ALIEN THE COLD FORGE Read online

  She had always imagined Sudler to be a meticulously clean man, given his spotless appearance and pressed suits. She finds, instead, two folding easels and a mess of paints, filthy papers and old brushes and palette knives. Against the backdrop of Kaufmann’s light, the whole place strikes her as Bohemian.

  Coming to one of his canvases, she scowls. It’s a pleasing mishmash of angles and geometric shapes—a decent imitation of a Georges Braque. Does he haul this shit all over the galaxy? When he’s ruining lives, does he retire for a nice, relaxing painting session?

  Clearly, the answer is yes.

  Mixed into the shapes, she sees the curve of Anne’s body, clearly outlined in burnt umber, shading to orange starlight. Back in her own body Blue wants to throw up, but of course, that could kill her. Instead she turns away and looks for Dorian’s personal terminal. It’s not hard to find among the clutter of painting supplies. She lifts open the screen and the Weyland-Yutani login shield pops up.

  Sudler probably thinks Blue can’t code or hack, because of her background as a geneticist. He’d be wrong. She’s written thousands of programs, and has set up massive server farms. She wrote the program to open and close the heat shields on the kennels. That was disastrous, but it gave her unique insight into the Cold Forge’s IT and devops policies.

  Thus she knows all of the exploits for his system, and bypasses the login screen with little trouble, reaching a directory listing of encrypted files. In the event someone dies or quits, the company has to be able to decrypt the contents of their drives. She has the master keys, because she exported them from the SCIF without permission after she wrote the behavioral modification code for the kennels.

  Blue grabs copies of the most recent hundred files— all small, so most likely documents or spreadsheets. She drops them onto a portable drive and deposits that in Marcus’s pocket, then powers down the system. In and out in under five minutes, and when she leaves, the corridors are empty. She makes it the short distance back to her room with no difficulty, since the bastard decided to be her neighbor. Sometimes, she thinks he intentionally did it to annoy her, though only a creep would do something so ridiculous.

  In seconds she’s back to her own terminal with the stick plugged in and master decryption cracking open Sudler’s files. Some of the filenames are a little scrambled, but she selects the top one, a spreadsheet.

  It’s a personnel rotation report, and it lists everyone on the station as slated for termination, with a recommendation for fresh blood all around. Blue smiles.

  This is her ace in the hole.

  * * *

  Marcus’s firm hand presses against her shoulder, gently rousing Blue from slumber. She sucks in a breath and blinks the sleep from her eyes. This past month, her left eyelid has become sluggish and unwilling to respond.

  “You have some visitors.”

  She smacks her lips, her mouth sticky with dried saliva. She checks the time. It’s the middle of the night cycle.

  “Send them away,” she croaks. “I’m not decent.”

  “I’m afraid they’re quite insistent. It’s the Commander.”

  That perks her up. “Okay. Plug me in.”

  Marcus takes the brain-direct interface from its place at her bedside and gently settles it over her shaved scalp. She can always tell when the connection is successful, because his ears can detect the hiss of her oxygen tanks, while hers cannot.

  When she’d first arrived, she insisted on being in her motorized wheelchair to meet visitors. Now, it sits idle in the corner of her room. She spends more time inside Marcus than she does inside herself, and every time she comes back, her world feels a little worse.

  She walks to her bedroom door and opens it to find Daniel on the other side, his face grave with concern. She can’t read his thinly lidded eyes, but she sees something he’s never shown her before—his martial sternness.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he says, obviously not sorry, “but there’s something we need to discuss. Right now.” The dim illumination of the night cycle casts the hallways beyond in an eerie red glow. She doesn’t bother asking him if it can wait. She knows it can’t.

  “Sure,” she says. “Come on in.” She steps aside, but he remains fixed outside her door.

  When Blue was in high school in New Jersey, she had an internship at a robotics design firm. She’d gotten interested in creating some hobby projects, and because she couldn’t afford the servos, she took five of them from her office. Then one day, a security guard came to her cubicle and stood before her, just like Daniel stands now.

