Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (29 page)

Meriel woke and blinked.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Elizabeth said with a smile.

“Where are we?”

“Jira-1. Inbound to LeHavre,” Elizabeth said. “We passed the beacon, and Socket sent messages to the kids and their families, M. And the messages to the troopers are out, too.”

“Now we wait,” Meriel said.

“Liz,” they heard Molly say through Elizabeth’s link, “take a look at this.” Elizabeth displayed the message on the ceiling for Meriel.

IGB news wire ET/2187:112:11

Breaking. For immediate release.

Documents hidden for ten years have been made available to this network that implicate BioLuna CEO Rhodes, the Archtrope of Calliope, and unnamed UNE/IS officials in the attempted illegal takeover of a colony.

These documents link the conspiracy to a complaint filed in the Lander Station superior court from representatives of the L5 colonists of Haven…

“Jeremy must have forwarded a copy of the material we sent him before the attack. He’d not have learned about the attack on the
Tiger
yet,” Meriel said.

“He must have been thinking like you were,” Elizabeth said. “Better to have the law and the media going after Biadez and Khanag before they can get to us and the kids.”

They were quiet a moment, and Elizabeth watched her sister staring at the overhead and smiling.

“You need to forgive him, M,” Elizabeth said.

Meriel turned to her sister and lost her smile. “Did he talk to you?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “It’s obvious. He just hangs around you, and you’re distant.”

Meriel looked away. “You’re not Mom.”

Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “No, but maybe you need one. Are you mad at him?”

Meriel remained silent.

“He loves you, M. He comes to the med-tech every time he’s off duty.”

Meriel nodded. “I saw him sometimes.

“He sleeps here.”

“So do you.”

“I’m family,” Elizabeth said and then raised her arm to show that she was still handcuffed to the chair. “And Cookie only gives me potty breaks. You didn’t talk to John about Ferrell?”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“I know he hurt you, M, but I think he was just trying to help.”

“We should pay for our own mistakes, but I paid for his.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Is that it? You making him suffer because Ferrell was a shit?”

“John didn’t trust me, Liz.”

“Oh, so now Ms. ‘I can skirt the law whenever I like’ is all so trustworthy? You’re acting like you’re going to walk away from this like nothing happened, like you can just forget him because he brings a bad memory.”

“I don’t need his help.”

“Now you’re just pissing me off,” Elizabeth said. “You’re acting like you’re alone in the world, like you can do all this yourself.”

“I’ve had to.”

“Not anymore, Sis, not for some time now. Mom gave you the chip but she told me to help you, so listen up.” Elizabeth took a breath. “You’re a mess, and he’s sticking with you. No one has ever cared for you like this except a few of us. And you’ve never cared for any man as much as you care for him. You give all us kids a mile but won’t give him an inch. Don’t blow this, M.”

“It still hurts,” Meriel said.

Elizabeth nodded and took Meriel’s hand. “Don’t wait too long, or the hurt will never go away.”

***

Ellen Biadez picked up the tiny vial of brown liquid that lay on the nightstand of the bed, pierced her little finger with the sharp end, closed her eyes, and sighed. Wearing only a silk nightgown that was banned everywhere in known space, she walked to the window and lit a cigarette from the monogrammed gold case on the coffee table. She inhaled deeply.

Along a section of the window frame, she drew her finger to increase the window’s transmissivity to bring out the red and black contrasts of the sunrise on the cliff face of the Ophir chasm outside. Another swipe of her finger on the frame and the low moan of the rushing wind filled the room as the air heated by the rising sun rushed into the long canyon. Without thinking, she wrote her initials on the window in the reddish dust that seemed to coat everything, even the most exclusive apartments of Mars-6.

It had been a long day of spinning the news and deflecting reporter’s questions because of a spacer who had lived ten years longer than they had intended.

Behind her, a mobile replicator rolled up and looked at her with a childlike face, awaiting her wishes. She looked at it and curled her lip.

“Champagne. Two. Surprise me,” she said, and the robot placed two flutes of vintage champagne on the table.

Her bracelet link buzzed. “What is it?”

“We know where they went.”

She waited and sighed. “OK, where are they?”

“Haven.”

“Crap. Can we get to her?”

“Not yet.”

“What about her old ship. Can we destroy it?”

“They looked into it. We can’t do that without taking a chunk outta Enterprise Station and lots of collateral damage.”

