The Freezer Page 19

  “There’s been an explosion up here! It almost cracked the starlight port!” That was the transparent ceiling that showed the magnificent view of Jupiter.

  “Your work on the communications panel?” I yelled up at him. A second later the alarm cut out and silence returned.

  “All ruined,” came the reply.

  I turned to Dinova. “Stay here, in this module, with us. If you run, remember what I said.”

  Her eyes were hard but she gave the hint of a nod. I released her and marched to the ladder. Looking up, I saw Dyson at the top staring down at me.

  “Is there any hope?” I called.

  He frowned. “The fire suppression system kicked on immediately, but the control panels are shrapnel. Most everything’s gone.”

  “Oh, my God,” Cray gasped. I turned to him. His face was pale in the red glare. “The refrigeration units are out. I can’t hear them.”

  I listened for a heartbeat. He was right. The constant hum of those units, present in every module, was gone.

  “Can you fix it, Dyson?” I yelled.

  Even from the bottom of the ladder I could interpret the expression.

  Hopeless.

  “Refrigeration units, communications again, facility control.” He looked behind him at the shattered, smoking mess. “All gone. Life support is still on though.”

  So. The facility was in trouble, but I’d been in this situation before. We just had to capture the killers, keep them isolated and survive until someone arrived to take us out of this frozen wasteland.

  But who could the other killer be? We were all there, together. Had I made a mistake thinking the owner of the white vacsuit was one of these people? Or was there actually someone else on the moon with us?

  I swore.

  * * *

  “You’re not understanding, Tanner,” Cray said. His features were tense and sweat beaded on his forehead. “Not everything is down. The life support is still up and running. But the refrigeration units are out.”

  “So?” I shrugged. “We can—”

  “The coolers are off, dammit! In a few minutes this place is going to start melting downward. That’s going to put stress on the structures. The ice around us will crack and collapse.” He was trembling from obvious fear. “The skin of the domes and the travel tubes will split. We can’t survive here for more than a few hours!”

  Join the club, I wanted to say. “So the station is going to sink into the ice unless we get the coolers back up and running,” I said.

  Dyson called down, “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Lieutenant!” He looked behind him again and exhaled in a rush. “The controls here operate every major system at The Freezer. And the explosion trashed most of them.”

  I considered our options. “What if we deactivate life support? Let it freeze in here?”

  Snow said, “That would kill the primates.”

  “You already keep them—”

  “Not below zero! It’s cool in there, but not cold.” She gestured around her. “It would have to be negative seventy-five Celsius in the facility for it not to sublimate the ice. That can’t happen.”

  “Why?”

  She looked shocked. “Because we’d freeze to death! Our vacsuits aren’t rated for the temperatures on this moon for longer than a couple of hours!”

  I exhaled. It was worse than I’d thought. The animals were going to die regardless, and she was going to have to accept it. “What’s the temperature in the facility now?”

  Cray pursed his lips in thought. “Around eight Celsius, I think.”

  “We can bring it down to zero, can’t we? We can live in that.”

  “The animals, Tanner!” Snow growled. “They can’t.”

  “They’re in Module C. We can keep that one a bit warmer then.”

  “Then it’ll melt into the ice faster.” She stopped and stared at us each in turn. “We are either going to freeze to death here trying to keep from sublimating the ice under the base, or we’re going to die crashing down into a fissure as the facility crumbles around us!”

  * * *

  The options weren’t pleasant. If only we could get one refrigeration unit working in one dome, then maybe we could stay in there until help arrived. I raised the idea and Dyson shook his head. “They’re all operated from here, and the controls are gone and are not coming back.”

  I said, “The controls might be gone, but the damn systems work just fine! We just have to access one and turn it on.”

  “Power distribution to each cooler is out. You need power to get them working, and there is simply none for them.”

  Damn. Whoever had done this had been skilled. Still, it wouldn’t stop me from trying. I’d do anything to survive, to persevere, to live.

  I was a primate, after all.

  * * *

  “Dyson! Get your ass down here, right now!”

  I frowned as I faced the others. We were going to have to work together in order to get through this. If only Shaheen had been with me. She was a brilliant engineer. She could get the systems up and running, of that I was sure. Still...

  Sato was next to me, waiting for my orders. So were the others. Dinova sat in a chair by herself; no one wanted to be near her. Even Marius, her closest friend, seemed repulsed by the revelation earlier. Now he wouldn’t even meet her eyes.

  Dyson jumped down the last few steps and sprinted to my side. At least the gravity was still functioning, I thought absently.

  “Why is life support working while the refrigeration units aren’t?” I asked.

  He snorted. “I tried to adjust it, cool it down in here already, but it won’t respond. It’s almost as if it’s been locked out intentionally!”

  And then I noticed something quite conspicuous. For some reason, no one else had. Strange that it hadn’t occurred to me until now, but the disaster, alarms, struggle to find a vacsuit and determine the nature of the damage had distracted everyone.

