The Freezer Page 27

And with that I stumbled into the air lock and frantically pressed the battery-powered emergency cycle button.

  I fell to my knees and pushed the helmet back without waiting for the chamber to pressurize. I knew I was on the verge of passing out, and if it happened with the helmet on, I would die in that air lock.

  And then darkness overtook me.

  * * *

  I came to only minutes later, lying on the deck, arms and legs starfished out.

  But breathing normally.

  The red illumination was even dimmer now, and the dome skewed to the side at a greater angle than Module A had been at earlier. My feet, in fact, were at a higher elevation than my head.

  I was still in the air lock, and the overpowering stench of vomit surrounded me. After hauling myself up using handholds on the bulkheads, I stripped the suit off and stood shivering, wondering what to do. My uniform and sweater were also soaked in vomit, and I needed something else. I pulled those off in a second.

  Rummaging through a few lockers in the dome, I found some of Dyson’s overalls, then another vacsuit. I was still freezing, but at least a bit more comfortable than I had been.

  The others were in Aoki’s cabin; it was where we had found her body and where Sato had fallen violently ill as a result. I knew the travel tube that led to that module was destroyed, however, which was perhaps why they had picked it. It was a good choice.

  I exited the dome in my new vacsuit and marched around the facility. I stayed as close to the hull as possible, though it was difficult with the cracking and hollow ice that now surrounded the structures. I kept a close lookout for Lefave, but didn’t see him.

  Inside Module B I stalked straight to Aoki’s cabin. The hatch slid aside at my request, and I came to an abrupt halt at the sight that met my eyes.

  Within, Sato, Snow, Marius and Cray stood around the bunk. Sitting there, looking as healthy as ever, eating from a pack of rations and wearing a neatly pressed uniform, was Dr. Marina Dinova.

  * * *

  “What happened?” I blurted. “Did you stop the procedure?”

  Dinova smiled at me, though it wasn’t what I would call an engaging expression. It was more...calculating than anything else. Almost as if she had won.

  Sato said, “It was impossible. The systems are down, we couldn’t find a power source for the pulse...Lefave was around...”

  “He was outside with me.”

  “For a bit, but afterward he was prowling the facility, looking for us,” Snow said. “We had to hide with the chimps for a while.”

  I studied Dinova as she watched me. “And?” I prompted. “The procedure?”

  “Worked,” she said with a slight smile.

  I shook my head. “You killed Dyson. And Bojdl and Shaheen.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m bringing you back to HQ at Fort Iridium. I can’t have you escape.”

  She sighed and put the ration pack down. “You can try, Tanner, but I doubt you’ll succeed.”

  I glanced around. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Cray said, “We’re stuck with a madman here, or her. We don’t have much choice in the matter.”

  I blew my breath out in a rush. She was basically daring me to capture her, but before I could, I needed to take care of Lefave.

  Which was what she had wanted all along.

  “Other dissidents know about The Freezer, don’t they?” I said.

  She eyed me for a moment. “Yes. And if I make it through this, the techniques here could be useful.”

  Cray nearly choked. “Useful for what?”

  There must have been an expression of horror on my face, for she watched me for a long stretch. “I don’t want the CCF to have this, Tanner. But I don’t want what happened to those poor people from the captured jumpship to be in vain. Now I have the secrets, locked within my body. I know the process. I can take it to my friends.”

  And they will be more than happy to use them, I thought. It was like salt on a wound. I had kept this woman alive; I could have killed her earlier, carried out the justice that was due.

  “You’re as bad as them,” I whispered. “As bad as Lefave. You might as well have done this all yourself.”

  “If you want to think that, then go ahead. But after we’re through with Lefave and we’re off this ball of ice, you can start the countdown. If you’re still alive, that is.”

  I frowned. “The countdown to what?”

  She blinked. “To the end of the Council, of course. I’m going to destroy them and bring an end to the Terran Confederacy.”

  So. She had finally revealed her plan, and time was counting down.

  Midnight.

  One day left.

  Part Five: Saturday—Death Day

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I sighed as realization came. Marina Dinova had planned it all from the beginning, most likely with a group of dissidents at Fort Iridium or at one of the mines in The Belt. A nearby asteroid perhaps. Had killed Bojdl to get me to Ceres...had killed Shaheen to motivate me...had planted seeds that led to Europa...

  All to get the procedure performed on her. To kill Lefave, possibly, but the more important task was to infiltrate The Freezer for the secrets to the super soldier.

  In order to bring down the Council.

  “How many of you are there?”

  Her expression was fixed and her eyes cold. “You’d love to know, wouldn’t you Tanner? So you can kill everyone involved.”

  “How are you planning to do it?”

  “Once again, I don’t have to tell you a thing.” She rose and faced me. She seemed different than before. Her body appeared more...taut maybe. Coiled, as if ready to strike. Her arms were at her sides, but her hands were loose. She didn’t appear to want to attack...

  Though that had to be her plan.

  Just like Lefave. She couldn’t leave any of us alive. Otherwise we’d be able to let the authorities know what was going on. The CCF would hunt down and slaughter her and her friends, regardless of whatever powers she might now possess.

