Argo wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting out in the tunnels.

  It wasn’t this, though.

  The silence.

  The…absence of anything.

  It wasn’t just that the human group was silent. Even Skoro had shut up, holding on to Mags’s kugu, letting the little thing pull him through the air.

  In addition to the camera system, Daelia and Matt had destroyed the materiel locator server. That system was used to monitor major pieces of equipment, from suits to instrumentation. But the AR they’d left up.

  “Why?” Argo asked as they moved through the tunnels.

  He and Daelia were both forced to use their thruster packs quite a bit. The others, more used to the environment, were able to propel themselves along easily. There were odd little platforms all over, wide, flat boxes sunk into the epoxied sealant. These, Argo was learning, were for stepping and pushing. Kick off hard enough and in the right way, and a person could essentially jump from one to another, making good speed.

  Daelia had rigged the haptic controls in her brace to her pack and steered herself up the next curving section of tunnel with an upward tilt of her hand. They were headed toward a larger space, a junction point, according to the map Argo had loaded in his monocle.

  “We might need it,” she said. “If these are abiota, they need it to communicate.”

  “Why in the hell would they use AR? These are aliens.”

  “Are they?” Daelia asked, dropping her voice.

  “What, like somebody is faking alien first contact? That’s insane. Who would benefit from that?”

  “I don’t know, but things aren’t adding up,” Daelia replied.

  “Whatever it is, we can figure it out later,” Argo sighed. “We need to get these people off this station.”

  “You promised me a chance to look into this.”

  “What, you going to throw that back in my face now?” Argo retorted. “Priority is getting out of here. Alive. All of us.”

  “Your brother, that’s what you mean,” Daelia sniffed, and didn’t speak to him for a while.

  32

  As the first asteroid hauled back into Earth’s orbit, and one of the very first rocks to get mined, Numina had been something of an experiment. Everything here had been a test, a prototype.

  Nowhere was this more true than with the hangar bays.

  As Tomas understood it, there had been a lot of debate initially over how to handle moving cargo in and out of void-based freighters. The technology—hell, the entire industry—was being built from the ground up, and thus, there was a lot of room for imagination. And just like with so many other things up here, whether consciously or unconsciously, science fiction had been the primary starting point.

  And science fiction had nice big hangar bays.

  But any amount of construction up here was resource intensive. Besides, the larger the space, the more air was required to fill it. And it came with problems. The need for vacuum suction in the HVAC system. Storage tanks to hold the extra air. Safety controls. Air locks. Extra gear. The more moving parts a system had, the more likely it was to malfunction, and not even the best efforts of the Astraeus engineering abiota could get projected malfunctions to an acceptable percentage.

  The idea of pressurizing a bay had been abandoned, and bays were kept open to the void. For smaller ships, the system worked fine. But the big freighters moving around in the Archipelago needed more space than was practical.

  The solution had been to keep just those spacecraft entirely exterior. That meant setting up a system of air locks large enough for containers to pass through.

  Standard containers were loaded, same as they would have been back on Earth, then rolled onto tracks leading into small, tight air locks. Just big enough to admit one container at a time, Numina had four: one for loading, one for depressurization, one for unloading, and one for repressurization. From there, the cargo containers rolled out on tracks into a large warehouse, open to space, for loading onto the cargo freighter’s deck. That, too, was external, and placement was handled via robotic arm. Like a great big kugu, Numina’s had been operated by another of their now-dead abiota.

  Tomas could see it, curled up like a dead bird’s wing, a pitted yellow shape against the blackness beyond.

  And because this was a long, lengthy process—everything took longer in zero-gee—docking clamps were essential.

  This close, the cargo freighter was definitely in focus, and it was definitely human. While heavily altered, the template from Earth’s oceanic shipping had been carried up here.

