Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 (6 page)

"Did you notice anything at all strange when you came in here? Was Barre able to say anything to you? Do you know what he was doing?"

"No." The bittergreen ground to powder in his fist.

"Well, we'll figure it out when the tox comes back."

Bittergreen might be addictive and stupid, but it didn't do this.

His mother frowned, her gaze sweeping the room for clues. She didn't look worried. She looked furious.

Jem didn't want to be anywhere on Daedalus when they confronted Barre about whatever the hell he'd done this time.

***

Micah paced a tight triangle between his bed, the door, and his desk, furious with Ro for making him feel like he had to defend himself. She had no idea. She had no right. His micro buzzed. He waved at it.

"Micah, something's come up." His father's voice vibrated through the small speaker.

Flopping down on the narrow bed, he threw his arm over his face.

"We need to talk."

If Ro had lied to him and told his father about the bittergreen …

"Now would be a good time," his father said, and Micah could visualize the well-practiced look combining concern and amusement. That one look had always worked so well in his debates.

It was impossible to really avoid the man, not just because Daedalus only covered twenty thousand square meters, but because his intensity always eclipsed everything and everyone who stood near him. "I'll be right there."

Micah rolled off the bed and checked himself in the mirror. Appearances always counted with the senator.

He waited by Micah's door looking as if he'd just come by for an impromptu chat, dressed in the warm browns that contrasted so well with his still-thick blond hair. The only thing that spoiled his oh-so-casual stance was the slight frown. "Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee."

Micah winced. He had asked Ro the same thing, in that exact same tone of voice earlier. "I'm fine, Dad."

He shrugged and walked into the galley. "Then I don't mind if I do," he said, pouring himself a cup. Instead of sugar, he flavored it with a generous slug of whiskey.

"I have work to do," Micah said, trying to keep the disapproval out of his voice.

"It can wait."

That was always the problem. Everyone else got to wait, even his mother, even when she so inconveniently got sick.

His father stared directly at Micah, his blue eyes cold and crystalline, an uncomfortable contrast with his high energy smile. "The Commonwealth Council has appointed me Ambassador to the Trest Consortium."

Micah clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. How had he managed to wrangle a posting even more remote than Daedalus? Ro had no idea what it cost him every time his father fucked up somehow and they had to flee again. Though a Council appointment meant he'd probably traded something in return for a post that had at least the trappings of political respectability.

It would be simpler if one of his father's enemies collected on the death bounty. Simpler, certainly, but he had promised his mother to take care of him and until Micah reached legal age, he would keep that promise, no matter what. "Trest?" He wondered how long they'd be there.

"Apparently they are seeking full admission to the Trade Exchange."

Micah burst out laughing. "And the Commonwealth wants to sabotage it so they're sending you."

His father frowned. Micah resisted pointing out that frown lines would mar his perfectly photogenic face.

"I've atoned for my actions and moved past them."

But what about all the people his father stole from? Micah was willing to bet they hadn't moved past what his father did to them. So they would be moving again. That made six times in less than three years. He'd hoped Daedalus would be the last stop on the humiliation shuttle, but clearly that wasn't the case. "How soon?"

"The advance team is negotiating our housing," he said, beaming at Micah. The heat of his father's approval made him turn away.

"Can I at least finish out the semester?"

He put his arm around Micah's shoulders. "Wait, is this the same Micah who described Daedalus as, and I quote, the ass end of the universe?" He laughed.

"I have a botany experiment running." Micah shrugged off his father's arm and paced the length of the galley. "If we leave now, I'll have to abort it and start all over. Six months of hard work wasted." He hated how whiny he sounded. No matter what he said, the chance of his father changing his mind or even flexing his plans was slim to none. He didn't even really know why he tried.

"I'm sorry, son."

He only called him son when trying to soften the impact of "no".

"Our transport has already been booked. Do what you can to finish up. Once we're on Tresthame, I'll be able to request whatever supplies you need for your work. I've been told they're quite sophisticated for an outlying colony." He paused. "Excuse me, former colony."