  Director Francis Lefave was gone.

  * * *

  “Does anyone know where Lefave is?” I said.

  Their eyes shot around the dome before returning to meet mine. It had shocked them as well.

  I swore again. He was the one I’d been after. He had killed Aoki for threatening to tell me.

  And now he was gone.

  “Dinova,” I whispered. “Explain yourself. Why the deception?”

  She shook her head. “You’ll see soon enough, Tanner.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The reason we’re here. The reason I brought you. The reason he killed Aoki. What they’re doing...” She shuddered and circled her arms around herself. “Guilt overwhelmed Bojdl. He couldn’t live with it any longer. You’re on the right path...”

  My brow furrowed. She wanted me to know, but for some reason needed me to find out for myself.

  Then I realized. I had been about to reveal it anyway. She was just waiting for me to do it.

  I turned to Dyson. “It’s time that you showed me the lowest level of this module, Crewman.”

  His face paled and he turned to the others. Cray and Snow glanced at each other. Marius couldn’t meet my eyes.

  And then Snow whispered, “Do it, Dyson. Show him.”

  He hesitated for a heartbeat before finally nodding. He moved to a control panel near Lefave’s workspace and entered a code. An instant later there was a thunk and the sound of a gear turning.

  My gaze shifted to the noise. A section of the deck had opened to reveal a ladder leading downward. It was very close to the center of the level, near the ladder that led up. It was cold in the dark hole, and carved, rough ice lined the ladder well.

  Whatever was down there had not been here originally. Someone had dug a cavity in
the ice below The Freezer.

  I tightened my grip on the pistol. I motioned everyone over to the opening in the deck. “Get over there. We’re going to investigate the rest of this facility.”

  * * *

  I followed as they disappeared downward. It was dark there, though the emergency lights provided traces of illumination. I stepped off the last rung and turned to see what this mysterious level held.

  It took a moment for my brain to process the image.

  Before us, in the center of a cave carved from the ice, was a circular medical platform of some sort. Diagnostic machines surrounded it and a skeletal support system rose upward.

  The red lighting was dim there, but the shape that it showed was unmistakable.

  Strapped to the supports was a rail-thin man, naked, his skin translucent, bone protruding from his thin flesh. Wisps of hair rose from his mottled scalp. His eyes were sunken and his chest and stomach concave. His skin was white, as if it had never seen proper light. Beneath it I could see veins, arteries, a heart beating. Wires and tubes protruded from him, and nearby displays showed vitals and other statistics related to brain activity and blood chemistry and respiratory operation.

  He seemed to sense our presence and his head jerked minutely.

  And then his jaw opened, revealing a toothless mouth and a black tongue.

  He screamed, and it was low and guttural...sustained and ethereal.

  It was the sound we’d been hearing all along, only down here it sounded more organic and human. Above, muffled by the steel deck and suppressed by the regular noises of station operation, it had seemed like splintering ice. And in more distant modules, it had sounded simply like the natural stresses of the surrounding frozen crust.

  The sound is louder in Module A...

  I turned to the others. All but Sato stared at the deck; they could not bring themselves to see the tortured remnant of a man in the center of the chamber. But the horror on Sato’s face mirrored my own. I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing. There was a human being in that place...a human who did not belong on Europa.

  I whispered without turning from the sight before me, “What in Christ’s name have you people been doing here?”

  Part Four: Friday—One Day Left

  Chapter Nineteen

  The source of the depression that Bojdl had dealt with in the days and weeks leading up to his death was now painfully obvious. In fact, based on the reactions of the people I had forced into the ice cave with me, I could tell that it had affected them similarly. They had begun with tests on primates...

  Then moved on to live subjects.

  Disgusting.

  I studied the scientist-doctors near me. Janice Snow, Robert Cray, Marina Dinova and Simon Marius. All had played a part in this. I watched Dinova now, as she stood surrounded by chiseled ice with the red reflections glinting off her angular features. She had murdered Shaheen to motivate my trip to Europa.

  She had wanted me to find this. This secret level beneath the main facility.

  But why?

  It still boggled the mind.

  The man in the center of the chamber seemed incapable of speech. He could scream or moan, but no more, and even that took time for him to build the strength for. It seemed as though the spark had left his eyes, as in the chimps, and that there was no rational thought coursing through his brain.

  His withered body, translucent malnourished flesh, decayed teeth and atrophied muscles indicated a tremendous suffering over a long period of time. I had seen a lot of horrible crime scenes in my life, though there were always corpses littering them. This was atypical in my profession, and it was perhaps the worst thing I’d ever seen. He was a corpse and didn’t yet know it. His mind had died while his body staggered on. Barely.

  I circled him slowly. His eyes didn’t follow me. He stared blankly at the ice over his head. The tips of his toes and fingers were black. They were stark contrast to the pale white of his skin. In fact, I noticed as I stared at his hands, some of his fingers had already fallen off, at the second or third knuckles.

