Heir Apparent - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4 Read online

  I punched a code into my pad and brought up the base’s Fleet display. The colonists didn’t have access to this part of the station’s comp system. They didn’t even know it was there. Fleet bean counters liked to know where the people were on their facilities at all times. Everyone on the station came up as a little red blip.

  The map showed all the buildings in the eight wedge-shaped sections of the central dome. Each section was connected to the two adjacent sections and a common area in the middle.

  I stared at the display, hoping for a little luck. When I saw it, I grinned. Blackjack! According to the data, the locals had mothballed four sections to conserve power, but someone was in one of the vacant housing units. I noticed another blip just outside Kate’s place. It wasn’t moving.

  I grabbed my gun and cracked the front door. Taka was in the shadows with a burner. I wasn’t sure about the range of the thing, but I knew it wasn’t meant to be a weapon. It looked heavy and awkward. I tucked my pad into my jacket, then clenched my jaw, triggering my enhancements.

  To fight the Krnylt, we’d had our muscle and bone densities jacked up and our neural pathways enhanced. It took a while to get revved…but when was I ready, I could fucking fly. I hyperventilated, pumping oxygen into my bloodstream, then triggered a surge of adrenalin and blew open the front door.

  I covered the distance to the Constable in a blur. His eyes got big and he blurted “Wait!” just before I smashed my fist into his head.

  I stood over the Constable, panting for breath. My heart pounded and my fingers tingled. The combat enhancements didn’t make you feel like you were on drugs, you were on drugs. Endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and every other chemical the human body produced that made it feel good to fight and screw, swirled through me. I wouldn’t be fatigued for hours and pain was a distant memory. God, I missed this. But coming down was going to be a bitch without all the field tranqs and stims.

  I used the map display to avoid the other colonists while I dragged Taka behind me. I made my way to the mothballed section, and when I entered it, it was like I’d stepped into another world. The distant blue system star twinkled behind the massive world sitting on the horizon. Vivid blues and greens shrouded the gas giant.

  To save power, the colonists had cut the dome light in this section, leaving only the emergency lighting. Most bases I’d been on had the “sky” set to default. Many people found views like the one before me unnerving.

  I kicked in a door at random, bound and gagged Taka with some cabling I found inside, then stuffed him in a closet. His breathing was a little ragged, but I thought he’d live. There hadn’t been much illumination in the housing unit, just more of the same dim emergency lighting.

  Now for Willis. I approached the vacant unit with the blip. I needed to take him quickly, before he revved. I burst through the door, my weapon out. I’d wanted to come in firing, but I didn’t know for sure it was Willis inside, so I’d held off.

  I peered through the gloom. Empty? But there were two blips on the display. I dropped and rolled. A gun blast tore past my head, sending my ears screaming. Willis melted out of a wall, or at least it looked that way. He was wearing a chameleon suit.

  Willis moved too fast to stay hidden. The suit had his name and rank on it. He pointed an old-fashioned chem round revolver at me, and I dodged as he fired again.

  I shot back as he blurred past. Blobs of metal thwacked into the front door as he ran out. My liquid alloy rounds were supposed to cut through flesh, not bulkheads—it’s all about safety in the Marshals’ service.

  I vaulted outside and ripped a round across Willis’s shoulder just as he vanished around a corner. He yelped.

  Recon units had worn chameleon suits during the war. The suits couldn’t shrug rounds like the heavy battle armor I’d worn, but anyone wearing a chameleon suit would be damned hard to spot as long as they moved slowly enough. The suits had built-in compounds to seal tears instantly and auto-stims to keep wearers alive if wounded. Chameleon suits were even rated for hard vacuum and came with an independent air supply.

  As I charged after Willis, I had two thoughts running through my brain. The first was: Yep, I am about to fuck up a simple prisoner transfer. I’d only skimmed Willis’s confession on the trip to Frost. It hadn’t struck me before, but it sure rattled around now. Willis had said he’d killed the victim, Van Agabe, on the surface, not the base. These turtle colonies were almost completely robotic; workers could practically run things from their desks. They sure as shit didn’t need to go topside. I hadn’t even considered the possibility because they’d need special equipment. Like a chameleon suit.

