River of Pain Read online

  “Boss…” Najit started, caution in his voice.

  Hansard rounded on the three structural engineers.

  “Get back, you idiots,” he said, waving them away. “Don’t you remember Processor Three?”

  On his comm he could hear the engineers inside the processor, shouting to each other—commands and profanities in a cocktail of panicked words.

  “You think it’s going to get worse?” Najit called.

  The ground continued to tremble. The quake was localized, but there was no way of knowing how long it would last. They’d surveyed this sector for eighteen months before beginning construction, with no sign of localized tremors.

  Until it was too late to stop.

  “It’s already bad enough,” Hansard barked.

  The processor gasped, and the hum inside it went silent, but its hull continued to tremble. A lull in the storm gave him a clearer view up the side of the machine, where he spotted a crack in the otherwise smooth metal, twenty feet off the ground.

  Shit!

  “Get out of there, now,” he shouted. “Nguyen! Mendez! Get—”

  Suddenly Hansard stopped, and stared down at his feet. The ground seemed to settle, and the tremor eased. He held his breath for several seconds until he felt sure it had ended. Not that it mattered.

  The processor might be repairable, but there was no point. The next tremor—a day or ten years from now—might destroy it altogether. This machine would have to be abandoned, just a metal hulk that they would scavenge for parts as they built one on ground they deemed more stable. On Acheron, however, they would never know for sure if any ground was stable enough.

  “Boss?” Najit said, coming to stand beside him.

  Hansard stared off into the storm, buffeted by the wind.

  Defeated.

  Whoever had given LV-426 its new name had recognized the absurdity of it all. In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron had been one of the rivers that wound through the netherworld. The word had a grim translation.

  River of Pain.

  3

  REBECCA

  DATE: 15 MARCH, 2173

  Russ Jorden stared at the beads of sweat on his wife’s forehead and felt a tightening in his heart. She squeezed his hand so hard he felt the bones grind together, and he could see that she was holding her breath, her face scrunched into a mask of fury and pain.

  “Breathe, Anne,” he pleaded. “Come on, honey, breathe.”

  Anne gasped and her whole body relaxed a moment before she pursed her lips and began to blow out long drafts of air. Her face had been pale for hours, but now she looked almost gray and the circles beneath her eyes were bruise-blue. She let her head loll to one side and her eyes pleaded with him to do something, though they both knew the best he could do was be at her side and keep loving her.

  “Why won’t she just get here?” Anne asked.

  “She’s all cozy in there,” Russ replied. “It’s warm and she can hear your heartbeat. It’s a big, scary universe out here.”

  Anne glanced down at her enormous belly, which had shifted dramatically lower in the past few hours. She frowned, her forehead etched with stern lines.

  “Come on out, baby girl. If you’re gonna be a part of this family, you’ve got to be courageous, and a little bit crazy.”

  Russ laughed softly, but he couldn’t give in to the humor of the words the way he normally would have. Anne had been in labor for seventeen hours, and for the past three, her cervix had been stuck at seven centimeters dilated and sixty percent effaced. Dr. Komiskey had given her drugs to jump-start the process, with a warning that forcing the uterus into action might amplify the usual pain of labor.

  Anne gave a deep groan, and her breathing quickened.

  “Russell…”

  “She’ll be here soon,” he vowed. “I promise.” Silently he added, C’mon, Rebecca. It’s time.

  The nurse came into the room as Anne gritted her teeth and arched her back, her entire body going tense. Russ held his breath along with her—seeing Anne in pain made him want to scream. He glanced over in panic and frustration.

  “Can’t you do anything for her, Joel?”

  The nurse, slender and dark, gave a sympathetic shake of his head.

  “I’ve told you, Russ. She wanted to go natural, the way she did with Tim. Now it’s too late to give her anything that would offer any significant relief. The painkillers she’s already taken are the best we can do without endangering the baby.”

  Anne swore at him. Joel moved to the bedside and put a hand on her shoulder as she began to breathe again, easing down from another contraction.

