Sparks in Cosmic Dust (23 page)

“Why should we?” Varinia asked.

The skinny sucker looked her up and down several times. “Because yiz have three choices, lady, and three only. One, yiz can murder us here right now.” He paused, stroked two of his fingers over a braid of ginger hair trapped inside his clear breast plate. “From what we’ve seen of yiz so far, yiz ain’t the type to kill nobody. No more friends after murder. None. Especially between yiz four. And after all, we’re unarmed.

“Two, yiz can force us back into our shuttle at gunpoint. But our grandy ship is still orbitin’ the next planet, see, lookin’ for new winner-minnin’ spots. And we can fly to them no problem, tell them all about the pyro winner-minners here on this beach. They’d kill all of yiz for that pyro, no problem.”

Grace snatched up her rifle and thrust the muzzle at the bastard’s shifty face. “A strong argument in favor of choice number one,
friend.
”

“True, true. I’ll not deny it. But you’d still be killin’ unarmed men with no food. Listen to what the third choice offers instead. Allers and me can dig in with yiz, equal partners from now on. He’s a damn strong winner-minner.” Noriad patted his brooding friend’s cheek. “And we can camp in the shuttle, away from yiz, if that’s better. I’ll even give friend Solomon here the power module for our shuttle, as a guarantee. That’s better still, see? We want to be friends, that’s all.

“But whatever yiz choose, come sunup, we’re stayin’ here. That’s a fact.” With that the strangers got up, thanked everyone for their “friendship” and tramped back to their shuttle. They retrieved their helmets on the way but didn’t switch them on again.

The distant sounds of Varinia’s elusive four-legged seemed to focus everyone on the problem at hand.

“A trilemma.” Clay tapped his pistol on the toe of his boot.

“No. I don’t see any choices,” Solomon argued. “Kill ’em both now. Do it quick.”

“What?”
Varinia sounded appalled, and a deep, distant part of him squirmed—a part he’d had to bury, or try to bury, ever since he’d recovered from his fever. Because if he couldn’t get to grips with the fact he’d lost her, he’d go insane. The pyro poisoning had proved it. As long as he was thinking of Varinia, he was hating himself—
hating
with a vengeance. And that was toxic. Not the vapor in the air. It was him, him without her, her with eyes for—

No, get a grip. Forget her. Focus.

“He might have a point,” Clay said, to Solomon’s surprise. “You don’t really think we can trust these clowns, do you?”

An unbecoming scowl bunched Varinia’s blue-lit features. “I—I’d hope we could at least consider a way—”

“Consider nothing,” Solomon cut in. “We chase them off, we’re finished. We let them in, we’re risking our pyro
and
our lives. I don’t trust anything about them. That bigger ship they came with, that’s gotta be some kind of Kuiper cruiser, probably scouring the system for snatch-mining ops. ‘Winner-minning.’ These two assholes are scouting on commission. They spot somewhere lucrative, they report back and get a tiny share of the profits. That about right, Grace?”

The old doctor gave a long, tired sigh. It snagged a chesty cough. She finally gathered herself. “Yeah, that’s what I figure. They plan to hide here where corborilium blocks the orbital scans. How the hell they spotted us in the first place I’ll never know. Lucked out, maybe.”

“Or saw the energy blasts from the city,” Clay corrected her.

“Doesn’t matter.” Solomon was now sure he had logic to back up his mistrust. “They’re not digging with us. They have to die.”

“It’s a pickle all right,” Grace said.

“It’s a nightmare!” Varinia said. “We’ve shared supper with these men, and now we’re going to blast holes in them…in cold blood? We could always tie them up. Treat them like prisoners. It doesn’t have to end in bloodshed.”

Solomon rolled his eyes. “Afraid so, princess.” He despised himself for calling her that, a nickname he’d never have used before the fever. What had the neurotoxin done to him? “They took that gamble when they dropped in on us. They knew it might end up this way. All I can say is—they’re fucking desperate to get rich if they’re willing to throw their lives away. Assholes.”

“Tying them up wouldn’t work,” Grace said. “We’d have to watch them the whole time, and if they did get loose, we’d be up a piranha creek with our soft bits dangling. Nah, it’s either send them packing or bury them here and sink their ship.”

“Okay, let’s vote on it.” Clay didn’t seem overly bothered one way or the other. At least he wasn’t squeamish. A point in his favor, Solomon reckoned.

Still frowning, Varinia kept her eyes on the fire. “One caveat. There has to be a majority vote before we kill anybody. At least three of us.”

