This is a stall tactic, and I know it. I keep backing up the ramp, toward the open entrance in the side of the shuttle.
“Stop right there or we will fire!” shouts an Oasis PD officer, aiming from a kneeling stance.
The SPS Captain pulls the mic away from his mouth and approaches the city cop. He quietly puts the guy in his place, and I keep stalking backward.
A shot rings out. A sharp pain shoots through my calf, but I’m able to remain standing, only clipped by a low-caliber pistol round.
“Dammit,” the SPS Captain orders into his microphone, flustered. “Stand down! Stand down! Do! Not! Fire! She could damage the platform and the ship.”
“That’s right!” I call out. “Back off. I’m going to board the shuttle, but I mean no harm to anyone, and in fifteen minutes I will surrender.” Threatening, I add, “But if you attack me, I’ll have no choice but to pull the trigger, and that’ll be on you.”
More police are arriving, including SCAPE private security and a deployment truck with Collections Agency heavies. I quicken my pace, holding the fuel canister over my chest and neck, keeping it between me and the police. The ramp is long and steep, and I feel the warm blood trickling down my shin, soaking through the shabby leggings I borrowed from Ali Silva’s mother, but in a few seconds, I’m out over the deep shaft in the ground, staring down into the deep circular wall reinforced and heavily lined with ablative plating, in which the spacecraft sits. Two more steps and I’m at the entrance of the shuttle, looking through the door. Time seems to slow.
The SCAPE Short Range Planetary Transit Vehicle is a long, thin craft, which uses a controlled fusion burn as propellant. It has a maximum range of nearly five billion kilometers, but in this system, they never go farther out than the Orbital. The model has been in service for over three solar decades, and this particular craft looks nearly that old, its hull brighter in some places where the lining was recently replaced, darker in others from the char of atmospheric reentry. I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these, and there’s something surreal about stepping on board.
The floor is only about a meter square, a mesh landing port for service crews to step on. The chambers of the ship are wide open, all the way to the bottom, about ten meters down. A pair of crew in spaceport jumpsuits is securing cargo on the lower level. They look up at me in alarm, putting their hands up as I aim my pistol at them.
17
A few minutes later I emerge from the spacecraft and step back out onto the loading ramp. The crowd of authorities has grown, and a perimeter has been established with cones and pylons and police tape. I can’t see any snipers, but I know they’ll be set up by now, so I keep the fuel canister high, trying to deny them a clear shot. Next to the SPS Captain, two cops hold Brady Kearns by the arms, his hands cuffed behind his back. He’s disheveled and bleeding from the forehead but apparently otherwise unharmed. At the SPS man’s other side is my boss, Captain Knowles, a pissed off grin on his face, a sloppily tied tie around his collar.
The SPS Captain holds a hand up. “Hold your fire!”
I take a deep breath, clutching close the fuel canister and the package I took from the ship. The slim, airtight item is my last chance, and barely better than a wild guess.
“I am offering to surrender,” I announce, “on one condition.”
The SPS Captain holds the microphone to his mouth. “What is that condition?”
Moving slowly, I drop to one knee and place the fuel canister in front of me, keeping the revolver aimed at it. I reach up under my cap with my free left hand, and I can sense dozens of trigger fingers tensing as the cops below bristle, tightening their aim.
I hold up the item I’ve pulled out, showing it to them. My test kit.
I fling it to the pavement below, and many of the cops brace themselves, expecting it to explode, a few of them murmuring amongst themselves when it doesn’t. I toss down the package I took from the shuttle’s cargo hold, and it lands near the test kit. My life rests on the contents of that package, and I chose it on little more than a vague hunch. It sits there for a lonesome moment on the pavement, a single-serving container of SCAPE Long Haul Food, packaged in compostable black with a colorful image of the meal emblazoned on the front.
“Test it,” I say. “That’s my demand.”
The SPS Captain and Knowles stare at it for a second, puzzled, then confer with several policemen. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but a couple of the officers look like they’re making emphatic points, probably urging caution, arguing that there’s no reason not to wait for a bomb robot to arrive. But after a long, tense moment, the SPS Captain steps away, ducks under the police tape, and goes to the package himself. As the dozens of gathered officers look on, he kneels down, and, with great caution, opens my test kit and removes a chem strip. He hesitates slightly when he opens the long haul food, as though expecting an explosion or burst of poison as he peels back the wrapping.
But none comes. Inside the package is nothing more than a mundane little meal, supposedly curried beans and rice, formulated for an efficient diet over an interstellar journey of a year or more, though from where I’m standing it just looks like a spot of white next to a spot of gray brown.
I dare not blink as I watch the SPS Captain gently swab the test strip across it.
It’s too far away for me to make out the color. I hold my breath while the Captain stays kneeling beside the package, his face concealed from view as he stares down at the result.
He rises to his feet still holding the test strip as he raises the amplifier microphone to his mouth. “All officers stand down,” he says. “Agent Dare is to be taken in peacefully.”
The confused police lower their weapons, and the Captain calls up to me, “Agent Dare, you can come down.”
Suspecting that this might be some kind of ruse, I pick up the fuel canister and hold it up in front of me as I walk down the ramp. As I approach the SPS Captain, Knowles ducks under the police tape to meet us, a couple of Collections heavies trudging after him in their armor.
“Captain Knowles,” the SPS Captain says, “I will be releasing this person into your custody, as it appears that this has become a Collections Agency matter.”
He holds up the test strip, offering it to Knowles to take. One side is brown, smeared with residue from curried beans. The other side is pink.
18
Twenty-five minutes have passed, according to the clock ticking on the monitor, and Brady and I have not said a word to each other, even though we’ve made eye contact a few times over the false-wood conference room table. Maybe we’ve come too far together, maybe neither of us knows where to begin, maybe we’re both too exhausted for words. The blood has dried on his forehead, caked into some of the hair on his temple, and his blue suit is torn and dirty. I probably look even worse, still wearing the tattered dress and leggings I borrowed from Ali Silva’s mom. Medical foam is sealed dry over the two bullet wounds I took.
At minute twenty-six, the door opens and Knowles walks through it holding a tablet. “All right, easy part first,” he says, turning toward Brady. “Brady Kearns, the Collections Agency is honoring you with a special medal of service for your contributions. In the eyes of the government of this planet, you are a hero.”