  Air friction wasn’t a consideration up here, nor gravity; containers were arranged around the freighter’s central spine and locked in with integrated clamps. Octagonal in cross section, containers could be arranged in a 360-degree configuration, all the way around. A blunt command module supported a crew of four, while a bulbous engine stack provided thrust. Most products mined out of an asteroid didn’t require pressurized transport anyway.

  Tomas recognized the freighter currently docked at his asteroid. Haley’s Hope, an early Astraeus model that incorporated some pressurized cargo space. There were a few of these still banging around in Earth’s orbit. Newer models, designed for runs out to the Lagrange point or even the asteroid belt itself, had larger crew modules but no pressurized space for cargo.

  Still, what was a gal like Haley’s Hope doing masquerading as some alien vessel? Tomas wouldn’t have been willing to believe the story that Argo and Daelia had dropped on him, if not for what he’d seen out of the observation dome.

  Aliens. Why would anybody fake aliens?

  From his vantage point at the crest of the steppe, Tomas had a clear view of what the freighter was doing. It was loading cargo, he realized, watching one of the air locks open and the big loader arm swing down to grab the container there. Some other abiota was operating it. Had to be.

  That little revelation pissed him off all over again. It was irrational, but there it was.

  That had been Lucy’s kugu, back in the day. Her job.

  Who in the fuck was messing with her stuff?

  Tomas bit the anger down, and searched around for the—ahh, there it was.

  He might have overplayed the effectiveness of jamming the controls out here. The small control house for the docking clamps was within visual range of the cargo air locks. It had to be, in case it needed to be used.

  There was no tether cable running to it, though. That was intentional; the dock here hadn’t been used in years, and the control house was a convenient location for training walks, so Tomas had repurposed it. He’d taken the cable away.

  It sat on an outcropping of rock, a few feet above the regolith plain that surrounded it. This plain, unlike the others on the asteroid, had a permanent haze above it. A dust cloud kicked up every time somebody traversed it, falling slowly, slowly, impossibly slowly, back down to the surface. Asteroid snow.

  Despite it being within a hundred yards of the edge of the dock, it was invisible from the main platform there, and that was one of the other reasons Tomas liked to use for training. Walking into the dust blind, with nothing but an anchor pole and a readout in your helmet’s AR field, was an important lesson, and a gut check. It was the first EVA he made all his trainees do. If you couldn’t handle it, you couldn’t handle the job, as far as he was concerned.

  Today, he was grateful for the cover. The beacon was only turned on during training runs, and other than that, there was no comm out to the shack. It wasn’t visible either, not from the ground or from the air. There was a good chance they—whoever they were—hadn’t found the place. And if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t know the importance of it.

  Maybe.

  Hopefully.

  And yet…anything could be hiding in that dust.

  He wanted to go home, see his kids, see his ex-wife again. He’d never hated her, not even after the divorce.

  And they had Emily, didn’t they? She still had an open comm line to the surface. Even with their antennas smashed, maybe, maybe, maybe…

  If they were going to come looking, they would have, Tomas told himself. And he forced himself to think about everyone who was still alive, or might still be alive, somewhere in the asteroid.

  The only way for them to get off this thing was to keep that ship in the docking clamps. They were lucky it was loading cargo—and what, what was it taking out of a defunct mining station like this?—or it might already be gone. They might all already be dead.

  There was a line he liked to drop on new trainees. In space, there is no backup plan. You rescue yourself or you die.

  Gut-check time.

  Snapping his anchor pole out to its full length, he made his way cautiously over the rocky edge and down into the endless dust storm below.

  33

  The closer they got to the old Booville, the more dust was in the air.

  “Tunnel cave-ins,” Aiden murmured to Argo, when he asked as they were walking through a particularly bad area. “Have you heard those rumblings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d bet they’re pulling down tunnel entrances. Trying to flush us down in this direction.”

  The group emerged from a tunnel, into a small cavern. It seemed to be some kind of depot; there were a number of cog railcars here, covered in dust. One was overturned on its side.

