Prime Deceptions

by Valerie Valdes

  Mala, meanwhile, was still hissing at the xana guards like she was a tiger instead of a calico. Eva was astonished that none of them had punted her into the ocean yet.

  “Get in the damn backpack, comemierda,” Eva snapped at Mala.

  “Miau,” Mala replied, trotting over to wind around Eva’s legs instead.

  “Madre de dios, you’re so fucking stubborn,” Eva said. She reached down to grab the cat, tucking her under one arm like a furry sportsball. Mala writhed in protest before apparently settling into a sufficiently comfortable position to allow the great indignity to proceed.

  “Nara,” Eva said, “can you get Pink to the top platform?”

  “Claro,” Nara replied, “but you’re not paying me to.”

  “Me cago en diez, can you do one single thing pro bono? Just this once?”

  “Nope,” Nara said, firing off a plasma ball at an incoming Pod Pal. “But if you’re going to do something that will make my job easier or more successful . . .”

  Eva hesitated. “Possibly?”

  Nara barked out a laugh. “You’re worse at telling the truth than you are at lying. Good enough, though.” She sidled over to Pink, a lazy but powerful punch picking off an approaching xana in the process.

  “You ready to go?” Nara asked Pink.

  “What, you’re going to carry me like a cat?” Pink asked, gesturing at Mala.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Give me your arm.”

  Pink shouldered her sniper rifle and offered Nara her arm. Nara crouched slightly and, in a series of motions almost too fast for Eva to follow, tossed Pink over her shoulder. Pink yelped and began to cuss Nara and Eva out smooth as butter, which Nara ignored and Eva snorted at. Pink’s cussing intensified as Nara took a running leap off the edge of the pod toward the next one up, easily twenty meters away, landing with a grace and ease that gave Eva a twinge of envy.

  It also reminded her of Vakar, which she absolutely didn’t have time for. She wished he were there with her, but that was life. She hoped he and Min were fine. They had to be.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” Eva said. She grabbed a cable pulley from one of the unmoving xana guards lying nearby and detached it from his harness. It was different from ones she’d used herself, but close enough that she was able to get it attached to the cable with little fuss. She yanked her anchor line from her belt and looped it through the carabiner-like hook for safety, then held Mala up so she could look the cat in her hazel eyes.

  “Last chance to get in the backpack,” Eva said.

  “Miau,” Mala replied, as if offended.

  “Fucking cats,” Eva muttered. Tucking Mala back under her arm, she activated the pulley.

  The device wrenched her up along the cable toward the next pod, and Eva was glad she’d used her anchor line because she almost lost her grip immediately. She moved more quickly than she expected, but still slow enough to attract the attention of guards and Pod Pals both. More than once she had to twist out of the way to avoid a shot or swipe, but by the time she reached the rooftop of the next pod, Pink had apparently convinced Nara to put her down long enough to take a few shots to cover Eva’s approach.

  Jei and Sue, meanwhile, continued their own leisurely rise on Jei’s dog-bot. Interestingly, no robots were attacking them—Josh’s doing, perhaps? Which suggested he had some control over the Pod Pals being launched at the resistance. Eva filed that information away for a time when she wasn’t actively avoiding a fall to her death.

  One cable at a time, one building at a time, Eva and her feline stowaway ascended the cliffside laboratory complex. The wind continued to whip at her when the robots didn’t, and her arm burned from the exertion, despite the anchor line helping offset some of her weight. She made another mental note to add more pull-ups to her workout routine.

  I should start making actual notes, she thought, because I’m never going to remember all this shit.

  Finally, Eva was only one cable away from the platform at the top. Jei and Sue hovered nearby, while Nara and Pink waited for Eva to detach the pulley mechanism and switch it to the new cable.

  “The shield is still up,” Nara observed.

  “It sure is,” Eva said, turning to Sue. The engineer’s expression was hidden by her opaque isohelmet, but her posture was nervous. “What’s up with Josh?” Eva asked over private comms.

  “He’s worried,” Sue replied. “He says there are too many of us.”

  Eva eyed Jei and Nara and sighed. “How many is too many?”