The little robot interrupted. “Can I offer you something more, ma’am?” it asked with a child’s voice, but Ellen ignored it.

“How can I hurt her?” she asked under her breath. The robot tilted its head in confusion. “Can we destroy her reputation? Discredit her in the media?”

“We’ve still got drugs on her record. We can push that button anytime we want.”

She shook her head. “Then push the goddamned button, moron,” she said and tapped her link.

A man stirred in the bed behind her, and the reflection of the bed lamp glinted off her champagne flute.

“You were stupid to listen to my husband and not deal with those brats more…decisively,” she said. “Now our entire plan is jeopardized by one stupid girl who has no clue what she’s gotten herself into.”

“Your husband is an influential man, and he is our partner in this.”

“My husband is an idealistic imbecile.” She threw her cigarette on the plush white carpet, and the little robot quickly moved to extinguish and dispose of it. “At least you should have taken out that little bitch before she shot off her mouth,” she said while watching the robot with contempt.

“She was too public.”

“You’ve been saying that for a decade. How public is she now, for god’s sake? I’m tired of cleaning up the mess those cretins always seem to leave behind.”

“You worry too much,” he said. “No media company in the galaxy will print the real story.” He walked to the window and picked up the other flute of champagne. “Forces are in place. It will only be a few weeks.”

“You said that before, as I recall,” she said with another sneer. She turned on him with teeth bared and poked her index finger in his chest. “And this time when your forces roll over Haven, make sure they roll over her, too.”

He narrowed his eyes, put his hand over hers, and squeezed slowly. Ellen’s face lost its animal fierceness, and when she winced, he smiled and eased his grip without letting go. He kissed her on the lips, turned, and walked to the bathroom.

Ellen rubbed her hand and clenched her teeth. She saw the innocent face of the mobile replicator waiting for her wishes nearby, and she kicked it. Her smile returned as she watched the wounded robot leave to engage a functioning replacement, dragging its shattered arm behind it.

She could not tell him what she knew—her husband, Alan Biadez, was feeling remorseful and preparing to expose their plans. If she did, her lover, Cecil Rhodes, the CEO of BioLuna, would kill them both before she left the room.

LeHavre was a gleaming white torus mostly dedicated to research and development and transshipments from space to the surface. Since John had left, the stationers had built a new appendage around the slender zero-g axis, a toroid with a simulated 1.15-g at the periphery and pods along spokes to provide ranges of gravity for physical therapy.

In the clinic on the third tier, a wrinkled old doctor, the genetic surgeon who had saved her life, checked Meriel’s vital signs from the telemetry patch on her stomach that monitored her damaged organs.

“Any pain?” the doctor asked as he pushed a spot on her stomach near the patch.

“Nothing. Can’t we move this any faster?”

The doctor frowned and pushed on the patch. “Now?”

“Yeah! OK, OK.”

“Stand for me.”

Meriel took the forearm crutches and winced when the crutch padding rubbed the rashes on her arms, and she stood awkwardly. “This would be easier in a suit, Doc.”

“Can’t use any of those gadgets and gee-gaws,” the doctor said absently while he made notations on his link. “I told you that once you go on the gadgets, you never get off. If you wear a walking suit, the body adapts to the suit, your muscles atrophy, and you’ll never be able to walk again without it.”

The doctor waved his link near the telemetry patch and a full-size, real-time holo of the inside of Meriel’s body appeared beside them next to a heads-up display of a console. With a wave of his fingers on the console’s icons, the holo zoomed into the region near each of Meriel’s wounds.

“Uh-huh,” the doctor said as he moved from region to region within the holo of her body to observe the fractured ribs and contusions that appeared with green or blue glows around the healing injuries. He moved to the orange glow around her ruptured liver and used the console to adjust the genomics pump, and the orange region calmed to light chartreuse.

He zoomed into the region near the lumbar plexus and the damaged nerves just above narrow rods that appeared to be staples in the rear of her pelvis. “Hmmm. Healing nicely. See here,” he said and pointed to an orange region with white fibers running in all directions and an angry red area in the center. “Raise your leg.”

Meriel complied, and a few of the white fibers lit up along with the center red area. “See there?” he said. “That’s where we need to work now.”

He waved his fingers near the console icons. “Here’s an archive from last week,” he said, and a similar holo came up, but the red region now extended well outside the field of view. “Lots of progress here, see?” He switched back to the real-time display. “We’ve got your gross motor skills back, but we want the fast twitch and fine motor skills engaged. Until that red area disappears, we want you exercising. We want blood in there to help you heal and your nerves to keep signaling that region.”

