Bare feet cold over the floor, she went down the hall, counting doors. The crying was coming from the fourth one on the left. Trudi’s room.
Heart squeezing with sudden apprehension, Liza tapped on the door.
“Trudi? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Nooo,” it was a moan of pain.
“I’ll call emergency,” Liza said, whirling.
Trudi’s door whooshed open to reveal the older woman, the screen of her handheld illuminating the tears flowing down her lined cheeks.
“It’s Rand,” she whispered. “My baby.” She stood there, rocking back and forth.
Liza stepped inside, closed the door, and led Trudi to the disheveled bed.
“Sit down, and tell me.”
Trudi sank down on the bed, then held out her device. As Liza read the scrolling communications, her blood went cold.
Rand: Mami I love you.
Rand: Someone here with D-ray. Shooting.
Trudi: Are you ok?
Rand: Trapped.
Gods, no. Liza sucked in her breath. D-rays were banned on all the civilized words. They could kill dozens of people with one sweep. And Rand was down there in Raldoon, trapped by some madman with a death machine. Her legs suddenly weak, she sat heavily on the bed beside Trudi.
Her blood went to ice. What if Selina was there, too?
“Where is he? What’s happening?”
Trudi drew in a gasping breath. “A dance club.”
Selina had planned to go dancing. A wave of nausea swept over Liza as she glanced back at the conversation preserved on the screen.
Rand: Call for help.
Rand: I’m going to die.
Trudi: I called. Help coming. Is anyone hurt?
Rand: Yes. Lots.
Trudi: Stay safe. Please.
“Has security come?” Liza asked. The handheld trembled in her grip. This could not be happening. Not to Rand.
Trudi nodded. “Been almost an hour. Some vid coverage. Shooter is barricaded in the building. With my boy. I haven’t heard from him in over twenty minutes.”
She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking with desperation. Tears blurring her vision, Liza kept reading.
Rand: Still in building. He has us. Need help. Call them, Mami.
Trudi: Guards are there. Tell me you see them.
Rand: Hurry.
Rand: He’s here.
Trudi: Stay down.
Trudi: Are you hurt?
Trudi: Rand! Baby, are you ok?
Trudi: I love you.
Trudi: Talk to me.
Trudi: Baby?
Trudi: Rand?
Trudi: I love you.
It was the last thing on the screen. Liza checked the time of the last communication, and felt like a black hole opened in her chest.
Over half an hour since Rand had responded.
She set the unanswered handheld down and put her arms around Trudi. She had the terrible conviction that Rand was dead. Help hadn’t come in time. It was hard to breathe past the vacuum surrounding her heart, dragging all the light from her body.
What about Selina?
“I have to get down there,” Trudi said. “My boy.”
“The shuttle won’t leave before eight,” Liza said, cursing the fact they were stuck up in the belt. It was impossible to get to their loved ones.
“I don’t have enough credits.” Trudi’s voice broke, and she bent over, her chest pressed to her knees.
For a moment, Liza almost offered Trudi her ticket down—but no. She had to get down there, too. Had to make sure Selina was safe.
“Ask the company to send you,” Liza said.
If they wouldn’t, she’d help take up a collection.
Trudi sat up, and gave a single nod. “They should. They should help.”
“Let me get my handheld,” Liza said. “Then I’ll come stay with you until it’s time.”
She ran back to her room, heart pounding. Please, let there be a message from Selina that she was safe. That she’d gone to bed early. That she could hardly wait for Liza to arrive.
The screen was blank. No messages.
Liza flipped to the news, then stumbled to her chair as she read the headlines streaming past.
“Devastation at Raldoon Dance Club.”
“Dozens Dead in Wake of D-beam Madman.”
“Security Finally Takes Down Shooter in Club Massacre.”
Why? She knotted her robe in her fingers. How could such a thing happen? And where was Selina?
She stabbed at the device, trying again and again to reach Selina, each time hearing her girlfriend’s laughing, recorded voice telling her to try again later.
Grief knifed through Liza. Would there be a later, or had the bright spark of Selina’s life been erased from the galaxy?
Numbly, Liza pulled on her clothing, then grabbed her handheld and went to sit with Trudi through the long, excruciating hours until morning.
The next morning, the miners were given the first three shifts off, and it was announced that all traffic to Raldoon was being restricted. Only relatives of those affected were allowed to travel to the surface. The eight am shuttle left, taking Trudi.
As the silvery craft receded, Liza hammered her fist against the thick plasglass viewport, then went to pace in her room. Rage and hope and fear fired her footsteps, churned in her belly until she couldn’t bear it any longer.
The cantina was packed and smelly, but full of life. She needed life, in the face of so much death. They all did.
It seemed as though everyone in the belt was crammed onto barstools and around tables, talking, drinking, and staring at the screen over the bar as it updated with the names of the confirmed dead.
Every few minutes, a new name would appear, and the cantina would fall silent in a moment of respect. Two of the already-posted names were known to Liza—other miners who’d been vacationing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She hated the stab of relief she felt with each unfamiliar name. That was someone’s son, someone’s lover, someone’s wife.
Dead.
“Why’d he do it?” one of the miners at the bar next to her asked. “A D-ray, that’s insane.”
“Smuggled it on-planet,” somebody replied. “One of those crazy Ascetics saw people dancing on the vids and decided it was his job to cleanse the place.”
Another name posted, another breath of silence.
“Aw, damn,” a woman said.
Rand Miller. The letters were stark against the screen.
“Trudi,” Liza said, then realized she’d spoken aloud.
Tears slipped down her face, hot and messy. She couldn’t imagine anything more terrible than what Trudi had gone through—seeing her son’s last words, his pleas for help, and not being able to do a single thing.
Unless it was the horrible ache inside of not knowing.
Selina. Please.
More names, until the count reached fifty. Sixty. Seventy.
“How many?” Liza said, drinking another beer somebody had set in front of her.
Drinks were on the house, not that there was anything more exciting than jimjack to drink. Still, it helped blunt the razor-edges of grief.
“Near eighty, they think,” the miner on her right said.
Liza pulled her handheld out of her pocket, trying not to hope. The screen was dark.
Surely Selina would have told her she was safe, by now.
Two more unfamiliar names.
And then the one Liza had been dreading.
Selina Perez.
“No,” she whispered.
The letters muddled and blurred, but the name was printed with stark clarity in her mind. Selina was one of the dead—her beautiful smile and teasing laughter, her warmth and light gone forever.