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  They listened, but there was nothing but static.

  There should at least have been an automated return signal.

  After a pause, Verlaine continued. “We’re carrying three passengers on a Weyland-Yutani bond. You’re holding the Nostromo’s flight recorder unit. We request immediate permission to transport the passengers portside.”

  Again, static. Then it intensified. Amanda thought she heard a voice, and the occasional word.

  “Waits… zzkkkk… situation… You… krrkk… read. Repeat, don… zrrkkzz…”

  There was more, but none of it came close to making sense. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Amanda knew that this was going to be another dead end. Something had happened at Sevastopol, and even if it was there, the flight recorder wasn’t going to be a priority.

  If they even still had it.

  “Hello, Marshal?” Verlaine leaned forward, hand on her headset. “Marshal? This is the Torrens, say again!”

  Now all she got was static.

  “Sevastopol, please respond! This is the Torrens, please repeat your message!”

  “We got nothin’, Cap’n.” Connor’s fingers were dancing over his console. “They’re not even broadcasting anymore.”

  “Dammit.”

  Samuels stepped forward. “We have to get on that station.”

  “We can’t dock,” Verlaine said. “That bay is toast. We don’t have any shuttles, and I’m saving my escape pods for an emergency, thank you very much.”

  Taylor folded her arms. “What are we to do, then… get out and walk?”

  “Actually, yeah,” Amanda said.

  The lawyer whirled on her. “I beg your pardon?”

  Amanda ignored her and regarded Verlaine. “Can you hit the station with an EVA cable?”

  “Sure,” Verlaine said with a nod. “But have any of you actually done a space walk?”

  “Of course,” Samuels said.

  “Tons,” Amanda said at the same time.

  “Oh God, no, never!” Taylor responded.

  “Great.” Verlaine instructed Connor to locate a viable airlock. Then she stood up. “All right, let’s get you three suited up.” Taylor gaped at her, but she ignored it as she exited the flight deck.

  Verlaine led them to the fore EVA hub, which—just like the aft one Amanda had passed before—boasted three oversized yellow EVA suits. Amanda practically had to drag Taylor along forcibly, and then she had to do all the work kitting her up before repeating the process for herself.

  Samuels suited up then he and Verlaine left them there, disappearing through the hatchway.

  “This is fucking insane,” Taylor said. “My pay-scale does not cover bloody space walks.”

  “It’s the only option,” Amanda told her, “and it’s perfectly safe if you do what I tell you.” That last was a lie—space walks were incredibly dangerous under the safest of circumstances, and with Sevastopol in who-knew-how-bad a shape, these circumstances were hardly ideal. But Taylor seemed to accept the reassurance, to a degree. Nevertheless, she was sweating like mad, even in the climate-controlled EVA suit.

  Verlaine and Samuels came back as Amanda was finishing the final check on her suit. She noticed that there was a small module on Samuels’s helmet.

  “The station’s comms seem pretty screwed up,” the captain said, “so I’ve fitted Samuels’s suit with a radio booster.” She paused, a slight frown on her face, and then added, “I can keep the Torrens in position for twenty-four hours—that’s all. You understand?”

  “You’ll have heard from us long before then, Captain.” Samuels spoke with a confidence that Amanda didn’t share. But regardless of what happened, all that mattered to her was that the flight recorder was on that station. She’d find it, come hell or high water, then worry about getting home.

  Amanda pulled three Sookdar carabiners from the supply closet and handed one each to Taylor and Samuels. “Attach this to the cable once the airlock door is opened. Two pedals will extend from the bottom, and slide your boots into those. They’ll keep you steady. Control your forward motion with the joystick.” She pointed to the knobbed handle on top of the Sookdar.

  “So we don’t have to actually walk on a cable?” Taylor asked.

  Verlaine chuckled. “We prefer our passengers to make it to their destination alive.” The captain moved to the other side of the airlock so she could cycle it. With a jaunty wave, she said, “Happy landings.”

  “Ha-bloody-ha,” Taylor muttered. They stepped into the airlock, and the hatch closed behind them. Connor’s voice sounded over the intercom.

  “At stationkeeping in five—four—three—two—one—locked. Holdin’ station at a hundred yards.”