Micah imagined putting in a list that included bittergreen seeds, though given how self-absorbed his father was, sober or drunk, he'd probably never even notice. "When?"

"Two weeks."

"Two weeks," Micah echoed, his stomach churning.

His father topped off his coffee with the rest of the contents of the scotch bottle and raised the cup in a salute to him. "I knew I could count on you." He sauntered across the common room toward his sleeping quarters.

How could his father do this to him again? Whirling around, he swept the empty bottle from the counter. Jaw tightly clenched, he stared at his father as it crashed to the floor. Glass shards ricocheted across the room.

"If you need me," Micah said, his voice a growl in the back of his throat, "I'll be in my lab."

His father's hand trembled and the diluted coffee sloshed over the rim of the cup.

Jem sat on his brother's bed and hung his head in his hands
. There was nothing he could do for Barre in the infirmary. If he had used again, the blood screen would show it. And then what? How could Barre be so stupid?

He pulled out Barre's tiny bag of bittergreen and turned it over and over in his hand. "Daedalus, report on the medical condition of Durbin, Barre."

His mother's recorded voice answered. "Stable, unresponsive."

The answer hadn't changed from the last five times he asked. Fine — he'd stop asking. "Locate Maldonado, Rosalen."

"Working, leave a message."

Jem pushed up from the bed, slipped the bittergreen in his pocket, and went to find Ro. If he couldn't do anything for Barre, at least he could work on the AI interface. Maybe he could help her set up or something. Anything would be better than thinking of the slack expression on his brother's face and the glassy dark eyes that stared up at nothing when he'd peeled back his lids.

He slipped through the airlock from the station into the old-style corridor — the kind of structure they put up when a place first got terraformed. It was sort of a pop-up tent construction with interlocking umbilicals and habitation bubbles. This last umbilical remained.

The door to the ship sealed behind him. "Ro?" Her utility cart sat empty between the bridge and the forward cargo hold. Maybe she was still working on the bridge. "Ro?" he called again as the bridge door slid open. It looked as much of a wreck as it had a few hours ago but without Ro here, he had a hard time believing any of the main computer would ever work again.

Maybe she had realized that, too.

He picked his way around twisted, fused metal and melted polymers. Whatever destroyed this place had really done a job of it. The consoles and the monitoring stations were all ruined. Jem frowned at the untouched chairs. That made no sense. He couldn't imagine a pitched battle with weapons fire sparing the chairs.

Clearly Ro hadn't been spending her time here. He retreated, opened the cargo bay doors, and stepped inside. It looked like a battle had been waged between the forces of organization and chaos. Odds and ends of old computers lay scattered in random arrangement along a beat-up table. A monitoring station set on a bench wedged against a thickly fogged curved barrier made reassuring beeping sounds.

Jem walked close to the barrier. He placed a hand on its material and pushed gently. It had a little give, but was thicker and stronger than he expected. How had Ro set up an old terraforming bubble so quickly? And where in the cosmos had she even found it? He studied the length of the wall, looking for a way in. Metal uprights embedded in the glass formed the frame for a field-airlock. It wasn't pretty, but the design was effective in either keeping something in or something out, especially if that something was nasty and airborne.

What could Ro possibly need to wall out?

Jem slid the rudimentary lock open and stepped through. The inner door flashed red until he re-sealed the outer compartment. These things were rigged to do full air exchange or pressurization if need be. This one didn't seem set up for anything but a simple in and out. He slid the inner door open and stepped into instant dusk and the thick humidity of a rain forest.

Blinking, he tried to see past the thick clouds of fog and moisture condensing on every surface.

"Damn it, Ro, I thought we had an agreement."

Jem stiffened at the angry male voice shouting from the back of the bubble.

"Bad enough I have to share my space with you."

The voice came closer. Jem's pulse sped up double time and he glanced back at the airlock, ready for a quick retreat, when a light flickered in the corner of his eye and he caught a flash of green. The light strengthened and the mist cleared. A tall figure emerged out of the fog along with row after row of plants, all with the long, thin five-part leaves of bittergreen.

