The Rhine Read online

  "Haydon!" Mat yelled.

  The vitals next to Haydon's face were picking up. The camera caught a sudden spark on the bulkhead next to Haydon's helmet and he jerked ... more cursing and more gunfire. He was starting to breath heavy, then his eyes focused on something off camera and he yelled, "How many are there! How many!" There was a muffled voice, then gunfire. Mat was certain it was his rifle and he felt his face turn cold. Haydon had someone down ... then ... shot them. He must have.

  "Haydon, what's happening?" He asked. The ex-soldier grunted, and the camera suddenly lost connection for a moment— turned to fuzz then cleared. He was gritting his teeth and cursing. Mat heard banging— like metal on metal— then another shot from the rifle.

  "I'm a little busy right now ..." He took a few deep breaths, then said, "Looks like they managed to seal off the aft compartments, but their oxygen plant must be down. I'm heading forward. So much for my idea of someone knocking on their front door as a distraction."

  For the next fifteen minutes Haydon went through the tug, every so often he whispered, "Clear." Then finally he said, "I've found the starboard airlock ... I think. Yes it is. I'm on my way, boss."

  A full minute went by before the control pad beside the hatch lit up and the hatch unlocked. Mat pushed it aside and stepped into the airlock. Through the small window in the opposite hatch he could see the light's flickering, then Haydon's helmeted face appeared, looking at him.

  "I got him, Yuri," Haydon said as Mat cycled through and opened the hatch.

  "Stay safe, no changes here."

  Haydon was standing in the corridor, holding his rifle at rest in front of him, like you see UNSEC troops holding them while standing on a street corner in the newsfeeds. Then Mat saw the blood on the front of Haydon's suit. He wanted to say something, ask Haydon ... something ... "Are you alright," he managed.

  "I'm fivers, boss," Haydon said. "And you?"

  "I'm okay," he said.

  "Good. I ran in to four enemy combatants aft ... can't be many more. We'll check the Flight deck first, then Engineering. Stay behind me, watch my backside."

  Enemy combatants? Mat thought. Behind the face shield of his helmet Haydon's eyes were a little wide ... sweat beading on his forehead.

  Haydon looked down and said, "You'll need that."

  It took Mat a second to realize he meant the pistol. He pulled it from the holster and held it down at the floor, like Haydon showed him during practice. Haydon gave him a small smile and nod, then turned and in a crouch began walking down the corridor.

  The corridor leading from the airlock was a wreck. Panels were torn from the wall, some floating in the way. There were sparks from exposed electrical conduits and gas leaks. There was a vibration in the hull, something down deep, and Mat could hear a low groan through his helmet. The readouts on his suit said the temperature was below fifty degrees.

  Haydon reached the hatch at the end of the corridor, opened it and stuck his rifle barrel in first, then he looked in and shoved upward. Mat followed, the inside of his suit starting to feel uncomfortably hot.

  The tube was bent five meters up. Not enough to stop them, but it twisted a few degrees to port before straightening back out. They passed a maintenance hatch bent in the frame of the opening, the control pad dead. Haydon ignored it and continued on, stopping at another hatch another five meters up. It was marked FD. The control pad was lit and the hatch looked functional.

  Mat pulled to the side of the hatch and readied his pistol in one hand, and the other he hovered over the control pad. Haydon pushed back against the tube's bulkhead and leveled his rifle at the hatch.

  The light strips lining the tube— already flickering— went out. They were plunged into complete blackness for the moment it took to turn on their helmet lamps. It was an automatic response to the darkness— to living on the Moon and on a ship— Mat didn't even think of the lamp in a concrete way.

  "Alright," Haydon said.

  Mat tapped the pad and the hatch slid aside. Haydon's light illuminated a man floating right there on the other side of the hatch. His heart was hammering, but Haydon simply stared at the man with his rifle leveled. Then Mat realized that he was dead. The man's long black hair was messy and wild around his head, the stubble of his face smeared with blood from his nose, and his eyes were half closed. The name patch on his coveralls read Morse in black stencil.