  “Can’t we get any c-closer?” Taylor asked. Her voice cracked on the last syllable.

  “Not safely,” Amanda said. “It’ll be fine, it’s just the length of a football field.”

  “I hate football.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes.

  “Umbilical released,” Connor said, even as Amanda watched the tiny monitor which showed a large cable bursting forth from a housing in the hull, and zipping across the void to attach itself to the outer hull of one of Sevastopol’s spires. She was impressed with Connor’s aim—the cable hit right above the outer control for an airlock, so getting in would be easy.

  A loud hiss signaled that the process of evacuating the air prior to opening the outer door had begun. Over the large metal handle, a light glowed red.

  “Depressurizing,” Amanda reported out of habit.

  “Oh fuck,” Taylor muttered. “Hating this.”

  “Just shadow me, Taylor.” Then, to make it look as if she wasn’t just babying the lawyer, she added, “You too, Samuels.”

  “Affirmative,” Samuels said with blessed calm. Amanda had no idea if this reassured Taylor or not, but anything they could do to make the lawyer relax would be worth the effort. Space was too damned unforgiving to try to move through it in a panic.

  Once the airlock was depressurized, the red light turned green. Amanda reached out and pulled the handle upward, allowing the outer door to slide open slowly. At only a hundred yards, all they could see was the station spire, and it was an even bigger mess when viewed this close. One of the bridges to the next spire was completely shattered, Amanda spied two broken dishes and three more empty housings that should have held dishes—which helped explain the comms problems. The hull integrity had been compromised in at least half a dozen places.

  What worried Amanda most was how non-centralized the damage was. This wasn’t a meteor strike or a focused malfunction. The damage was everywhere, and none of it was catastrophic on its own.

  “What the fuck happened here?” she muttered as she attached the Sookdar to the cable. As if in response, Taylor started rapid-fire babbling.

  “I want to go back. Ripley. I want to go back!”

  “You’re doing fine, Taylor.” Amanda reached behind her, grasped the lawyer’s Sookdar, and attached it to the cable for her. “Just put your feet in. You’ll be fine.”

  Taylor nodded quickly and then slid her feet into the pedals. She actually missed the first time, cursed, and then got it right.

  “Now just move slowly.” As she spoke, Amanda pushed her own lever forward. Exiting the airlock, abruptly engulfed in semidarkness, she slid quickly but smoothly toward the station.

  Taylor was next, and Samuels followed. Amanda was glad they’d put Taylor in the middle. With people on either side of her, she was unlikely to try to go back in a panic.

  Though she did seem to be going forward in a panic…

  “My God, Ripley,” Taylor said over the comms.

  “You’re doing fine, Tay—”

  More than a hundred yards above them, a large chunk of the station hull exploded in a ball of fire.

  SEEGSON TECHNOLOGIES CLIENT PRESENTATION

  “WORKING JOE” ANDROIDS

  SEVASTOPOL STATION

  JANUARY 2125

&n
bsp; SEEGSON—TOMORROW, TOGETHER!

  FOR YOUR COMFORT AND REASSURANCE, OUR WORKING JOE SYNTHETICS ARE DESIGNED TO BE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZABLE. SURVEYS HAVE SHOWN THAT CONSUMERS ARE OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE DEALING WITH ADVANCED HUMAN-REAL ANDROIDS. SEEGSON WORKING JOES ARE UNMISTAKABLE, SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH. BE REASSURED. THAT’S THE SEEGSON PROMISE. YOUR USER COMFORT IS OUR PRIORITY.

  YOU CAN TRUST OUR WORKING JOES.

  ALWAYS THERE, ALWAYS HELPFUL, ALWAYS WORKING FOR YOU. OUR SYNTHETICS ARE MADE TO BE SIMPLE. NO EMOTIONAL SIMULATIONS. NO LIFE-REAL QUALITIES. THEY JUST WORK, FOR YOU, SO YOU CAN GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE IN PERFECT PEACE OF MIND.

  WORKING JOES: BRILLIANTLY SIMPLE AND SIMPLY BRILLIANT.