  “Fuck,” she says.

  “Will you come with me to the SCIF, please?”

  It certainly doesn’t look optional.

  Blue steps into the hall, where she sees Anne standing nearby, a dark look on her face. They fall into a small caravan and make their way down the central strut. She passes the infirmary and glimpses Kambili’s still body through the window, his vitals a pulsing nightlight in the shadows. When they reach the docking area, Blue spies the crew of the Athenian, lurking in the darkness, quietly chatting as they share cigarettes. She wonders what they’re up to. Maybe they’re prepping to launch. Dorian certainly got what he was after. He has all the information he needs to make a case for cleaning out the Cold Forge.

  Escape pods line the walls, capable of taking her back to Earth in a sleepy decade, each pod with space for two people. On her worst days, she’s thought about climbing into one and launching, hoping that they’ll have a cure for her by the time she arrives. There are very few people with her condition, though, so probably not. Civilization has written her off. She has to save herself.

  But she’s failed. That’s why they’re walking to the SCIF in the middle of the night.

  She wonders if Sudler will force her off the station and onto the Athenian with him, or if she’ll have to stay aboard until the next crew rotation, confined to quarters. Maybe he’ll trot her before the Governance Board like a prized pig ready to be slaughtered. Maybe she’ll choke on her spit and die of pneumonia before then.

  When they reach the SCIF entryway, he’s waiting there, hands in his suit pockets, a professional smile on his face. He relaxes in the floodlights of the great door like an actor on the stage about to deliver a monologue. Lucy, Javier, Dick, and Josep stand nearby as well, looking considerably less pleased.

  Lucy stares daggers at her. Blue knows it’s because of Kambili.

  “Good evening, Doctor Marsalis,” Sudler says. “We have some questions for you.” Blue smacks her lips. Her android body feels no fatigue, but freshly awakened, she still stretches his muscles.

  “I take it we couldn’t wait until the morning?”

  Anne and Daniel ascend the ramp to enter their access codes and open the door. Blue feels certain her access codes have been revoked, and so doesn’t bother to ask if she should help. The buzzer sounds and the colossal door swings wide as lights flicker to life inside the SCIF.

  “Care to tell me what this is about?”

  “We’ll get to it,” Sudler replies, ushering all of them inside. Maybe she should punch him. She could plow her fist into his nose and snap it before her time here is over. He would, of course, sue her earthly estate to pieces, but what does it matter? She tucks that thought away for later. Like a funeral procession, they pass under Juno’s glass cage, headed straight for the kennels.

  “Miss Wexler tells me you’ve maintained an unlicensed server,” Sudler says, falling in beside her. “And I’ve been asking around. Seems like no one else has heard of it. Care to render any comments on that?”

  She glances over at Anne, who finds somewhere else to look.

  “That’s my fault,” Blue says, careful to keep the edge from her voice. “I told her because I thought it’d make her feel better about the destruction caused by Silversmile.”

  Sudler nods. “I see. So your research is…”

  “Destroyed by Lucy’s project, just like everyone else’s.”

  “You lying bi
tch,” Lucy says, shaking her head. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

  A flash pops behind Blue’s eyes—it’s getting harder to keep her temper in check.

  “Yeah? Well where the fuck is it, huh, Lucy? Can you show me, or are you just going to run your goddamned mouth?”

  “Ladies,” Sudler says, his voice stained with irony as he grins at Blue’s body. He winks. “Please. We can be civil about this, can’t we?”

  “All right, that’s it,” Blue says. “I’m so tired of your shit, Sudler. You’re seriously going to get all cute about my gender now? You think this is funny, asshole?”

  Everyone’s gaze slews to him, and he shrugs innocently, his shark smile vanishing.

  Blue gestures toward him. “This is the guy you decided to sleep with, Anne? Really?”

  But Anne doesn’t respond. Lucy closes the gap to Blue, filling her view.