  Haydon pushed off the back of the tube, shoving the body aside as he floated through the hatch.

  The corridor lights flickered and there was a red warning light flashing on one bulkhead. As Mat followed Haydon he couldn't help but think how much the tug's interior looked like the Sadie's own hatches and corridors. It was a product of design-function and available materials, he supposed. Ahead was another hatch, half open and its control pad dark. And as they headed toward it Mat thought for a moment about how strange it was to see Haydon in combat mode ... that's all he could think to call it. Up until now Haydon's physical presence was used as a deterrent to would-be thieves on ore drop-off stations. His frown would encourage people to move on. And now here he was, holding an assault rifle ... and it looked natural. The sort of natural that came with seeing someone who always wore a hat or dressed a certain way, and then one day you see them in something different, something out of character and it seems strange. In Haydon's case it was the reverse. Thinking back at all the times he had seen the man with a wrench in his hand, or doing some maintenance on the Sadie, now that seemed out of character— out of place. Haydon was always supposed to be carrying a gun.

  Mat glanced at the pistol in his outstretched right hand, that really did seem odd.

  Haydon moved to the half open hatch and stuck his rifle barrel in, then slowly edged his way inside by placing one hand on the hatch frame and pulling. When there were no gunshots and enough room in the hatchway, Mat followed.

  Like the rest of the ship the Flight deck was heavily damaged. What Mat thought was the plot terminal was ripped from the deck and lodged against one bulkhead. The pilot, a stocky man that must have been about Mat's age with gray in his close cropped hair, was strapped in his seat at the cockpit, blood around his mouth and nose and his limp limbs floating. Another victim of the sudden deceleration that occurred when the tug hit the canister.

  "Kep," Yuri suddenly said. "One of the tug's thrusters is fluctuating. Very small now, but it will turn in to big problem."

  "How long we have, Yuri?" Mat asked.

  "Umm. Difficult to say, maybe an hour before it gives out. Whatever you are doing, you should hurry."

  Haydon bent to a terminal with a cracked screen and began punching buttons. "Let's see ... just wondering where this thing has been ..."

  The man in the cockpit seat suddenly opened his mouth, his eyes going wide. His head snapped toward Haydon and his left arm jerked down to his seat and then there was a pistol in his hand.

  Mat shot him.

  It was surreal. The pistol's report was muffled through his helmet, like the gunfire he heard when Haydon first boarded the tug, and then the man was limp again. Floating a little sideways in his straps with a small red hole in his neck and blood splatter floating on the other side ... a smear of it on the bulkhead. And the pistol hovering loose from his out stretched hand, still pointing in Haydon's direction. There was a flat taste in Mat's mouth as he stared at the now— certainly— dead pilot.

  Haydon turned and looked back, first Mat and then the pilot. "Nice shot, boss. You saved me a hole in the back."

  Mat looked at him and Haydon pointed to his pistol. "I'm pretty sure you don't have to keep pointing that at him. You did it right the first time."

  When Mat lowered the pistol Haydon gave him a tight smile that he saw both through the face of his helmet and in the HUD video feed of his own helmet. Haydon turned back to the terminal he was looking at and said, "Yuri, the tug's systems are encrypted but I've managed to open a data port, can you connect? Look for course data."

  "I see the carrier wave
... working on it."

  Mat wasn't sure what to do, so he turned toward the hatch and watched it. In case someone came in while Haydon pilfered on the terminals. Idly he wondered what the tug's name was. "Yuri," he said. "What's this thing called?"

  "What?"

  "Its name. What's the tug's name?"

  "I do not know. The transponder data is blocked with heavy encryption. Very sophisticated ... maybe military grade."

  That was odd, a rock tug's systems having that kind of protection.

  "That's what it looked like to me," Haydon said. "The question is why do they have it, and who did it? The only people I know that can do this sort of programming all work in vaults, underground on Earth."

  UN Security spooks, Mat thought. People Haydon met during his time as a soldier.

  "Boss, let's get to Engineering. I'll need help setting up the fuel line extension so we can siphon their tanks."