  8

  SOLOMONS HABITATION SPIRE, SEVASTOPOL STATION

  DECEMBER 2137

  There was a bright, stuttering flash in her peripheral vision, and the hull of the spire lurched violently in front of her. The vibration travelled up the EVA cable and rippled through Amanda’s body. The throbbing rang in her ears.

  As quickly as the flames had appeared, they vanished, snuffed out by the lack of oxygen. She heard a gasp from Samuels, and a choked whimper from Taylor.

  While the cable vibrated through the Sookdar, that was all it did. Like all the other new equipment on the Torrens, the Sookdars were top of the line. It would have stayed attached through a much bigger explosion.

  She smelled the sweat that broke out on her skin, despite the suit’s climate control, and she tasted the adrenaline that coursed through her system as she realized that the debris from the explosion was flying in all directions—including right at them.

  “Keep moving!” she shouted. At first, she’d only pushed the joystick about halfway, not wanting to zip too far ahead of Taylor, nor go at a pace she couldn’t handle. Now, though, time was suddenly of the essence, and she throttled it.

  A large hunk of ragged metal hurtled right toward them. Amanda leaned forward as she pushed the joystick, trying to will the Sookdar to go faster. But the math was never going to work. She couldn’t possibly go fast enough to get to Sevastopol before the debris struck home.

  “Ripley, Taylor, hold on!” Samuels cried out. Suddenly she was yanked from the Sookdar as the cable snapped. She was only about a hundred feet from Sevastopol. The bitter taste of adrenaline became intense as she found herself suffering the worst nightmare of anyone who worked in space—hurtling untethered through the vacuum.

  Her first EVA walk had been during a summer internship at Pascoe-Keane when she was still attending Delaj Technical School. She was assisting an engineer who needed to service the comms system on a satellite. But the magboots in her suit had been faulty.

  Amanda let go of the satellite in order to retrieve a tool, thinking she would remain safely attached to the satellite. Luckily, the engineer with whom she had been working was able to grab her before she floated away, but the two seconds when she wasn’t attached to anything had to be the longest of her life.

  The funny thing was, the final thought before her boss grabbed her ankle was that at least out in space, nobody and nothing could disappoint her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Amanda saw the part of the broken cable that was attached to Sevastopol, whipping toward the spire. Lunging for it as best she could in freefall, she somehow managed to wrap her gloved hand around the thick metal cord. Luckily, its momentum was greater than hers, and it continued its journey toward the station.

  The cable carried her along and, within seconds, she crashed into the hull of the station with a bone-jarring thud. Again she reached out blindly, and her hands found purchase in a pair of handles which some smart engineer put there. Such handles were all over the outer part of most objects created to function in space, and Amanda had never been more grateful for that design standard.

  For a second, she paused, getting her breath under control, blinking the sweat from her eyes.

  “Samuels? Taylor?”

  Nothing.

  She hadn’t seen what had happened to either of her comrades when the cable had snapped.

  “Respond, anybody!”

  Still silence.

  “Torrens, this is Ripley, do you copy?”

  And then, finally, Amanda realized that the silence in her ear was complete. She couldn’t hear any response, nor could she hear the low hum that indicated the comms were on. She touched the activation button on her collar, but that did nothing. The comms in her suit must have been damaged when she smashed into Sevastopol’s hull.

  Taking several more breaths she lifted her head for a look around, realizing that her luck, for once, was actually pretty good, dead comms notwithstanding. Not only had she grabbed the cable and made it to the spire, but she’d landed right next to the airlock.

  Gripping the handle tightly with her left hand, she reached up with her right one to pull down the lever on the outer door. Moments later, the light above the lever went from red to green and the hatch slid open. She glanced from side to side, but still there was no sign of the others. Pulling herself in, hand over hand, she flicked down the equivalent lever as soon as her entire body was inside.

  With a loud hiss that was the most glorious sound she’d heard all day, the chamber refilled with air. Then, with a grunt, Amanda fell to the deck as the gravity reasserted itself. For several seconds she just lay on the deck, breathing heavily.

  Could you maybe have provided a warning that the gravity was back on? she mentally queried the station.

  After a few moments she got to her feet, half-surprised that no one had come to greet her. Usually, when the airlock was activated from outside, someone came to investigate. Padding through the small chamber to an inner door, she looked out into a corridor. It was empty, and only the emergency lights were on. Even in the gloom she could see that the facility was dilapidated, especially in contrast to the Torrens.

