“Unknown.”
Jed shot across the storage room and closed the door. Nothing he could do about the damning trolley outside, though. His heart began yammering as he flattened himself against the wall beside the door—as if that made a difference.
“Still coming,” Rocio announced calmly. “Seventy metres now.”
Jed’s hand crept down to the utility pocket on his hip. Fingers flicked the seal catch, and he dug inside. His hand closed around the cold, reassuring grip of the laser pistol.
“Thirty metres. He’s coming to the junction with your corridor.”
Don’t look at the bloody trolley, Jed prayed. Christ, please don’t.
He drew the laser pistol out, and studied the simple controls for a second. Switched modes to constant beam, full power. Repeater was no good, a possessed would be able to screw with the electrics inside while he was shooting. He was only going to have one chance.
“He’s in the corridor. I think he’s seen the trolley. Stopping just outside.”
Jed closed his eyes, shaking badly. A possessed would be able to sense his thoughts. They would all be hauled off to face Capone. He would be tortured and Beth would get sent to the brothel.
I should have left the door open, that way I could have sprung out and surprised them.
“Hello?” a voice called. It was very high pitched, almost a girl.
“Is that them?” he whispered to his suit mike.
“Yes. He’s examined the trolley. Now by the door.”
The locking clamp moved, slowly hinging back. Jed stared at it in dread, desperate for one last hit from the suit’s medical module.
If the laser doesn’t work, I’ll kill myself, he decided. Better that . . .
“Hello?” the high voice sounded timid. “Is someone there?”
The door started to open.
“Hello?”
Jed shouted in fury, and jumped from the wall. Holding the laser pistol in a double handed grip, he spun round and fired out into the corridor. Webster Pryor was saved by two things: his own diminutive height, and Jed’s quite abysmal aim.
The red strand of laserlight was quite brilliant compared to the corridor lighting. It left Jed squinting against the glare, trying to see what he was shooting at. Blue-white flames and black smoke were squirting out of the corridor wall opposite, tracing a meandering line in the composite. Then the smoke stopped, and a spray of molten metal rained down. He was slicing through a conditioning duct.
He did—just—see a small man dive to the floor at his feet as the laser slashed round in search of a target. There was a yell of panic, and someone was screaming: “Don’t shoot me don’t shoot me!” in a high pitched voice.
Jed yelled himself. Confused all to hell what was happening. Tentatively, he took his finger off the laser’s trigger. Metal creaked alarmingly as the duct sagged around the dripping gap in its side. He looked down at the figure in the white jacket and black trousers grovelling on the floor. “What in Christ’s name is going on? Who are you?”
A terrified face was looking up at him. It wasn’t a bloke, just a kid. “Please don’t kill me,” Webster pleaded. “Please. I don’t want to be one of them. They’re horrible.”
“What’s happening?” Rocio asked.
“Not sure,” Jed mumbled. He took a look down the corridor. All clear.
“Was that a laser?”
“Yeah.” He aimed it down at Webster. “Are you possessed?”
“No. Are you?”
“Course bloody not.”
“Well I didn’t know,” Webster wailed.
“How did you get a weapon?” Rocio asked.
“Shut up! Jeeze, give me a break. I just got one, okay?”
Webster was frowning through his tears. “What?”
“Nothing.” Jed hesitated, then put the laser pistol back in his utility pocket. The kid looked harmless; though the waiter’s jacket with its brass buttons which he wore, along with his oil-slicked hair, was a little odd. But he was more scared than anything else. “Who are you?”
The story came out in broken sentences, punctuated by sobs. How Webster and his mother had been caught up in Capone’s take-over. How they’d been held in one of the asteroid’s halls with hundreds of other women and children. How some Organization woman came searching them out from the rest. How he’d been separated from his mother and put to work serving drinks and food for the gangster bosses and a peculiar, very pretty, lady. How he kept hearing Capone and the lady mention his father’s name, and then glance in his direction.
“What are you doing down here?” Jed asked.
“They sent me for some food,” Webster said. “The cook told me to find out if there were any swans left in storage.”
“This is the spacecraft section,” Jed said. “Didn’t you know?”
Webster sniffled loudly. “Yes. But if I look everywhere, I could stay away from them for a while.”
“Right.” He straightened, and found one of the small camera lenses. “What do we do?” he asked, flustered by the boy’s tale.
“Get rid of him,” Rocio said curtly.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s a complication. You’ve got the laser pistol, haven’t you?”
Webster was looking up at him passively, eyes red-rimmed from the tears. All mournful and beat; the way not so long ago Jed had looked at Digger when the pain was at its worst.
“I can’t do that!” Jed exclaimed.
“What do you need, a note from your mother? Listen to me, Jed, the second he steps within range of a possessed, they’ll know something’s happened to him. Then they’ll come looking for you. They’ll get you, and Beth, and the girls.”
“No way. I can’t. I just can’t. Not even if I wanted to.”
“So what are you going to do instead?”
“I don’t know! Beth? Beth, have you been switched on to all this?”
“Yes, Jed,” she replied. “You’re not to touch that boy. We’ve got plenty of food, now, so bring him back with you. He can come with us.”
“Really?” Rocio enquired disdainfully. “And where’s his spacesuit? How’s he supposed to get out to me?”
Jed looked at Webster, thoroughly disconcerted. This whole situation was just getting worse and worse. “For Christ’s sake, just get me out of this.”
“Stop being an arsehole,” Beth snapped. “It’s bloody obvious, you’ll have to steal one of the vehicles. There’s plenty of them about. I can see some of them docked to the airlocks close to where you went in. Take one and drive it over to us.”
Jed wanted to curl up into a ball and take a decent hit. A vehicle! In full view of this whole nest of possessed.
“Please Jed, come back,” Gari entreated. “I don’t like it here without you.”
“All right, doll,” he said, too bushed to kick up an argument. “On my way.” He rounded on Webster. “And you’d better not be any trouble.”
“You’re going to take me away?” the boy asked in wonder.
“Sort of, yeah.”
Jed didn’t bother about collecting any more food from the shelves. He just started pushing the trolley, making sure Webster was in sight the whole time.
Rocio reviewed the camera images and schematic data available to him, and quickly devised a route to one of the docking ledge vehicles. It meant the two of them taking a lift up to the lounge level, which he didn’t like. But previewing enabled him to hurry them past the sections where crews were still working without incident.
The vehicle he’d chosen for them was a small taxi with a five-seater cab. Large enough to take the trolley, and simple enough for Jed to drive. He was back at the Mindori three minutes after disengaging from the airlock. It actually took him longer than that to match the taxi’s docking tube with the starship’s life support module hatch. Once the tube was locked and pressurized, Beth, Gari, and Navar came rushing in to greet the returning hero. Beth put her hands on either side of his face and gave him a long kiss. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
That wasn’t something she’d ever told him before, and she didn’t hand out platitudes, either. Of course, today had been full of not merely the unusual, but the positively weird. However, the words left him warm and uncertain. The moment was only slightly spoilt when the two younger girls started reading labels and found out what he’d brought back.