The Freezer Read online

  “Look right and left,” I murmured. “Check the landscape.”

  The viewports on the curving bulkheads provided an incredible view of the ice and Jupiter overhead. The gas giant was waning toward darkness now; the terminator moved rapidly and the lightning show was back. By tomorrow Jupiter would be black, but punctuated by those shots of electrical activity.

  In front of us, the tube disappeared into darkness. Module B was perhaps twenty meters away.

  As we marched together, I glanced out to my left. The ice ridge loomed over the station, cutting off the view to the west of space and the planet above. There were a series of long scrapes in the surface out there: marks left by Dyson’s icetrack. He had been out two days earlier when the jumpship had exploded. The tracks could have been from much earlier though. Tracks probably stayed on the moon for weeks or months, until impact debris or ice from water geysers covered them. Some were probably from the drill rig, which was only the size of an aircar.

  “What caused the jumpship to explode?” I asked in a soft tone. Obviously Lefave had done it to strand us there, but I was unsure of the method.

  “A weapon that the CCF left here eighteen months ago,” Dyson said. “Same thing I used on the other ship.” His response was a whisper.

  I glanced at Cray and Snow. “You people are sick. What you did to that man...”

  “And two others, don’t forget,” Dinova hissed. “Another man and a woman. You brutalized them! We had to listen to their constant screaming.”

  We stopped moving and stood there as Dinova thrust her face into Cray’s. “You disgust me! Creating a better soldier so the Council can further tighten their hold over humanity! Isn’t what they’ve done bad enough? Why make this worse for people?”

  “It’s the system that we live in,” Snow said. But it was hard for her to be vociferous about it. After all, what she had taken part in was indeed horrific, and dealing with it—no matter how legal it was—had been painfully difficult for her. No doubt she was suffering extreme guilt, as Bojdl had.

  Marius said to me, “Lefave was not compassionate at all toward them. To him they were just animals for experiments.”

  Snow added, “We begged him to put those people out of their misery. We pleaded with him to seal the chamber, gag them, just so we wouldn’t have to hear them at night. But he refused!” She choked on her next words. “He even seemed to enjoy their suffering!”

  “He’s a madman!” Dinova spat. “I want to kill him for what he did to them, for what he subjected us to.” She looked at me. “I need you for that, Tanner.”

  “Why me?”

  She scoffed at that. “Your reputation precedes you everywhere you go. How you caught The Torcher when no one else could. I had heard you were on Mars and took a chance that your contact would assign you the case on Ceres.” She stepped toward me and visibly tried to calm herself. “I need you to kill Lefave. You have to kill him!”

  I studied her for a long moment. She had used me and had even killed Shaheen. What she wanted to do was attack a fundamental part of the Terran Confederacy. Since The Freezer was functioning under the command of the CCF, it was wholly and completely legitimate. She had needed somebody to enter the facility under orders to allow her infiltration.

  It was brilliant, actually. She had probably planned it for months before finally unleashing her plan—and the micro-bomb—on Bojdl.

  “You’ll probably claim that you were putting Bojdl out of his misery,” I muttered.

  “I was. He was suffering. He was not capable of recovering from the experience here. He was weeks from suicide, I’m convinced of it.”

  “How convenient for you.” I mulled it all over. “How did you kill Shaheen?”

  “I planted the micro-bomb in your cabin the day you arrived. Easy.”

  The way she referred to Shaheen’s murder infuriated me, but I held my rage in check.

  For now.

  Cray said, “She has other motives. Don’t forget, Tanner. She’s a dissident. She wants to destroy what we’re doing here.”

  I glanced at Dinova. Her expression now seemed guarded. Cray was right. “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I sighed. “Come on, Marina. I know what’s happened here, I know you’re a murderer, and after this is over you’re going to CCF HQ on Ceres charged with the crimes. Just tell me the truth now.”

  She scowled. “And turn other people over to you? That’s your way, isn’t it? Torture dissidents to drag other innocent people to their deaths.”

  “I’m not asking for names,” I said. I was, after all, compassionate toward those people. “I just want to know if Cray is right.”

  Her expression hardened at that, but she didn’t respond.

  * * *

  Dyson suddenly shouted something unintelligible. I shot a look at him; he was pointing through the viewport. I followed his gaze...

  On the ice, nearly invisible because of the white vacsuit he wore, a figure was racing toward our travel tube.

  His legs were pumping rapidly and in the lower gravity outside the facility he was moving extremely fast.

  He was like a missile.

  Headed right for us.

  I swore. He meant to—

  “Everyone seal your vacsuits!” I screamed. I reached up to grab the helmet and lift it off my shoulders—

  And an instant later Lefave slammed into the side of the tube. He had jumped at the last moment. The tube was a meter off the ice and he ripped through it in a blast of shrapnel and flying glass. The air vented in an instant, throwing everyone off their feet.

  He had torn a five-meter section of the travel tube apart.