"What the hell?" Jem said, glaring up at Micah who stared back at him with narrowed eyes and his mouth a thin slash across his face. "What did you do to my brother?" he demanded. "I swear, if anything happens to him, I'll ruin you."

"Great. Just great. Not that it fucking matters anymore." He turned his back on Jem and walked down a row between planters, stopping to examine his crop.

Jem stood there, his mouth falling open, before digging out his brother's remaining dried bittergreen and stomping after Micah. "Don't you walk away from me!"

Micah turned and scowled, looking down at Jem. "You're the doctors' kid. Why are you here?"

"Really? You have no idea?" Jem squeezed the baggie in his fist and stared Micah down. It didn't matter that the senator's son had nearly a half meter and twenty-five kilos on him. "Or do you not give a shit that you're selling tainted bittergreen?"

"What in the Hub are you talking about?"

Jem gestured across the miniature drug farm. "So, you're going to tell me this isn't bittergreen? I may look like a little kid, but I'm not stupid." He nearly spit the words at Micah. "Barre is in the infirmary. He was using. I found his stash. And then look what I stumble into — your little secret garden."

"Look, kid, I have no idea what your brother is using, but it's not my bittergreen. So far, I haven't been able to bring a crop anywhere near to market. Trust me, I really want to. Besides, it's just bittergreen."

"Just bittergreen." The ghost of Barre's face and his limp arm swinging over the edge of the bed filled Jem's mind. "Something in this stuff took my brother down. If you really believe it's that harmless, then try some." Jem shoved the bag at him.

Micah backed away and the drugs fell to the floor. "Look, I had nothing to do with your brother. I'm sorry if he's sick or whatever."

"Pick it up," Jem said, his voice a hoarse, unfamiliar growl. "You pick it up and you figure out what did this to him."

"I don't have time for this." Micah started to walk away again.

"The hell you don't," Jem said. His face blazed and pressure beat against his temples. He pulled out his micro. "Do it, or I'll video your little set-up directly to the commander. I think she'd be very interested in what you have going on here."

"Jem?"

He whirled around to find Ro standing behind him.

"This is your fault," Micah shouted, pointing at Ro.

"I guess I need to get working on some security for this place," she said, shrugging one shoulder.

Jem swiveled his head from Ro to Micah and back again. He didn't understand. Did Ro already know about the bittergreen? Was she part of it? His stomach clenched. Not Ro. It couldn't be Ro. She wouldn't want to hurt Barre, would she?

***

Micah shook his head. Jem's threats would almost be funny, except for the fact his father had just screwed up Micah's last, best chance to get this strain right. The hell with him. The hell with Ro and this kid, Jem. He'd already lost everything he cared about, starting with his mother.

"Those are not my drugs." He pointed down to the small packet of dried leaves at his feet. "And you," he glared at Ro. "You promised to leave me alone."

"I heard voices."

"Don't tell my parents that." Jem laughed and clamped his hand over his mouth.

"Jem, what happened?" Ro asked, softly.

"Ask him." He jabbed a finger at Micah.

"Damn it, I have no idea!" Micah shouted. "He starts raving at me like some lunatic about bittergreen and his brother. Like I'm the one who poisoned him or something. If he's sick, it's not because of me or the drug." Jem was so not convinced. Micah saw it in the set of his thin shoulders, vibrating with his anger and the dark, hooded eyes. "Why the hell do you think I chose the stuff to work with in the first place?" It was pretty benign and if his mother had had a sure supply of it, her last weeks wouldn't have been a nightmare of pain and despair.

The drug wasn't hard to grow, but the best strains were patented and completely controlled by the cartels. His attempts to get some for his mom were the beginning of the end for his father's political career and the start of Micah's botany experiments. He couldn't bring his mother back, but he could break the back of the cartels that ruined their lives.

"All I know is Barre is unconscious in the infirmary and I found that packet of bittergreen next to him." Jem shot a poisonous look at Micah before turning back to Ro. "You do the calculations."