  My second thought was: God, I love it when they run.

  I knew the robotics bay had an airlock, and if Willis made it there, he could hide on the surface for days where I couldn’t touch him. That’s exactly where he was headed now. Why hadn’t he just bolted to the surface the minute I landed, avoiding all of this?

  As I chased Willis through the center of the base, we began to pass other colonists. Most got out of Willis’s way, leaving a hole for me to follow, but as the chase progressed, some grabbed at me, trying to slow me as I went by. Willis charged past a group of six who then turned to block my path. I sprayed rounds over their heads and hurdled the group as they ducked to the side.

  Willis and I raced by some startled maintenance techs who were working in the bay. One of them, holding a wrench, stepped in my path just as Willis dove into the airlock. I put a hole through the tech’s shoulder, spinning him out of my way. I continued firing as the airlock door swung closed. I might have sent a round through the crack just as the door hissed shut, but I missed Willis.

  I glanced back at the wounded tech. He held his hand over his shoulder, blood leaking between his fingers. When I fired my weapon, I was supposed to shoot to kill, but somehow I didn’t think the maintenance guy would mind—once he’d really thought about it.

  I stood, heart pounding, adrenalin pumping. Now what was I supposed to do? Play nice with the locals? Sign off on the body like they wanted? And as long as I was taking the time to think, who was the second dead guy, and why had the local cops called the Marshals at all? There sure seemed to be a lot of people wanting Willis to beat this rap, including the constable. Had the victim been some worthless sack of crap begging for a bullet? Kate had said Willis had found something, but every colony had a crank with an idea to turn the place around. I was missing something.

  Wait…I was missing something. Something obvious. Willis and Agabe had both been on the planet. There had to be another suit on the base, and I thought I knew where.

  I spun and sprinted out of the bay. I sent another surge of adrenalin through my system and was glad for it as I rushed past the gathering mob. Some fired burners, and the skin on my neck sizzled as I ducked around a building.

  I ran flat out for two minutes, then burst through the door of the Constable’s office and shot the first guy I saw. The “guy” was a middle-aged woman built like a barrel. We’d met earlier. I’d forgotten her name.

  I was getting good at the shoulder shots, but the woman seemed unimpressed, the way she kept screaming and all. I shoved her into a cleaning closet, then headed to the evidence cage I’d seen earlier. It was unlocked. A chameleon suit with Agabe’s name on it hung inside—he must have done Recon too. The skin of the suit had a silver splotch over the heart where the sealant had covered the bullet hole. Agabe had been taller and thinner than me, but the suit fit well enough.

  I left the office at a fast walk, letting the suit blend with the light around me—any faster and the colonists would spot me. Kate was in the crowd near the robotics bay, bandaging the maintenance guy I’d shot. She had a nasty bruise on the side of her face.

  The crowd was focused on the wounded man, and I used the distraction to move around them undetected. I’d managed to slip by most of them when someone jostled against me and gave a shout. I bolted toward the airlock, not worrying that they could see me now. Three p
eople with burners guarded the hatch.

  I was done getting cute with my gun. I pulled my weapon and…sent it skidding toward the airlock. Agabe’s fingers had been a lot longer than mine, and the suit’s gloves didn’t fit worth a damn.

  Unarmed, I zigzagged toward the three men, then charged the one who seemed slowest on the draw. I didn’t make it. They fired, and the air around me shimmered. The heat hit me like a punch in the gut, but I kept moving. When I reached the men, I spun one around and used him to shield me from the other two. I broke the man’s arm and cut past him as his burner fell. I smashed my foot into the second man’s knee, and kicked the third in the groin.

  I glanced down to see how badly I was wounded. I wasn’t. The chameleon suit had literally saved my skin. I’d either been too hard to see to hit directly, or the suit had diffused enough thermal energy—like it did with ambient light—to save my life.