  I found myself on my hands and knees, staring at the deck. It was now on an angle and the artificial gravity in this section was out. My stomach lurched slightly and I bounced trying to push myself up, still unaccustomed to the one-sixth gravity of this moon.

  But the bigger problem by far was that I had not managed to seal my helmet.

  The air from the tube had exploded out to the surface of Europa, instantly condensing and freezing. It surrounded us in a haze that was difficult to pierce. The water covering my retinas froze immediately, making matters worse.

  But despite it all, I knew that Lefave was not the priority.

  I needed to latch the helmet and pressurize my suit.

  As I kneeled in the fog of floating ice particles, I reached behind me to grasp the helmet. I’d almost had it latched when the tube had shattered; now it was back on my shoulders and at the maximum extent that the hinges would open.

  My hands closed over it and I hauled it back over my head.

  My lungs expelled the last gulp of air that I’d taken; it was impossible to hold your breath in vacuum. I screamed soundlessly as I struggled with the latch...

  Now nothing was visible around me, or my eyes were incapable of seeing.

  Finally I snapped the latch closed and the suit automatically pressurized; its AI had understood immediately that the occupant needed air and pressure.

  I gasped several times as my vision began to clear. I had to blink rapidly to melt the ice on my retinas and relieve the tears.

  The skin on my face felt raw from flash freezing.

  Beside me, Snow and Sato were writhing on the deck, struggling to get their helmets on. I hauled both to their knees and slammed their helmets over their heads. Sato sealed the latch himself, but Snow needed help. I got hers locked down, searched her face through the visor and saw her eyes fluttering.

  She was still alive.

  A thought suddenly chilled me to the core.

  My pistol.

  Where the fuck was my pistol?

  I frantically searched the deck near me. I’d been holding it only ten seconds earlier...
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br />   And then another impact on the travel tube, from ten meters toward Module B. My helmet was already on, however, and the immediate danger had passed.

  My pistol.

  Five meters behind me.

  It had flown from my grasp back up the travel tube.

  I staggered toward it, but it was an uphill slope and it was difficult to get started. I swore and leaped forward. In the lower gravity I moved several meters at once and my hands closed on the handle of the weapon.

  Spinning toward the now-open and shattered end of the travel tube, I fell back and searched for a target.

  I was an instant from firing...

  But Lefave was not there. He’d already moved away.

  I lurched toward the group; all now had helmets on and were gasping from exposure. In vacuum one can only remain conscious for slightly more than ten seconds. And in this freezing environment, with an extremely thin and supercooled atmosphere of ice particles, everyone was in bad shape. All were blinking rapidly. My vision was still blurred and my eyes burning like the rest of my face.

  “Where is he?” Cray screamed finally. He was frantic, looking this way and that.

  “Get behind me,” I growled. I raised the weapon and searched the ice around us. The others were looking through shattered viewports for signs of the man.

  Nothing.

  And then my comm beeped.

  Not again.

  I swore.

  “You can’t win,” he said. But there was no distortion this time, no trying to hide his identity. It was Lefave’s voice, hard and icy cold. “I have to kill you all and destroy this place. Destroy all my research.”

  Snow attempted to reason with him. “But Francis, we’re colleagues...in the CCF together. Why kill us? We helped develop the techniques—”

  “Which belong to me now.”

  “The CCF needs this information,” Cray said. “We were developing it for them. Surely you want them to have better soldiers, better—”

  “It’s not for them. And it’s not for any dissidents either.”

  Dinova was gasping but her voice stabbed through my helmet. “You’re a disgusting, vile creature Lefave! You’re going to be dead soon, and we’ll use your secrets!”

  I snapped a look at her. She was goading the man, and it was not the time. He had the advantage now. We were disorganized and hurt.

  “But why destroy the facility?” Cray asked. “We haven’t finished our work yet! We can still develop more—”

  A deep and powerful laugh reverberated from the speakers at my ears. “The CCF will take this power from me! They’ll never let me roam the solar system the way I am!”

  “But they don’t know that you’ve used the procedures on yourself!” Cray’s voice was pleading.

  “Nor will they, once you’re dead,” he snapped in cold reply.

  “You have no way off this moon either,” Janice Snow said. “We have to work together to escape this place. Come back with us, help us repair the facility and we can continue our work.”

  He laughed again. “Do you think Tanner will allow that?”

  “It’s possible,” I said.

  But Lefave barked a sharp laugh. “I’d rather kill you, Tanner. You’ve been a thorn in my side since the second you arrived.”

  “You should have just told me what you were doing here from the start,” I said. “It would have made all of this easier.”

  “It’s still easy, Tanner.”

  I hesitated, not knowing what to say. I searched the area surrounding the destroyed travel tube. Splinters of steel and glass were everywhere, pieces of the hull and deck. No figure in a white suit, however.

  “Killing you will be simple,” he continued.

  “You tried and failed already.”

  He snarled, “I thought you were gone! I saw you fall into the crevasse! But when you returned...” he trailed off.

