Exit Black by Joe Pitkin

Author:Joe Pitkin [Pitkin, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

CHAPTER

EIGHT

TEN MINUTES EARLIER

Dion was grateful, at least, that Roger Van Cleave had stopped hailing him over the communicators. Roger’s pleas for assistance—first affronted, then cajoling, finally pathetic—had distracted Dion during moments when his attention was needed elsewhere. It was a relief at last to hear nothing—no claxons, no whining.

Of all the unproductive emotions, Dion understood despair to be the most troublesome. It was a more tenacious passion even than anger and fear, those two instincts that he had spent a whole life weeding out of his character. Despair, though, was a feeling that committed a man to more stupidities than anger and fear put together. As Augustine had said somewhere, despair was the only unforgivable sin.

When he had found the Reckoners locked out of the bridge, his team’s key fobs deactivated, another team member dead, Dion had contended for a few moments with the same kind of despair that a chess player confronts when surprised by the loss of a rook. In silence he had had to remind himself, as he floated outside the bridge hatch with Nina and Vitaly, that many games of chess are won by players who are down a rook, notwithstanding that God generally favors the player with more rooks.

Most frustrating of all was that this endless wrangling with Chloe had been so unnecessary to begin with. He had not lied to her, at least not about what he would do if she surrendered: he had had no intention of killing her if she had laid down her weapons. Even now, he wouldn’t harm a hair on her head if she would simply let the Reckoners finish their business.

But there was no sense, he knew, in wishing for what might have been. Time to pick himself up and regroup. He had been so concerned about the Starliner before, when Chloe was holed up in the lab wing and could get to the shuttle more easily than they could. Intentionally or not, she had drawn the Reckoners out into a more vulnerable position with her antics. And now Chloe could get into a lot more mischief on the bridge than she could have done before, even in the lab wing. Even if Nina kept her pinned down there, she could⁠—

Could what? Dion wondered. Would the launch window for a rescue come any more quickly with Chloe on the bridge? Was she likely to decompress the whole station when there were hostages aboard? Did it matter that she had revoked their key access? Most doors on the rim could be forced open with a pry bar, and they had more than enough explosives to break open the security hatches separating the Reckoners from the Starliner. Their goals would be more difficult to accomplish after the loss of Meredith and the bridge, but hardly impossible.

He supposed that if she wanted to, Chloe could shut down the internet router to the rim from where she was. That would stop the transfer of wealth, alas. But Dion did his best to

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