  “He’ll let me in with one other person, but that’s it.”

  And he couldn’t have said that five minutes ago? Eva thought. Madre de dios.

  “Fine,” Eva said. She detached the pulley from her anchor line and gestured for Sue to come over. “Use this to get up, and Jei will stay here.”

  “What are you doing?” Jei asked immediately.

  “We can’t all go inside,” Eva said. “Not yet. But the rest of you can wait here and we’ll figure out how to get all the shields down for good.”

  “Will you, now,” Nara said. She raised her arm cannon and aimed it at Eva, who froze. Another flashback threatened to overcome her, send her to her knees—the same gun, the same posture, Eva staring down that barrel with the certainty that it was the last thing she’d ever see.

  Then Nara shifted to shoot a guard sneaking up behind Eva, his stun baton clattering against the roof of the pod as he fell. Eva exhaled so hard it gave her a brief pang of dizziness.

  “This better not be a trick,” Jei said, but he made no move to stop her. That was about as much trust as Eva was likely to get from him in a lifetime, she figured, and hopefully it would be enough.

  “Pink, stay with them, please,” Eva said, once she found her voice again. “We’ll be back.”

  Pink held out her hand, and Eva took it. Several snaps, slaps and a hip-bump later, Eva climbed onto the top of the pulley mechanism and activated her gravboots, while Sue clung to the device’s grips with all her strength. Mala was uncharacteristically silent and still, but her pupils were fully dilated and she had extended her claws in a futile attempt to grip Eva’s puncture-proof spacesuit.

  “Go,” Eva told Sue, and Sue activated the pulley. They shot up the cable, Eva fighting to stay vertical as the wind continued to blow. They came to a landing on a tiny extension of the platform, and without further ado, a hole in the shields opened to allow them access.

  Unlike the other parts of the facility, which were entirely enclosed, this was a large, open area like a sports facility. There were markings on the floor, a combination of concentric circles and lines intersecting them, as well as a rectangle surrounding them, and platforms on either end like the kind that might hold referees or players. The whole place was partially covered by an arcing roof jutting out from the cliffside, with an array of holoscreens and electronics underneath, currently being monitored by a few xana. A wall of shelving held at least a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty capsules like the ones used to contain the Pod Pals.

  That is a lot of damn robots, Eva thought.

  A single, gray-haired human in a green lab coat and goggles stood nearby, and immediately started running toward them once they’d passed through the shield. Eva raised an eyebrow, then pulled out her pistol warily. The man slowed, raising his hands and smiling. It was a cocky smile, a dimple-cheeked asymmetrical smile, meant to be disarming and probably very successful at parties, but Eva was walking an emotional tightrope and too busy maintaining her balance to be charmed.

  “I, uh, thought you weren’t with the rebels,” he said. He looked back and forth between her and Sue.

  “Our goals aren’t mutually exclusive,” Eva said. “Joshua Zafone, I presume.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Josh said. Now that he was closer, it was clear he was taller than Sue by at least a quarter meter, and younger than Eva despite his hair color. But their features were similar, and his fingers were twitching like Sue’s did when she was anxious, even if he seemed to b
e hiding it better otherwise.

  “We’re here to ask for your help,” Eva said.

  “Right, okay,” Josh replied. “But let me ask you something first: Why are you carrying a cat?”

  Chapter 21

  The Power That’s Inside

  Eva resisted the urge to put Mala down, la muy cabrona, who purred at being acknowledged. “She insisted on coming. We don’t have time for long explanations. I’ve been hired to bring you to a secret project in another galaxy, and you’re the only one who can help it succeed, because you’re the only one with the skills and information they need.”

  Josh laughed again, and again Eva was struck by how he was probably a hit with his fellow science types. He was certainly infinitely less punchable than Miles Erck so far.

  “That’s very flattering,” Josh said. “But I already have a job, as you can see.” He gestured at the xana behind him, who were operating a bunch of equipment Eva didn’t recognize or understand. Then he turned to Sue, who had been standing as still as a statue since they arrived.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked her. “How did you find me?”

