He tucks the revolver away.
Coward.
He wipes the tears from his cheeks and opens the bathroom door.
Lana jumps back.
She stands with her fist raised, about to knock.
“Hey,” he says.
“Are you okay?”
He shrugs. “Does it matter?”
She starts with some optimistic response, but stops herself, chooses a different course. She says, “You need to hear this.”
Chapter 27
He can’t think in the main chamber with Dandy nearby. Keeps getting distracted by thoughts of strangling him. So they sit in the side room with Dino again. Lana takes a moment to check his bandages, then sits on a storage chest across from Jack and tells him everything Dandy shared.
Eight months ago, a mining corporation found a reflective object drifting in the Kuiper belt. Some kind of sphere. About 300 feet in diameter, it was much too small and not nearly dense enough to have formed naturally. The team thought they’d discovered a relic from the war and reported to the Star Nation, per protocol, and have not been heard from since. Officially, their expedition vanished. Most likely, they were put in a military prison without so much as an official charge.
The object, codenamed Barbaricus—the barber needs a haircut, Jack thinks—was the first definitive proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. Turns out Dandy has been keeping tabs on the search for years, a self-proclaimed UFO enthusiast after he saw strange lights zipping around one of Jupiter’s moons, and he’d been bribing sources in the government ever since. In a matter of days, he knew everything the Nation knew about the discovery in the Kuiper belt. The sphere was made of alloys that did not correspond to anything on the periodic table. Seismic tests showed it was hollow. Asteroids and comets had splattered across its surface, leaving traces of radioactive material, including a bit of zircon, which radiocarbon dating showed was at least four billion years old. If accurate, it meant the sphere was nearly as old as our solar system. Possibly older.
Surveys found an opening in its surface. A tunnel leading to a massive door with a manual locking mechanism. Inside, they found no alien crew. No bodies. No supercomputers. Not even any sign of a navigation system. The only contents were 360 objects about ten feet in diameter each, all spherical, like replicas of the ship—if it was a ship. They appeared to glow from within.
That was all Dandy’s sources could get before they cut off communication.
Jack pieces the rest together himself.
His informants gone, Dandy decided to steal one of the spheres. First, he would have had to track the cargo to its new home, then study the security measures where it was held. He’d have contacts in place already. All he needed was a patsy and a way inside. A lot of people died for this. Innocents. People just doing their jobs. Lana confirms it. Gregorian and his mercenaries destroyed at least one research vessel, murdered the crew, stole access codes. At one point, they held an army general’s daughter hostage and assassinated a senator. All in the span of a few months. Dandy threw his money here and there. It is how governments function. Cash in one hand, rifle in the other. Jack is just one more unwitting player in Jim Dandy’s orchestra, and he had performed brilliantly. There will be no trace of Dandy’s intervention. Records will show that Jack forged his entry to the facility and took the sphere by force. When all this is over, he’ll have to answer for those supposed crimes. Yet one more reason to get Dandy back alive.
“Anything else?”
“That’s the gist of it,” Lana says.
None of the information proves particularly useful, and he says so.
“You don’t think so?” Lana says.
“Maybe you know something I don’t.”
“Well, let’s see.” She ticks items off on her fingers. “For starters, I know that thing was in a container for several billion years, so it won’t starve any time soon. I know that somebody put it into a container in the first place. So that tells me it must be vulnerable. Or at least controllable.”
“For all we know, the hydra was made in that sphere. Maybe it was in cryosleep. Maybe the sphere was an egg.”
“The kid reached inside and turned it off.”
“So what does that mean?”
“The thing was inside a container. Someone contained it.”
“Why? How?”
“I don’t know, Jack. I’m just saying. Maybe it’s not hopeless.”
“Right. If only we had a microscope.”
“That would help. I could examine it on a molecular level. I can’t understand how it converts organisms without leaving waste. That’s impossible.”
Jack says, “I was joking.”
“Well I’m not. And I’m not giving up because that thing is making scary noises. We’re safe for now. We just need time.”
“We don’t have time.”
“It takes eleven days to reach the nearest outpost. Dandy said he needs to be back in two weeks. That gives us three days.”
“That includes today.”
“It also assumes Dandy wasn’t bluffing. Think about it.”
“I can’t take that risk. You know that.”
“Yeah.” She reaches across, places a hand on his knee.
He gives her hands a squeeze and looks into her eyes. There is sympathy in there, but also fear. They both know how unlikely it is that everyone will make it out of this. Perhaps it is her way of saying she understands his burden, but she doesn’t. No one ever will.
Chapter 28
He paces the main room, studies the ceiling to avoid eye contact with the Dandy. He admires the lights set in transparent tile, walls that arc smoothly upward like an upside-down bathtub. He remembers the day he had the pod installed. Years ago now. They came in through the wall, tore a chunk out of Bel’s side and rebuilt it around her. He hadn’t expected that. Thought they’d haul it through the ship and set it against the wall, a childish concept in retrospect. He felt guilty for the modification at the time, worried he was causing unnecessary damage to his ship, as if he’d deemed her inadequate. And this late addition is the only reason they’re alive. If they are going to make the long haul back, it won’t be aboard Belinda. They’ll leave her out here, alone, circling ever closer to the sun until she drops into the heat or a solar flare consumes her.
There are seven EVA suits in the panic pod, and nine survivors. If they are going to reach the Homunculus, at least two people will have to make the sprint. The Homunculus has only one airlock, which is currently engaged with Belinda, and it requires the fingerprint of an active crewmember to unlock while at port. So at least one of Dandy’s men needs to come along. Gregorian volunteers. “It is my ships,” he says. Jack will go with him. No arguments.
“Bullshit,” Hunter says. “I’ll go.”
Justin throws his hand up. “Me too.”
“Hunter, you’re a pilot. We might need you to fly the Homunculus.”
She says something but Jack cuts her off.
“That’s the end of it. And Justin, I seem to recall finding you unconscious on your bedroom floor. You’re staying here.”
He flushes and lowers his face.
Once Jack and Gregorian disengage the Homunculus, the others can strap in and eject the pod. It has no docking capabilities, so the Homunculus will position nearby and the panic pod crew will perform a short spacewalk, making it to the new ship without having to deal with the hydra.
It’s a nice plan. Would look very straightforward on paper. It’s also naïve as hell to suppose Jack and Gregorian can just slip past the hydra. And if it sees through walls, that’s pretty much the end of it. It is too fast to outrun in a straight shot. The best idea so far is to rush down the Zero-G shaft with the hydra in tow, get to the first floor, and have Bel reverse the shaft’s gravity before the hydra clears it. That will leave only the hydra on the first floor to contend with. Hopefully it won’t be waiting for them at the bottom of the shaft. If it is, Jack will distract it long enough for Gregorian to reach the airlock.