The doctor stopped tapping on his link, and the holo disappeared. He waved his hand for her to sit down and looked at Meriel. “Your whole body must relearn how to work together. It’s smart, but it needs time. Twenty years ago, you’d be in a suit or wheelchair for the rest of your life. Now you’ve got the choice of a full recovery. You made the right choice. Stick with it awhile longer.” He reached into a drawer along the wall and removed a small tube. “This is for the rash on your forearms,” he said and pursed his lips. “Now, what about the scar? Did you make a decision?”

Meriel looked down and rubbed her hand along the long scar that crossed her body, the scar from that first attack on the
Princess
. “I’m not sure anymore, Doc.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand. It’s part of you. Take your time. Anything else?”

“Yeah, how do you do a kata with forearm crutches?” she asked and held them up. “I look ridiculous. What can I do to speed this up?”

“Exercise,” the doctor said and tapped the medallion on her necklace. He smiled. “And pray.”

The doctor left, and Meriel stood near the large window that looked out to a view of Haven. Her experience of planets was limited to burned-out husks and frozen shells that maintained human life only with grit and technical genius. She still could not believe it and tried to imagine life on the surface.

“Hey, Chief,” Meriel heard from the door to the clinic and turned to see Molly walking toward her.

“I’m writing a letter of commendation for Ferrell for his family,” Molly said. “You were with him. What can I say?”

“Sorry, did he actually do anything except die?” Meriel asked with a sneer. “I must have missed the commendable part.”

“I just want to say something nice to his family.”

Meriel sighed. Ferrell’s interrogation of her on the
Tiger
was still fresh and painful, especially the memory of him asking if she was OK, and her saying, “No.” Ferrell had just ignored her as if all of the pain in her past and the agony of dredging it up in detail meant nothing to him—as if he dissected a butterfly while it still twitched.

“Permission to be candid, ma’am?” Meriel said.

“Granted.”

“Tell his family that I’ll piss on his corpse.”

Molly frowned. “My, you’re grumpy this morning. Got something more to say?”

Meriel looked at her, confused; she was sure that Ferrell had told Molly everything. “He didn’t tell you?”

“About what?”

“He drugged me. That shit drugged me to get inside my head—without my permission.”

Molly shook her head. “I warned him that I’d kick him off the
Tiger
if he tried something like that. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There wasn’t time. And then it didn’t matter,” Meriel said and looked away.

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said I was off the meds and dangerous, especially around equipment.”

“Well, you are pretty scary sometimes, girl. Were you off the meds?”

Meriel looked down at her hands and pressed her lips together. She felt guilty about her repeated lies. “Yeah, but I really don’t need them.”

“How long have you been off?”

“Nearly seven years.”

Molly nodded. “And you qualified for eighteen ratings and a logistics-five during that period. Yup, seven years would do it.”

“You know something, Molly. What is it?”

“The passengers said that Ferrell mentioned something about BioLuna to a black-suit.”

Meriel sneered. “Maybe he guarded the passengers rather than protected them.”

“I don’t think so. One of the mothers said they shot him as he raised his weapon. She gave me a vid. I’ve got it here.” Molly pulled out her link and played the vid.

The vid displayed Ferrell’s profile. With a nervous voice he said, “Please. I’m Dr. Patrick Ferrell. BioLuna will vouch for me and the passengers. General Khanag knows this.”

Molly stopped the vid. “What do you make of it?”

“They knew him, Molly. Khanag’s people knew him. He worked for BioLuna, and he knew BioLuna partnered with the archtrope.”

“Jeez. So what do I tell his family?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t one of the bad guys, but he helped the really bad people. Oh, right, that makes him corrupt. Let’s see now, corrupt and unethical and unscrupulous. And, oh yeah, he died saving his own skin. Did I miss something virtuous there that you want to tell his family?” she said and went back to her training.

“I’ll write up a formal complaint against him, Chief.”

“Why bother?” Meriel asked with tears on her cheeks. “He’s dead.”

“Legal action against BioLuna.”

Meriel shrugged and struggled with her crutches to maneuver over to a bench by the window and sat down. She threw the crutches down in frustration and looked out the window.

Molly walked over to her, picked up the crutches, and leaned them against the wall within Meriel’s reach. “You hid her in plain sight,” she said.

