Haywire (20 page)

She left her sentence unfinished as she flicked her eyes forward toward the oblivious captain. Shawn bit at the inside of his lower lip, angry he’d forgotten. A slip-up like that was something they couldn’t afford.

“
Sorry. Do you need–”

“
I’ll handle it,” his mother said as she floated past him.

A beeping sound issued from near the captain, and the woman hit a blinking button. “This is Finnegan.”

“
I know who ya are, ya twit,” a deep voice replied through speakers bolted to the surrounding bulkheads. “I’m not so old and daft I’ve forgotten how to work a radio, ya know.”

Finnegan barked out a laugh. “Aye, but I’m sure that’s the next bit o’ brain to go, ya git. Now, what are ya badgering me for, Garron? I’ve got things to do.”

“
I bet, and it’s a good thing ya blasted away when ya did. It’s why I’m callin’. Ten minutes after yer ship leapt off, we got locked down.”

“
Wha? The spaceport?”

“
No, ya twit. The bloody
moon
. They’ve locked ‘er tight as a fish’s bunghole.”

“
Cor! They give any reason as to why?”

“
Nary a word, Millie. It’s a right cock-up, and no one’s sayin’ anythin’. All we’ve been told is to stay put and wait fer inspectors. Word round ‘ere, though, is that someone nicked off with somethin’, somethin’ important, and now the Feds are aimin’ to get it back.”

“
But no one knows what?”

“
What, or who, or when. Just be glad ya missed it. If’n I can I’ll call ya when the kerfuffle is done with.”

The captain nodded. “Aye, do that. Now get yer arse back to work.”

Garron chuckled like a thunderhead. “Like ya even know the meanin’ of the word, Millie. Garron out.”

Finnegan closed the comm, flipped a toggle next to her control stick, and stood up. As she twisted quickly to her left and right the air was filled with crunchy pops along her spine. A look of pleasure swam across her face. “That’s the stuff.”

Once Artemis was freed from her seatbelts, his mother guided her toward the rear of the bridge. The Titan kept her head turned away from the captain, and her hands were folded in close to her body to hide the slight tremors creeping into her limbs. His mother held her as tightly as she could, then asked, “Captain, how long will it be until we land at Hygeia?”

Finnegan’s right eyebrow shot into the air. “Four hours, or thereabouts. This boat weren’t made fer racin’. Now, it’s none of my bloody business, but there a particular reason yer askin’? Mars is your destination, innit?”

His mother nodded, maintaining eye contact like any innocent person would who had nothing to hide. “It is. I need to make a call before we get there, though.”

“
And ya donna want it goin’ through our blowers, I take it.”

“
I’d rather not.”

Finnegan smirked. “Right. The mining office at Hygeia has a beamer. She’s secure, but it’ll cost ya.”

“
I understand, Captain. Are we free to go to our cabin now?”

Finnegan looked at her, then at the tall woman in her arms. Confusion was plain upon her face, and anger was beginning to slink in around the edges. “Not to be rude, but is there somethin’ goin’ on here I should know about?”

“
What do you mean?” Shawn said, trying to bring the captain’s attention to himself.

“
I mean, lad, is she sick?” Finnegan tilted her head toward the Titan, and then locked eyes with Shawn’s mother. “When ya asked for transport off that rock, I dinna ask why. Ya could be runnin’ to somethin’, or away, but it’s none o’ my concern, so I kept my nose out of it. Yer money was good enough, certainly. But I see this girl here, and she looks like death warmed up, so it makes me wonder if you’ve brung some lurgy lass onto my boat to infect us all. If ya did, and ya dinna feel like it was worth mentionin’, then we’re gonna ‘ave us some words. So, I say again, is she sick?”

Artemis’s shoulders stopped trembling, and when she turned her head she appeared as normal as anyone else. “Space travel doesn’t sit well with me, Captain. Never has. There’s nothing that you need to be concerned about.”

“
Right.” The captain didn’t look entirely convinced, but she sighed and said, “As to yer question, yes, ya can go to yer cabin now. It’ll be the hatch with a light on over it. You’ll pass the galley on yer way, so if you need somethin’ to eat or drink, go on and tuck in. We don’t do room service on this boat. I’ll shout when we’re about to pass through the conduit, which is comin’ up shortly.”

