The Freezer Page 31

  It was a freezer.

  A freezer for corpses.

  And the jumpship had come from Pluto. I’d called the colony days ago. I thought back to that conversation now:

  “Keep her in the freezer,” I ordered.

  “Aye, sir,” the doctor said.

  “Send her to Europa. There’s a facility there. I’m transmitting the coordinates now. I’ll be waiting.”

  And now the vessel had arrived.

  I stepped closer and peered within.

  My heart was thudding in my chest. I had to be careful here...

  And there she was. Her black hair cascading down her shoulders and stretching across her chest. Her delicate features. She wore her CCF uniform. She was exactly as she’d appeared when she died. There was even the bandage on her hand, where she had cut herself in the galley.

  I fell to my knees and reached out to touch the freezer. The sobs rose uncontrollably, racking my body. Tears obscured my vision. I could barely breathe from the reaction. I had held it in this entire time, while investigating at Ceres and The Freezer, and during the long fight for survival on this godforsaken moon. And there before me was my very reason for living. The person who had given me meaning in this crazy universe. Living within and serving a dictatorship...searching out the worst humans in the galaxy, struggling against killers...dealing with the pain and hurt that I saw nearly every day...

  And the ironic thing was that she was dead.

  And I had been fighting to survive for her.

  I finally got control and shook myself out of it. Stared at Shaheen Ramachandra, a corpse, lying peacefully within the freezer. Her aorta had ruptured and she’d bled out in minutes, dead because of Marina Dinova.

  I glanced behind me and noted the others standing outside the ramp. But they hadn’t come in. My communit had been open, and they had heard everything.

  Cray said finally, “Is that her? Your...”

  “Yes. Shaheen.” My voice was a whisper. And then I rose and descended the ramp. Marius was there, and I approached him. “Are your instruments ready, Doctor? We don’t have much time.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When I had first received that devastating news at Fort Iridium—the frantic call from the jumpship en route to Pluto, from the doctor who had witnessed Shaheen’s death—I had fought through my immediate shock to check on something and give one command.

  “Did you get her in the freezer immediately?” I asked, my voice sounding distant and hollow.

  “Yes,” came the response. “Within two minutes I’d say.”

  “Don’t do an autopsy,” I growled.

  “You think there’s a chance?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Two minutes...”

  It had been a long time, but there was always a possibility.

  I would never stop fighting.

  We moved her container across the ice, bouncing it over tiny cracks and fractures that hadn’t been there minutes earlier, and we had to vent the dome completely in order to get her in. It meant sealing Dinova’s helmet—she was still restrained—and then repressurizing the clinic, but eventually the freezer was next to the procedures table.

  Was there a chance? What if it had been longer? What if that doctor had merely been covering his own ass, making it sound as though he were more competent than he really was? I’d seen that before, that was for sure. His career—and maybe life—was on the line here.

  If her brain was already dead...

  If there was no way she could come back to me...

  I hoped he’d been telling the truth. That he had been right next to her when she’d collapsed. When the nanos injected to heal the cut on her hand had triggered the bomb in her aorta.

  The others were stony-faced, but I could see their skepticism. She had expired of aneurysm and rupture. Her brain had died, starved of blood and oxygen.

  There was no way...

  But I had to try.

  She would never forgive me if I didn’t.

  I would never forgive myself.

  “The second we open the canister, the brain death will resume,” Marius said. “Decay will continue. You’re sure it was only two minutes between loss of consciousness...”

  I winced but didn’t respond.

  He watched my eyes and then turned back to Shaheen. “So we have to assume her brain is a minute from death.” He sighed and glanced at Dinova. “I could really use her help.”

  “Out of the question,” I snapped. “She killed Shaheen.”

  Cray stepped forward. “I’m a doctor, don’t forget. Maybe not a surgeon, but I can do what you need, Simon.”

  The two locked eyes as the dome shuddered and quaked.

  “We don’t have much time!” I barked.

  Marius said, “I’ll need to make the incision above the sternal notch and perform a mediastinoscopy as soon as she’s on the table. Get the rupture sealed. But we need a blood supply infused.” He winced. “Usually we’d just do this through the femoral down in the leg. But in this situation—”

  “I can run the line, get it flowing,” Cray said.

  Marius pondered that for a heartbeat. “Then let’s do it.”

  Cray leapt forward and grabbed the necessary equipment from a cabinet beside the procedures table. I gestured for Sato. “You help me get her on the table.”

  He moved forward.

  We glanced at each other in the second before the procedure. The dome continued to tremble. The structure groaned under massive stress. Marius had a scalpel in his hands; he was in a vacsuit, which seemed out of place, but necessary. If we lost pressure now...

  Then Shaheen had no chance.

  Our eyes were locked together.

  “Go,” he said.

  Sato and I snapped the latches on the lid and heaved it open. In an instant the device stopped humming and the control lights went out. I grabbed Shaheen around the shoulders and Sato her legs. We lifted her in a smooth motion to the procedures table and laid her down gently. In a flash Cray inserted a large-gauge needle into her neck and deftly taped it down. He jabbed at a button...

