Sasha seemed to welcome that, and, with the big secret out of the bag, let her guard down. She wore her eyepatch, a Regis Line T-shirt, and a pair of shorts. The food sat on the bed between us. She told me about her childhood, and it sounded depressing as hell.
“…So, even though I received training in the martial arts, I didn’t know why until Marsha called me into her office, and told me about the mission.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You call her Marsha?”
Sasha smiled. “Everyone else calls her Dr. Casad.”
I shook my head in amazement. “Go on.”
“Well, she told me how a man had been captured during the war and used as a storage module for valuable research. Research it would take years to duplicate, and she needed to complete an important project. The mission was to find and bring the man back, but to do so in a manner that left him unaware of his significance, and fooled the competition.” She smiled wryly. “I’m zero for three.”
I ignored the joke. “So, what did you say?”
Sasha allowed her eye to drift down towards the bed and brought it up again. “I didn’t say what I should have said. I didn’t say that it was wrong, I didn’t say that I was horrified, I didn’t say no. I said ‘yes, ma’am,’ and did as I was told.”
There was a moment of silence. Tears trickled down Sasha’s cheeks. Something broke inside me, and tears trickled down my cheeks too. I wiped them away. “So what will you do? When we reach Europa Station?”
Her eye wandered away. “I honestly don’t know. What Marsha did was wrong, but she’s my mother, and this project means a lot to her.”
I nodded. It was an honest answer, and a step in the right direction.
Thanks to Joy, and the time she spent camped in the air ducts over Linda Gibson’s stateroom, we knew about the plan to abduct me well before the ship docked at Europa Station.
Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four largest moons, was little more than an ice ball, its light-colored surface crosshatched with reddish fracture lines where water had erupted from the ocean below and frozen in place. Not especially hospitable until compared with Jupiter herself, playground for anticyclones large enough to swallow planets, and an atmosphere composed of ninety-five per cent hydrogen and helium.
It was no wonder, then, that Protech had established its base on a satellite rather than on the planet itself, and selected the one that not only had an abundance of water, but, thanks to Jupiter’s tidal action, a partially molten mantle that provided the scientists with a ready-made source of geothermal energy.
Since the station had been founded, financial necessity had forced Protech to lease some of the ever-growing habitat to other corporations, but they were still in charge, and kept the rest of the corpies on a short leash.
Which made it all the more amazing that the greenies had hatched a plan to grab me right out from under Protech’s nose. A plan that involved snatching me as the passengers disembarked, and either killing or holding me prisoner, they couldn’t decide which. Bey, bless his ecological heart, was for letting me live, while Linda favored the death penalty and Trask vacillated back and forth.
I opposed both plans, needless to say, and Sasha’s too, since it amounted to giving myself over to her mother. So, unbeknownst to my teenaged companion, I had a plan of my own, flawed as always, but better than nothing.
Everyone watched the approach on the ship’s entertainment system, and we were no exception. The bed doubled as an acceleration couch, and we strapped ourselves in place.
The moon was little more than a cue ball at first but quickly grew larger. It didn’t take long for the ship to fire powerful repulsors and come to terms with the satellite’s rather anemic gravity.
Viewed from space, Europa Station was an intricate maze of solar arrays, antenna farms, observatories, storage tanks, catwalks, and other installations too arcane to identify with a single glance. But the single most noticeable feature was the fact that the entire complex rested on platforms like those that dot the California coast. Only larger.
I was struck by the look of anticipation on Sasha’s face. What seemed strange and alien to me was the place where she’d been born, spent her childhood, and been trained…as what? An extension of her mother’s will?
One of the ship’s officers provided a rather nasal explanation of what we were seeing. Sasha replaced his narration with one of her own. There was genuine enthusiasm in her voice as she told me about the columns that held Europa Station aloft, how they extended down through ice and semiliquid slush to the top of a seamount hundreds of feet below, and functioned as gigantic shock absorbers in case of a moonquake or other geological disturbance.
I found myself watching her face rather than the screen, entranced by the energy I saw there, and impressed by the amount of scientific knowledge she had accumulated. Knowledge natural to someone of her background, yet hidden until now. From me? Or from a mother so strong, so domineering, that any sign of talent similar to her own was interpreted as a threat? My head started to hurt, and I let it go.
The ship swung out and away from the station, melted ice with the heat from its repellors, and vectored through a cloud of its own making. A sign appeared and disappeared as vapor drifted past the external vid cams. “WELCOME TO EUROPA STATION-HOME TO THE PROTECH CORPORATION.”
I felt a hand grab my stomach and squeeze. Here it was, the place where I would learn what they had stored in my head or die trying. I was scared, but eager too, wanting the whole thing to end.
The ship lost altitude, hovered for a moment, and dropped towards frost-covered metal. Other ships shared the deck, including freighters, couriers, and some strangely configured research vessels, but the Queen dwarfed them all, and cast her shadow across most of the landing platform and a substantial amount of sulphur-stained ice. Our landing jacks touched steel, and the hull creaked as it accepted the unaccustomed weight. We had arrived. A tone sounded, and the captain came on the PA system.
“On behalf of Regis Lines, and the Protech Corporation, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to Europa Station. I would like to thank those departing our vessel, and wish them a productive visit or happy homecoming, whichever the case may be. As for the rest of our passengers, this is but the halfway point in what I hope is the best vacation you’ve ever had. The ground crew is hard at work connecting pressurized tubeways to our locks, and the moment they’re done, you’ll be free to leave the ship. Please consult a host or hostess for more information regarding…”
I ordered the screen to black, touched my harness release, and swung my feet over the side of the bed. Sasha hit her release a second time. “Hey, Max, this thing’s jammed.”
I stepped over to the storage locker, ordered it open, and grabbed the bag I had packed six hours earlier. “Really? That’s too bad. I’ll tell maintenance to take a look.”
Sasha swore, tried to free herself, and gave up. Her first reaction was anger. “You did this!”
I looked in the mirror, polished my skull plate with a hand towel, and straightened my collar. “No, I asked Joy to do it.”
Always happy to hear the sound of her name, Joy climbed my pants leg and claimed her place on my shoulder. She was cheerful as always. “Sorry Sasha, but he’s the boss. I had to obey.”
Sasha strained against the harness, hit the release five or six times, and fell back against the pillow. Her expression changed to one of concern. “What will you do?”
“Find your mother, ask her what she stored in my head, and decide what to do with it.”
The kid shook her head in amazement. “You’re nuts. Absolutely nuts. You know that?”
I nodded agreeably. “So I’ve been told, although most people are less charitable and say I’m stupid.”
She gave me one of those looks, the kind that turn me gooey inside, and said, “Take care of yourself.”
I said I would and let myself out. There was lots of traffic, most of which was headed towards the C Deck lock. It was tempting to join the flow and let it carry me along, but I wasn’t that stupid. Assuming the greenies still planned to grab me, and I had no reason to doubt it, the lock was the logical place to do it. No, the crew’s lock, which was located one level down on D Deck, would be a safer bet.
I fought the current like a long-extinct salmon fighting its way upstream and made my way to one of the more utilitarian lift tubes frequented by the crew. And, given the fact that beyond the occasional tryst, passengers had no reason to visit crew quarters, there was nothing to prevent me from doing so. I wound up on a platform with a couple of stewards. They pretended I wasn’t there. No small task where I’m concerned.
The doors opened as the platform stopped on D Deck. The stewards got off and I followed. Europa’s gravity
