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The guards said something—the security feed’s audio was playing to vacuum—and the Scopuli crew looked aghast. Then, hesitantly, the captain started taking his uniform off. They were stripping the prisoners. Miller shook his head.
“Bad plan.”
“What?” Holden said.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
Julie wasn’t moving. One of the guards moved toward her, his legs braced on the wall. Julie, who’d lived through being raped, maybe, or something as bad. Who’d studied jiu jitsu to feel safe afterward. Maybe they thought she was just being modest. Maybe they were afraid she was hiding a weapon under her clothes. Either way, they tried to force the point. One of the guards pushed her, and she latched on to his arm like her life depended on it. Miller winced when he saw the man’s elbow bend the wrong way, but he also smiled.
That’s my girl, he thought. Give ’em hell.
And she did. For almost forty seconds, the airlock bay was a battleground. Even some of the cowed Scopuli crew tried to join in. But then Julie didn’t see a thick-shouldered man launch from behind her. Miller felt it when the gauntleted hand hammered Julie’s temple. She wasn’t out, but she was groggy. The men with guns stripped her with a cold efficiency, and when there were no weapons or comm devices, they handed her a jumpsuit and shoved her in a locker. The others, they led down into the ship. Miller matched time stamps and switched feeds.
The prisoners were taken to the galley, then bound to the tables. One of the guards spent a minute or so talking, but with his faceplate down, the only clues Miller had to the content of the sermon were the reactions of the crew—wide-eyed disbelief, confusion, outrage, and fear. The guard could have been saying anything.
Miller started skipping. A few hours, then a few more. The ship was under thrust, the prisoners actually sitting at the tables instead of floating near them. He flipped to other parts of the ship. Julie’s locker was still closed. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have assumed she was dead.
He skipped ahead.
One hundred and thirty-two hours later, the crew of the Scopuli grew a pair. Miller saw it in their bodies even before the violence started. He’d seen holding cells rise up before, and the prisoners had the same sullen-but-excited look. The feed showed the stretch of wall where he’d seen the bullet holes. They weren’t there yet. They would be. A man came into the picture with a tray of food rations.
Here it comes, Miller thought.
The fight was short and brutal. The prisoners didn’t stand a chance. Miller watched as they hauled one of them—a sandy-haired man—to the airlock and spaced him. The others were put in heavy restraints. Some wept. Some screamed. Miller skipped ahead.
It had to be in there someplace. The moment when it—whatever it was—got loose. But either it had happened in some unmonitored crew quarters or it had been there from the beginning. Almost exactly one hundred and sixty hours after Julie had gone into the locker, a man in a white jumper, eyes glassy and stance unsure, lurched out of the crew quarters and vomited on one of the guards.
“Fuck!” Amos shouted.
Miller was out of his chair before he knew what had happened. Holden was up too.
“Amos?” Holden said. “Talk to me.”
“Hold on,” Amos said. “Yeah, it’s okay, Cap’n. It’s just these f**kers stripped off a bunch of the reactor shielding. We’ve got her up, but I sucked down a few more rads than I’d have picked.”
“Get back to the Roci,” Holden said. Miller steadied himself against a wall, pushing back down toward the control stations.
“No offense, sir, but it ain’t like I’m about to start pissing blood or anything fun like that,” Amos said. “I got surprised more than anything. I start feeling itchy, I’ll head back over, but I can get some atmosphere for us by working out of the machine shop if you give me a few more minutes.”
Miller watched Holden’s face as the man struggled. He could make it an order; he could leave it be.
“Okay, Amos. But you start getting light-headed or anything—I mean anything—and you get over to the sick bay.”
“Aye, aye,” Amos said.
“Alex, keep an eye on Amos’ biomed feed from over there. Give us a heads-up if you see a problem,” Holden said on the general channel.
“Roger,” came Alex’s lazy drawl.
“You finding anything?” Holden asked Miller on their private channel.
“Nothing unexpected,” Miller said. “You?”
“Yeah, actually. Take a look.”
Miller pushed himself to the screen Holden had been working. Holden pulled himself back into the station and started pulling up feeds.
“I was thinking that someone had to go last,” Holden said. “I mean, there had to be someone who was the least sick when whatever it was got loose. So I went through the directory to see what activity was going on before the system went dead.”
“And?”
“There’s a whole bunch of activity that looks like it happened a couple days before the system shutdown, and then nothing for two solid days. And then a little spike. A lot of accessed files and system diagnostics. Then someone hacked the override codes to blow atmosphere.”
“It was Julie, then.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Holden said. “But one of the feeds she accessed was… Shit, where is it? It was right… Oh. Here. Watch this.”
The screen blinked, controls dropping to standby, and a high-res emblem, green and gold, came up. The corporate logo of Protogen, with a slogan Miller hadn’t seen before. First. Fastest. Furthest.
“What’s the time stamp on the file?” Miller asked.
“The original was created about two years ago,” Holden said. “This copy was burned eight months ago.”
The emblem faded, and a pleasant-faced man sitting at a desk took its place. He had dark hair, with just a scattering of gray at the temples, and lips that seemed used to smiling. He nodded at the camera. The smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were as empty as a shark’s.
Sociopath, Miller thought.
The man’s lips began moving soundlessly. Holden said, “Shit,” and hit a switch to have the audio transmitted to their suits. He rewound the video feed and started it over.
“Mr. Dresden,” the man said. “I would like to thank you and the members of the board for taking the time to review this information. Your support, both financial and otherwise, has been absolutely essential to the incredible discoveries we’ve seen on this project. While my team has been point man, as it were, Protogen’s tireless commitment to the advancement of science has made our work possible.