  I didn’t dwell on my good fortune, choosing instead to smash back through the three men, sending blood and teeth spattering across the floor. I ignored their groans as I retrieved my gun, stepped into the airlock, and started the cycle. As the mob rushed into the bay, I gave them the finger. The hatch sealed shut.

  The outer door opened noiselessly, and I grinned. On the dirty brown ice of the surface, footprints led away from the base.

  The surface of Frost was completely flat near the colony and gleamed with the reflected light of the star. Ice, kilometers thick, covered the moon. In the distance, there were dark lines in the ice, massive cracks, evidence of the slow churn of the oceans beneath.

  I loped over the surface, matching Willis’s stride. Frost’s gravity was lower than the base’s Earth standard, but I tired quickly as I ran. I’d been able to tweak my O2 supply when I’d worn heavy battle armor, but soldiers were meant to move slowly in the chameleon suits and the smaller breather unit meant my O2 came at a trickle. It was like running at altitude.

  I gasped for air and my head swam. All I could hear was the sound of my breathing, keeping time with my heart. It was a ragged sound. Oxygen deprived, I plodded on as darkness crept in on all sides of my vision. It was like something was swallowing me, and I didn’t think I’d make it out of the monster’s gullet before its teeth snapped shut. My ears rang with a sudden, shrill sound: my scream. I clamped my mouth shut.

  Keep it together, Braddock.

  Half a klick ahead, Willis’s footprints led to a small shelter in front of a crevasse stretching for kilometers in either direction. I risked an adrenalin surge, trying to push back the darkness. If I pushed too hard and for too long, I’d collapse.

  The shelter was little more than a shack with an airlock. More adrenalin surged, unbidden, blurring my vision as I stumbled the last few dozen meters. I slapped the panel outside the structure to open the door. The shelter didn’t have a two-stage airlock, so the air had to be restored each time someone entered. I stepped inside and pounded the interior panel to close the hatch, then whirled to look for Willis as I wrestled with my helmet. I couldn’t work the damned latch! A red light blinked on the airlock controls.

  Holy Christ…

  My hands shook as I removed a length of pipe jammed between the airlock door and the shelter wall. Willis must have propped the pipe against the hatch to fall and block the door as I entered—a simple but effective way for me to kill myself.

  The compressors finally kicked in, and the panel light changed to solid green. I removed my helmet and took slow, deep breaths. The shack was filled with crates of food and old mining equipment. There wasn’t another exit. If Willis had been in the shelter, he’d have put a bullet in me by now—or he’d have just kept the door locked in the first place. I wasn’t thinking too good. It was going to get me slagged.

  I took some time to gather myself. I could feel the blackout coming—the downside to using my enhancements without stims. I hyperventilated, pumping as much oxygen as I could to my brain, then put my helmet back on and slapped open the door.

  Stretching back toward the base were my footprints and Willis’s. Somehow he’d doubled back on me, disguising his tracks. He’d definitely made it as far as the shack, but if he’d walked backwards in his prints—back the way we’d come—he could have ditched me at any point.

  It had taken me about an hour to make it this far. I had sixteen hours to find Willis before the freighter left me behind. I didn’t like my chances. Still…the shelter had to be out here for a reason. I circled the structure, moving outward in a spiral.

  It took almost another hour to find it, and it wasn’t much, just a hint of a boot print. Willis had hidden his tracks well, but he’d missed something in his haste. If I drew a line from the shack and extended it past the boot print, it fell across a point on the nearby ice crack.

  I pulled my gun and crept to the crevasse, then stared down. The gap between the two ice sheets was narrow. I could leap the distance easily. A jagged line of black snaked between the frozen, dingy slabs, down where the star’s light couldn’t reach. I knew I’d have to get down there somehow. This might be another trap, another way for me to kill myself in a careless accident, but there had to be something. I paced back and forth, gazing into the gap.

  There…Small metal rods were jammed into the ice wall, forming handholds. If I hadn’t known where to look, I would have never spotted the dark metal in the gloom. The rods ran thirty meters down, ending near some kind of cave.