  “Dr. Komiskey will be here in a second to evaluate you again.”

  Russ glared at him. “And if she hasn’t progressed?”

  “I don’t want a cesarean!” Anne snapped between gasps.

  Joel patted her shoulder.

  “You know it’s perfectly safe. And if you’re worried about scarring—”

  “Don’t be stupid. C-sections haven’t left a scar since my grandmother was born,” Anne said breathlessly.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” the nurse replied. “For the sake of the baby—”

  Stricken, Anne turned to stare at him.

  “Joel, is there something wrong with the baby?”

  “Not now,” Joel said. “Everything we’ve seen looks perfectly normal, and all blood and genetic tests show a healthy child. But there can be complications if… Look, this is really something Dr. Komiskey should be talking to you about.”

  “Damn it, Joel, we’ve known you two years now,” Russ barked. “The colony’s not that big. If there’s something to worry about—”

  “No. Just stop,” Joel said, holding up a hand. “If you were on your own, you’d have something to worry about. But you’re not alone. You’ve got the med-staff looking out for you and your baby, and the whole colony waiting for the little girl to show her face.”

  Anne cried out and squeezed Russ’s hand again. He stared at his wife’s beautiful face, contorted with pain, and realized that one of the beads of moisture on her cheek wasn’t sweat at all, but a tear, and he knew they had let it go on too long.

  “Get Komiskey in here,” Russ snapped.

  “She’ll be here any—” Joel began.

  “Get her!”

  “Okay, okay.” Joel rushed from the room, leaving the Jordens alone with their fear and hope and a baby who didn’t seem to want to meet them.

  Worried silence fell between Russ and Anne. Exhausted, she used the low ebbs between the agonizing crests of her contractions to breathe and rest and pray that when Dr. Komiskey returned, her cervix would be fully dilated so that she could push the baby out.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered tiredly. “Tim took four hours from first contraction to last. And my back… God, my back didn’t hurt like this. What’s wrong?”

  Russ stared at the white smoothness of the monitors stationed above and beside the bed. If the baby went into distress, alarms would go off, but for the moment the monitors blinked green and blue and made no sound but a soft, almost musical hum. Beyond the monitors, quiet and dark, there stood a much larger machine, a huge unit with a mostly transparent hood.

  If Komiskey had to surgically remove the baby, she would move Anne into that unit. It wasn’t scarring that frightened Anne, but the idea that she would no longer be treated by human hands. The natal surgery unit would perform the C-section essentially by itself, and the thought terrified both of the Jordens. Humans might make errors, but at least they cared about the outcome. Machines did not understand consequences, or the value of life.

  “Did we make a mistake?” Anne rasped.

  Russ pressed a cold, damp cloth against her forehead.

  “Timmy was so easy,” he said. “We couldn’t have known it would be like this. Trying to deliver naturally made sense at the time.”

  “Not that,” his wife said, one hand fluttering weakly upward, moving her fingers as if she could e
rase his reply. “I mean coming to Acheron. To Hadley’s Hope.”

  Russ frowned. “We had no choice. There was no work at home. We were lucky to get the opportunity to work off-planet. You know—”

  “I do,” she rasped, and then she began to stiffen, hissing breath through her teeth as another contraction came on. “But having children… here…”

  The monitors flickered red, just for an instant, as Anne went rigid and roared in pain.

  “That’s it!” Russ snapped. He jumped from his seat, knocking the chair over behind him, and turned toward the door, but Anne would not release her grip on his hand. He turned to plead with her and saw that the monitor lights were all back to green. No alarms had sounded.

  He didn’t care. That one flicker had been enough.

  “Komiskey!”

  As he drew a breath to shout the doctor’s name again, Dr. Theodora Komiskey came breezing through the door, a squat woman with blue eyes and a mass of brown curls. Joel followed dutifully in her wake.

  “Let’s see how far we’ve come,” the doctor said, smiling and upbeat as ever.

  “Halfway across the fucking universe,” Russ growled.

