Ghost station, p.25
Ghost Station, page 25
“Carry on, Doctor.”
Taking care not to get any on her suit, Ophelia swabs a gloppy sample from Birch’s nose and quickly transfers it to the vial, scraping as much of it as she can from the swab before resealing the vial. In an ideal situation, they should probably take a separate sample of the black stuff rolling out of his ears, but they are far from ideal here.
She tucks the used swab inside a corner flap of the body bag, where it will be sealed in with Birch.
“There.” Ophelia puts the sealed vial on her desk, which is still at odd angles with everything in the room after the chaos Birch evoked, and holds her hand over the vial for a moment, making sure it doesn’t roll off. What they can do with it, she has no idea, but at least they have it.
“Can we do this now?” Ethan’s prickly tone should get under her skin, but now that she knows he’s using it to cover strong emotions, it’s easier.
With grunting effort, they lift and then transfer Birch to the bag-covered table. More of the black sludge rolls out, as if their movements are pushing it out of him. Or like it’s oozing out with a purpose and mind of its own. It drips from his ears, landing on the expanded bag with a splat she can hear even with her helmet on. Her skin crawls like it’s trying to run away.
Moving as fast as she can, she hauls her side of the bag up and over Birch, and Ethan does the same on the opposite side. With some trial and error, they figure out that the side without the activation strip has to be tucked in, wrapped tightly around … the body. Emergency body bags do not come with instructions, and they should.
Once that’s done, Ophelia tugs the activation strip free and presses the edge into place. It makes a hissing noise and the bag bubbles and melts where the strip touches it. A chemical reaction of some kind.
“Okay,” she says, breathless.
Ethan ratchets up the antigrav sled until it’s closer to level with the table, and they transfer Birch. It’s not a good fit. The sled is meant for crates, cargo, equipment, boxed and stacked. Birch’s frame is too long, too person-shaped. No matter what they try, his covered and booted feet dangle.
“He deserves better,” Ethan says with harshness. “More dignity.”
“He does,” she agrees.
Ethan looks up at Ophelia in surprise.
“I don’t have to have gotten along with him to recognize that this is a shitty end.” Not to mention Birch had plenty of reason to hate her and more than enough terrible life experiences to earn him a better death, if things worked like that. They don’t, unfortunately.
Together, Ophelia and Ethan pull the sled out into the corridor and then into the central hub.
Kate, Suresh, and Liana are suited up and waiting near the main airlock.
Ethan stops, forcing Ophelia to halt as well. “I told you to seal yourselves in on the other—”
“We’re here for Birch,” Suresh says, steadfastly avoiding looking at Ophelia. It seems his anger hasn’t dissipated.
She can feel Ethan weighing his choices, whether the risk is large enough to push his authority on them or if it’s better to let them join.
As always, the team dynamics here are complicated for reasons she doesn’t understand. She’s tempted to step back out of the way, to make room for Suresh to take her place at the sled next to Ethan. But she’s beginning to suspect that her efforts to support the team, to help them see her as an advocate, have only raised suspicions about her motives instead of soothing them. Ethan thought she was trying to undermine his authority. She wasn’t, she’s not. But if you have a crew where leadership is in question from one side or another, it might seem like that. Ophelia came in trying to solve the wrong problem.
So she stays quiet and keeps her hand on the sled handle.
That seems to be the right move. After a moment, Ethan shakes his head. “Fine,” he says with a sigh, and the thick lines of tension winding around everyone slacken a little. “Keep your distance, don’t touch the bag. We don’t know what this is yet.”
Ophelia moves back to make room for Suresh, who takes her place with a sullen look.
The five of them make a somber procession into the main airlock and then out into the storm. The wind immediately tears at them, and the sled lifts and tilts under the gale.
For a second, it looks as though Birch is going to tumble off before they can even get clear of the hab.
