The jane colt trilogy, p.25
The Jane Colt Trilogy, page 25
Adam was quiet for a moment. “I guess the only consciousness you can be certain of is your own.”
A beep. Jane grabbed her slate and unfolded it.
Corsair: Roof. Now.
She tossed the slate to Adam and shoved the steering bars forward. The Stargazer swooped toward the building’s roof.
Devin ran across it. Jane was about to tell Adam to open the door but found he’d already left the cockpit. She brought the Stargazer to a hover. The ladder extended before Devin. He grabbed it. Several armed security officers came into view, firing in his direction.
“He’s in!” Adam called. “Go!”
Jane steered the Stargazer into the atmosphere. Someone entered the cockpit—Must be Devin. “What happened?”
No reply came. Instead, Adam returned to the copilot’s seat.
“Where’s Devin?” Jane asked. “Is he hurt?”
Adam buckled his safety belt. “Looked like a blast grazed him, but it’s not bad. Something’s troubling him, though. He went into the back and didn’t say a word.”
“Tell him to get his butt over here! This is no time to mope!”
“Jane,” Adam said. “He’s not coming.”
“What?” A sudden panic rushed through her, overriding all movement and all thought, even the weariness. According to the tracker, several Anven cruisers were on their way. She had no idea where she was supposed to go.
“Engage lightspeed,” Adam suggested.
Jane automatically swiped the icon on the control screen. The Stargazer zoomed. Her hands froze on the steering bars. Despite her cockiness about piloting, she’d taken comfort in her big brother’s presence. He’d take charge if she forgot what she was doing. Where am I supposed to go?
Adam leaned toward her. “Relax. The authorities are well out of eyeshot, and they can’t trace us, remember? As soon as we’re out of the IC’s reach, you can berate Devin for leaving you on your own, but for now, just fly.”
Just fly. They’ll never find us. “How far are we from the tunnels?”
Adam checked the navigation chart. “About sixteen light-minutes.”
“Are the authorities after us?” Jane didn’t dare look at the tracker herself.
“We’re invisible. They won’t even see us. Just stay out of sight.”
Just fly…
The panicked tension subsided, replaced by determined calm. She steered the ship into an arbitrary tunnel. Never mind where it or the other tunnels she wove through led, as long as they took her as far from the IC as possible.
The heavy weariness returned. Jane resisted it, telling herself to keep her head up and focus.
The engines’ temperature gauge appeared on the control screen. The needle flashed at the red zone, as though saying, “Look! Your engines are overheating!”
Sorry, ship. I can’t exactly stop now.
Something rattled. Jane hoped it was stuff jangling in the storage compartment, not the engines breaking down. Her chest tightened with trepidation, and her shoulders tensed. She fixed her attention on the navigation chart to keep from looking at the gauge.
The chains of tunnels became shorter and shorter. The Stargazer exited one that stood alone against a sea of stars. According to the navigation chart, the ship was a few light-minutes from an asteroid field labeled “Xaxone 12587—Retired.”
Xaxone was an industrial company with several interstellar mining operations. The field must have been one of their abandoned sites, containing nothing but stripped space rocks. Jane pulled the steering bars to flip the Stargazer and return to the tunnel.
The ship didn’t react.
She wrenched the controls, but the ship continued toward the field. She tried veering instead. Alarms pealed. A warning appeared on the control screen, saying the generators couldn’t take it anymore. The ship rapidly lost power.
Panicked, Jane cut power to the engines. The ship continued moving toward the asteroid field at lightspeed. Right—things keep going in space…
The indicator lights by the brakes went dark. Shit. I can’t even stop.
Anxiety gripped her chest like a pair of hands digging into her heart. She felt every nervous breath in her lungs.
“What’s happening?” Adam asked.
“The generators are dying.” Jane tried to keep her voice steady. “Ship’s breaking apart and all that. No big deal.”
She revved up the engines. Without power, she couldn’t steer. Asteroids covered the viewscreen. She scrambled to maneuver the slow-reacting Stargazer. The needle on the temperature gauge kept flashing. The ship screamed with alarms, begging her to turn off the engines before they caught fire.
Hold together, you ugly little bucket of bolts!
The tension made her nauseous. She kept her face calm and her eyes fixed on the viewscreen. If she so much as blinked, she could crash. Her vision faded in and out, as it had on Travan Float. Black dots filled in from the edges. In some moments, all she could see were pale blurs amid darkness.
She forced her eyes open as wide as she could to make sure it wasn’t her eyelids drooping. What the hell is wrong with me?
Jane didn’t have much time to think about it between dodging space rocks and ducking abandoned mining equipment. The steering bars resisted her movements, and she felt her control over the vehicle slipping. In spite of her best efforts, the Stargazer bumped up against asteroid after asteroid. It shook as sparks spewed from the distressed control panel. The rattling grew louder.
With no way to stop, her only choice was to keep going and wonder how long she could ignore her vehicle falling to pieces. The needle on the temperature gauge fell past the red zone. It stopped flashing, as though the ship had given up on its warnings and accepted its eventual destruction.
