Once they were in, the hatch closed, Irwin warmed up the ship and joined the other three in the cabin, the viewscreen dialed to show the platform outside. The fear-struck scientist was already strapped in, his eyes blank and empty, but Tia and John seemed okay. No one approached, the faraway sounds of the transports taking off the only change in the strange air. They watched for what seemed like hours, although it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes—and when the platform shook beneath them, a glow of orange light rising up past one of the envelopes along with the dull, muffled sound of an explosion, her companions had had enough waiting.
“If that was a stabilizer, the slant’s about to get a fuckload worse,” John said, turning to Irwin. “And if one of the envelopes gets blown through, the whole station’s going down.”
“Maybe your guy was on one of the transports,” Tia said hopefully.
Irwin nodded slowly. Maybe he was. And if he wasn’t, maybe it was because he was dead, and she wasn’t so hot on the idea of joining him.
“Strap in,” she said, and the relief on both their faces lent conviction to her decision. She was the pilot, these people were counting on her to take them to safety; Briggs and his twin goons were on their own.
Irwin snapped off the viewscreen and moved toward the cockpit, harnessing in and taking a final check on her passengers before she realized that she hadn’t had time to think about what had happened to Windy. It had all happened so fast.
And we were going to be together, we both wanted it, and now it will never happen. He ‘II never laugh at another one of my dumb stories, or drink to old times or kiss a woman, ever again—he’s over, like some movie, dead.
Irwin brought the Jumper up, a tear running down her face for the terrible murder of her friend as they blasted away from Bunda survey.
Vincent was nearly hysterical when they finally made it to control, and Briggs had to suppress a serious urge to scream at him. It was bad enough that the ASM had led them halfway around the station trying to find a lift that worked, babbling all the way about what a Company man he was. But at the sight of the corpses on the outside platform, followed by the sounds of Bunda’s transport ships taking off, he’d graduated from annoying to a possible liability.
They stood in control, Vincent pacing and tearful, his voice raised to a near shout.
“I don’t understand, who could have done this? Why, why would anyone want to kill them, why didn’t someone call us, why did they leave? Jesus, I don’t understand, where’s Cabot, he wouldn’t have left without trying to find us and—”
“Shut up,” Briggs snapped, almost as irritated with himself as with the blithering Vincent. He hadn’t expected such a savage attack, hadn’t been prepared for it, and God only knew what was happening to the three on the shuttle.
“Nirasawa, this station is under attack by person or persons unknown,” he said briskly. “Get me back to the Nemesis shuttle by the fastest possible route.”
“Yes, Mr. Briggs,” Nirasawa said, turning back to the outside platform. Briggs followed him, stepping over one of the extraordinarily dead people and wrinkling his nose in disgust. All three had been eviscerated, which didn’t strike him as the work of a Company exec—leading him to the unsettling conclusion that some outside competition was involved.
Vincent tagged after them, finally quiet, and as they reached the steps leading up to the next deck—
BA-BOOM!
Nirasawa reached back and gripped Briggs’s arm before he could fall as the platform trembled violently, continuing its gradual slant. Briggs could see a reflected glow off the side of one of the spheres. Something was on fire, something in the direction of the H/K shuttle.
They’d have to hurry, these stations wouldn’t withstand a serious fire and with no one to put it out, it was only a matter of time—
“The whole platform’s going to crash,” Vincent said.
Brilliant.
“I don’t understand,” the ASM whined, stumbling up the stairs behind them. “Why would anyone—”
Briggs cut him off, tired of waiting for Vincent to figure out what was right in front of him. “Think about it—your survey hasn’t turned up anything of particular value, has it … yet someone has deemed it necessary to attack your station and kill your people, on the very same day that a shuttle from the Nemesis lands. Tell me—do you really think Weyland/Yutani is the only corporation interested in the data they collected?”
They reached the top of the steps and started across another deck, the flickering glow getting stronger. Across the wide, empty expanse of dark platform was another set of stairs. Briggs sighed, feeling entirely put out with the circumstances, with the idiot botanist and the obstinate Lara and with whatever internal leak had led to the immensely inconvenient attack on Bunda’s station.
“You mean another company did this?” Vincent asked, his attempt at outrage coming out in a squeak.
Nirasawa had stopped, his head cocked as if listening for something. Briggs glanced back at Vincent, wondering what he could possibly say that would make him be quiet. Nothing, he imagined, some people were just—
“Sir—trouble,” Nirasawa said, and stepped forward with his arms raised, reaching out as if to grab a shadow. Briggs frowned, peering into the darkness—
—and suddenly, out of nowhere, a giant appeared. He was dressed in some kind of armor with long, beaded hair surrounding a full face mask. He towered over Nirasawa by half a meter, and the guard was by no means a small man.
A cloaking device!
“Wh—what is it?” Vincent stammered.
“Synthetic,” Briggs said, unable to keep the awe out of his voice as Nirasawa grabbed the giant’s arms, straining to hold him in place. Nirasawa was state, his vat-grown muscles fibered with steel thread, the combination of electrical stim and pumped microhydraulics providing him with exceptional power; Briggs had wanted two of them, but there simply weren’t enough of his model to meet the demand. That the assailant seemed to be holding his own was simply amazing, and with an invisibility device . . . this was big, he’d have to get a team on it as soon as possible.
“I’ll hold him, Mr. Briggs,” Nirasawa said, barely able to restrain the monster synth. “I would recommend you get to your Sun Jumper—”
The attacker slipped one hand free and slashed at Nirasawa’s face, divots of layered flesh flying. The guard managed to restrain him again, but Briggs realized that he was right; the 949 log wouldn’t do him any good if he were killed in a station explosion or murdered by one of these cloaked soldiers.
Back to the ship, wait for Nirasawa, and then have him fetch Keene and the others, we can conclude our business on the way back to Earth , . .
“Vincent, take point, I don’t know the layout,” Briggs said, reluctant to tear his gaze from the struggle. Truly astounding. There was a clattering sound coming from the strangely dressed synth, perhaps some malfunction. If Nirasawa could incapacitate it, carry it back to—
“But—Mr. Briggs, isn’t that your ship?”
That got his attention. Briggs’s head whipped around, his gaze following Vincent’s pointing finger. For a second, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, unable to comprehend that Irwin would dare—but the elite Jumper was speeding away from the station, its sleek form unmistakable against the starry sky.
Damn her, when I get back to Earth, I’ll—
When he got back. Of course he would, but suddenly, he wasn’t so sure that he should be worrying about what he would do to Irwin at some future date. There were more immediate concerns—and for the first time since he’d landed on this forsaken hole, for the first time in years, he had no idea what the next step should be.
20
T.
I he force of the explosion pushed Jess underneath the shuttle, lucky for him; as it was, Lara had to slap out a patch of burning fabric on his leg before dragging him away from the growing fire.
She wasn’t sure what had happened, she’d heard Ellis shout and then there was the explosion, the shuttle rocking violently. She’d run out and seen Ellis frantically pulling the hose away from the ship, huge sections of the deck covered with burning fuel. She’d seen a flailing shape engulfed in flames only a few meters away, and for one terrible second, she’d been sure that it was Jess. If she hadn’t heard him groaning from beneath the transport . . .
, Ellis joined them behind the shuttle, helping Lara pull Jess to the far railing, but Lara knew that they wouldn’t be safe if the tanks caught fire. Jess started to come out of his daze, looking up into Ellis’s stricken face as he rubbed at his jaw, obviously in pain.