Ophelia lunges forward to the side of the sled and then crouches down against the barreling force of the wind to press her hand flat on the bottom of the sled. Across the sled, Kate does the same.
In this slow, hobbling, uneven manner, they creep forward in the storm.
“Far enough,” Ethan says. “We need to be able to find our way back.” The snow clinks hard against Ophelia’s faceplate, gathering at the seal just at the edge of her vision.
Suresh starts to reach down for the bag surrounding Birch.
“No,” Ethan says sharply. Then he looks to Ophelia, and for a second she imagines she can see the battle being waged inside him, though in this weather it’s likely her imagination, extrapolating.
Then he says, “Doctor?”
“Why?” Suresh demands. “He was my friend, not—”
“Because we know we’ve already been affected,” Ethan says.
Suresh gives a derisive snort. “You don’t even know what it is, let alone how—”
Enough. “Do you have a rash or any kind of raised bumps on your arm?” Ophelia asks.
“No,” Suresh says after a moment, as if he wants to say yes just to prove a point. What point that would make, other than being a stubborn ass, she has no idea.
Which reminds Ophelia that they’ll need to do a thorough check on everyone when they get back in. And then, after that, they should probably have all the exposed quarantine together until they can get clearance to take off. God, this would be so much easier if she knew what she was doing.
“Then stay back,” Ethan says to Suresh. Ethan nods at Ophe- lia, and they move into the same positions as before, he at the head and Ophelia at the feet. But the storm makes it even harder, with the sled bobbing and wobbling and the wind tearing at Birch the moment they lift him. It’s less a gentle transfer of Birch to the ground and more like a partially controlled fall, ending with an audible thud.
Suresh makes a pained noise. “Fuck,” he mutters, kicking at the snow as he turns away.
Ophelia shifts to the opposite side, feeling very much like the funeral pallbearer that no one wanted to be there, and Ethan bends down to stab the pointed end of a makeshift flag into the snow. The bright orange fabric flaps in the wind, wrapping itself around the post.
Everyone stands in silence until Kate pushes forward to stand over Birch. At first Ophelia’s not sure why, then she sees Kate’s mouth moving. She’s saying something to him, on a private channel with Birch, whose helmet and suit are of course back in the hab. It’s a last chance to say what needs to be said.
When they retrieve Birch, they will be rushing to make the lander. Kate’s right to do it now.
Ophelia’s eyes sting at the final good-bye, one that so many can’t have.
Liana steps up after her and does the same as Kate. Ophelia gives her as much privacy as she can by not watching, though from the corner of her eye she sees Liana’s shoulders moving up and down in a gesture that speaks to crying.
Suresh moves into place, and just as Ophelia could read Liana’s body language as sadness, his anger comes through even without his words.
“Permission to return?” Kate asks in a clipped tone, even as Ethan starts forward to take his turn.
He closes his eyes for a second, then opens them. “Granted,” he says in that flat tone.
The three of them leave, hauling the sled behind them.
Ophelia’s not invited, but even if she was, she would have remained. Ethan is a lonely figure in front of Birch’s body. Empathy pulls at her. She wants to say something to help, but she doesn’t know what.
“I can’t keep anyone safe if they don’t talk to me,” he says. Almost exactly what he said before, only now he sounds more frustrated than angry.
Ophelia’s first temptation is to react defensively, assuming his words to be directed at her—he is after all on a channel with her, rather than speaking to Birch as the others did—but then it occurs to Ophelia that it’s not about her being Bloody Bledsoe’s daughter. It’s not even about Birch. Or not just about him. The damage is too old, too deep for that, both in Ethan and in the reactions of the others.
“Ava,” she says, disparate pieces coming together.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Then, after a moment, he says, “It was a routine assignment, just a drop and flop on Minos. HQ wanted a sample of some mineral that was registering on scans, but it was underground, through a system of old tunnels. Old.” He tips his head toward the remains of the city in the distance, signaling that he meant millennia rather than decades or even centuries.