Please, ship. Please don’t explode…
“We’re almost there.” Adam’s voice was calm. “Only thirty light-seconds until we pass through the field.”
Jane nodded quickly in acknowledgement. Empty space lay ahead. She focused on weaving through the asteroids, tuning out the rattling, the alarms, the terrified cries in her head. Just fly…
The Stargazer banged against one last asteroid and hurtled out of the field.
All the tension released her at once, and her shoulders caved. “We made it.”
“Well done.” Adam sounded both relieved and impressed.
Jane cut power to the engines again and switched off the alarms. The ship continued tearing through space. With nothing for it to crash into, she figured they were all right. For now, at least. She collapsed back into the chair, worn out.
“Jane?”
“I’m fine.” Jane sat up and looked at the status report. “But the Stargazer’s not.”
No way to brake, hardly any power, busted engines—she recalled all the hits the Stargazer had taken under her piloting, and her confidence drained. “I broke it. I broke the damn ship. We’re stuck here.”
Adam gave her a bright, reassuring look. “It’s not your fault. You were given a junker that hardly functioned, and you still managed to get us out of impossible situations. You saved our lives.”
His encouragement did little for her grumpiness. “You don’t have to be nice.”
“I mean it. We’d have been blasted away at Travan if it weren’t for you.”
Jane couldn’t help smirking. “I did outfly a fleet of merc ships. It was so weird. There must’ve been about twenty ships launched at the same time, and the way they flew… It’s like they were drones. Maybe they were unmanned, but—”
Adam grasped his forearms as he had on Travan Float.
Alarmed, Jane asked, “What’s wrong?”
He relaxed as though freed from whatever gripped him. “I’m all right. It’s… I don’t know how to put it. You know how you go through life with these inaudible nudges within you saying, ‘I should do this,’ and then you do it? I feel like someone’s putting those thoughts in my mind, except I really don’t want to do what they’re telling me to. They’re in my head, but… they aren’t mine.”
That’s weird. “I thought the drugs had worn off.”
Adam shook his head. “I’m just better at ignoring them. Right now, something within me wants to take the slate and tell the galaxy where we are. I have no idea why.”
“What the hell could they have done to you?” Jane thought for a moment. “The government developed a mind-control implant. Maybe the bad guys put one in you while you were out.”
Adam looked as though he found the explanation ridiculous and apparent at the same time. “That would explain some of the stranger ones. Although, to be honest, I don’t think this is the first time this has happened.”
Huh? “What do you mean?”
“I mean… remember when I was transferred to Kydera Minor? A part of me, a very loud part, told me I should take the opportunity and go. I guess we all have our inner battles, but this was different. It felt… unnatural, like a part of myself I didn’t recognize. If I’d listened to that instinct, I would’ve left without saying good-bye. But there were things about staying that meant much more to me.”
Jane tried not to read into the tender turn his voice had taken and replied flippantly, “You’re so cheesy. Besides, that was your everyday mind-versus-soul dilemma, the kind you’re always philosophizing at me about.”
“It was more than that.” Adam looked past her. “It was foreign, like another voice in my head trying to… for lack of a better term, possess me.” He brought his gaze back to Jane. “With all that’s been going on, I guess No Name must’ve implanted me or something. At the time, though, I thought I was succumbing to the pressures of my advisors.”
Jane slouched in her chair. “I know that feeling. Sometimes I feel like I’m being mind-controlled by my dad. It’s like he’s in my head giving me orders even when he’s not around, and my thoughts are actually his.” Knock it off. I’m not turning this into another Dad conversation. “But anyway, what’s happening to you now is different. It seems to be telling you to… betray us.”
“I would never do that,” Adam said firmly. “I swear, Jane, I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
What am I supposed to say? She wished Adam wouldn’t talk like that. “Yeah, I know.” She kept her tone casual in an attempt to steer things back toward normality. “Hey, the first thing we’re doing once we get outta here is finding one of those super-advanced body scanners and checking you for a brain chip.”
How’re we supposed to leave with no power? Where can we go that’d be safe?
Jane got up. The familiar black dots surged across her vision. She grabbed the back of the seat to steady herself. Her knees buckled, and she felt herself sinking…
Her focus returned. Adam supported her, his arms around her. Jane vaguely remembered him calling her name.
She quickly left his embrace. “Just a head rush. Stood up too quickly, that’s all. Devin’s been back there long enough. I’m gonna go tell him off now.”
Jane left the cockpit and walked into the living quarters. Her brother sat on the ground against a wall, staring at a hologram projected from his slate.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Catching up on the news again.” Devin dully tossed the slate away.
Jane picked it up, wondering why he was so upset. The hologram displayed a reporter standing outside a courthouse. She tentatively pressed “Play.”
“Although the defendant is still at large, the tribunal has reached a verdict concerning the attempted murder of Victor Colt. Due to the heinous nature of his crime, Devin Colt has been sentenced to death.”
Stunned, Jane sank to the floor beside her brother.
“The execution has been scheduled for two weeks from today. The authorities have been granted permission to perform the execution upon arrest if Devin Colt is not apprehended by that time.”
