenties. Kalico favored immaculately tailored clothes that accented her broad shoulders and high breasts, and the taper to her lean waist, sensual hips, and long legs. A body as perfect as programmed genetics could make it.

  Unlike Cap, she hadn’t been “assigned” to the mission. She’d gambled everything and asked for it. The whispered rumor was that the Board had resisted—thought she was too talented to lose—but that Boardmember Taglioni pushed it through. It had been hinted that Kalico had enthusiastically shared the good Boardmember’s bed as a way to seal the deal.

  Cap took his chair as Kalico turned back to the report projected above the table. A frown lined her high brow, and her blue eyes were thoughtful as she read. Cap admired the view as she ran supple fingers through her thick black hair. That alone was a sign of status. Most everyone else shipboard had to shave their heads.

  Then, just as a man’s fantasies began to run away with him, her eyes would fix on him like cutting lasers. An instant later her razor-sharp personality would slice away any semblance of femininity, warmth, or empathy. A reminder that no matter how she looked, Kalico Aguila remained as ruthless as any tiger, and as coldly focused as a cobra.

  Ship’s Captain Margo Abibi also concentrated on the report; the holographic words and images scrolled with the movement of her light brown eyes. Even sitting there in her chair, she looked the part. A stereotype of a career spacer. No nonsense. Capable, right down to her short fingers with their unpainted nails. That The Corporation had appointed a woman of Abibi’s capabilities and record indicated just how seriously they took the Donovan mission.

  Cap sat back in the chair, turned his watch up, and watched the display. Ten SDR a day. He watched the seconds tick by. . . . Twenty, thirty, forty . . .

  He’d gotten to two hundred and thirty when Kalico said, “I hate to interrupt the amassing of a small fortune, Captain, but I need your attention.”

  “Yes, Supervisor?” He glanced across the empty seat that separated them.

  Kalico leaned back and fingered her implant monitor with her left hand. Her expression communicated a preoccupied tension. She flicked fingers toward the projection. “This is the latest of the fragmentary, disjointed, and ludicrous reports we’ve been receiving.”

  Cap shifted, rotating his coffee cup on the desktop. “Fragmentary? Disjointed? What’s the Supervisor down there think he’s doing?”

  “He’s dead,” Kalico said crisply. “Killed in the ‘bush.’ Whatever that means.” A beat. “Or so they say.”

  “What the hell? Have they all gone mad down there?”

  “You could wonder,” Fuloni muttered under her breath.

  “It gets worse,” Kalico told him. “According to the reports, there’s only three hundred and eighty-nine people alive in Port Authority. They think—think mind you—that another couple of hundred might be living in the ‘bush.’”

  “Must be a hell of a big bush.”

  Abibi was shooting them sidelong glances.

  “At least part of the mystery, however, is solved. We’re the first ship they’ve seen since the Mekong spaced for Solar System over six years ago.”

  “Mekong? That’s the second ship that disappeared, isn’t it? After Nemesis?”

  “Vanished after leaving Donovan for Solar System. But at least it made it this far.” She looked uncomfortable as she stared at the display with pinched eyes. “That’s seven. Seven missing ships in a row! It doesn’t make sense. What the hell has happened to them? The Board expected the missing ships to be here, in orbit. Perhaps seized by the colonists. Maybe left behind by mutinous crews. But not vanished.”

  “What could have gone wrong?” Abibi wondered. “Anything that failed during inversion should have kicked on the default. Reversed the math, and they should have returned automatically to Solar System. That’s the fail-safe.”

  “Maybe we’ll find out when we get dirtside.” Kalico massaged her brow.

  Cap lowered a skeptical eyebrow. “They’ve been on their own down there for all that time? Outside of the fact that there’s a colony still left, is there any good news?”

  “Every sialon shipping crate is full of clay, rare-earth elements, or metals. All stacked and waiting transport.” Kalico tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. “Oh, and they have exotics t
o ship. Locally derived foods, spices, and rare gems. Lots of animal hides.” She paused. “Animal hides?”

  “They refer to some of the indigenous life-forms,” Fuloni told her. “I saw a quetzal hide once. Remarkable colors.”

  “Now there’s a moneymaker for the Board.”

