The Boundary Zone Read online

  “What if I left before your ship got here?” She could think of three barges leaving station that morning.

  His shoulders sank. “Then you’d go on the list of those wanted for desertion.”

  And put herself directly in line for a date with the void.

  That was a death sentence. “Okay… well, you’ll get me out as quick as you can. Promise?”

  “It’s going to take a miracle to subdue my unit after you cause your usual chaos. But I can promise you, I’ll do everything I can to get you out of there.

  Cable’s eyes searched hers, as if looking for more… and there was something else Mackenzie wanted to give him, but couldn’t.

  She took a deep breath. “Good. Because if nothing else is solid in this crazy universe, your promises are something I can count on.” Kissing him on the cheek, she immediately hopped back, that wasn’t helping. “Does your shower work? The personal pod showers have been offline for a week and I’ve missed my normal oh-one-hundred window in the public lavs.”

  He nodded and jabbed a thumb back toward the bedroom. “I’ll find you when the Dendratic arrives. Don’t spend too much time in here, or else people might think I’ve killed you and stashed the body.”

  “No one’s going to think that.” She threw him a petulant glare. “I take quick showers anyway.”

  The station groaned and the entire deck rumbled.

  Cable had braced himself against the doorway. When it stopped, he said, “The station’s settling after the attack. It’ll take a while to get back to normal as the thrusters realign orbit.”

  She knew what settling felt like. That wasn’t it.

  She watched him leave in silence.

  The lav was just to the left of the bedroom door and when she opened it, she let out a low whistle. It was not the closet-like space down in her pod.

  Hidden behind a metal cup that held his toothbrush, she saw the flickering movement of a photo cube, saw her face.

  It was the same one she had down in her bunk.

  Plucking it from the back, the night came back to her as though it had been less than a week before, not nearly a year. They’d been happy then, all of them. Aaron stood to her right, grinning at the camera like a wolf that had just bagged a full flock of sheep. Cable to the right. She brushed her thumb over the image and it played. Cable shifted, looking down at her... and she back up at him.

  They’d come close to ditching Aaron that night, and as much as she missed her brother, as happy as she was she’d spent the rest of that night losing to them both at poker and talking until her vocal cords were raw…

  Never date a military man… never sleep with your brother’s friends.

  She dropped the picture back on the shelf and decided to take Cable’s advice.

  When she left his quarters, her still-wet hair was wrapped up in a braided crown and her hangover was gone.

  The station was in full swing of day shift, and she caught a few surprised glances as she walked briskly through the halls. Heard murmurs that would quickly evolve into rumors.

  She ignored them as she stepped onto the officer’s lift and descended as far as she could go, joining a group of civilians as she crossed the expanse of the public level’s top most deck and slipped into the transport that dropped to the lowest levels of the station.

  When she finally stepped out of the lift on nine with a group seemingly destined for the atrium, she let out a sigh of relief and headed for the most claustrophobic maze on the station.

  She had a job to finish.

  Eight

  Time was ticking away, and Cable knew he was only making things worse.

  Kenzie wasn’t helping….

  His hand went to his jaw, rubbing the spot where his best friend had decked him the one time Cable had said what he actually thought about Kenzie.

  It had been two years.

  Aaron was dead. And the memory still brought a twinge.

  He hadn’t let Cable anywhere near Kenzie alone after that.

  “What does the hull damage look like?” Cable asked Stacy when he entered his office--her office. “The last bit of settling was worse than all the others before it.”

  He set his data pad into the desk’s uplink port and watched the conversion flow commence.

  They hadn’t changed over permissions yet. Full access. No roadblocks.

  “We have a briefing in ten minutes to discuss just that.”

  “Did you have a nice time with Kenzie last night?” Stacy waggled her eyebrows at him, and knew she wasn’t looking for an answer, so he didn’t give her one.

  “She knows, you know.”

  Aaron. Cable’s heart clenched in his chest as his eyes locked on Stacy’s.

  How could Kenzie know?

  For that matter, how could Stacy know? The records were locked.

  “She knows you came back here for her. Whether she knows it’s because you’re in love with her, I don’t know.”

  He let out the breath he’d been holding. Another sip of his coffee--perfectly bitter--gave him time to reel in his thoughts.

  “Kenzie should know why I came here. I told her.” He was as honest as he could be with her.

  He’d been a shell back when he’d come on station. Guilt and grief the only things filling him.

  So when Kenzie asked him why he looked like he’d just lost a bar fight with a demon… he’d told her the closest thing he had to a truth back then. He’d needed her.

  Stacy was staring at him. “There’s only one secret I keep from Kenzie… and that is for her own good. Anything else, I’ll tell her freely. Assuming she asks.”

  “Does that one secret have to do with why Aaron Flack’s files and final report are sealed?”

  A cold spike ran through Cable’s veins and he fought the urge to lunge across the desk and pin her to the wall. To demand how she knew that much. He took a deep breath and reminded himself anyone could see that. All they had to do was look.

  “Drop it. As soon as Kenzie and I leave, the best thing you can do is forget you ever knew Aaron Flack.” He stood, snatching up his data pad and turned for the door. “I’ll wait for you and the others in the briefing room.”