  “You make it your business to know who everyone is fucking, don’t you?” she growls, her big eyes narrowing to slits. “Then you pull your strings and get them hurt.” Lucy’s eyebrow twitches upward, and she licks her overlarge lips. “I guess it’s your turn now.”

  Instantly the dots connect. Kambili has decided he has nothing less to lose, and told Lucy where the server is. Sudler probably put pressure on Kambili after hearing about the system from Anne. And Josep—he’s there to help the others crack it open.

  Inside, they’ll find years of malfeasance. They’ll find her research, her journals, her clear and explicit goals of medical application, transmission logs to Elise Coto, and copies of the cipher used to decrypt Blue’s picture messaging. It won’t take long before they locate her last received transmission and realize the conspiracy is very much alive. They’re going to arrest her for fraud and embezzlement, and she will never see the cure for which she’s fought.

  “I’ve seen Sudler’s private records,” Blue says, her voice shaking and rising out of Marcus’s natural range. “He’s going to fire all of you. Don’t do this for him. Don’t—”

  “Show some dignity, Doctor Marsalis.” Sudler purses his lips.

  It’s all crashing down. If ever there were a time to break the man’s face, it’s now. She takes three quick steps toward him.

  “Marcus, engage override Epsilon,” he says.

  Her leg locks in place.

  She feels herself say, “Override confirmed. Locking out pilot controls.”

  Sudler jams his hands into his pockets and saunters over, nose wrinkling in a grin. He clucks his tongue.

  “I can’t believe you were going to hit me.”

  “I would never strike a human, sir,” Blue says, even as she strains to control the muscles in her throat.

  “Of course not,” he says, clapping her on the shoulder. “That’s because you’re Company property. Now go back to synthetic storage and shut down, if you please. We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yes, sir. Very good.”

  Dorian sighs. “I’ve got to say, I like this side of you, Blue.”

  11

  VIABLE COUNTERMEASURES

  They found the hidden data port and the server behind the wall panel down one of the utility corridors, just as Kambili said they would. Dorian stares at the set of metal boxes, happier than he’s been in a long time.

  Companies aren’t about providing a service to the people who work there. They aren’t about social progress or any of that other bullshit. Companies are about maintaining the balance of profit to expansion, and winning—two things which Dorian has done handily.

  “Get the techs from Rose Eagle and Silversmile up here,” Dorian says to Anne. “I want her results ready to take back to Earth by tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Anne shakes her head. “Do you really think that was an appropriate way to handle her?”

  How can she not understand the expert maneuvering that’s brought them to this victory? How can she possibly question him, especially at that moment? Dorian glances around the hall and surveys the reaction. To his dismay, Lucy seems to be the only one pleased with the way this is playing out.

  Fury grows within him. Anne’s words are like grease on a precious diamond. They could be easily wiped away, but he’s shocked someone put them there in the first place. His hands shake with disbelief.

  “She’s a thief, you idiot!” he roars, then he pauses, takes a deep breath, and gets his voice under control. “Every single egg sample she misappropriated was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every adult snatcher rotting in a cell is worth a million. Glitter Edifice has a net value sixteen times that of Rose Eagle, and a hundred times the price of Silversmile. Doctor Marsalis’s kennels are the only reason any of these other people are here.” He sweeps his hand over the assembled crowd.

  “We were very successful,” Lucy protests.

  “At fucking everything up!” Anger starts to burn again. “And you did a good fucking job!”

  “Blue wasn’t lying, was she?” Anne asks. “You’re going to fire everyone.”

  “No,” Dorian says. “But I am making a lot of transfers— starting with you. Just about everyone here is too good for this place. I want to move you to Tokyo, Miss Wexler, where your talents will be better utilized.”

  As a security member, her talents are basically nonexistent. She’s failed to contain any threats, and he has trouble imagining Anne Wexler or Commander Cardozo repelling hostile boarders. At this point, he needs her, however, and the Tokyo office is an effective carrot. He can always betray her after he has what he needs.

  “What about us?” Lucy asks.