“But when we checked it out, the passageway was blocked, and the whole thing looked shaky as hell. I called it, sent us back to the hab. By the book,” he says with a bitter laugh.
His sisters died in the Lunar Valley collapse; no wonder he was reluctant to push into those tunnels.
“So wait, if it wasn’t ERS, you’re telling me that Ava went back later on her own?” Ophelia is aghast. “Why?” There’s no bonus involved in taking those kinds of risks. In fact, Ethan would have been well within his rights to write Ava up, and she would have been immediately removed from the active roster.
He tips his head back to look up at the storm. “We need to head back to the hab. Now.”
“Ethan.” Her legs are shaking from bracing herself in the wind, but she’s not leaving, not until she hears the rest.
He shakes his head, and for a second she thinks he might just make good and walk away, forcing her to follow. But then he says, “I suppose that even if this isn’t covered under doctor–patient confidentiality, I have my own form of certainty that this stays between us?”
Ophelia grits her teeth. “Correct.” She waits for the threat, for the reminder of who she is.
But he just nods. “You know about the Challenge?”
She blinks, attempting to make the conversational leap. “What happened with Ava was about a dare?” Rumors of an underground competition among R&E teams to obtain the most valuable or rarest of items have been circulating for years. It’s mostly urban legend, according to Montrose’s Internal Affairs department. Something for teams to brag about over beers on leave and frighten the newbies.
“No, no. That is bullshit. Or maybe the Challenge was real once, I don’t know. Now it’s just a cover for the Nessers.”
Every once in a while, in life, there’s a moment where you sense that you’re balancing on a precipice, a before-and-after, with a question in the offing that you’re not sure you really want answered.
“Nessers?” Ophelia asks in a strangled voice.
“It’s a bastardization of NSR. New Silk Road. A black market where samples or artifacts from claimed planets are sold to competitors. Or the highest bidder. It’s not exactly a formalized process. Nessers are the ones who supply the product.”
Ophelia gapes at him. “How—”
“Just clip an extra sample for your ‘customer’ and slip it through with your personals, or so I hear.” He shrugs. “Other teams may sell on the market, but not my team, never my team.”
That sounds like a point of pride for him, but Ophelia can barely focus on it because she’s too busy reeling from the potential ramifications. Personal items go through a general decontamination process and quarantine, but that’s nothing like the stringent protocols for anything extraterrestrial brought back to their solar system from an assignment. “But the risks…” She can’t think straight. “That outbreak on New Rhodes, the plague they couldn’t get a handle on.” Thousands dead on a Montrose-claimed planet, an entire colony abandoned because of the virulence of a disease they couldn’t identify.
“Maybe the employers involved shouldn’t buy on the market then, if they don’t want their people selling on it,” he says flatly. “Or, here’s another possibility—they could treat their R&E people less like disposable garbage. Unions, medical care, pay increases for assignments with higher risk … all proposed, all rejected.”
“And that makes this okay?” Ophelia stomps toward him, nearly falling over in the snow. “People died!” God, it makes her dizzy thinking of all the lives lost.
“I’m not saying I like it,” he snaps. “I’m saying I understand it. If you leave a gap, desperate people will find a way to fill it. Capitalism isn’t only for the wealthy.”
“At what cost?” Ophelia demands.
“The costs don’t go just one way. And neither do the deaths, as you well know,” he says.
His sisters. Her father’s victims. All of them, in one way or another, could be listed as victims of greed. The Lunar Valley should have been reinforced years before, with better infrastructure. Goliath and the others should have been retrofitted with new equipment, new safety protocols.
But that’s not what he means, not this time.
“Ava’s daughter,” Ophelia breathes. Experimental treatment that isn’t covered. That’s what Liana said, back that first day.
“She needed the money. But I didn’t know it was happening until it was over. I would have stopped it,” he says. “I would have stopped her. I still don’t know how she left the hab without it notifying us.”