  Mat gave an automatic nod to Haydon in his helmet and followed him back out of the hatch.

  * * *

  Mat stared at the terminal screen. The hull of the tug was scraped clean by the impact blast with the canister, so there were no cameras to show him Haydon's work with the siphon line from the Sadie. So he watched the cracked screen give a readout of fuel levels, occasionally glancing at Haydon's face on his HUD.

  Engineering fared worse than the rest of the tug, it was essentially a compartment of floating junk. The terminal that Mat floated by was the only one remaining attached to the deck. Its controls flickered in time with the lighting and the screen was fuzzy. A wrench the size of his arm hovered a meter away. The tool cabinet it undoubtedly belonged in was ripped apart, half of it floating and half of it still attached to the bulkhead. The wrench and everything else would become missiles if the tug's thrust shifted or the acceleration changed.

  "On my way back, boss," Haydon said.

  "Copy that."

  On the way to Engineering they had passed more bodies. These with bullet holes in them. Haydon hadn't commented, but they could only be the ones that he ran across when he first boarded. Those bodies vied for attention with the image of the one he himself shot, the pilot. The broken screen of fuel readouts and Haydon's face were a measure of distraction, but poor ones.

  Mat told himself that these were people that tried to rob them ... chased them for the canisters ... and would have killed them so they couldn't tell anyone about it. That made him feel better, but the bodies and the red splatter were nagging flashes that wouldn't go away.

  "I'm inside," Haydon said. "Coming your way, boss. I want to grab a few things there, then we should hit the crew quarters before leaving this wreck."

  Mat grunted in response, still staring at the screen. Hit the crew quarters. The dead crew of the tug would have likely done the same on the Sadie. It would have been Yuri floating in the cockpit with a bullet in his neck. These people— pirates— got what they deserved.

  When Haydon floated in he was carrying a large duffel, the kind that was used to haul vac-suits around in when they were not hanging near an airlock. He said, "I saw a couple things I needed." He pulled out a box of pipe cutter blades that was strapped in against the back of the remains of the cabinet. There was a box of fuses floating nearby, he grabbed it and shoved it in the duffel with the blades.

  The Crew deck consisted of three cabins for the crew and Medical. Mat floated into Medical with a laundry bag that he found while Haydon went through the crew quarters. A medical cabinet was still intact against one bulkhead, its doors half open and its contents spilled out into the cabin— first aid kits, boxes of stim-pens, clear tubes of medicine for the medbed, and more.

  Mat gathered it all and stuffed it in his laundry bag.

  "Moving, on to the second cabin," Haydon said over the commlink.

  "Alright ..." Mat started, then stopped mid-sentence. There was a white box shoved down in the bottom of the medical cabinet. It was metal, with no visible markings on top and with a simple handle. It reminded him of the firebox that his aunt used to keep her important things in. He reached in and tried to pull it out with one hand, but it was jammed in the cabinet, or held in by some way he couldn't see. Pulling the cinch on the laundry bag he let it float, then using his foot against the door frame of the cabinet and a hand on the top of the cabinet, he grabbed the box again and pulled.

  "Boss, you okay?" Haydon asked.

  "I'm fine, just working on something ..."

  The force of the box coming free from the cabinet pushed him back in the cabin. Rather than flailing like a newbie in zero-g he put out a hand to the scanner hanging over the medbed and steadied himself. Mat studied the box. It wasn't big, about the size of his aunt's firebox, just as he thought. There was a latch, and a hole for a physical key, but the whole assembly was bent, twisting away from the metal side of the box.

  There was a pair of surgical scissors strapped to the inside of the cabinet door, he took them and jammed the sharp end between the lock and the box and popped it off. Mat flipped the lid open and looked inside. There were small, plastic cases of medical pens, like stim-pens, but the clear plastic syringes held milky liquid that he had never seen before. All of it unmarked, no names, no manufacture labels ... nothing.

  "Haydon, I have something I want you to take a look at," Mat said, shoving the cases of pens in his laundry bag.

  "You want me to come there?"

  "No, I'll come to you."