  “What about the political situation?” Cap asked. “You said the Supervisor is dead. What about his deputies? What are we looking at?”

  “They seem to be rather vague about that. Questions are answered in terms like ‘We think’ and ‘We’re not sure.’ As if it’s some kind of committee. No one seems to have a title. There are phrases like, ‘Talina informs us that the following quarters are ready.’ Or ‘Shig has heard from Raya that the supplies listed below are exhausted.’”

  “There’s only three hundred and eighty-nine of them,” Fuloni mused. “It’s no wonder they use names instead of titles. They all know each other.”

  Cap took a swig of his coffee and shook his head. “Xian’s report was that nearly three thousand people were working the mines, building outlying research bases, surveying, prospecting, cataloging the planet’s resources. What happened to them? Disease?”

  Kalico flicked her fingers at the report again. “The answer I got was one word: attrition.”

  “We’ve only had a colony on Donovan for thirty years. You think it was a social meltdown?” Fuloni asked. “A lack of leadership after the Supervisor died? Maybe they all turned on each other?”

  “Might be. We’ll know more when we get down there.” Kalico turned her intense eyes on Cap. “I want you to get together with your marines, Cap. I know you’ve been training this entire journey. Be ready for anything. You will function as my personal guard, but I want you and your people learning the ropes. On my command you may have to seize the Port Authority facilities and institute martial law.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He paused. “But there’s something I don’t get. You said that it’s been six years since they’ve seen a ship? That the last one was Mekong?” He ticked them off on his fingers. “That’s Governor Han Xi, Tableau, Phoenix, Ashanti, and Freelander. They can’t have all vanished.”

  Fuloni’s expression betrayed a poorly hidden sorrow. “And don’t forget Nemesis . . . and that Mekong never made it home. So apparently they all have.”

  “We’ll get to that problem in its turn. For the moment, our concern is Donovan.” Kalico thrust a finger at him like a spear. “Cap, get your people in order. To restore order we may have to kick some ass when we set foot dirtside, and when the shooting’s done I want them down instead of us.”

  His stomach tightened. “Are you sure that—”

  “You don’t have a reputation for being squeamish when the shooting starts, Captain. I wouldn’t think it would be a problem for you.”

  An image formed in the back of his mind: torn and blasted bodies spiraling in zero g; streamers of blood coalescing into oscillating blobs that floated toward the bulkheads. The staring and sightless eyes and protruding fingers of intestines that leaked from ripped bellies.

  Men, women, and the children. All dead.

  No, Supervisor. Not a problem.

  6

  No more than a day out of hospital, Talina Perez felt as weak as a jellyfish—and yes, Donovan had its version of the organism. All of her life she’d presented an image of tough invulnerability. Now she had to stand before the whole of Port Authority—on crutches, no less—when her guts felt like wadded tissue paper.

  Not only that, her eyes were playing tricks on her. At odd moments the backs of her eyes would ache, and she’d see a rainbow haze of color at the edges of her vision like a sheen of oil on water. Her muscles would spasm and knot unexpectedly. Hints of odor that she’d never noticed now caught her nose. Her dreams had been off, jumbled with images of color, smells, and the thrill of a chase she could never quite understand.

  And there was that weird swelling sensation in her gut just below the heart, as if some foreign body were present.

  All of which meant that Talina Perez was in a really pissy mood.

  Get it out of your head. You’ve got a job to do.

  She propped herself, stiff-armed, on Inga’s bar and used one of the crutches to keep the weight off her healing leg. Raya had explained that the bone was knitting well, but that Talina needed to wear the cast for at least another week. Oh, and don’t push it.

  That was quetzal crap.

  It figured that Shig and Yvette would lay this on her.

  For effect she’d worn her sable uniform—or at least what was left of it. The form-fitting garment had begun to look more than a little worse for wear. The elbows and knees had been patched, and the fabric mended here and there, but she’d tried to keep the threadbare look to a minimum. Any other day she’d have worn her quetzal-hide vest, wide-brimmed hat, and chamois shirt and pants.