  But if others had her abilities...

  An army of people to bring the ruling party down, all with those special powers.

  All like Lefave...

  My pistol was lost in the ice crevasse south of The Freezer. Cray still had one. Dinova’s reflexes were fast enough to dodge the blasts, however, as Lefave had proven earlier. The only solution was to get her confidence and attack when she least suspected.

  She was studying my eyes, and I saw her tilt her head. She knew I was thinking, planning.

  “It’s not something I’m comfortable with,” I finally said. “A dissident uprising. I have to take you to CCF HQ at Fort Iridium to face the charges.”

  She laughed, and it echoed in the cabin for long seconds.

  It was eerie. She sounded like Lefave.

  “You won’t be able to bring me in, Tanner.” It was a sneer.

  “But you need me to kill Lefave.”

  “I might not even need you now.”

  “You are a worthless cunt, a dissident whose only fate is death.”

  She stepped toward me, and the tension suddenly skyrocketed. It was electric.

  No one even breathed.

  And then she laughed again and turned back to the others. “I’ll deal with Tanner later, if he’s still alive that is. Now I’m going to go find Lefave. You can stay here if you want. I don’t care.” She bent to the deck and scooped up her vacsuit.

  “But Marina,” Marius said, concern clear on his face. “He is—”

  She spun on him and there was a flash of anger on her face that was almost unnatural. Her expression twisted and she snarled: “I’m going to kill that bastard for what he did to us! For what he
did to those people!” She thrust a finger at Simon’s chest. “And don’t you try to stop me!”

  He took a step back. “I just don’t want to see you die.”

  “She’s already dead,” I muttered. “The CCF will execute her.” I was goading her now, but with good reason. “She’s guilty of killing three people in cold blood. She’s leading a dissident group to bring down the Council. It’s a clear case. She’s a dead woman, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

  She turned and whipped an arm out. The back of her hand caught my jaw and hurled me to the side. I slammed into the bulkhead and lay there as stars flashed before my eyes.

  I had expected it to happen...had wanted it to happen.

  My chest flared again into agony; that combined with the pain in my jaw made my eyes water. I gasped for breath and lay there, hoping that she would not press the attack. At that moment I simply wasn’t ready for a fight to the death.

  I heard the hatch open and her thudding footsteps ring down the corridor. The hatch closed and I slowly turned to the others, wincing as I did so.

  Cray had a look on his face that said it all. “My God, she’s changed as well.”

  “What does it mean?” I grumbled, rubbing my jaw.

  “The process. It seems to affect their mental state. I thought Lefave was maybe an aberration, someone who was already on the edge and under pressure. But now Dinova too. It must be the myelin sheathing.”

  “You’re manipulating axons in the human brain. It has an impact on their sanity.”

  Snow crumpled to a chair and held her hands to her face, her body racked with sobs. The experience had terrified her. Abduction from the ice at the point of a weapon and forced to perform the procedure...

  “Are there more nanos in that cabinet in the ice laboratory?” I asked.

  She wiped a hand across her cheek and nodded. “Yes. Several more doses.”

  “Of each type? Adrenaline, myelin, A-delta nerve destroyers?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was small.

  My brow furrowed. The sounds of the station sinking into the ice penetrated the halls and cabins of the module. And if one of those bubbles was under us, or nearby...

  It was after midnight now. There was too much for one person to do. I had to break everyone into groups to help. It would endanger us, especially since there was only one weapon, but I had no choice. Things were pressing in on us now, like the tides that forced massive plates of ice together on this planet.

  Dante had written about hell being icy cold.

  He might have been right.

  “Sato,” I muttered. “You have to fix the dish on the landing pad. Connect it with the comm we grabbed from the jumpship. We need to get help here today.” In case my backup plan didn’t succeed...or didn’t arrive in time...

  He blinked. “But I can’t do that.”

  “You’re the only one capable.” I gestured to the others. “They’re doctors. I’m a homicide investigator.”

  “I’m a programmer!”

  “You have electronics experience. That’s as good as we can get here.” I turned to Snow and Cray and ignored his splutter of protest. “You two have to go back to the ice lab. You have a pistol, so use it if you see one of them.”

  They looked to each other, not quite sure if they wanted to be paired. After all, they had shared a lover and Snow had been ignorant of it.

  Then they turned to me. There was a shocked expression on their faces. “Kill Dinova too?”

  I sighed. “You have my permission. Kill her if you see her. We might not have a choice now.”

  A long silence. And then Cray said, “What do you want us to do there?”

  “Bring all the vials in that cabinet. Use a duffel or something from this cabin.”

  The deck suddenly shifted under us and Snow screamed. It had dropped by a few centimeters. The curved ceiling in the module groaned.

  I looked at Marius. “Meet me in the clinic. We have to deal with my problem. There’s no more time.”

  Today was the day the device would finish its work. Aortal rupture, regardless of whatever else happened at The Freezer.

