Amazing what kind of man can evolve when he’s knocked off his high horse and face-first into the shit.
Galluzzi stared down into his cup of tea. Not like the real thing, mind you, but a green liquid made from boiled spinach, algae, and leaves. Stuff that still grew in hydroponics, though the nutritional content was down considerably from the early days.
They all showed signs of malnutrition.
“What do you think?” Galluzzi asked. He was long past formalities with these people.
Benj, still fingering his chin, said, “Aguila’s not like any Corporate Supervisor I ever knew. When I saw the scars, it scared hell out of me. Like she was one of the Unreconciled. Sent a shiver right up my spine.”
Michaela placed her long-fingered hands flat on the table. “She didn’t bat an eye when we told her we sealed the transportees on Deck Three. Not a single protest. Nothing about what the contractual implications might be, or what it was going to cost The Corporation in litigation.”
“Tough lady,” Turner said thoughtfully. “Sounds like Cap III has fallen on hard times while we’ve been in transit. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not sure how the crew is going to take this. We’ve sold them on the belief that when we reach Cap III, it’s going to be like a paradise.”
Benj chuckled. “Hey, just being out in fresh air, under an open sky, is paradise.”
“After what we’ve been through, you’d think the universe would cut us a break.” Galluzzi sipped his tea. Tried to remember what it was supposed to taste like. Nothing had much taste anymore.
Turner shot him a sidelong glance. “I think you just got your break, Miguel. Aguila didn’t immediately order you arrested for what we did. I thought she’d take that a whole lot harder.”
“Something’s not right,” Benj added. “We lost two thirds of the transportees, and what’s left are man-eating monsters. Drop that kind of bombshell on a Corporate Supervisor? You expect to let loose a shitstorm.”
“She almost took it as a foregone conclusion.” Galluzzi rubbed his face, thankful that his hand was no longer shaking. Damn, he’d been on the edge. Like the others, he’d expected to be relieved of command, pilloried, maybe even charged with mass murder.
He glanced at Taglioni. Had hoped that if Corporate was going to flush him down the shitter, that Dek would be his only chance. Betting on a Taglioni? It showed how desperate a man could be.
“Think it’s some kind of political gambit?” Begay wondered. “You know. The kind of intrigue the Board is into: layers within layers. Maybe we’re suddenly pawns in some complex game she’s playing. Like she’s going to use our failure to keep the transportees alive as a means to destroy some adversary.”
Was that it? Galluzzi’s stomach began to roil. He felt the first tremors in his hand. “I just wish it was all over.”
“Hey, Miguel,” Michaela told him, “you’re getting ahead of yourself. We all are. Think, people. There’s going to be an inquest. There has to be. You can’t just seal three hundred and sixty people into a confined space, let them mutilate and eat each other, and expect to walk away without some sort of questions.”
She glanced around the table. “We’ve known since the beginning that a day of reckoning is coming. In the meantime, we stick together. Let’s not forget that by doing what we did, we got the ship to Cap III. And we did it with most of the crew alive. The entire Maritime Unit is not only alive, but with the kids there’s a lot more of us than spaced from Solar System.”
“Steps had to be taken,” Benj agreed. “Remember what it was like? We all agreed that if we made it, we’d stand together. That what they did to one, they’d have to do to all of us.”
“Here, here,” Turner muttered, watery eyes fixed on infinity.
Benj turned to Taglioni. “Dek? Your word is going to carry the most weight.”
Taglioni’s lips bent into a thin smile. “You’re assuming my family’s still in power.”
“Aguila asked specifically if you were aboard,” Benj reminded.
“That has as many ominous interpretations as it does positive ones, Board politics being what it is.”
“Let’s wait and see,” Galluzzi told them. “If it comes down to it, and there has to be a sacrifice, it is my responsibility.”
“You’re not doing that holy martyr thing again, are you?” Michaela asked. “We didn’t like it the first time you pulled that shit.”
He smiled, sipped his tea, looked around at the familiar faces. He’d alternately shunned these people, loved or hated them, sought their company, and periodically despised them. Between them, they had no secrets. Well, maybe but for Taglioni. Not that he hadn’t done more than his share, pulled more than his weight, but he’d always kept himself apart. Maintained a distance.
“No martyrdom. It’s just that the end, at last, is in sight. Mostly, however, it’s because after what we’ve been through, if they need a sacrifice, I don’t give a damn. I’m just . . . tired.”
Taglioni was watching him with those piercing yellow-green eyes. Even after all these years, they still sent a shiver up Galluzzi’s spine.
There would be a price. There had to be.
4
The tavern in Port Authority was called The Bloody Drink; the moniker dated back to a more sanguine period in the colony’s early existence. Most folks just called it Inga’s after the proprietor. Inga Lock was a large-boned blonde woman in her forties with thick arms, a no-nonsense disposition, and a talent for brewing, distilling, and producing extraordinary wines from local grains and fruits.
Inga’s tavern had originally been housed in one of the midsized utility domes, but as it was the planet’s only public house, the crowds had necessitated expansion. Since the dome couldn’t be enlarged—and with Donovan being a mining planet—Inga had dug down to create the cavernous stone-floored room that now sported locally made chabacho-wood tables, benches, chairs, a restaurant, and on the west end, the curving bar from which Inga dispensed her liquid refreshments.
A ramp in the storeroom behind the bar led up to street level and the two-story stone building that housed her distillery, brewery, and winery. The upper floor she rented out to itinerant miners and hunters—called Wild Ones—who might be in town.
On the righthand side of the bar, Security Officer Talina Perez perched atop her usual stool. She wore mud-spattered and smudged quetzal hide: a rainbow-color-shifting leather made from one of the native predators. Next to her knee, her rifle was propped against the bar. Hung from a strap around her neck, a floppy leather hat flattened Tal’s raven-black hair against her back.