  Dorian pauses to consider his response. The Company will never again require Lucy’s services. After the Silversmile debacle, he’s going to blacklist her so she can’t get as much as an interview. She’s through.

  “Miss Biltmore, I’m not going to fire any project managers. No doubt you’ll fit in at our Berkeley technology incubator. Mister Janos, we’ve got numerous cryptography postings.” Dorian lifts a hand to fend off any questions. “These are details that are better left for later. We all have a job to do, and I want that goddamned research.” His voice rises. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Before they can respond, he adds, “I presume you all understand that Doctor Blue Marsalis will no longer be employed by the Company. Her clearance is revoked. She is to be prevented from having any further access to vital station assets.”

  He turns away, indicating that the discussion is at an end. The techs arrive, as do reheated pizza and sodas from the lounge. Whatever they’re doing, the various programmers settle in for a hard couple of hours.

  A makeshift lab pops up around the wall panel they removed to locate the server, complete with portable terminals, folding tables, and dozens of food wrappers. There are several members of the crew Dorian has never met. They introduce themselves to him as if he should care.

  The camaraderie between the low-ranking workers flourishes as they laugh and pore over the problem. Even Blue’s low-level techs are in evidence, helping with the effort, expressing shock and dismay, providing insights into their former boss’s mindset. What began as a couple of managers standing around a hole in the wall transforms into a war room.

  These are people working for the ledgers, and Dorian feels the pendulum swinging away from chaos. Balance will return to the Cold Forge, though he’ll be damned if it continues under the same management. With such colossal losses assessed against each project, the place is a gold mine. If his new appointees get the RB-232 back on track, his bonus will be of celestial proportions.

  Still, it’s hard not to love chaos sometimes. His money results from terrible management and bad decisions, from the failure of others, and he’s grateful that his job only sends him to places that are massive blunders. He always longs to be closest to the raging wildfire.

  * * *

  The day cycle wears on into night, and the techs show no signs of a breakthrough. When he asks Lucy about their progress, he gets only noncommittal mumbling and technical jargon. S
o he asks Josep. Blue’s research is carefully locked through quantum cryptography, something Rose Eagle can break, he’s assured. They have men and women trying to get the entangler back online.

  It’s been hours. They don’t need him to hover, so Dorian wanders off into the kennels, toward parts he’s never seen before. He visits egg storage, marveling at the robust countermeasures placed on the egg boxes. He commandeers one of the techs to show him video of an early impregnation. All of the later ones are stored on Blue’s secret server.

  They sit down together at one of the chem lab workstations and the video begins to play. A chimp lies strapped before a stony oval the size of a large garden vase. The egg blooms at the top like a flower, its meaty-white insides almost delicate. A caul pulls aside, and the creature springs forth, almost too fast to see, until it lands a deadly blow.

  This is the claw he saw floating in the lab. He leans toward the monitor for a better look, and counts eight fleshy articulating fingers with bony joints like those of an old woman. The whip-like tail lashes out, folding around the anthropoid’s neck to choke it out with negligible effort.

  The chimp strains against its straps, and falls still.

  “How long can those creatures survive outside the eggs?” Dorian asks. The tech shrugs, clearly uncomfortable with being spoken to.

  “We’ve never checked, sir. We, well… wouldn’t have wanted to waste one by letting it die.”

  “How strong are their tail muscles?”

  “About as strong as a boa constrictor, I guess.”

  Dorian scoffs. “Is that what passes for a unit of measurement? What tests have you run?”

  “I don’t, uh, think,” the tech stammers. “I-I don’t know.”

  “And what did you do when you worked on this project?”

  “I, uh, made sure the sequencers ran correctly and, uh, logged everything for Doctor Okoro and Doctor Marsalis.”

  “I see. Show me a video of the birth.”

  The tech keys in a few codes.

  “Do I not work here anymore?” he asks.

  Dorian shakes his head. “I guess that depends on whether or not I can get you to show me some simple videos, doesn’t it? Birth. Now. Get a move on.”