  And if I wasn’t prepared for it, I’d die wherever I stood.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a canister. Within was a pill for the radiation. I swallowed it dry.

  “Where are you going?” Sato asked.

  “Keep your vacsuits on, everybody.” A rip in a vacsuit that wasn’t sealed meant inescapable death. No matter what enhancements Lefave’s and Snow’s bodies had, they could not survive in a near-zero pressure with no oxygen. “I’m going to vent the entire station to the surface. There won’t be a sealed cabin anywhere on this moon in a few minutes.”

  With each dome in vacuum, the melting beneath would actually stop. We could have done this earlier, but we could not last long without a pressurized environment.

  Marius’s expression was of pure horror. “But Tanner, we won’t survive more than a few hours!”

  My eyes were cold. “Precisely.”

  * * *

  The others left through the emergency air lock. Sato had to go retrieve the jumpship comm that we had carted over the ice; we’d left it outside Module A. It was the most important task, but I couldn’t imagine anyone else being able to do it. Dyson had been our best hope, unfortunately.

  Perhaps that was why Dinova had killed him.

  Marius made straight for the clinic, Module C.

  Snow and Cray marched for Module A in order to access the ice lab below the dome. Cray held the pistol at his side, and Snow stayed close, even hooking arms with him. She pressed tightly against him as they marched over the ice.

  There was only one way to vent the facility, so I stayed in Module B. Technically I should have been able to do it from the command center, level three of Module A. However, Lefave’s sabotage when he set his plan in motion had destroyed the equipment there. And even if the consoles still functioned, I simply did not have the necessary codes to command every hatch to the surface to open.

  The only way to do it now was to break viewports in the station and leave every hatch ajar. It would take time, but it was possible.

  * * *

  As I searched for a tool strong enough for what I intended, my comm beeped. For a second my heart jumped, and then Marius’s voice came to me. “Tanner.”

  “Go ahead.” I was rummaging through a storage closet in the living module, where it was nearly pitch black. No emergency lights in closets. My helmet lamp shone around the small area and something glinted from a shelf beside some steel buckets. A large wrench. Dyson had been using it earlier to repair a pump in the lavatory. Lucky for me, he hadn’t returned it to his bench in the vehicle berth. I hefted it before me. Yes, it would do nicely.

  “You were pushing her, Tanner, when she could have killed you. Why?”

  “She wouldn’t have killed me. She thinks she might still need me to take out Lefave. But I was goading her, yes.”

  “But why would you—”

  “The others needed to see what she’s become. I need them on my side.” I hesitated. “Otherwise, none of us might make it off this moon.”

  There was a long pause. I could hear him puffing as he ran for the clinic. “You have to kill them, don’t you?”

  A heartbeat, then, “It might be the only choice.”

  His tone was accepting. “I realize that. It’s just going to be...hard.”

  “It’s them or us.”

  The statement hung in the silence between us.

  * * *

  I faced the first port and pulled the wrench back. As I did so, a sharp pain sparked across my chest.

  I swore. I feared that every single twinge was the aneurysm and rupture.

  I fell against the bulkhead to catch m
y breath. My eyes were burning and I took a moment to close them and wait for the sensation to pass. Dammit. I hadn’t slept now since Wednesday night, and here it was Saturday morning. And a great deal of that time had been spent fighting for survival, battling Lefave, running across the surface of Europa. Climbing from the crevasse south of the facility.

  Pure exhaustion now.

  I could use some of the adrenaline enhancers that Snow and Cray were going to retrieve.

  My stomach felt queasy as well. Radiation sickness. It took a few minutes to overcome the pain and nausea, but eventually I stood before the long viewport once more. It was two meters across and provided a stunning vista of the ice outside.

  It was large and would be easy to break and harder to patch.

  I swung the wrench and it bounced off the viewport, vibrating madly.

  Damn. The pistol would have made this so much easier. It would also help in case Lefave made another appearance. I decided, after a moment, that if he did, I would just call the others for help and hope to survive long enough for them to arrive.

  I swung again and again. Finally a crack appeared in the corner of the port. A few more strikes, and abruptly it blew apart. Pressure from inside the dome surged out and the shards exploded to the surface of the moon. The outrush of air pressed me to the bulkhead.

  More warning lights appeared in the module, these ones yellow and flashing angrily. Emergency canisters of air at the apex of the dome snapped open and vented into the module. These would run until they were dry, as no one was going to fix the viewport.

  The module was now in near vacuum, but I went to each cabin and opened the hatches using my security override code. Soon each was also devoid of air.

  One module done, five more to go.

  And then the secret lab.

  * * *

  I decided to work counterclockwise and stop at the clinic to see what Marius had planned for me. Surgery was scary, but death was worse. And, I realized, it could happen at any moment. The micro-bomb had been thinning my aorta since Tuesday and its work was almost done. I had to prevent the rupture from occurring and somehow stop the bomb if we triggered it. I knew it wasn’t a large explosion—it was more like a match going off—but the location meant near instant unconsciousness and brain death within a few minutes. And if it did happen, I needed to be in the clinic with Marius so he could at least attempt some method of revival.