The Freezer Page 23

  I switched my communit back to the common frequency. “Can you tell me about the project? What did Lefave do to those people?”

  A lengthy silence followed the question. Then Snow began to speak. Her voice quavered from the bouncy terrain, or perhaps it was from guilt and resentment at what had happened at The Freezer.

  “At first we researched the disorder.”

  “HSAN?”

  “Yes. We knew we wanted to create that effect in a healthy person.”

  “By removing the A-delta nerves.”

  “We tried a few methods for that. Surgery was the obvious choice. It was extremely painful and we tested it on the primates first.”

  “The scars. I saw them on one.”

  “They all have them, but hair obscures most of them now.”

  “And Bojdl.”

  “Yes. He volunteered. He was actually the first live human test subject. But he agreed to only do parts.”

  “His feet.”

  “His lower legs, yes. The surgeries went well, but the pain was intense. We anesthetized him during it, but afterward, he complained incessantly.”

  “But you removed the nerves that—”

  “Yes, but it didn’t quite work.”

  “Phantom pain,” Cray provided.

  We were halfway there now; I recognized a particularly large ice column that pressure had forced upward. It towered over us, rising above the surface at a twenty-degree angle. Behind it, Jupiter and its lightning.

  It really was a magnificent sight.

  At times I felt the landscape was stark, lonely, barren.

  At others I saw pure beauty.

  It was difficult to reconcile the two perceptions.

  Snow continued, “The nerves were gone. It was a difficult surgery and the pain was immense.”

  “But he was asleep.”

  “His brain still felt it, Tanner, and the echoes of that pain remained afterward.”

  I grunted. I’d never heard of that.

  “Don’t forget the nerves travel to the spinal column,” Cray provided. “We severed them near the spine, but not right at it. They might have transmitted pain to his brain, even after the surgeries.”

  “And there are a lot of nerves that needed removal,” Snow continued. “Lefave saw the issues involved. You couldn’t have soldiers wandering around who felt constant pain. The whole point was to eliminate it!”

  “So you turned to nanos.”

  “Yes. We used them to eat away at the nerves. For that, Lefave wanted human trials.”

  I grunted. “Why not just use the chimps again? They still have A-delta nerves, don’t they? I only saw the scars on the leg—”

  Cray spoke up. “This is where Lefave began to lose it.”

  “But he hadn’t had any procedures at that point.”

  “No. But this outpost was his pet project. If it didn’t succeed, he felt that he would go nowhere afterward. He’d be working on a transport at some distant colony. So he ramped up the project and insisted on human trials. He informed his contacts, whoever they were, and within days a jumpship landed. They off-loaded the weapons, and a soldier trained Dyson.”

  The crewman remained pointedly silent.

  “They also left a white suit, right?”

  Cray snorted. “Yes.” Then there was a long hesitation. “Your intuition and investigative skills are really incredible. No wonder you have this reputation—”

  I cut him off quickly. “And no one mentioned that white suit when I asked about it.” The disdain dripped from my voice.

  “We were under orders,” Snow sighed. “It was difficult, but the murders on Ceres had nothing to do with us. We knew that. So we wanted you to leave.”

  Even after Aoki’s death? Still, I did understand. The chain of command was law.

  “What happened next?”

  Her voice was hushed from this point on. “Dyson and Lefave went out to the crash site. There were three...survivors. They wore vacsuits but were unconscious. By the time they woke up, they were in the...in the cavern under Module A.”

  “Who built that?”

  “CCF engineers carved it after Lefave made his request. It was never planned, which is why it’s under the main dome. Then the trials began.”

  “Wait a minute. Who were these people?”

  I had finished circumventing the column and was back on a straight line for the crater. The rest of the icetracks were behind now. I had unconsciously tensed my hand on the throttle, increasing speed slightly.

  The others were trying to keep up.

  Snow said, “One woman and two men. The ship had been on its way to Neptune. We sent a distress, and Dyson shot them down.”

  A long, long silence now.

  But I still hadn’t heard what I wanted to know.

  “And the tests?” I prodded.

  She exhaled forcefully. “Lefave wanted to try the nanos. He began on the woman first. It didn’t go well. The nanos ate the nerves in her body, but it was too fast, the pain too intense. She couldn’t handle it.”

  It made me want to vomit. She spoke as if the woman had been taking a test of some sort. She couldn’t handle it. In this case it meant that she had suffered so terribly that death was the result.

  “She had a heart attack,” Cray said. “In the middle of the procedure. She was screaming like...” He choked off the sentence.

  “Wait a minute.” My skin prickled. “You mean...he didn’t use anesthetic? He didn’t put them under?”

  Dinova finally spoke up. She’d listened to it all in silence up until then. But now, as she spat her words, I could feel her hate for Lefave and The Freezer. “He refused, Tanner. He felt that it was an important part of the process.”

  “Even after what happened to Bojdl?”