  To her right, Inga Lock braced herself with her left hip against the bar. The big woman had her meaty arms crossed and a stern look on her forty-year-old face. Every trial and tribulation in the woman’s long and hard life had left its trace on her broad-boned features. She called her establishment The Bloody Drink, after a particularly harrowing incident that had occurred there many years past. Most folks just called it Inga’s Tavern.

  Now it functioned as town hall. Probably because Inga served whiskey, beer, and various wines. All made in the stone warehouse immediately behind the dome-covered subterranean tavern. Each time she’d enlarged, it was easier to dig out beneath the dome to increase the room’s circumference.

  Tonight’s meeting consisted of nearly two hundred people, the others still attending to their scheduled duties under Trish’s watchful eye.

  As if summoned by the thought, the young woman came skipping down the steps from outside. Trish carried a slung rifle over her shoulder and wore a standard brown coverall. From across the room she gave Talina the kind of nod that made her auburn hair bounce—the signal that everyone who wasn’t on watch was present.

  Talina had sort of adopted Trish after the girl was orphaned. Seen that she stuck out her education. Mentored her through the ups and downs of the teenage years, the heartbreak of Trish’s first love, and trauma when one of her classmates died. Somehow, given the bond between them, it wasn’t surprising that Trish had taken to security—and done well enough to essentially become Talina’s second-in-command. Sometimes she worried about the younger woman’s near worship.

  “Hey! Attention! I’m calling this to order!” Talina slapped the bar for good measure, and kept slapping it as the room slowly quieted. “And I do mean order! First one of you bastards that crosses me, by God’s ugly ass, I’ll blow him in two!”

  Talina didn’t have a commanding voice; she generally talked in a mellow contralto. What she did have was the respect of every man, woman, and child in the place. She might not have outright killed any silly son of a bitch who had the temerity to disrespect her—but she’d have considered maiming him.

  In the following silence, she gave the packed room a narrow-eyed glare. “All of you want to know about the ship. It’s called the Turalon. It inverted symmetry two years ago outside the orbit of Neptune. Now, here’s the thing: Including the Mekong, The Corporation has sent seven ships our way, and the Mekong never made it back. Every ship since the Xian has been lost. That’s seven lost ships. Seven.”

  “What happened to them?” someone called.

  “We don’t know. Maybe they got lost on the other side? Mechanical failure? Exploded for all we know.”

  That sobered them.

  Soft muttering broke out, people shaking their heads, sharing uneasy glances.

  Talina read the character in their faces; trial, self-reliance, and hardship reflected from their sun-leathered features. Keen-eyed and level stares looked back at her, challenging, but willing to hear her out.

  All totaled, there were three hundred and
eighty-nine of them in and around Port Authority, from old Artie Manfroid who had just turned seventy-two, down to little new-born Macie Han Chow, who hadn’t reached a full month.

  They wore a mixture of clothing that included bits of hide they’d skinned off the native animals, tanned, and tailored to service. Some still maintained old jumpsuits, mining overalls, and coats from their previous worlds. Over the years, footwear had given way to boots made from durable quetzal hide that shimmered and shot rainbows with each step. Hats of various descriptions—but obvious utility—covered every head. Capella’s light could be brutal. Most of the adults carried weapons of one sort or another, a constant reminder that even in the supposed sanctuary of Port Authority, Donovan could strike at any moment. Equipment belts were studded with battered communicators, solar pocket computers, coiled line, carabineers, and the emergency kit that contained fire-starter, a thermal blanket, water purifier, needle, hatchet head, string and thread, along with other necessaries that could mean the difference between life and death.

  These are my people.

  The thought brought her a sudden pride. An understanding that she couldn’t have had without that ship up there in orbit. Now her people waited, heads cocked, expectant of the information she brought.

  “You think we got all night?” Tyrell Lawson asked, from the front row. “What’s the news?”

  “Probably taking their good time about sending a shuttle,” someone groused in the back. “Been six years. What’s their hurry?”

  “They’re processing their people,” Talina answered. “Shifting cargo. Most of you spaced here. You remember the drill. Ships have to be shut down, inspected. It’s not like shucking your coat on the way to Inga’s. And after six years and all the missing ships, it’s not like they don’t want to get it right.”

  “Damn straight,” a man in back called. “Especially if they’re taking me back to Transluna.”

  “Hear, hear,” someone else called.