Disgust curls through Ophelia. “That hardly makes you the hero,” she points out. “You know what’s happening, and you haven’t told anyone, when people are being hurt!”
He laughs, a dark, humorless sound. “How’s the view from that glass house, Doctor?”
Ophelia takes a step back, stumbling a little, physically repulsed by the idea. “I … that’s not the same. Not at all.” Isn’t it, though, Lark Bledsoe?
“If you say so,” he says, in that same even tone that somehow manages to scream the opposite of his words.
Before she can even find an opening to argue, or decide how to argue it, he continues.
“Besides, reporting won’t stop it. The companies, they’re all too dependent on the market.” He shakes his head. “They’ll change the name, take it deeper underground. In the meantime, how many R&E teams would lose their jobs as part of the cover-up?”
In that moment, she can see it playing out. The press releases from Montrose, the grave statements of concern from Pinnacle, Generex, Mivida, Li Qi, and others, and the lower-level sacrificial lambs who would be fired or jailed to “make things right.”
Ethan’s right. It wouldn’t matter. The power imbalance is tipped too far to one side, even with the existence of a black market. A swirl of despair—one that has always spun in Ophelia, sometimes a small dark cloud, other times a funnel cloud of hopelessness consuming everything in its path—lurches to life, gripping her chest and cutting off her breath.
“Anyway, none of that matters. The point is, Kate, Suresh, all of them, they don’t entirely trust me anymore. I wouldn’t let them go after Ava, once we figured out where she’d likely gone.” Shame and frustration color his voice.
“That’s your job,” Ophelia manages. “To make the ugly choices and keep them safe.”
“Yes, but doing my job then is making it impossible to do it now, if they won’t tell me anything. Ava’s death is my responsibility because she was my team member, but Birch’s…” He takes a deep breath. “That’s my fault.”
“You can do the right thing and still end up being fucked,” Ophelia says flatly. Not her finest moment, but at this exact second she can’t seem to summon even a thin facade of optimism.
A glimmer of a smile emerges on Ethan’s face. “That your professional opinion?”
“I think it’s more along the line of a universal truth, but sure, if you want to go with that.” She shrugs. “Not helpful but accurate.”
“It might be more helpful than you realize,” he says, after a moment. “Thank you.”
Lightning flashes above them, followed by a booming crack of thunder.
“We’re done. Now.” Ethan turns toward the hab, authority back in place.
They haven’t gone more than a few steps before she has to ask, “Are you … you’re sure that all of them are involved? The corporations. The New Silk Road thing.”
Ethan glances over at her with pity, and she hates herself for asking. But since she’s going to hate herself anyway, might as well know. She’s always struggled with her Bray side, but not nearly as much as with her Bledsoe half. “At least they never killed anyone” is not exactly high praise, but it’s not nothing, either. Now she’s not so sure she chose the right side of that moral conflict. If there even is a right side to it.
She’s tried to build a new self out of the unobjectionable parts of her past. But now it feels like there are no unobjectionable parts, no ground on which to build her identity. Like she’s creating an imitation of a semidecent human out of shit, blood, and corruption.
“Why else do you think the market still exists?” he asks. “None of them can rat out the others without being caught in the net themselves.”
“Right.” Ophelia nods, sickness welling in her.
When lightning slashes behind them, she can’t help but turn and look back. The gray sky is violet now, the white lace of lightning spreading across it in jagged embroidered lines.
Back near where they left Birch, not far from where the flag twists and squirms in the torturous wind, a glint of metal in the snow catches the flash of lightning, a spark of brightness.
Liana’s spider; it has to be. The one that found the Pinnacle R&E body. They must not be far from him, from Delacroix.
We’re creating our own impromptu morgue out here.
That feels like an omen, or just fucking bad luck. Either way.
24
Raised voices in the hab greet Ethan and Ophelia as soon as the interior airlock door opens, after their (possibly pointless) decon session.