  “Let me check our location,” Matt said, pulling a tablet out. It was the same type that was used on job sites and in the oil fields back home, a robust thing in a rubberized case.

  “It’s the old rail junction,” Rachel said.

  “Not if they’ve been moving shit around,” Matt said, and held out the tablet. “No, wait, yes. It’s the rail junction.”

  Matt looked around. “So the side entrance we were going for should be over…” And he pointed at a pile of rubble. “Shit.” His head turned up. “Just the main tunnel, then.”

  Emily kicked off, dragon form lazy in the hazy air. “Where this go?”

  “That’s straight up. Main byway through the Booville, out to the dock.”

  “They’ll see us coming,” Argo said.

  Aiden gestured around. “I think they know we’re coming already.”

  “Eh,” Emily said, darting back down and maneuvering over one of the cars. “Here. Come you look.”

  Argo looked over the kugu’s shoulder.

  There, in a hollow under the overturned railcar, was a person. Rail-thin, barely conscious, but alive.

  “Greg?” Aiden asked incredulously.

  The man looked up at them, eyes rheumy, clearly trying to speak. But no words came out. One of his hands, tucked up by his face, began flexing rhythmically, frustration stamped on his features.

  “Hang on,” Aiden said, and started pulling at the debris. “Greg, just hang on!”

  With Emily standing guard at the mouth of the tunnel, everyone else pulled back to a respectful distance. Guy examined the half-dead man.

  “Who is he?” Argo asked Aiden quietly.

  His little brother, already subdued, seemed totally lost right now. “Greg? He, uhh, he’s one of the guys in my qualifications class. A friend. I thought…I thought he was dead.”

  “He looks like he should be,” Daelia said.

  “Not helping,” Argo muttered.

  She huffed and hunched up a little. “I’m just saying.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Argo asked.

  “Aiden!” the medic called. “I think he wants to talk to you.”

  Aiden pushed off the cavern wall, closing the distance fast. Daelia looked at Argo and then shoved off after him. Privacy was impossible up here anyway, Argo reasoned, and followed too.

  “Hey, hey, buddy, we’re going to get out of here,” Aiden was saying, even as the medic held a flexible packet of water up to the man’s mouth. He drank slowly, eyes on Aiden. “See that big guy back there? That’s my brother. Military’s here to help us out.”

  The guy, Greg, shook his head and pulled his mouth away from the water packet. A few stray drops squeezed out, floating in the air between them. “C-can’t,” he said.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t…leave.” He said the words slowly, like he might fall and stumble and lose them entirely. “They…won’t…let…”

  “They? What they? The kugus?”

  “A-ah…aliens.”

  Aiden looked back at Argo, who just shook his head. “I know, I’ve heard. Some kind of first-contact bullshit. Greg, we’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Can’t… Leave…me.”

  “We’re not going to… Shit. We’re all getting out of here together.”

  The man struggled with his hand for a moment, then finally tapped his forehead. “Can’t…leave…with…with me.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?” Aiden asked the medic.

  Guy held up his hands. “It looks like a stroke to me, but that’s just a guess.”

  “Huh,” Skoro said, coming up beside Argo. “You’re right, Mags. That is interesting.”

  “What?”

  Skoro nodded. “He’s got a NULI.”

  The medic looked, and then shrugged. He had his backpack open, sorting through the compartments for something.

  Daelia picked it up instead. “So? Those have been rigorously, exhaustively tested. They can’t cause this kind of damage.”

  “Remember what Emily told us about that fungus thing?” Skoro countered.

  “I don’t think this is some kind of reaction to a toxin,” Guy said.

  “Not literally fungus,” Argo said, catching on. “Like the Storm Gryphons. Emily, tell her.”

  Cordyceps, Emily said, sending it directly to their monocles. Take control.

  “NULIs don’t work like that,” Daelia protested.