  “Yes. He was convinced that the subject had to be conscious in order to deal with the pain. The point when it disappeared because the nerves were finally gone.” She snorted. “He wanted to eliminate the pain echoes that Bojdl experienced. But for those people...”

  It was revolting. Live subjects...with no anesthetic...

  “And the others?” I asked. We were almost at our destination.

  “Lefave slowed the process. It lessened the pain, but the duration was longer.”

  “How long?”

  “A few days. That subject did better. The pain finally disappeared, which is what Lefave wanted. Then he tried to thicken the myelin. But it didn’t work.”

  “Did he use nanos for that too?” Two of the scientists were experts in medical nanos; it made sense.

  “Yes, but once again, the treatment was too violent. Hundreds of thousands of nanos crawling over axons in the brain’s neurons. That subject died as well. We never determined the cause.”

  And now the third one was left, and he had survived both procedures as well as surgeries on his extremities. And so Lefave had decided to try them on himself. But it had left the third subject mentally void. Why did Lefave think it would work on him? Why was he so intent on trying it himself? My forehead creased in thought.

  “Lefave’s power hungry,” Marius interjected. “He wants it all. The facility was his idea from the beginning, and I wonder if the whole point was to feed his ego.”

  I chewed that over. If so, it would indicate an incredible megalomaniac. Someone who would torture innocent people for his own ambitions. To achieve success and power.

  And now the procedures had intensified his own desires.

  They’ll never let me roam the solar system the way I am, he had said.

  What were his plans? Did he intend to use these abilities on different colonies around Home System?

  Was I looking at another Torcher in the making? But one so powerful that he would
be nearly impossible to capture?

  The ice crater appeared before us and we slowed to a crawl.

  Time to stop thinking about Lefave and test my theory.

  We were running out of options.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We stopped ten meters from the opening at the center of the crater. The others got off their vehicles and stretched their backs. The journey had punished some of them, since most had never been on the icetracks before. But despite the wear and tear on their bodies, the crater intrigued them; the center was a yawning dark cavity, angular and jagged, and the puckered rim marked it as something unique on this moon. The walls were smooth, created from the burning fuel as the ship had melted downward.

  Cray walked to the edge and lay down with his helmet over the opening. “I don’t see anything...too dark.”

  The marks our rope had made when we last visited were still there, and we prepared to lower ourselves from the same place. Sato had brought several long spikes and a large hammer, which we used to drive them in. As we did so, Dinova and Marius stood nearby uncertainly. This was the site of something they had caused. Dyson too was silent, but he at least helped us gather the rope and prepare the lines to rappel down.

  I was convinced that it was safer here than at The Freezer, though something about Dinova bothered me. She seemed preoccupied. Granted there were larger things going on than our current endeavor—she wanted me to kill Lefave—so I put her aside for now. I would deal with that issue later.

  The cold was starting to creep up my feet and my fingers were growing numb. It was frustrating. I had not been warm since the jumpship journey from Ceres. Even my earlier shower at The Freezer had been merely lukewarm.

  “Sato,” I said quietly. I had keyed the communit for just him.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Give me your honest opinion. The comm on that jumpship. Will it work?”

  “No.” He responded without hesitation. “The dish at the nose of the craft is gone. Maybe, however, we can salvage the equipment and jury-rig something back at the facility.”

  It was doubtful. The dish there was gone too.

  I sighed. Whatever the case, we had to try. I couldn’t continue on and ignore such an obvious solution to our dilemma. But if it didn’t work, I knew there were other options.

  I decided to go down to the ship. I hadn’t yet seen it, and there might be something else of use there. A weapon perhaps. Cray would come too, and Dyson as well. He had the power supply and we’d need him to connect it. He wasn’t an engineer like Shaheen—he was more what I’d call a handyman. At that moment in time at that place, however, he was the best we had.

  Thinking of Shaheen brought an instant lump to my throat that I had to suppress.

  Within minutes three lines hung over the edge and disappeared into darkness. I showed the others how to wrap them over their shoulders, around their waists, and between their legs, and to release the rope slowly as they rappelled. Cray had that intense, unemotional expression on his face. He might have been nervous, but one would never have known it. Dyson, on the other hand, was his complete opposite: he was terrified and pleaded not to do it.

  “You’ve been down there before,” I muttered, growing irritated. However, it occurred to me that the last time he’d been here had been under vastly different circumstances. They were visiting the site of a crash that he had caused, where he had dragged three victims from the hole and brought them back to The Freezer.

  For live experimentation.

  “You have to go down,” I prodded. “We need you to test the communit.”

  “It won’t work,” he growled.

  “I don’t care, we’re trying. Now get your ass over the edge.”

  He grumbled but bent to pick up the rope. I was getting tired of his attitude, but at least I knew how to deal with him. A little reaffirmation of his place in the CCF was all it took. Rank was what mattered, nothing more. Follow the chain of command. Obey authority.

  It was the core ideal of the entire Terran Confederacy, for better or for worse.