  Clambering out of her EVA suit, she was particularly grateful to be able to palm the sweat from her eyes at last.

  She started to hang it in the closet, and noted that there was plenty of room there. That meant a lot of them were in use.

  Once it had been stowed, she proceeded out to the promenade just past the airlock bay, only to find it deserted. It was difficult to make anything out in the emergency lighting, but there was a giant window that looked out onto the gas giant. This was obviously some kind of lounge, distinctly decrepit, and she could make out a large information desk that probably should have had someone stationed at it. The window provided a spectacular vista of the bright oranges and shimmery reds of KG348. Under other circumstances, she’d have been impressed by the view.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  Her words echoed through the large lounge, but nobody replied. There was no movement. The space boasted tables and chairs, but there were no signs that anyone had been there recently. Some graffiti on the walls, but that could have been normal. No food on the tables, no drink cups—nothing.

  Moving into the chamber, she approached a small terminal, and it lit up, blinking a single word centered in a circle.

  WELCOME

  Figuring she had nothing to lose at this point, she touched the circle. A female face appeared on the screen and her mouth started to move. A second after that, words came out of the speaker, slightly out of sync with the woman’s lips.

  “Welcome to Sevastopol Station, your home away from home,” the woman said. “Situated in the Zeta Reticuli region, the station is the number one gateway to commerce and resources abundant in this sector.”

  The image flickered and went out.

  Then it came back on again.

  A map of the station appeared for a second, then it went dark again. Throughout, the woman’s disembodied voice continued.

  “There are maps for your convenience at dedicated console points. All organic material must be scanned and signed in and out of the station. Sevastopol is an APOLLO integrated station. All synthetics must register at Sevastopol immigra—”

/>   Suddenly, the sound went out, and then the woman’s face returned, continuing to mouth words.

  “Doesn’t anything here fucking work?” Amanda asked the console, but the woman continued to babble silently. Irritation began to build toward frustration, and anger. Giving up, she moved toward a set of stairs, in the hope of finding her way to some actual people. Her path provided a much better view of the window, the gas giant—

  —and the Torrens, moving slowly past her vantage point.

  At the sight of the vessel she scanned the lounge for a comms system. Spotting something that looked like an intercom she stepped over and hit a button, but it didn’t respond.

  Dammit!

  Moving over to the huge window, she jumped up and down, waved her arms, and shouted as loud as she could.

  “Verlaine, it’s me!” The chance was infinitesimal that Verlaine or Connor would see her tiny figure in this particular window among the many on the station. But infinitesimal wasn’t zero, and she had nothing to lose by trying. However, the ship passed by without giving any indication that she had succeeded. More likely Verlaine was looking for the three of them out in the void.

  Moving back to the stairs, she climbed them to the next level, finding herself in a corridor that had several information screens along the wall. Most were dark, but two were lit up with text. One offered an image of the gas giant, and words scrolled across the screen.

  KG348 IS A JOVIAN GAS GIANT, SITUATED AT A MEAN DISTANCE OF 6.2 ASTRONOMICAL UNITS FROM THE HEART OF THE SYSTEM. INITIAL SURVEYS OF ITS CLOUD LAYERS SHOW A RARE MIX…

  Amanda moved past it, to another that had an illustration of a bald male human figure.

  APOLLO IS THE CENTRAL A.I. THAT MONITORS AND PROVIDES GUIDANCE FOR ALL THE SEEGSON “WORKING JOES” ON SEVASTOPOL. APOLLO ALSO OVERSEES ALL COMMUNICATIONS ON THE STATION. SO WHEREVER YOU ARE, YOU KNOW YOU’RE IN SAFE HANDS.

  Unable to help herself, Amanda burst out with a bitter chuckle. Then she continued her search, but if there were any working comms on the station, she hadn’t yet found one.

  Moving along the corridor, she reached a junction and turned right. Repeating this process several times, she moved deeper into the station. Nothing was working except for a few lights, and she wished she’d brought her toolbox with her. It was safely in a storage unit on Luna, however, along with her other possessions. She hadn’t brought anything except toiletries and clothes.