They were going to kill him. She knew his life had been in danger from the moment he ran from Quasar, but hearing it passed off as justice made it worse—and real.
She stopped the hologram and whispered, “They can’t.”
Devin leaned his head against the wall. “I’m not surprised. They have evidence, witnesses… Hell, they could’ve dredged up motive. Everyone knows I never got along with him. Play the previous one.”
Jane peered into her brother’s face, trying to figure out what his expression meant. It was somehow rage and resignation, loss and utter defeat. She’d never seen him like that. She didn’t know what else to do, so she played the previous video.
A hologram of Sarah appeared. “Devin Colt always scared me. He was so charming, and I was foolish enough to believe him when he said he’d changed. By the time I realized what a monster he really was, it was too late. I tried to work up the courage to leave him, but I was too frightened.” She looked down, as though suppressing tears. “I wish I’d said something to someone. Maybe they would’ve noticed there was something wrong with him, and none of this would have happened. Please understand, I only agreed to marry him because I was afraid of what he’d do to me if I refused. I want nothing to do with him, and I hope they catch him soon.”
Jane smoldered with fury. “Bitch. She’s not real anyway. Your Sarah would kick her ass if she saw this.”
“She is my Sarah.” Devin’s voice was low. “She’s the only Sarah there ever was. I fell for an illusion.”
What? Jane’s body shook. She wasn’t sure whether it was from the weakness fast enveloping her body or the intense sorrow bruising her heart. To keep still, she hugged her knees, unable to find it in herself to ask her questions.
Devin seemed to read them in her expression. “I found Kron. He’s not involved with No Name. He was tracking their activities, and he showed me some of their files. I knew something was wrong when I found out that Sarah’s identity was faked. I shouldn’t have tried to deny it, should’ve believed the obvious and spared us all a lot of grief. I saw her test program, saw how her expressions, her voice—even some of her words—were taken from watching the way other women behaved, combined to create a perfect lie.”
The madness behind his eyes made Jane shudder. She didn’t dare speak as her own eyes welled up at the sight of her brother’s pain. He sounded as though he’d given up on everything, as though… he wanted to die.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Devin sounded disgusted. “I didn’t lose anyone. Sarah never existed, so how could I lose her? It’s kind of funny if you think about it. I’m engaged to a one-year-old. That’s what Kron said. And he laughed. He laughed away as he watched my world shatter.”
There were no tears in his eyes and no quiver in his voice, only a flat statement of fact. Jane nevertheless sensed his agony. A rush of fury engulfed her. “I’ll kill him.”
Devin looked away. “He’s already dead. Shot through the head, his brilliant brains splattered across the images of the women who became Sarah.”
Normally, Jane would’ve known her brother couldn’t kill anyone in cold blood, but the unfamiliar iciness in his voice, the stillness in his face, the madness—she was at a loss as to how to answer.
“I didn’t do it.” Devin smiled wryly. “But I might as well have. They’ll pin it on me, and I don’t blame them. I did run into his office waving a gun. No Name’s all about perfection, right? The perfect singer. The perfect love. And now, I’m their perfect murderer.”
Jane’s question burst from her lips: “What happened?”
“He was about to tell me everything. He mentioned something called the ‘Pandora Project’ and then…” Devin pointed his finger like a gun. “Bang.” He flicked his wrist.
“Was it the internal defenses again?”
“Yeah. No Name’s favorite modus operandi. I guess Kron was a liability, and they were waiting for someone like me to come along so they could off him without drawing attention to themselves.”
“Wait, how could they have known you were there? The Gag Warriors shut down the cameras. Riley said you’d be invisible!”
“Unlike Sarah, they’re not perfect.”
“Forget Sarah!” Jane’s fury returned even as she felt herself fading. “She was never real anyway, so forget all about her! What we have to do now is clear your name. Show those idiots who call themselves ‘justice’ you didn’t do it!”
“Maybe I did.” Devin’s voice was almost a whisper. “Dad’s good as dead because of me. Hell, even Kron’s dead because of me. All because I tried to save a girl who never existed.”
“Devin…”
“I don’t care anymore.” His tone turned harsh. “Sarah was my one shot at happiness, my one way out of this numb misery I call life. She never existed. That chance never existed, and I was stupid to believe anything could change. I have no future, no hope… nothing.”
“You’ve got me!” The darkness invaded into Jane’s vision again. “I… I’ll always…”
“Jane!” Devin reached toward his sister as she slumped to the floor. He was too late to catch her. Her eyes were closed and her breath shallow. One arm lay across her stomach. He noticed a reddish scar on her wrist and pushed her sleeve back. Burns covered her forearm, some sickeningly discolored.
Shit. The chemical—it was toxic.
Adam scrambled into the room. He knelt beside Jane, put a hand on her shoulder, and shook her. “Jane, wake up! Jane!”
How long had she been sick? How much pain had she hidden behind those cocky smirks? If Devin had paid attention to her instead of obsessing over Sarah, he would’ve noticed her weakness was more than fatigue. “I should’ve taken her to a hospital the moment we landed on Fragan.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” Adam put a hand on Jane’s forehead and brushed her hair out of her face. “She’s ice cold.”