  He crossed the bustling Ops deck as another shake rippled through the station. The bridge froze as everyone braced and then burst back to life as they rushed through checking their readings.

  Bezzon gave him a smile and a salute, neither of which Cable returned. He’d work on the lieutenant’s write-up while he waited for Stacy. And he’d do his best to let his irritation at the man’s advances toward Kenzie find no anchor in that report. This was business. The fact he wanted to beat the skunk to a pulp… that was personal.

  He made his way around the officers on deck and tried to loosen his jaw as he pressed open the briefing room door release. It slid aside with a deep sigh that echoed the one leaving his lips.

  Luckily, the three maintenance techs and the head of station security already seated around the long table gave him a brief nod and let him ignore their idle chatter. He wasn’t in a mood for small talk, but the last thing he needed was an empty room to give him space to get lost in the mire that was Aaron Flack’s final personnel file entry. A document Cable could have recited verbatim.

  One he’d like to purge from his brain.

  The maintenance techs wore varying shades of worry as they talked between themselves. Impatient glances toward the door shifted in a clockwise rotation.

  He was reading over his notations when a message from Gunk appeared on his screen. The lieutenants behavior in the bar was more grievous than Kenzie had led him to believe.

  Finishing up the report, he added the retired admiral’s addenda and made a note of “unbecoming behavior in off-duty capacity.”

  Without a direct statement from Kenzie, he couldn’t do more and that sort of a demerit would undoubtedly bring suspicious queries from higher up. He didn’t need anything to interfere with finding a way to discharge Kenzie.

  Before h
e could sign off on it though, a flickering bulletin appeared in the corner of his pad. The Curran was still lost, and Maeltar was finally taking credit. If she was working with KaRapp, she hadn’t said. Cable wouldn’t have staked his pension on it.

  The attached orders hadn’t changed, but the Dendratic would be pushing her engines to get on sight that much faster.

  He closed and sent off the report as Stacy and a handful of the ops crew walked in and joined them the table.

  “Let's get this over with so we can hold ourselves together until we’re ready to fall apart.” She motioned to one of the techs who stood quickly and pressed on the wall screen.

  With the ambient lighting dimmed, silent video footage was punctuated by the maintenance tech’s assurance that what they were going to see was bad. Terrifying even.

  Cable would have used the word “grotesque.”

  “We have sealed off as much of the station as we can without inciting a panic. Here you’ll see sector five’s. Three of them.” He pointed to the corresponding holes as the camera passed over them. His hand had a slight tremor. “They’ve made it impossible to recover the final data from the ore mining surveys. We made sure the scientists waiting for that information were on an early transport off station this morning.”

  Another of the techs, still staring at the video feed, said, “We’ve convinced as many people as possible to get out as soon as possible.”

  “Is that why the Nostrneon requested a delayed departure?”

  “Yes.” the head tech looked at her, his face an impassive mask. “Per your instructions last night, I worked with the medical staff. There were two critical patients that required extra time for transfer.”

  “We’ll continue to speed up the evacuation proceedings. I want everyone but essential personnel off station in the next forty-eight hours.” Stacy glanced down the table at him.

  She wasn’t asking for permission. Her words were almost verbatim to the request Cable had made three months ago. But without an event of this magnitude, he’d had no reason--in Admiral Buchanan’s mind--to do so.

  “We need a more aggressive timeline.” The head station tech said, “Structural integrity is on the verge of critical failure. We won’t be able to sustain orbit. Between the damages and the gravitational flux of the planet’s moons crossing our orbit… Celesta is going to tear herself apart.”

  “How long do we have if we cobble things together?” Stacy’s eyes never left the images on the wall.

  She didn’t see the two techs share a wary glance.

  “We’ll be lucky if we have three days. There is no way we can shore up the damage quickly enough to forestall the inevitable.”

  A chill ran through Cable, pinning him to his chair.

  Full scale emergency evac… six thousand people still called Celesta their home. Some were integral to tear down. Others refused to go down before the station was laid with det-charges.

  He knew which ships were docked. There was enough passenger space for twenty two hundred. They might be able to fit another two thousand in cargo bays, but the rest…. The rest would end up in the stations life pods. Cramped and claustrophobic quarters until the Dendratic arrived.

  “Is that our only option?” Stacy’s voice was level, her tone in command, but she couldn’t hide the pallor of her face, or the worry in her eyes. She’d done the math too.

  The station let our another long groan and shuddered as the tech giving his speech muttered a prayer to the Goddess.

  “It is.” One of the techs turned to the screen and pressed an illuminated square on the table top. The image shifted and Cable saw the full truth of it.

  The wide view showed the exterior of the station, riddled with gashes and stress fractures spiraling away from the gaping maws. A holographic projection spun in the center of the table, playing out the likely scenario of what they faced.

  They sat on a time bomb waiting to implode. No wonder the station was trying to jar them awake.

  Cable stood, staring at the globule like mass stuck to the side of the station. “We need to get everyone off. The Dendratic will be here in the next three hours, but send out a call anyway. Anything with space in their hold or their passenger cabins needs to divert here.”