“Who?” Meriel asked. She thought that Molly might be talking about Elizabeth.

“I got a message from Jeff Conklin,” Molly said. “Jeff said the
Liu Yang
is on the impound dock at Enterprise with a hull breach and never flew. The
Liu Yang
is your ship, the
Princess
, no?”

Meriel nodded.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Molly said and put her hand on Meriel’s shoulder. Meriel said nothing, but another tear rolled down her cheek.

“May I interrupt?” John asked as he entered the clinic and walked toward them. He noticed Meriel wiping the tears from her eyes.

“Greetings, Pilot Smith,” Molly said. “Excuse me, please, I’m on duty. Ms. Hope, I’ll consider what you said. Good day to you both.”

“You OK?” John asked when Molly had turned the corner.

“Yeah,” Meriel said. “Molly just reminded me what a total scumbag Ferrell was.” She returned her gaze out the window to Haven.

“It’s gorgeous, huh?” John said.

Meriel nodded but wondered what he meant. “There’s a lot of brown down there.”

“More dirt than water, but even the vegetation looks brown from up here,” John said. “It’s hard to see the cultivated areas anyway. The settlements are those dots by the sea.”

“What are the little white spots?”

“Clouds,” John said as he sat next to her. He tapped the window ledge, and a wireframe overlay appeared around the features of Haven below them. “Nowhere near as many as on Earth. Lack of rain is one of our major problems. The water cycle returns through ground water, and there is very little surface runoff.” He tapped on the window, and the view zoomed closer. “See those long, white, oval shapes near the sea there?”

Meriel nodded.

“Those are cloud plumes from hyperbolic cooling towers and evaporation ponds. They humidify the air and cut the dust, at least downwind. It may take a hundred years to get a regional water cycle going, maybe decades before the dust storms and mud rains stop.”

“It rains?” Meriel asked with a surprised smile.

“A little. We can’t let it rain too much, though. The native animals get their water from plants and aquifers. They’d drown in a puddle.”

“Where are the domes?” she asked.

John moved his fingers along the window and the closeup view panned east to show the interconnected hemispheres of domed habitats.

Meriel smiled. “They look like soap bubbles.”

John nodded. “There are only a few. We’ve lived in habitats for generations, and some still fear living outside. These were built as protection from the dust storms, but most of us live out in the open.”

“Really, you can walk around without suits?”

“Yup. Jira-1 is just a little less UV and a bit more IR than Sol. Great for crops. We only need goggles for the dust storms. The big dome is the capital at Stewardville.” He panned farther east past rectangular areas of green. “Those are the farms.”

“The clouds don’t reach that far,” she said.

John nodded. “Right. It’s all subsurface drip irrigation.” He panned a bit farther to the east. “This is the Johnston valley, where we fought off BioLuna and the mercenaries.” He paused, and sadness marred his face for a moment. Then he zoomed in to an assortment of shapes and green areas. “And that’s our compound there.”

“I think my mom would have liked it here,” she said but frowned.

John looked at her and took her hand. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel in control in space, prepared for anything, kinda.”

“Haven is safer than the
Tiger
.”

Meriel nodded. “I’ve been dreaming about Home since I was a kid. But this is real, and it’s all so new,” she said, wondering if she could ever trust a sky to keep her alive.

“What about us, M? You’ve been distant.”

Meriel looked down. “It still hurts, John.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was only trying to help.”

“That’s what hurts, John. You didn’t trust me.

“You weren’t honest with me, M.”

“How could I have told you I’ve been breaking the law for a decade and thousands of violations of court orders? And then aiding and abetting an escaped suspect and a stowaway? They’d kick you off the
Tiger
and arrest you if they ever thought you knew any of that. You wouldn’t see your girls for years.” She still didn’t tell him the worst—a security breach on Enterprise that could put him away for life if he knew. “I haven’t been a good girl, John. It’s dangerous for you to hang around me.”

“You didn’t trust me. You kept all that from me.”

“I told you everything but the stuff that could get you shipped off to a mining colony.”

John nodded. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more about Haven. Everyone on Haven is afraid that immigrants will overwhelm us,” John said. “It’s not resource rich like Earth still is, and the ecosystem is fragile. No one thinks that those coddled people on Earth or the stations can survive here. Farming is nothing at all like spacing.”

Meriel thought of the hydroponics and agri on Enterprise. “They might surprise you.”

“You can understand why we need to be careful.”