call.
Yeah, or failing that, some fucking backup, Command. This baby’s come from space, right, from Mars most likely. No fucking telling what kind of bugs might be loose in there. That’s what nanorack quarantine’s for, right?
For a moment, he thought about backing up anyway.
But—
You’re equipped, he could already hear the patient voice explaining to him. You’re masked and gelled against biothreat, which we don’t in any case anticipate. You have no valid reason to query your orders .
And Zdena’s voice: Why they pay us, cowboy .
And from the others, jeers.
He shook off a tiny shudder, moved down a couple of rungs, and put a boot through the water to press gingerly on the hatch. It gave, fractionally.
“Great.”
Point?
“Nothing,” he said sourly. “Just proceeding with extreme fucking caution.”
He braced one hand flat on the wall of the air lock, stamped harder on the hatch, impatient now and—
—it caved in under his foot.
Hinged heavily down to the side, dumping the water through into a darkened interior with a long, hollow splash. The sudden drop caught him unawares. He lost his grip on the rung above. Fell, grabbed clumsily with one flailing gloved hand, missed, and clouted the side of his head on the ladder as he tumbled. He went right through the opened inner hatch, had time for one garbled yell—
“Fuuuuuuahhhh—”
—and ended up in a heap on what must have been the sidewall of the corridor below.
Shock of impact, his teeth clipped the edge of his tongue. Sharp bang in his shoulder, gouge in the ribs where one end of the XM jabbed him on the way down. He hissed the pain out through gritted teeth.
For the rest, he seemed to have landed on something soft. He lay still for a moment, checking for damage reports from his tangled limbs.
Total-body awareness, right, Sarge.
He summoned a grin. Didn’t think he’d broken anything. Looking up, he figured it for not much more than a three-meter drop.
He blew a hard, chuckled breath of relief into the mask filter. Completed his expletive quietly.
“Fuck.”
Point? Command came through, yeah, finally fucking concerned now. Report your status. Are you injured?
“I’m fine.” He propped himself up on one arm, squinted around in the gloom and snapped on the helmet light. “Just took a digger. Nothing to—”
The edge of the beam clipped something that didn’t make any sense. His head jerked around, the beam hit full on what he’d seen—
“Ah, fuck man, you gotta be—”
And suddenly, with the flood of disbelieving comprehension, he gagged, vomit flooding up and into the mask, burning his nose and throat, as he saw for the first time exactly what the soft thing was that had broken his fall.
Chapter Four
Sevgi Ertekin awoke to the curious conviction that it was raining in dirty gray sheets all over the city.
In June?
She blinked. Somewhere outside the open window of the apartment, she heard a siren calling her.
Intimate and nostalgic as the sound of the ezan she still missed from the old neighborhood, but freighted with an adrenaline significance the prayer call would never match. Rusted professional reflex surfaced in her, then rolled over and sank as memory came aboard. Not her call anymore. In any case, the melancholy caught-breath cry of the cop car, wherever it was, was distant. Noises of commerce from the street market six floors below almost drowned it out. There was shouting, mostly good-humored, and music from stall-mounted sound systems, frenetic neo-arabesque that she was in no mood for currently.
The day had started without her.
Against her own better judgment, she turned over to face the window. Glare from the sun hit her in the face and drove her to squinting. The varipolara drapes billowed in the breeze from outside, incandescent with morning light. It appeared she’d forgotten to remote them down to opaque again. An empty bottle of Jameson’s was partly hidden where the curtain hem brushed the
Yeah, or failing that, some fucking backup, Command. This baby’s come from space, right, from Mars most likely. No fucking telling what kind of bugs might be loose in there. That’s what nanorack quarantine’s for, right?
For a moment, he thought about backing up anyway.
But—
You’re equipped, he could already hear the patient voice explaining to him. You’re masked and gelled against biothreat, which we don’t in any case anticipate. You have no valid reason to query your orders .
And Zdena’s voice: Why they pay us, cowboy .
And from the others, jeers.
He shook off a tiny shudder, moved down a couple of rungs, and put a boot through the water to press gingerly on the hatch. It gave, fractionally.
“Great.”
Point?
“Nothing,” he said sourly. “Just proceeding with extreme fucking caution.”
He braced one hand flat on the wall of the air lock, stamped harder on the hatch, impatient now and—
—it caved in under his foot.
Hinged heavily down to the side, dumping the water through into a darkened interior with a long, hollow splash. The sudden drop caught him unawares. He lost his grip on the rung above. Fell, grabbed clumsily with one flailing gloved hand, missed, and clouted the side of his head on the ladder as he tumbled. He went right through the opened inner hatch, had time for one garbled yell—
“Fuuuuuuahhhh—”
—and ended up in a heap on what must have been the sidewall of the corridor below.
Shock of impact, his teeth clipped the edge of his tongue. Sharp bang in his shoulder, gouge in the ribs where one end of the XM jabbed him on the way down. He hissed the pain out through gritted teeth.
For the rest, he seemed to have landed on something soft. He lay still for a moment, checking for damage reports from his tangled limbs.
Total-body awareness, right, Sarge.
He summoned a grin. Didn’t think he’d broken anything. Looking up, he figured it for not much more than a three-meter drop.
He blew a hard, chuckled breath of relief into the mask filter. Completed his expletive quietly.
“Fuck.”
Point? Command came through, yeah, finally fucking concerned now. Report your status. Are you injured?
“I’m fine.” He propped himself up on one arm, squinted around in the gloom and snapped on the helmet light. “Just took a digger. Nothing to—”
The edge of the beam clipped something that didn’t make any sense. His head jerked around, the beam hit full on what he’d seen—
“Ah, fuck man, you gotta be—”
And suddenly, with the flood of disbelieving comprehension, he gagged, vomit flooding up and into the mask, burning his nose and throat, as he saw for the first time exactly what the soft thing was that had broken his fall.
Chapter Four
Sevgi Ertekin awoke to the curious conviction that it was raining in dirty gray sheets all over the city.
In June?
She blinked. Somewhere outside the open window of the apartment, she heard a siren calling her.
Intimate and nostalgic as the sound of the ezan she still missed from the old neighborhood, but freighted with an adrenaline significance the prayer call would never match. Rusted professional reflex surfaced in her, then rolled over and sank as memory came aboard. Not her call anymore. In any case, the melancholy caught-breath cry of the cop car, wherever it was, was distant. Noises of commerce from the street market six floors below almost drowned it out. There was shouting, mostly good-humored, and music from stall-mounted sound systems, frenetic neo-arabesque that she was in no mood for currently.
The day had started without her.
Against her own better judgment, she turned over to face the window. Glare from the sun hit her in the face and drove her to squinting. The varipolara drapes billowed in the breeze from outside, incandescent with morning light. It appeared she’d forgotten to remote them down to opaque again. An empty bottle of Jameson’s was partly hidden where the curtain hem brushed the
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