  He didn’t turn away from the scarred and dying station on the screen as Stacy began laying out instructions. “Start the evacuation. Don’t incite a panic. You three. Get your teams to keep us together as long as possible. I want everyone off this station alive.

  The room cleared as the others scurried off to start the evacuation. Turning away from the vid feed, he watched Stacy drop her head to the table’s surface. “Looks like you’ll be here for the end of Celesta after all.”

  “Believe me, I’d rather not be.” He palmed open the door.

  “Get your tech and be ready to go as soon as the Dendratic is here.” She turned to the still-crowded station-ops. “We’re staging for emergency evac. All ships are on dock hold until they are full. No one leaves this station until they’ve hit max capacity, or we hit the point of catastrophic failure. Things are going to be uncomfortable. You’re going to field complaints. We don’t have time for them. Send people on to those ships in handcuffs if you need to.”

  Cable didn’t hear the rest of her speech as the lift doors closed.

  There was only one soul he needed to worry about now.

  Nine

  The air processor fit nicely into the hidden storage space in the floor behind Gunk’s bar. The old admiral gave her a wink and tabbed through the account transfer process.

  Mack watched the numbers flow through. It was an eighth of her normal rate, but Gunk wasn’t paying her solely in credits.

  Gunk stowed the comp clip and gave her a big smile. “Like I said, never doubted you.”

  “I always find it funny working for you of all people.”

  “We all have our reasons for what we do.” She looked down to the hidden processor with a worried grin and tapped her lips with the side of her thumb. “You sure you want this information?”

  “I am.” Mack spun in the swivel-stool.

  She wasn’t.

  Her brother was not a saint. Far, far from it.

  And while she had no illusions on that score, it was never fun to see demerits writ out in their condemning fashion.

  Worse, she knew the words would be written out in Cable’s terse manner. His opinions mattered, however often she tried to remove herself from his influence.

  She stretched her neck, expecting the tight strain that was ever present. It was gone. Cable’s bed had a miracle mattress if one night worked out all her knots.

  With a heavy sigh, she gave up the search for a sore spot.

  “So, where did Cable put you? The Nostrneon is leaving in a few hours?” Gunk motioned her toward the bar’s back door. Mack forced a smile as she slipped from the stool.

  “I’m not leaving Celesta on a slag hauler….” She always had a hard time getting her thoughts straight when the whirr of Gunk’s cybernetic leg echoed around her.

  “Did he charter you a private yacht?” Gunk laughed as she locked up.

  “That was my first guess too, but no. The Dendratic is coming in to pull him off station, and he’s taking me with him.”

  Gunk gave her a quizzical look.

  “I’ve been unceremoniously drafted by an Admiral Buchanan. Know her?”

  Gunk’s attempts to keep a straight face failed miserably, Mack could see that plain as the deepening crease etched its way down the middle of the admiral-turned-barkeeper's forehead.

  “I know her. She and Bezzon are peas in a pinorian pod.” Gunk looked toward the ops corridor like she might interfere.

  “I doubt I’ll have to deal with her. From the glimpse I caught of Cable’s orders, it looks like they’re pushing us straight into the Boundary Zone.”

  The retired admiral stopped and stared at her as though Mack had just called her mother a dirty name. “They’re not even training you?”
<
br />   “They want my technical skills. I doubt I’ll be tasked with hand-to-hand combat.”

  Gunk glared at the floor. “Keep your head down and use Cable for a shield.”

  “I think I can remember that.” She gave Gunk a small smile as the woman clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder.

  “You do that and you get back in one piece.” She pulled the info stick from her pants pocket and handed it over. “Be careful where you open that, and be careful how you take the information there.”

  “You know what’s on it?”

  “Of course.” She scowled and then shook her head as though she’d been about to say something, thought better of it, and then settled on, “Excuse me, I have a commander to harangue.”

  “Give him Hell.” Mackenzie watched the old admiral walk with lilting steps toward the Ops lift before she ducked through the airlock doors connecting to the hive.

  The honeycombed glom had been added on as the station made the conversion from military outpost and scientific facility to civilian pit stop sixty-some years ago. It had its own life support and its own lifts… but they still required the station’s power.

  A blocky parasite attached to the station with tie wires and the obstinate need for more space.

  She made her way to the hive lift banks and held onto the railing as it dropped sixteen decks in three point seven seconds—she’d timed it before.

  The inertial dampeners kept everything but her stomach from feeling the rapid descent. Its speed was another glitch no one had time to fix.

  Once again, she thanked the Goddess and Cable too for a shot of blue liquid.

  Day shift meant she had the hive pretty much to herself. Even with the ever thinning population, there were still ten occupied domiciles on her level and two of them were too close for comfort.

  She passed an open door and ignored the heady spice of a hot weed cigarette. They were illegal—a fire hazard-but she wasn’t going to report them and they were too high most of the time to notice that she even existed.

  She glanced at the watch on her comm band and paused as the two men stumbled out, grumbling and popping their jumpsuit collars up as they headed for the lift she’d just left.