Shawn forced a smile to his face. “Thank you. We’ll head back now.”

Finnegan smiled back, the expression just as forced, before she returned to her chair and unlocked her controls.

As they passed through the kitchen area, which was really nothing more than a collection of bins and drink tubes, his mother stopped and asked, “Artemis, is there anything I can get you?”

“
No, thank you. Right now my body is in a delicate balance, and I can’t take a chance on upsetting it. If we can get to Mars as quickly as the captain said, I should be fine.”

His mother clearly didn’t like that answer, but the look in her eyes said she understood. She then looked over at him. “What about you?”

“
Oh, I’m okay, don’t–”

The Titan interrupted him. “You need fuel, Shawn.” Making sure they were alone, she said, “Nanite integration is hard on the body, but right now hormones and endorphins meant to make the process easier are flooding your body. If you don’t get nutrients inside you you’ll start to crash in a few hours, and trust me when I say that isn’t something you want to go through. I’ve been there, and it isn’t pretty.”

Before he could say anything, his mother slapped a cold plastic nutrient drink pouch into his hands. “Take this.”

They floated several meters aft until they came to a circular hatchway with a lit bulb glowing above it. Once inside it only took a few minutes for everyone to get strapped into a padded seat. To Shawn’s left was a small round porthole that looked out onto Callisto. The moon shrank with each passing moment. From a distance it didn’t seem like much, but it had changed his life forever.

Once settled, he held up the drink pouch and popped its built-in straw into his mouth. The cold juice tasted thick and vaguely of berries. Blocks of text appeared in his vision as his internal nanites broke down the drink’s nutrient information. After the pouch was empty he flicked it into the air. His mother grabbed it, tucked it into one of the pockets on her spacesuit’s legs, and gave him a motherly look of disapproval. Somehow, given the strangeness of their situation, the gesture made him feel more normal.

Across from him, Artemis looked at him. Her gaze was steady, boring right through him, and an angry flash lit across her eyes. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve a look like that, but before he could ask she doubled over in pain and cried out. The liquid metal on her hands and around her neck quivered, and small spikes jittering up and down across her body. It slashed through her suit, tearing holes all across it. She grabbed the arms of her seat, but they crumpled in her hands like paper, and she tore them off as she convulsed, freeing her to float up. He feared that in her convulsions she’d lash out and hit the bulkhead next to her, tearing the freighter open, but then she went slack and her eyes closed.

“
Holy shit,” he said, his breath coming out sharp and fast.

His mother looked anxious, but she didn’t move a muscle. “This is so dangerous, Shawn. The word ‘unstable’ doesn’t begin to describe her condition. She could kill us or destroy this ship without even realizing it. This… I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“
We don’t have a choice, Mom. We have to help her. She can’t do this on her own. I can’t do it on my own either.”

Looks of frustration and sadness crossed his mother’s face in alternating waves, but before she could say anything the overhead speakers rumbled to life.

“
This is the cap’n. We’re nearin’ Minerva Terminus and should be through the Hygeia Conduit shortly. For our passengers, if ya wanna take a gander at it, look out the port side. That is all.”

Shawn glanced over at the porthole, but he couldn’t see anything, and Artemis’s infected body blocked him from getting closer. His mother drifted across and gently put the Titan back in her seat.

“
I know we just got seated, Shawn, but why don’t you go to the bridge for a few minutes? You can’t do anything in here, and frankly I don’t want you near her until she’s awake and in control again. I’ll let you know if we have any problems, though I suspect the sudden decompression will be your first clue.”

He didn’t know if that was supposed to be a joke, but either way he failed to find it funny. After tossing a worried glace at the cataleptic Titan, he exited the cabin and drifted to the cockpit. Finnegan was still at her piloting seat, guiding the freighter with one hand while hitting buttons with the other. He knew he hadn’t made a sound as he neared her, but without turning the captain said, “‘Ello there, young sir, and what can I do ya for?”