  He despised the false cheer so many doctors wore like a mask, and wanted to scream the smile off Dr. Komiskey’s face, but that wouldn’t have done anything to help Anne or the baby. Instead, he could only stand there while the barrel-shaped woman pulled on a pair of medical gloves, perched on a stool, and reached up between Anne’s thighs, feeling around as if searching for something she’d lost.

  “I can feel her head,” Dr. Komiskey said, concern in her voice. “And now I understand the trouble. The baby’s presenting in the posterior position—”

  Russ felt his heart clench.

  “What does that mean?”

  Komiskey ignored him, addressing Anne instead. “She’s facing your abdomen, which means the back of her skull is putting pressure on your sacrum—your tailbone. The good news is that you’re fully dilated and effaced. Your baby is about to make her big debut as the adorable princess of Hadley’s Hope.”

  Russ hung his head. “Thank God.”

  “What’s…” Anne said, sucking in a breath. “What’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news is that it’s gonna hurt like hell,” Komiskey said.

  Anne shook with relief.

  “I’m ready when you are, Theo. Let’s get the little newt out of there.”

  Russ smiled. They’d been calling the baby that for months, imagining her growing from tiny speck to odd little newt to full-fledged fetus.

  “All right, then,” Dr. Komiskey said. “When the next contraction hits, you’re going to—”

  But Anne didn’t need to be told. She’d already given birth once. The contraction hit her and she shouted again, but this time her roar sounded less like a scream of pain and more like a battle cry.

  * * *

  Thirteen minutes later, Dr. Komiskey slipped Rebecca Jorden into her mother’s arms. Russ smiled so wide that his face hurt, his chest so full of love he thought it might burst. As Anne kissed the baby girl’s forehead, Russ touched her tiny hand and his infant daughter gripped his finger tightly, already strong.

  “Hello, little newt,” Anne whispered to the baby, and kissed her again. “Better be careful or that nickname’s gonna stick.”

  Russ laughed and Anne turned to smile at him.

  Newt, he thought. You’re a lucky little girl.

  * * *

  DATE: 2 APRIL, 2173

  When the new recreational center at the Hadley’s Hope colony opened, nobody bothered with anything as formal or old-fashioned as a ribbon cutting. Al Simpson, the colony’s administrator, unlocked the door and swung it open, and the party began. The Finch brothers brought some of their homemade whiskey, Samantha Monet and her sister had decorated the facility, and Bronagh Flaherty, the cook, put out a selection of cakes and cookies that she had made for the occasion.

  The star of the evening, however, was two-and-a-half-week-old Newt Jorden. Al Simpson stood in the corner of the main room and sipped at a mug of hot Irish coffee, watching the rest of the colonists take turns fussing over the baby girl.

  Swaddled in a blanket, cradled in her mother’s arms, she was a beautiful little thing, no question about that. As a rule, Al had no fondness for babies. More often than not they were crying, crapping machines and looked like shriveled, hairless monkeys. Not little Newt, though. He’d barely heard a peep out of her since the party began, and she had big lovely peepers that made her seem like a curious old soul gazing out from within a ruddy, healthy baby face.

  The Jordens’ boy, Tim, had been an infant himself when they first arrived on LV-426, but Newt was a reason for the whole colony to celebrate—the first baby actually born on Acheron. Al thought that if all of the colony’s future babies turned out like Newt, it wouldn’t be so bad having them around. But he had a feeling that Newt would be an exception, and that he wasn’t about to change his feelings toward newborns… or children in general, now that he thought about it.

  “Cute kid,” a voice said beside him.

  Al flinched, coffee sloshing out of his mug. He swore as it burned his fingers and quickly switched the mug from his right to left hand.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he said as he shook the coffee droplets from his fingers, and then blew on them.

  “Damn, Al, I’m sorry about that,” Greg Hansard said, wincing in sympathy.

  Al shook his fingers again, but the pain had started to fade.

  “Good thing I put a good dollop of Irish cream in there,” he said. “Cooled it down a bit.”