“Sounds fair,” Solomon humored her. Let her keep her conscience squeaky clean. He knew full well what had to happen. “You all know where I stand. Bury the bastards.”

“Tie them up. Keep them prisoner until we’re ready to leave. It’s the least immoral thing to do,” Varinia insisted.

Clay didn’t waste any time. “Morality’s beside the point. Letting them live is just too dangerous for us. Remember the Christmas message, written in French? Ask yourself what happened to the Frenchman who wrote it.”

He had a point.

“And don’t forget
they gave us
this ultimatum,” Clay added. “I say kill ’em.”

The deciding vote now rested with Grace, the most experienced “winner-minner” of the group. Whatever she decided, they would have to abide by.

“Well, I started this whole insane adventure. Might as well see it through.”

She flung her rifle into the sand…

…then unholstered her Ares pistol.

“Always a handgun for close quarters.” She rose stiffly. “Sorry, chick. They have to die.”

Solomon held a celebratory fist to one side, away from the others, but in the throes of bloodlust, the most extraordinary buzz quivered his hand—a jagged throb that left both his wrists limp. The sensation quickly spread, petrifying his entire body. Ice. His heart drummed. And through the cold, he realized…

He was about to break one of his father’s commandments. The one he knew would condemn his soul to everlasting hell.

For the first time in his life, the concept gnawed, like his father had always said it would, at the marrow of his being.

Thou shalt not kill.

Fuck it.

He rose and on wobbly legs followed Grace out into the darkness.

If she hadn’t known, deep down, that their logic was undeniable, Varinia sure as hell knew it now. With Solomon, it had to be the fever talking. His arguments were lucid, but this was simply not the same sweet man, the same gentle giant who’d helped her escape from the Delfin and Kappa Max. It had to be the toxins still smogging his brain. If not, a gentle man had reasoned cold-blooded murder as the best solution. A scary thought.

And Grace? She respected Grace more than she’d told anyone. The old woman might be an unconscionable cynic at times, but she had displayed sound judgment throughout the expedition thus far, and she genuinely cared for her colleagues. As for Clay, well, he exploded
heads
for a living. What did she expect? And yet there was something constant about him, unswerving, an adamant center to this traumatized man that told her he would never hurt another living thing unless he felt there was no other choice.

If these people were bent on murder, maybe they had a point. Tying the intruders up, letting them go, gifting them equal shares in the profits to come—these
were
huge risks. Killing them was not a risk. It made cold, Darwinian sense. It was finite.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into?

With ghost hands she lifted her rifle and stole after her friends across the empty beach. Clay lit the way with his helmet lamp, while they did their best to conceal their weapons of execution, pistols for Grace and Clay, a rifle for Solomon. Varinia clutched hers behind her back with both hands. Stupid, but it was the best her crumbling mind could think of.

Noriad and Allers stood tall on the nose of their craft, three feet above the sand. Unarmed.

“So it’s choice number one?” Noriad’s loud voice sounded resigned, his absurd accent now a little pitiable. He stroked over the braid of hair frozen inside his breast plate.

“Your ultimatum, not ours,” Grace said.

Allers’s head stuttered back. When it reached the apex of its odd nervous cycle, he held it there facing skyward. “Yiz are all damned to him down there anyway. Dead anyway.”

Grace stepped forward, motioned for the others to join her. “We’ll make this quick.”

“And he’s right,” Noriad answered calmly—far too calm. “Yiz have no chance without us. Our grandy ship is on its way, and it’s not lookin’ for pyro. It’s lookin’ for a winner-minner called Roger—”

Clay opened fire, blasting bolts through the man’s chest with horrible rapidity. Grace did the same for Allers. Despite hesitating, Solomon raised his rifle quicker than Varinia lifted hers. She shot a bullet apiece into the two flailing men, then bowed in shame. The firing ceased.

At once, Zopyrus had never been louder nor quieter.

Clay rested a soft hand on her shoulder, delicately squeezed the tense muscle. “You okay?”

“Huh? Yeah,” she lied.

“Why didn’t you leave it to us? You could have stayed behind.”

She glanced up, couldn’t see him properly through the glare of his lamp, and bowed her head again. “We share everything, remember? Grace said that before we even got here. All of us or none of us.”

“Yeah, I remember.” He threaded his arm around hers and led her back to the safety of the camp.