  And the battery backup began pumping blood into her system.

  At that exact moment, Marius sliced her top off, exposing her chest. He didn’t even bother with iodine or antibacterial surgical foam.

  He felt with two fingers for the correct location and pushed the scalpel into her flesh.

  The blade, down two inches now, moved easily through her.

  I almost couldn’t handle watching this, but knew that it was necessary. There was no other way.

  Marius was working faster than normal, I could tell...wasn’t taking the time he normally would.

  Her heart wasn’t beating, after all, and there was little blood still in her system. He had to get that rupture sealed within just a few seconds.

  He grabbed a thin black tube with a metal tip and pushed it into the incision he’d made. There was a camera on the tool. A nearby monitor showed a grainy image of the scene in her mediastinum region. Marius grimaced. “Get this blood out of here,” he whispered to Cray.

  Cray seized a suction device and with Marius’s help pushed it through the incision, into the correct area. It dumped the blood in the bucket at the deck, where my own blood had splattered.

  Watching the procedure was shocking. They had done the same thing to me only minutes earlier...

  I passed a hand over my incision. Glue had sealed the wound and nanos were working to knit the cells and muscles back together. The ache was there though. No wonder, after watching the violence of the operation.

  Sato couldn’t stomach it. He had turned away and was staring out a viewport, watching the crevasse outside the structure. He seemed nervous though, shifting from foot to
foot...

  We were in imminent danger.

  “Hurry,” I muttered to Marius.

  “Doing it,” came the simple response.

  In a flash he grabbed another tube—more narrow than the first—and inserted it inside the mediastinoscope and pushed it through. There was still so much blood pumping into the bucket... the aneurysm had spilled nearly every ounce out of her vascular system.

  He studied the monitor, and then with a sharp move he squeezed a trigger on the device’s handle and a tool at the end of the tube clamped around the aorta.

  He had sealed the rupture.

  Cray had started a second line now, into an artery above her right lung.

  Two lines to transfer as much blood as possible.

  “Go!” he yelled at Cray.

  The second line filled now, infusing Shaheen’s arteries and veins.

  Marius was performing chest compressions, helping move the blood through her system. He had placed a mask over her face, and the ventilator was filling her lungs with oxygen. “Shocker,” he muttered at Cray, who handed him two paddles. He pushed them to her chest...

  And then the emergency air-lock hatch swung open with a sigh.

  I turned, expecting to see the pilot from the jumpship, who was no doubt wondering exactly what was going on and when we were leaving.

  But my breath caught in my throat.

  The figure wore a heavily patched white vacsuit.

  Director Francis Lefave.

  * * *

  I didn’t wait for him to get his bearings and see what was going on. I took two massive steps toward him and thrust my right palm into his throat.

  If he can’t breathe, he can’t live.

  Lefave stumbled back from my strike but without hesitating swung a right cross at me. I blocked it, but barely. The pain in my chest kept me from moving as fast as I would have normally, and Lefave possessed unnatural speed. He struck again and again, and it was a blur. I blocked two, then the next three landed. My face felt raw and swollen within an instant, and I stepped back, eyes tearing and nose bleeding.

  Lefave sneered. He spoke, but it took him a second to find his voice after the impact to his throat. “You don’t have a chance, Tanner. I’m faster. I don’t feel any pain from your punches. You can’t kill me.”

  And then Cray and Sato charged simultaneously. Sato went straight for the director’s throat, and Cray held some sort of weapon.

  It was a scalpel. It took me a second to realize what he was trying, but in a flash he’d slashed Lefave’s sleeve as well as his arm; blood welled up and covered the blade. Lefave swung and struck Cray across the forehead, knocking him away.

  The dome trembled and shuddered again. Marius swore and I glanced toward him. He was still working on Shaheen, trying his best to restart her heart.

  Sato was holding on to Lefave now, with his arms wrapped around the other’s neck, and the director was thrashing from side to side, trying to free himself from the much smaller man. But Sato was strong, wiry and athletic. The two slammed into a cabinet, and medical equipment spilled from it and crashed to the deck.

  I moved back into the fray, but my mobility was severely limited and I was having problems catching my breath.

  “Be careful, Tanner!” Marius yelled. “Don’t reopen the rupture!”

  Cray rose and jumped toward the two. He grabbed the latch on the director’s collar and popped the helmet up. The director was livid, his eyes wide and filled with pure hate. He swung again at Cray but the doctor clawed at his face.

  He was going for the eyes.

  “Damn you!” Lefave screamed. He shifted his attention solely to Cray, which gave Sato an opening. He pulled his hand back and, still clinging to the much larger man as if he were climbing a tree, thrust his fist at the director’s throat.

  Lefave gurgled and stumbled back again.

  The deck dropped once more and I fell hard on my ass. Lefave managed to keep his footing, though he was off balance. Sato hit again, and Cray leapt back toward him.