“
Nothing, Captain. Don’t let me interrupt you. I just came to take a look out the forward windows. I couldn’t see much from our cabin.”

Finnegan smiled, the expression making her face look lovelier than it had any right to. “Ah, yer more than welcome. The route I fly, I see the same sights over and over again, so much so’s I sometimes ferget the beauty o’ the endless deep. Do ya get into space much?”

“
I do, but it’s all commercial, so you barely see anything. The first time I can remember going into space was when we moved from Luna, but I was just a kid, so it’s all just fleeting images.”

“
Never been to Luna. I’ve seen ‘er, from a distance ya know, but that’s it. Always meant to land and have a look about. Soak up the history and all that.”

“
Have you ever been to Earth?”

“
Aye, a few times. I was born on Io – most of me family moved there to help rebuild the colony after the Titans ran those spiky bastards off – but a few stubborn ones stayed on Earth, so I try to stop in and see ‘em when I can. Helps to remember where ya came from.”

Shawn nodded. “I suppose so.”

“
Ah, ya dinna come up here for all this jawin’. Step forward, young sir, and take yerself a good look. Minerva Terminus is dead ahead, and I doubt you’ll get a better gander at ‘er than ya can right now.”

Happy to follow orders, Shawn pulled himself forward and brought his face close to the thick glass that separated him from vacuum. Outside it was Jupiter in all its swirling orange and brown glory, seeming to fill all of space. In the middle of his view, though, was a sprawling construct of steel and human ingenuity. Against Jupiter’s majesty it seemed small and insignificant, but he knew from being inside it that it was actually a gigantic facility that dwarfed most space stations.

“
A beauty, innit?” the captain asked. “We humans don’t often pull together, but when we do we can make somethin’ really special. Of all the terminuses I fly past, Minerva’s the capper.”

Shawn couldn’t argue with her. Minerva Terminus looked like an enormous creature that had been pulled from the deepest depths of the sea, and then clad in steel and sent floating in space. Nearly five kilometers long, the top of the station was where thousands of people live and worked. It was a dome-shaped area a thousand meters high at its tallest point and two thousand wide. Tapering down from it was what looked like a tail, the shaft a hundred meters thick. From the tail sprouted six massive arms, each one lined with docks, some occupied by starships and some empty. The arms, in turn, pointed toward large metal rings, inside of which swirled vortexes of red and blue light.

“
Ever think we’ll discover new wormholes?” he asked. “Or maybe we have but weren’t told about them?”

Finnegan chuckled. “Ah, don’t go gettin’ all conspiratorial on me. Believe you me, if the governments, any governments, found a wormhole that was worth usin’, we’d know about it. Space is a big place, but conduit rings are hard to hide, and so’s ship traffic. Sure, you could try and sneak one out behind Ganymede or Mercury, but eventually one of us shippers would catch on, and then the jig’d be up. ‘Sides, there’s nothing worth hidin’. Sol is Sol. What we got is what we got.”

“
What about out-system? You don’t think someone’s managed to find a wormhole that leads to another solar system?”

“
Now yer gettin’ daft!” Finnegan replied with a loud laugh. “The bigger the secret, the harder it is to hide. Findin’ a conduit that leads out to Alpha Centauri or some other such place would be too big of an event to keep quiet. We’ve got robo-ships headin’ out there as we speak, burnin’ their ion engines as hot as they can, and when they get where they’re goin’ they’ll start pulsin’ as loud as possible. Maybe then we’ll catch sight of a wormhole that leads out of Sol. Until then, I’m afraid we’re stuck ‘ere. Wherever it is the Titans ran off to, they took those secrets wit’ ‘em. Maybe someday they’ll wander back and let us all in on the fun.”

A chill ran down Shawn’s back like a spider with cold feet when he heard the freighter captain mention the Titans, and he backed away from the window in a slow drift. “Now who’s being silly?”

Finnegan grinned like a little girl. “Aye, yer right there. We both be daft. Anyways, ya seen enough, or do ya want to stay here while we go through? Passin’ through a wormhole is a wondrous sight to behold, and this is the best seat in the house fer it. We should have our clearance in a few minutes.”