From a distance, the fire’s blue flames appeared colder than ever. The tents darker, emptier. She couldn’t get over that braid of ginger hair frozen over the dying man’s heart.

The first sliver of blood-red sun brimmed over the horizon as the shuttle’s nose bobbed in the swells a few hundred yards offshore. An improvised burial at sea. Clay had fastened the corpses inside and programmed the ship’s autopilot for its final nose-diving flight.

He’d done it in the nick of time, too, as daylight now augured fears he’d long thought behind him. Noriad’s last word—
Roger
—clawed at his gut, and the dread feeling multiplied. It left him heavy, sluggish, as though light and visibility had physical weight, and the sky was pressing down on him, enveloping his anonymity.

Roger.
Flight Lieutenant Roger O’Neill, Inner Colony Space Corps, 81
^st
Condor Squadron. But…

How the hell had his real identity reached him all the way out here?

He trudged back to his tent in a daze, avoiding everyone else while they set about packing the camp’s supplies. Leaving Zopyrus ASAP was now the only smart option. They couldn’t be sure Noriad and Allers hadn’t sent a signal to their control ship. Given their ominous warning, though—“Our grandy ship is on its way”—it was reasonable to assume they’d contacted their superiors with
some
information on the mining party, and also that they’d planned to steal the pyro soon and make a quick getaway. What other choice would they have? They might even have been convicts paroled to Kuiper Wells for their tracking abilities—it would explain them being unarmed.

He slumped into his tent and folded his clothes and blankets for the return trip. Packing up the camp wouldn’t take long because they sure as shit wouldn’t be lugging most of the supplies back to the
Taras.
A quick getaway under cover of night was essential. They’d just have to transfer the bulk of the food and mining equipment into the mine and seal the fucker shut. Leave as few traces as possible.

But how the hell had Kuiper tracked him to this system?

Something to do with Kappa Max? It had to be. What, though? Camera surveillance? The low-g market had had decent security. Maybe Kuiper operatives had been systematically checking all deep-space security footage, colony by colony. Shit, were they
that
desperate to get their hands on him?

Then he remembered the flop-port. What if a camera had seen his little exploding heads stunt there, and word had reached the ears of a Kuiper agent?
Jesus.
He’d been so careful for so long, then he’d gone and…

And all for Varinia.

Well, not all…

Greed had played its part, too. He’d brought this on himself, for chrissakes.
Dumb son of a bitch.
That Kuiper ship had followed them from Kappa, keeping its distance. Was that the first clue Roger O’Neill had been followed? Hell, his warp double-back would be moot if Kuiper had gambled on his
original
vector away from Kappa being the correct one. Why hadn’t that occurred to him before? Solomon was right. He’d tried a fancy maneuver without applying basic logic. His own ingenuity had dazzled him. And Kuiper already knew the
Taras Bulba
’s heading before he’d zigzagged around the cosmos.

Unforgivable!

They were coming for Roger O’Neill. And God help him, if it came to that, he’d rather die than be a bringer of death in the wastelands of Ladon again.

But what could he do to save the others? Varinia—

Whump, whump, whump…

It sounded like a child playing drums on the sky. A gentle, distant rhythm, high up and descending. He grabbed his rifle by the barrel and dashed outside. Dawn’s pinks and purples filled the sky. He looked up, couldn’t see anything untoward. He checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber.

Before he could, a blaze of white light blinded him. All the hairs on his body bristled and seemed to soak up savage stimulants from the light. His chest tickled. Each breath flushed adrenaline around him in blissful surges. The
crack, crack
of aerial gunfire sounded.

A violent rumble underfoot staggered his balance. The whiteness blinked out.

“What’s that?” Solomon yelled from behind.

Readjusting his eyes to normality took several blurry seconds. The first thing he noticed as he gazed out was a small ivory trapezoid glowing on the horizon. The amphibian energy converter Lyssa had seen? So the white light had to have been another of the gargantuan blasts angled from the alien city to the mysterious ocean habitat.

More rumbling. Overhead. Underfoot.
What the hell had
—

“They opened fire!” Grace pointed skyward. “Look.”

Fuck.

It was a Kuiper raider, fleeing into space. The wispy brown trails of its missile paths curled into two commas above the ocean.

“They must have thought they were being fired on!” he shouted. “So they fired back. Self-defense.”

“Great. That’s gonna bring them
all
down on us.” With a furious roar, Solomon hurled his pickaxe like a Highland hammer at the inlet’s rear wall. The head broke off. “
Now
we’re fucked.”