  "Okay, I'm in the third cabin now."

  Mat pushed himself out of the Medical cabin and into the corridor. The third cabin was on the opposite side and clearly marked with a 3 near the control pad, and the hatch was open. There were two racks against one bulkhead, a small closet, and a fold-down table still latched shut. The table's corresponding folding plastic chairs were strapped down beside the racks. Other than a few loose panels the cabin was clear of debris.

  Haydon was floating in the middle of the cabin, staring at a small picture he was holding in his gloved hand. His duffel drifted beside him. When Mat floated in he turned his head momentarily in his direction, then back to the picture.

  "This was taken on Mars," Haydon said, as Mat floated up beside him and looked at the picture. It was about the size of Haydon's hand, with a cracked frame of black plastic, but the picture itself was intact under its thin cover of transparent plexi. A man was standing with his arm around the shoulders of a woman with long brunette hair brushed back behind her ears. They were dressed in casual clothes and both smiling. Behind them a mix of people walked in business suits, sat on benches, a man was eating a sandwich ... a child was running by, smiling and carrying a ball. Was it a park ... Mat saw a row of green grass between concrete sidewalks. A few meters above them was the same similar concrete on the ground and there were light panels stuck to it. It took him a moment to realize that the couple was standing in subway, or tunnel.

  "It's the tram station at Central Park, in Capital Burrow," Haydon continued. "I was stationed on Mars, briefly."

  Mat suddenly recognized the man in the picture. He was floating at the hatch on the Flight deck. Haydon frowned, then asked, "What did you want me to see?" For some reason he stuck the picture in the pocket of one suit leg. He didn't seem to care that Mat noticed.

  Haydon took one of the small cases that Mat offered him from the laundry bag and opened it. He studied the syringes of white fluid. "Cocomine, maybe," he said. "Or something like it. Probably intended to sell it at their next drop-off point. We could get the Medical computer to analyze it, if you want."

  Ore drop-off stations were a natural location for selling and buying drugs, for one simple reason— they were gathering places for humanity. Mat thought of those tiny havens of light and oxygen as refugee camps. They were more crowded than the domes of the Moon, and with less of a UNSEC presence.

  "Kep," Yuri suddenly interrupted. "The tug's starboard-aft thruster is losing power again ..."

  The cabin suddenly tilted and Mat slammed against Haydon, both of them hi
tting the rack and tossed into the corner of the 'ceiling'. They hung there, feeling a vibration in the bulkhead through their suits, while the thruster regained power and leveled out again.

  "... retracting fuel line. The vestibule will not be stable much longer ..." Yuri's voice continued.

  "Alright," Mat said. "We're leaving." He pushed off and grabbed the laundry bag, Haydon following close behind.

  The corridor lights were completely out now and the loose panels had shifted location. At the entrance to the cabin Mat turned his head in both directions, shining his helmet lamp back toward Medical and then to the deck's access tube hatch. He shoved off the hatch frame with his right foot, toward the access tube. His heart rate leveled out some since he boarded the tug, now it was picking up again. It was taking too long to float the few meters to the access tube.

  "Wait," Haydon suddenly said.

  Mat turned back to face him, one hand grabbing at the side of the corridor to slow his momentum. Haydon was floating in front of an emergency locker, his helmet lamp glaring off the metal door. The locker was a common site on any ship. There would be a toolkit and fire extinguisher in it, and maybe a spare vac-suit.

  "I saw something," he said, his helmet lamp playing over the grillwork in the locker door. Mat couldn't see anything through the small slits but the expression on Haydon's face said he was convinced something was in there, something that shouldn't be.

  As Haydon readied his rifle in one hand and reached for the latch with the other, Mat moved to a better angle, putting his back to the bulkhead and aiming his pistol at the locker. Haydon jerked the latch and the metal door popped opened, their helmet lamps lighting up the interior of the locker. A woman was shoved inside. Dark haired, maybe of Asian descent, she was wearing filthy sweat pants and a cut-off shirt. Silver pipe tape was wrapped around her wrists and ankles.

  "My God," Mat breathed.