  Hansard smiled. “Well, now, if you’re not badly burned you might just have to show me where you’re hiding that bottle.”

  Al didn’t really want to share, but Hansard was the colony’s chief engineer, and always good company. He supposed he could spare a few ounces of his private stock.

  “I might be persuaded,” he said, taking a long sip from his mug. Before he troubled himself to get Hansard a cup, he wanted to drink his own coffee while it was still hot. “You’re right, though. The Jorden kid is kind of adorable. I don’t know where she gets it, considering the parents.”

  Hansard uttered a dry laugh.

  “They are pretty scruffy.”

  Al grinned, hiding the smile behind his cup as he glanced around. He had always been a man full of opinions, but the colonists were all stuck with each other and it would complicate relationships around Hadley’s Hope if the colonial administrator started talking shit about people behind their backs. On the other hand, it wasn’t Anne Jorden’s wild, unruly curls that irritated him, or the fact that Russ always looked as if he’d had too much to drink the night before.

  “Wildcatters are pretty much always scruffy, aren’t they?” Al said quietly.

  “They’re trouble, is what they are,” Hansard replied. He nodded toward the cluster of people still cooing and ahhing over the baby. Otto Finch had crouched down to talk to young Tim, the Jordens’ son, and had handed him some kind of furry doll. “Nice enough people, the Jordens. But I worry about the boy.”

  Al frowned, turning to him. He didn’t like the sound of that.

  “What do you mean?”

  Hansard grimaced, brows knitted as if already regretting that he’d spoken.

  “Greg, you brought it up,” Al said. “I’m the administrator. I can’t let it go. If you think there’s a problem—”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘problem.’”

  Al glanced over at the Jordens again. Father and mother looked tired, but they both were smiling happily, so proud of their little family. They were surveyors employed by the colony, but like half of the survey team, they moonlighted on the side as wildcatters—prospectors—searching sectors of the planetoid’s surface for mineral deposits, meteor crash sites, and other things of interest to the company. The colony’s Weyland-Yutani science team used prospectors to retrieve soil and mineral samples, and to map out section
s of the planet. The excursions were often very dangerous.

  “It’s not just that the lifestyle is crazy,” Hansard said thoughtfully. “Yeah, colonists are going to have kids. That’s the nature of what we’re doing here. But wildcatting is risky, and Anne and Russ don’t seem to recognize the dangers involved. Bad enough for most of them—who’s going to raise their kids if something goes wrong? And the Jordens… well, they take it a step further, don’t they? Just today, Russ took Tim out with him in the tractor, prospecting ten kilometers north.”

  Al stared at him. “You’re sure of this?”

  Hansard nodded. “I don’t want to start something. Not tonight, anyway. But the kid’s not safe out there. I’ve been in more of the damn atmo-storms than anyone, and if the tractor gets stuck…”

  Al held up a hand.

  “I’m with you, but there’s no rule against it. I’ve mentioned it to several of the prospectors before, but they look at it the same way farmers do—it’s a family business, and if they take their kids out into the fields, they’re just teaching them for the future, giving them a sense of proprietorship.”

  “That’s idiotic.”

  “I didn’t say I agreed with them.” Al scratched the back of his neck, suddenly feeling tired. “I blame Weyland-Yutani, if you want to know the truth.”

  Hansard arched an eyebrow.

  “Dangerous opinion, Al. Talk like that can cost your job.”

  “We’re floating on a desolate rock where they’re trying to seed a little civilization. I don’t think they’re gonna care what I say as long as I do my job. And since when are you so in love with the company?”

  “I’m not,” Hansard admitted. “But I’m well paid, and when I leave here—when all the work is finally done—I’m hoping to get an easier assignment. Hell, since my first day on Acheron I’ve been wondering who I pissed off to end up here.”

  “Maybe they just had faith in you. Obviously not an easy job, trying to make this place livable.” Al sipped his mug again, letting the coffee warm him and the alcohol loosen him up. No matter how high they set the heat inside the colony buildings, he still felt cold. Just too damn far from the sun, he thought.