  I shook my head. The man was not thinking clearly. “Why not just kill me when I showed up? Why the big cover-up? Why continue this charade?”

  “If you had died out on the surface while investigating, that could be explained away. Had I outright murdered you, others would come looking for answers.” He swore. “I couldn’t have that.”

  “So now you want to just destroy everything.”

  “It’s the only solution.”

  Cray said, “No! It’s not! We can still—”

  “Too late,” he said in a soft tone. A rasp.

  And then I realized.

  I looked up.

  There he was, standing at the top of the rupture in the travel tube, in perfect silhouette with Jupiter and its light show behind him.

  Staring down at me.

  I was an easy target.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lefave had a shard of steel clutched in his right hand; it had come from the skin of the tube, was one meter long, and narrowed to a dangerous-looking, razor-sharp point.

  A steel spear.

  He raised it over his head, preparing to plunge it down into me. If he connected from his current angle overhead, it would tear into my suit at my shoulder, penetrate my chest and lungs, slice through my abdomen—rupturing multiple arteries and veins—and exit near my right hip. The suit would vent and the pain would be excruciating until unconsciousness overtook me.

  I raised the pistol, but even as I did so, I knew I wouldn’t make it in time.

  He was moving too fast.

  I fell backward onto the slanted deck toward the cold surface of Europa. As I moved from the director, his ragged lance stabbed at me. My downward slide, however, had given me the precious milliseconds that I’d needed to get my weapon lined up.

  He realized this too. I could see him start to shift sideways, away from the muzzle of the pistol.

  No one’s that fast, I thought.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

  The flash at the end of the barrel. The recoil. The ball of energy shimmering from the weapon, vaporizing ice particles that danced before it. The pulse blasting out...

  Right for Lefave’s helmet. I could see his eyes, the rage in his expression. At that point, staring into that face and seeing the hate exude from him, I knew clearly and confidently—as sure as the unending reality of Jupiter above—that he was insane. A psychopath. The procedures that he’d used on himself, manipulating nerves and increasing adrenaline surges and thickening the myelin on the axons of his brain, had left him unbalanced and unpredictable. There was something behind those eyes that spoke of suffering and anger, and he had caused it all himself. The power had fed his basic emotions, and the Lefave who had arrived on this moon two years earlier—the Lefave whose record spoke of a brilliant and talented scientist-physician, a man who had wanted nothing more than to research and advance the human species—was gone. Flushed away with each procedure he’d had his team at The Freezer conduct on him. He’d driven himself crazy. He had strapped down and tortured the jumpship survivors into numbing brain death. But Lefave...he had been free and alive and stimulated. He had survived the procedures still physically fit, and his mind was simply not the same.

  His transformation had altered his abilities as well as his mental state.

  He had pushed human anatomy beyond what evolution had already done. Lefave had suffered as a result, although he most likely did not even realize it.

  And I thought all this in an instant, because the impossible happened.

  I’d never seen it in my twelve years of hunting and capturing killers.

  Lefave suddenly made a simple, long twitch and his helmet jerked to the side just enough to avoid the pulse. The heat might have damaged bare skin, had he not been in a vacsuit. As it was, the sphere of energy shot into spac
e overhead, dissipating slowly. Within a few hundred meters it would be completely gone.

  I blinked in surprise.

  The director stepped off the tattered edge of the travel tube and floated to the ice.

  He still gripped the spear and even now was raising it to try again.

  I was on my back, incapable of getting up fast enough to mount an effective attack. I did have the pistol, though as I had just witnessed, hitting him with a blast was going to prove difficult.

  I was going to die.

  * * *

  I turned to the side and with my left boot attempted to sweep his feet out from under him. I connected, but his footing was solid and he didn’t budge. I then pulled my right leg back fractionally and kicked at his knee as hard as I could.

  This one did strike flesh and bone, and Lefave stumbled back from the blow, slightly off balance.

  But he stepped toward me an instant later.

  Of course. He couldn’t feel it. I’d injured my knees in the past, and the pain had kept me from walking normally. But had it not been for the pain, I probably would have just continued moving as I had before.

  He would move on stumps if necessary.

  I was going to have to get my head around this issue.

  I brought my pistol to bear again, but this time he darted forward, intent on ending things before I could squeeze the trigger.

  And then Cray struck.

  He’d leapt off the exposed deck of the travel tube and arced toward the director. Flying in the lower gravity, he’d closed the distance fast and had judged it perfectly. Lefave was a heartbeat from thrusting the spear into me...

  And then the collision.

  Cray was turning slightly as he sailed for the man.

  His shoulder and back slammed into him just as the spear began its forward stab. The two lurched to the side and Lefave lost his footing. His legs flew up behind him and the two hit the ice and slid several meters.

  Cray didn’t hesitate. His hands scrabbled at the latch on Lefave’s helmet. If he could get it open and vent the suit, and we could keep the director’s hands pinned and unable to reseat the helmet...