  The rage was building within me. The pain that these people had put the man through was unforgivable.

  I fixed them with a hard stare; they couldn’t meet it.

  * * *

  There were consoles and medical equipment around the entire chamber. Much of it covered the bare ice, perhaps insulating it to keep it from melting. Procedures tables—more than one, which indicated something unpleasant—operating theaters with stasis fields surrounding them, lab equipment, computer consoles and work stations. A separate power system seemed to feed this area; the medical equipment continued to function despite the emergency glow. Or it had a separate generator that activated in case of catastrophe.

  They wanted to keep this man alive.

  The floor was ice, covered with strips of rough carpeting for traction. There were vents in the metal ceiling aimed at the ice walls. Their function was to bathe the rough edges with freezing air to prevent the cave from melting. Our breath frosted outward as a result.

  Near one of the procedures tables a cabinet with transparent doors rose nearly to the ceiling. It was full of vials: nanos in saline solution. I had seen enough of them in my time to recognize them. They were the medical variety...but what did the doctors here use them for?

  Snow cleared her throat. “We’re not going to survive this, Tanner.”

  “Why not?”

  “He won’t let us. He can’t let us, now.”

  I frowned. “Lefave? Why not?”

  “Because you’ve seen this. And he’s...” She trailed off and glanced from side to side as if searching for a phantom. “He’s unbalanced.”

  I turned my attention back to the...to the experiment in the center of the cave. “Who is this?”

  She pressed her lips together and searched the floor.

  “Marius?” I asked, still staring at the suffering man.

  “Sorry, Tanner. I can’t say.”

  That startled me. “Can’t say.” Not “won’t.” That single statement actually said a great deal.

  “Dyson?”

  He only shook his head. “I’ve said enough to you, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m ordering you to speak.”

  He looked at the others and deflated. “Sorry, sir. Can’t.”

  I turned back to the suffering man. He was the focal point of the entire chamber, almost a giant crucifix. The red light illuminated him and sent long shadows across the cave. There were scars on his extremities like the ones I’d seen on the chimp. I had seen them before as well, and another piece clicked into place.

  “Can you hear me?” I whispered to him. “Do you know where you are?” No response. Not even a muscle twitch. “What’s your name?”

  Nothing.

  I exhaled harshly and stepped back. His mind was gone.

  I recalled Marius’s reaction when I had heard the initial crack at the facility on my first day. It had sickened him. Of course. He’d realized at that moment that it was still going on...

  I spun on the others and all but Sato took a step back. They could feel the anger radiating from me. “So if you won’t fill me in on what you’re doing, I will explain it to all of you.”

  I took a breath and they watched me, curious. The reason why they couldn’t speak made it clear what was going on. Finally.

  “I began to question what was going on here while back at Ceres. When I saw Bojdl’s corpse. Dinova hadn’t mentioned the scars on his legs, which I found odd considering how diligent she seemed. But when Marius told me the story of the acid on the lab bench, something triggered inside me.”

  “Pardon?” Marius said. “I don’t understand.”

  I watched him for a heartbeat. “You said that Bojdl spilled acid
on his foot and on his work bench. He didn’t notice the spill until he put his elbow in it, and that’s why you injected the priority nanos in him.”

  “That’s correct.” He began to look nervous.

  “And yet he also dropped acid on his right foot! Ate right through his shoe, you said. I saw the burn myself. It was large and would have been painful.”

  “Yes.”

  I frowned. “And yet he didn’t react until his elbow hit the acid.”

  Marius shifted his feet. “But that’s not what I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. You can’t change your story now.” I paused and allowed the thoughts to collect in my head. To come together so I could best explain what was going on. “There were also scars on his lower legs. Running up and down both shins. Later I saw the scars on a chimp under the clinic. It was the same thing!” I pointed at the man in the chamber. “This poor soul shows the same thing. On his arms as well.” I peered around him, at his back, but the metal framework holding him up concealed his spine. “I’m guessing they’re there as well, right?” I growled as I studied the twisted form. “What are they for, I wonder? Why the scars?” I studied the group before me, but as before, they remained silent.

  “I’ll continue then. I knew that Marius and Dinova had left The Freezer half a year ago. I didn’t know why until recently. You see, Sato and I found a jumpship in the ice fifteen kilometers from here. It had crashed and was at the bottom of a deep crater.”

  The Europans glanced at each other. This surprised them.

  I pressed on. “Bojdl, Marius and Dinova left The Freezer six months after that crash. Along with their dissident philosophies, they just couldn’t handle what was going on here.” I gestured at the experiment. “This. It had pushed them too far, and they simply had to leave. They went to Ceres and tried to blend in there. It was too much for Bojdl though. He couldn’t escape what he had done.” I shrugged. “Maybe he’d been having nightmares. His colleagues noticed, that’s for sure. They all mentioned his depression. He was also convinced that someone was after him, wanted to kill him. I’m wondering if he thought it was Lefave, who wanted to punish him for leaving...”