  “I . . .” Sue cleared her throat. “The piggy bank.” Her voice was raw, like she was struggling to speak through tears.

  “Sugar snacks, I should have known,” Josh said, scowling and snapping his fingers. He quickly raised his hands again, glancing at Eva’s pistol.

  Eva snorted. Sugar snacks. Yeah, definitely Sue’s brother.

  Before she could cut in with more about how she needed him to go with her, Sue stepped forward, trembling with what Eva realized was rage.

  “How could you?” Sue shouted. “All this time, you were here, and not . . . not . . .” She sniffled, and Eva mentally willed her not to deactivate her isohelmet to wipe the snot no doubt forming.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Josh said, shrugging. “It seemed like the safest thing for all of us. If you had seen where The Fridge was keeping me—”

  “I was there!” Sue shouted. “I was at their base! I saw the labs, and the cryo storage, and the big Proarkhe artifact, and—”

  “Wait, you what?” Josh frowned, lowered his hands and pointed at Sue. “How did you . . . What were you doing there?”

  “Hi, that was me,” Eva said, waving with her free hand. As she did, she realized she shouldn’t have a free hand; she was no longer carrying Mala, who was trotting cutely toward the wall of Pod Pal capsules. Eva mentally cursed, but she couldn’t leave Sue alone now.

  “I’ve been trying to find you,” Sue said, her voice cracking. “I robbed a bank for you, to pay your ransom. Do you know how many Fridge people I’ve . . .”

  Killed, Eva thought, when Sue couldn’t finish the sentence. It was a nonzero number, starting at the very Fridge base Sue was talking about now. Pink had spent weeks helping Sue deal with it afterward.

  “Oh, no,” Josh said. “No, no, don’t tell me they were making you pay, too. I thought I was earning my own freedom by working for them voluntarily, under excessive NDAs of course.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re fucking liars,” Eva said. “And speaking of The Fridge, if you really want to screw them over, trust me when I say you want to come meet the people we’re working for.”

  Josh waved his hands dismissively. “No, see, I’m already doing that here.” He gestured at the wall of capsules, his expression hard. “Once these are distributed throughout the universe, I’ll have the most advanced surveillance system ever created. I’ll be able to find Fridge agents wherever they’re hiding, and—” He paused. “Well, let’s say it won’t be very nice.”

  Eva thought of the exploding recycler and considered how very not nice indeed that would be. “Does your boss know what you want to do?” Eva asked.

  Josh gave a nasty laugh. “She has more creative ways of ruining people with whatever we get from our psychic traces, and that’s fine by me. Might as well make some money from the trash who wrecked my life.”

  “You should have told us!” Sue shouted, throwing a wild punch at her brother. It glanced off his arm, but Eva had been helping Sue practice, so it sent Josh stumbling backward, clutching himself in surprise.

  “Hey, ouch!” he exclaimed. “I was busy with other stuff. Take it easy!”

  “Take it easy?” Sue replied. “I’ll give you easy!” She kicked him in the shin, and he hopped on one foot, scowling.

  One of the xana monitoring the holoscreens had stopped and was staring at them, the faintest of concerned psychic emanations coming from their general direction. They apparently hadn’t noticed Mala, though, as she was clambering up onto a random piece of equipment.

  “Sue, hey, we’re attracting attention,” Eva said. “We don’t have much time here, and if we leave without Josh, we don’t get paid.”

  “I just . . . I . . .” Sue stuttered, then shouted, “Shit on ten!” She threw up her arms and turned around. One of her bots climbed out of her backpack and patted the back of her neck awkwardly.

  Eva stalked closer to Josh, who once again raised his arms. “Listen, mijo,” Eva said. “There are other people out there trying to stop The Fridge, and more importantly, doing super-weird science that they need your help with. Something to do with what you stole from the Fridge base when you escaped. So I need to drag your happy little culo back to them, and you can all sort out whatever it is that’s such a big fucking deal that they’d pay me truly exciting amounts of money for. Do we understand each other?”

  Josh blinked. “Not really?”

  Eva huffed out a breath. “What were you working on for The Fridge, and what did you steal from them when you left?”