  Lefave was screaming in rage. He was stronger and faster, but his two attackers were doing a good job at keeping him engaged.

  Which gave me an opportunity.

  I got slowly to my feet, stepped in and threw a punch as hard as I could.

  I connected with Lefave’s nose and it crushed inward. Blood exploded everywhere. It splattered Sato’s face but he didn’t lose his focus. He just kept pulling his fist back and continued to pound at the other’s throat.

  “Tanner!” Marius called.

  I glanced back to see what he wanted...

  He had backed away from the procedures table.

  Oh, my God.

  He had given up.

  And then I noticed his expression. And his gaze flicked to something...

  Shaheen.

  Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling as the dome shuddered and trembled and literally began to tear into pieces.

  She was alive.

  Shaheen was back.

  * * *

  I wanted to sprint to her side and ask a million questions. Wanted to tell her the whole story. From her point of view, she was still on her way to the elevator project at Pluto. The micro-bomb, the aneurysm and rupture, The Freezer and Lefave and Marina Dinova...

  Why I was even there with her.

  But I still didn’t know if her brain had survived the ordeal. If she even knew who she was...

  And Lefave was still in the dome.

  I spun savagely and swung again and again at the director. I thrust aside the agony in my chest, the searing agony, and just focused on finishing him once and for all.

  But the man was fast. Despite three of us on him at once, and all of us throwing strikes—and even Cray slicing with a scalpel!—Lefave managed to fend off nearly everything.

  Nearly everything.

  Blood was streaming from his nose, for instance.

  And one eye was rapidly swelling shut, thanks to a punch by Sato.

  And then Cray avoided a block and combination strike, darted in and sliced at the man’s face. The scalpel dug deep and cut across Lefave’s cheek, from just under his left eye past his mouth and down to his chin.

  He screamed in fury—not from pain—but he knew that the wound was bad. Blood was pouring from it and soaked the front of his white vacsuit in just seconds. An inch to the side and his eye would have been gone.

  I punched again and as the director moved to block it, Sato grabbed his arm and prevented the defense. My fist drove straight into his nose. The sound of cartilage crunching was clear. Lefave snarled and kicked outward, and it was fast. I stepped to the side, but not quick enough, and his boot connected with my abdomen and I fell once again to the deck.

  I glanced back at Shaheen as I collected myself and made sure my heart was still beating, and I saw her staring at me. There was a confused expression on her face—her eyes were wide, those bright blue eyes—and in that instant I knew that she was still there. Still with me. Her brain was alert and well, though her body was injured, like mine.

  She looked a wreck. Her uniform was slashed open. It was soaked with blood that dripped to the deck. The bucket was there, but it had tipped and spilled its contents everywhere.

  The uniform was wet with blood.

  The uniform...

  Holy shit. The uniform.

  My gaze shot to her thigh. The holster was there. The doctor had put her in the freezer immediately after she’d lost consciousness...

  Was there a chance?

  I darted to her side and scrabbled at the holster and the drenched fabric that covered it.

  No weapon.

  Shaheen reached for me and I grasped her hand and smiled at her. “Explain in a sec,” was al
l I could manage. It was ridiculous, but Lefave was the priority at that moment.

  No pistol. Where was it?

  In the freezer.

  I snapped my gaze to the empty canister beside the procedures table. There, near where her feet had been, was the pistol.

  Her pulse pistol, right there within my grasp.

  I reached for it and in a second had it aimed, my finger on the trigger, ready to burn him down where he stood.

  “STOP!”

  Sato and Cray and Lefave froze in midstruggle. Sato had two black eyes but clung to the director while his right fist was cocked and ready to strike. Cray’s arm was bloody up to the elbow, scalpel still clutched in his grasp, and he had been slicing Lefave’s face and neck.

  Francis Lefave was staring at the pistol aimed directly at him. He shrugged off the others, who detached and stepped back, eyes also fixed to me.

  “You still think you can kill me with that.”

  I frowned. Blood painted him now, and he stood a mere five meters from the muzzle of a pulse weapon. “This will kill you, quickly and effectively.”

  “You haven’t had much luck so far.”

  I grunted. “Don’t push it.” I straightened and took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Commander Lefave, I am taking you into custody for the murder of Private Aoki Tali and Lieutenant Janice Snow. You are also charged with resisting capture and assaulting CCF officers. Namely myself and Lieutenant Robert Cray.”

  He sneered at me as I made the formal statement. “I would rather die.”

  The clinic shuddered again, and the deck dropped another few inches. “I think if we don’t move quickly, that’s going to happen anyway.” I paused, and then, “Is that your answer, sir?” My finger tightened on the trigger.

  I was ready to kill him right then and there.

  He glared at me, only the whites of his eyes visible through the crimson smear. No doubt he felt the blood pouring down into his vacsuit.

  And then the largest tremor yet, and everyone lost their footing and reached out to steady themselves. On the other side of the clinic, Dr. Dinova fell from the table and hit the deck with a thud.

  And in a flash, Lefave dove for the air-lock hatch, still open from his entrance.