  I holstered my weapon and started down the makeshift ladder. My arms and legs banged and scraped against the ice. The deeper I went, the more the walls seemed to press against me. I couldn’t make myself look down. Instead, I kept my eyes on the fading light above me and felt for the rods with my boots. It was like climbing down into a grave.

  The rods came at regular intervals, and I got into a kind of rhythm as I descended. That’s why I nearly slipped when I put my foot down for the next rod and it wasn’t there. I crushed my chest against the wall as I scrambled to keep my grip on the rods in my hands. I gulped for air.

  Stupid! I could not afford to get stupid.

  When I got my breathing under control, I glanced over my shoulder. The cave was actually a fissure running under the ice. Someone had used a burner to widen the crack into a tunnel big enough for a single man. The shaft sloped down into darkness. I pried my fingers from the rods and stepped gingerly into the black of the tunnel, drawing my weapon.

  The chameleon suit was capable of projecting faint, white light. If Willis was waiting in the darkness, he would see me coming. But the suit dispersed the light a bit, so I looked more like a luminescent cloud than a man. With some luck, I’d spot Willis before he could get off a clean shot. I didn’t see a way around getting hurt, and it was either move forward or turn back.

  It took my eyes several minutes to adjust. I didn’t hurry. I’d walked fifty meters into the tunnel, ice fragments crunching under my boots, before I saw tracks on the icy floor: dozens of them, heading back and forth. It was impossible to figure out how old they were. My heart thudded in my chest, but I wasn’t afraid; I was relieved, knowing that I wasn’t alone.

  When I noticed the glow, I turned off my suit lights and let the darkness enshroud me. My breath came quick and raspy. The light from up ahead grew brighter as I walked further on into the tunnel. It wasn’t a steady light—colors danced and flickered. What the hell was Willis up to?

  When I first saw the creatures floating in the cavern, I kept moving toward them, moving into the chamber as it opened before me. I only stopped when I hit a ledge with a sharp drop. There had to be a hundred of them, some as big as whales, with smaller, identical creatures circling around them. Their bodies looked like dandelion puffs made of vivid, colored strands. The light filling the chamber came from the aliens. Beautiful.

  Each creature had dozens of slender, glowing tendrils hanging from its body. The aliens touched each other with them as they floated through the air. There were patterns to how the creatures’ colors shifted, like they were talking to each ot
her.

  Something clanked on the back of my helmet. I was so fucking stupid…

  “Thanks for letting me see them first,” I said through my suit com.

  The bullet didn’t come.

  Willis’s voice crackled in my helmet. “I call them Floaters.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. The pressure from the gun against my head let up a little.

  “Turn off your suit,” he said.

  I clenched my fist, disabling the suit’s camouflage. I let Willis take my weapon from my hand, and then I turned to face him. He disabled his own suit and kept his weapon pointed at me, but wasn’t really looking at me. He was staring at the creatures instead.

  Willis motioned with his gun, and his voice filled my helmet. “There are liquid oceans deep under the ice, warmed by the gravitational stress on the moon. The Floaters told me they came from the oceans and up through the cracks in the ice long ago. They can alter their buoyancy and move through the fractures, enlarging them as they go.”

  “You can talk to them?”

  “In a way.” He looked at me for the first time. “I know you.”

  I studied him carefully, and nodded. “Yeah, you do. I didn’t recognize you before.”

  He smiled and tapped his helmet with his gun. “The world looks different through a faceplate—brings back old memories.” His smile vanished. “We weren’t at our best when we last met. I don’t recall your name.”

  “First Sergeant William Braddock,” I said. “Do the other colonists know about these creatures?”

  “Yes. They visit as often as they can, staying for as long as they can. The chem suits from the enviro-plant are good for a few hours of air. Van and I guided them here.” He thought for a moment. “How did you know the body wasn’t mine?”

  I touched my arm. “No holes.”

  Willis shook his head, sadly. “I kept them covered.”