  “Information, mostly,” Josh said. “I was working on reproducing . . . technology the Proarkhe used.”

  Eva thought of the energy source inside the Pod Pals again, which was the same as the Gate-creating cannons she’d found at the Fridge base, and the strange ruins where she’d found Vakar after she escaped cryostasis. “Technology they used to make super-dense portable energy cubes, maybe?” Eva guessed.

  Josh flinched. “Yes, that, among other things.”

  Mierda, mojón y porquería. That was a hell of a tech to add to the universal pool. It was wild enough that energy sources existed that could power FTL drives, but ones that could power a Gate, to open a hole from one end of the universe to the other? A lot of people would pay a lot of credits—or kill a lot of other people—to get their respective appendages on something like that.

  Not to mention that, by BOFA law, it was incredibly illegal. If her mom found out, Josh and everyone else working on this project would be toast. Garilia might even be ejected from BOFA, depending on how things shook out.

  Ah, politics, Eva thought. Where all the players are assholes and all the prizes are bullshit.

  “And you were working with Miles Erck?” Eva asked, eager to avoid that trail of thought.

  “Yes, and Emle Carter,” Josh replied. He was looking more skittish by the moment, less self-assured, his fingers wagging almost uncontrollably. “Look, I’m sorry you came all this way for whoever is paying you, but I’m not leaving.” He shot a stricken look at Sue, who still wasn’t facing him. “You have to understand. Lashra is keeping me safe from The Fridge, and my work here is too important.”

  “I am pleased to hear you say so, Joshua,” a voice chimed in, psychic authority emanating from its source. Lashra Damaal strolled across the platform, her loose clothing billowing in the wind, pale as starlight. She was flanked by four Watchers, including Rakyra, as well as several Attuned.

  Behind her, in restraints, marched Pink, Nara, Jei, and Sapri, along with three of the xana resistance members who had been breaking into the first lab pod. Hopefully that meant the others had escaped, unless they had been apprehended as well and left below. Either way, Eva’s stomach sank like a rock in the sea.

  “I am less pleased to see the Hero of Garilia engaged in such violent, clandestine activities,” Damaal continued, drifting toward Eva, as tall and impo
sing as ever.

  “I’m nobody’s hero,” Eva said bitterly. “Certainly not Garilia’s.” She still held her pistol, but she didn’t dare use it, and the Watchers seemed to know that implicitly.

  “Truly, this is not an age of heroes, is it?” Damaal asked, pacing a slow circle around Eva. “Ours is an age of information. Of knowledge and secrets. It is said that a thing which is not done in the Light should not be done at all, and yet there are so many dark corners of the universe in which dark deeds are done. Is that not so?”

  “Cierto,” Eva muttered. “I’m looking at some right now.”

  Damaal emanated a shimmer of amusement. “Ah, but you misunderstand. This project is intended to illuminate rather than obfuscate. With our robotic Attuned, we will be capable of shining a light on all those dark corners, that the secrets they hold may no longer be hidden.” She made a small gesture with her tail toward the wall of capsules, and Eva stilled.

  Mala was over there. What was she doing? Pawing at some console, it looked like. Probably one that controlled the Pod Pals they’d been deploying against the rebels this whole time, given all the capsules nearby.

  Sure enough, one of the capsules opened and, in a flash of light, a robotic Attuned appeared. It looked like a spiky armadillo with giant claws, but since it hadn’t been given any orders, it just sat there silently and didn’t move.

  If the Watchers were monitoring their pings or private comms, Eva was probably screwed, but she had to take the chance. “Sue,” she said, “can you still do the thing you were doing earlier with one of the bots?” She hoped Sue knew what she meant without asking.

  Sue, who had been frozen since Damaal arrived, clenched her hands into fists. “Captain, from up here, I can do it to all of them at once.”

  A slow smile stretched the scar on Eva’s face. If she could somehow get Mala to open all the capsules at the same time . . .

  “What precisely is it you intend to do?” Damaal asked. “You will forgive my intrusion, of course. The devices Joshua modified are very adept at reading thoughts, but are not always capable of translating them perfectly.”