  “We can figure this shit out later. Help me get him out of here, Irvington,” Guy said.

  Argo made to move, but Aiden got in front of him. Greg grabbed at him, fighting, even as they pulled him free.

  “Must…leave…me.”

  “We’ve got a war machine along for the ride, buddy. It’ll be fine,” Aiden said, holding on.

  “No, no,” Greg replied, pushing at Guy now. “No!”

  “Argo!” Daelia said, pointing at the back of his head.

  The pilot looked. There, affixed to a shaved section of scalp, was a small circuit panel. Lights blinking.

  “Greg, what is this?” Argo asked.

  But Greg couldn’t answer. The left side of his face went slack. The hand, wound up in Aiden’s coveralls, drifted free, nerveless.

  “Doc?” Aiden asked.

  “Yeah, this is definitely a stroke,” Guy said. “Shit.”

  From the tunnels behind them came the sound of thruster jets.

  RUN flashed up in Argo’s monocle.

  He looked back, catching the sight of Emily spreading out her wings, almost the full width of the cavern mouth.

  Aiden grabbed his arm. He had Greg’s arm looped around his shoulder. “Up!” he shouted, and jumped.

  Grim-faced, Argo followed.

  The tunnel ended in another air lock.

  “Closed,” Matt reported grimly, checking the inner control panel, “and not responding to anything I’m trying.”

  “I thought these were mechanical,” Argo said.

  “They are.” Matt ripped open the access panel next to it, unshouldered his backpack. “Let me figure this bitch out.”

  Argo looked around, even as the sounds of the fight grew louder. The air lock was fitted into the opening perfectly; there was no lip, no cover, nowhere to hide. Everyone had scrounged a gun at this point, and that was something, but…

  “Argo,” Daelia said in a quiet voice, right next to him. “What do we do?”

  For a second, Argo blanked. There was no clear escape route, no way to sustain a frontal assault in this space. Or maybe there was, but he couldn’t see it; this wasn’t his type of battlefield. He’d bullied his way through this all, convinced them all to listen to him, turned everything upside down, only to get them all killed. This wasn’t what he did, up close, in person, on the ground. He didn’t order people to their deaths.

  Except he had.

  “Argo!” she hissed, louder this time.

  He breathed. He wasn’t going to die up here. He wasn’t going to let his brother die up here. Didn’t need to be perfect. Didn’t need to be his normal fight. He just needed to do it.

  “Form up around the entrance,” he said. Everyone scrambled, even as he spoke. “Get prone against the floor, aim out. The tunnel’s a bottleneck. Pick your targets. Don’t exceed rate of fire on these things.”

  “I’m going to need some cover!” Matt hollered.

  “I’ve got you,” Aiden said, and laying Greg down, pushed up, over to the back wall. Argo looked at him for a moment, wanting to tell him to get down, present a smaller target, but Aiden just narrowed his eyes at him. Argo let it go.

  He wriggled his way down, next to Daelia. The percussive blows of metal on metal were closer now. “Emily?” he asked.

  Daelia just nodded, and laid her DEW gun against the floor, pointed forward.

  Back on Earth, in his old job, Tomas would have expected rust. Corrosion. Grime.

  Instead, everything was exactly as he’d left it.

  Tomas shone his flashlight around the small equipment shack. There was no air in here, no life support. It was one little room, ten feet to a side, with the main controls set into the center of the floor, a power panel on the far wall. Beyond that, there was nothing. Some dust on the floor, regolith tracked in years ago, back when the place was still being used for its main purpose.

  What equipment was here was unsullied, untouched by time. After all his years at sea, Tomas found it hard to credit sometimes how the void preserved things.

  Okay, he thought to himself, looking around.

  No kugus.

  No sign that anything had discovered the place at all.

  Relieved, Tomas trudged over to the control column. The checklist for working the clamps was long gone, but he’d grabbed a copy of it from the station’s technical library before heading out.

 

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