  Leaning back on my rope with Cray at my right and Dyson at my left, I stepped over the edge and backed slowly into the opening. Dyson was hesitant and took a moment to catch up to me, but Cray moved quickly and was soon several meters below. I waited patiently for Dyson and then began my descent.

  * * *

  Soon my feet touched the hard bottom and I straightened and looked upward. Jupiter filled the entire opening. The lip was thirty meters above. It was indeed angular, close to the shape of the jumpship, but melting from the burning fuel must have widened it slightly. Jupiter itself was astonishing. The Great Red Spot was sliding from the light side to the dark, slowly rotating as it moved past the terminator on the face of the monster. The storm had started centuries earlier and astrophysicists predicted that it would continue for many more. The planet was an interesting mystery despite the exploration of Home System that had been going on now for over four hundred years. Jupiter gave off more energy than it received from the sun, so it was technically a brown-dwarf star. In fact, if it had been larger by a factor of fifteen, it would have had enough mass to trigger a fusion reaction and form a second sun. It was a result of the solar system’s formation during the nebula stage: solar winds pushed lighter gases outward and there they formed the gas giants. Most systems in the galaxy showed the same patterns. The first gas giant was always the largest, and many star systems actually had the binary star.

  It reminded me of the radiation. I had to remember to take meds for it this time, once we returned.

  My feet were on something solid, and it only took a second to realize that it was not ice. It was the hull of a jumpship.

  It was a privately owned model, quite common in fact. Roughly twenty meters in length and seven across. Not as tall as it was wide. Just enough space for a control room, a common area for sleeping and recreation, and the engineering area that housed the gravtrav. There was no hyperspace drive in this jumpship.

  Along the outside were a series of long but narrow viewports. Most were broken and I could see the interior. The couches were torn open and their stuffing littered the floor. There were chunks of ice inside and frost everywhere.

  It was clear what had happened. On impact the viewports had shattered and the interior immediately vented to near vacuum. The air had condensed and its frozen moisture had coated every solid surface.

  The hatch was open. It was where Sato had entered earlier. There was not enough room for the ramp to lower, so he had squeezed through the opening. He coached from the ice above, telling us how to manipulate our bodies to wedge ourselves into the ship. Meanwhile Snow had begun to complain about the cold, and I forced myself to ignore her. It would only grow worse, and we still had the return journey ahead of us.

  “No gravity,” Cray muttered.

  Power was off, and had likely been for almost eighteen months.

  It was much darker inside and our headlamps activated automatically. The area was a mess. Along with the debris from the couches were papers, clothing, glass, chunks of ice—ejected from the surface at point of impact—and decorative pieces from the consoles and ceiling. Particles of ice almost like snow, though each grain was larger and coarser, covered the carpeted deck of the ship.

  We marched to the control cabin at the front.

  I kept expecting to see bodies littering the ship, but of course it was empty. I would say they had been fortunate to survive the crash, but then again, I knew what fate had met them after their arrival to The Freezer.

  The control room looked remarkably undamaged. Frost and ice, yes, but no evidence of destroyed controls or that a fire had occurred on board. The intrasystem communit was on the forward console between the two pilot chairs. I toggled a switch with the hope that it still had power, but everything remained dark. I snor
ted. Fat chance. I couldn’t be that lucky.

  Dyson bent to the consoles and searched for the panel from which he could access the equipment. He had to scrape the frost off but finally located it. It snapped out with the application of just a little bit of force. He tried to peer in, but it was difficult while wearing a helmet. Eventually, however, he grunted. “The wiring seems fine. But remember, the nose...”

  “Where is the auxiliary power input?” I asked.

  We searched for five minutes and eventually found a panel near the aft end of the compartment. There were several inputs there, each labeled. I scraped the ice away. “Nav Aux Power...Lighting Aux Power...Life Support Aux Power...” Finally I found it. “Comm Aux Power.” The connector from Dyson’s portable unit fit, and he plugged it in and turned it on.

  We turned to the panel, expecting perhaps to see it lit and ready for use.

  It was still dark.

  “You sure it’s on?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I peered at the controls and shook my head. Damn. Didn’t function. I guess we’d have to—

  At that moment a faint red glow appeared from beneath some frost. I scraped that away and saw one word: Booting.

  * * *

  Within a minute it had cycled through the initiation program. It seemed to take longer than normal; perhaps the cold had reduced the wiring’s ability to transmit signals? Whatever the problem, I hoped it didn’t short-circuit the whole system.

  Then the display changed. It now said, Awaiting Dest. Signal.

  It was requesting the point of destination for our broadcast.

  The words Identify Nearby Contacts labeled a nearby button. I pressed it.

  Nothing.

  The screen should have listed nearby relay stations that could receive our signal, direct it and amplify it. It should also have shown the FTL station at the edge of Home System near Pluto—the massive facility that sent and received signals from other colonies across the Confederacy.