by Sean Platt
“No.”
“Summoning medical attention.”
“Goddammit, don’t you call medical attention! I’m…” She looked around, panicked. “I’m fucking a girl in here!”
That didn’t make sense. It was illegal if said girl-fucking was being done for extortion, and either way it wasn’t the kind of thing a computer would understand. She waited, heart rate increasing.
“Please hold still for medical scan.”
Kate looked at the body. Then, unsure what else to do, leaped over and lay on top of it.
“I am having a difficult time discerning two distinct sets of personal statistics,” said the voice.
“Back off!”
“Please stand up.”
“Section 7! Section 7, you cocksucker! Secret shit going on in here, and you’re making my boner sag while I try to…”
“Confirm override.”
Kate stopped, Levy’s blood now soaking her shirt, and looked up.
“Sure. Confirm.”
Chirp.
“Now open the fucking door.”
The door slid open without ceremony. When it did, Kate became painfully aware that she was lying on the floor atop a dead body, her shirt bloody, visible to anyone passing by. This side of the depot wasn’t bustling with activity, and the other inspectors were mostly minding their own business, but still, this couldn’t look good.
She rolled off, shoved Levy under the table then reached back over to unbutton and remove his uniform shirt. Levy’s shirt had stayed relatively clean thanks to the way he’d only begun bleeding once he was horizontal, so once she’d freed it, she turned it inside out and pulled it on atop over her own shirt, hiding the blood stain. It was an odd fashion choice, but it would have to do.
Staying low and peeking out, Kate ducked through the door. She whispered to the handheld, “Close door,” then held the handheld toward the pickup and cringed while it repeated the command too loudly in Levy’s voice. But the place was somewhat noisy, and nobody looked over.
The door slid closed.
Now what?
The row of interrogation rooms ran along one wall of the larger, garage-type space that served as the inspection depot. The entire structure was domed so that inspectors could work without suits (and so travelers could get out if inspectors told them to), and there was a long entrance corridor far down to Kate’s right leading to an airlock. At the other end, also far down, was a set of guarded doors that were currently open, leading into the main bay where shuttles docked with the moon elevator. There were also conventional launch platforms in that direction, past airlocks into open-non-air courtyards.
Unfortunately, there was no subtle way to flee the moon.
Kate looked at the line of inspection booths (there were a dozen; she’d been in the last one), keeping her back flat to the wall. She moved to the side, trying to stay casual, until she was behind a pillar that ran from the concrete floor to an arch-like structure overhead. She peered around the pillar, trying to decide if anyone had spotted her…or, more on the nose, if anyone cared about her at all.
Nobody seemed to. Her shuttle was still docked beside Levy’s booth, now unlit by the red nanobot outlines. The stalls had walls between them, making all of the stalls visible from where Kate was standing but keeping them private from one another. Only a few of the other inspection areas were currently occupied, one of them holding a huge, mass-occupancy conveyance the size of a car from a bullet train. A bored-looking inspector was circling the conveyance, clearly just going through the motions. The others — including Booth 11, beside of her own — were empty. Kate could see a female inspector inside that one, reading something on a tablet.
She wondered if she could get her shuttle off after all. What had happened after the canvas had accepted her oddly pat request to delete her own record? It had seemed so willing to erase (or rather, to archive) her presence. She hadn’t just changed history to show that she had gone through inspection without tripping the alarm; she’d made the canvas forget she’d even gone through any inspection at all. That was great when framed around the whole murder thing, but how did it affect her appointment on the elevator? Could she simply get into the shuttle, drive it into the main depot, and allow the techs to dock her to the climber as planned?
The idea was tempting, but it was equally absurd. So far, Kate was quite literally getting away with murder. Given that any DNA she’d left in the room and stall would decay into anonymity, she might even continue to get away with murder if she could take her shuttle out of the equation. Records of her trip to and from the moon would exist in an archive somewhere, but her instincts told her it was unlikely that anyone would ever find them. Whatever “Sector 7” was sounded dark and shadowed — the kind of thing that might permit a federal employee to die under mysterious circumstances rather than open itself to scrutiny. Whatever Sector 7 access was, something in Kate’s bones told her that no one around here had it (other than to open the box and dump their erasable garbage inside, of course, as she and Levy had done)…even when someone turned up dead.
If she could solve the problem of her shuttle, she might end up as clean as a murdering and smuggling girl could get.
After a quick look around, Kate walked briskly toward Levy’s stall. The other inspectors didn’t so much as look up. She did see a few heads inside the large conveyance turn toward her, but they were only checking her out. It was annoying, but not troublesome. The more time Kate spent as Kate, the more she regretted Doc’s bonerified request to be made “hot like a devil’s kabob” during her refurb.
“This is a bad idea,” she muttered once she’d reached the shuttle. She opened the door and sat inside, placing her hands on the steering fork.
She sighed then looked behind her. A large metallic partition had risen behind the shuttle after she’d pulled into the bay, walling her in from behind. She could see past it, but there wasn’t room to try and get around or over it. The gate blocking her exit from the front, however, had opened. Probably when she’d given herself clearance.
She pulled forward, moving the shuttle into the merging corridor that led into the elevator depot with the feeling of a thousand eyes on her. From the edge of her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of Levy’s bloodstain, visible on her own shirt beneath the inspector’s co-opted uniform shirt. She really didn’t want to be stopped again.
There was nowhere to go, so moments later, she found herself entering the depot, passing the strip of carpet where the techs had harassed her on the way in. The monolithic elevator base rose from the chamber’s center, the airlock’s transparent roof doors closed on the ribbon with the climber docked floor-side. Techs were in the process of unmounting a large shuttle.
She looked at the dashboard and saw the time. It was 4:20. Under ordinary circumstances, it would be her turn next. She could drive to the climber now, park the shuttle, and wait for the techs to load her up. She still had the Lunis stashed in her concealed bays, and as far as she could tell, she hadn’t been officially caught.
Kate slowed then stopped entirely, blocking the corridor.
The elevator filled her front window. She was pushing it, arriving only fifteen minutes early, but they’d mount her easily in that time. She had a reservation, and could make it. She’d already passed inspection. With luck, she might be able to make the elevator as planned then let it fling her toward Earth like a rock from the end of a spinning sling. Maybe she’d dock on time, make her meetup, and get paid. That would be good because Omar’s man Jimmy had made a big fucking deal about the importance of this particular shipment.
It’s like a string of dominoes, he’d said. Some of our clients have gotten way too low on supply thanks to the paltry amounts we’ve been able to get back. We don’t want them to tip. This group starts to jones, and the other dominoes behind it will fall. Trust me, Kate, we’re going to be in some serious fucking shit if that particular string of dominoes starts slapping the deck.
Her trial s
hipments had indeed been paltry — and moondust withdrawal, she’d heard, was hell. Who exactly was depending on this shipment? What would happen if they went cold and got violent? Jimmy made it sound like this one was about more than keeping junkies in smiles, like the junkies were pillars holding a larger structure in place, and that if they faltered, the whole thing would collapse. One batch of shit crashing down upon another in a row.
The moon elevator was too open. It looked too easy.
“Just nudge it up there a bit more, old gal,” Kate said, glancing at her eyes in the small mirror mounted to the lead sun shield. “Let the boys in blue take over, and you’ll be home in no time, still holding the prize.”
But everything inside her was prickling alert. Doc, even after he’d made his fortune and had finally stopped needing to scrap for survival, had always lived by his wits. Kate’s wits were screaming murder — which, of course, was what she’d left behind in the interrogation room.
Nothing will happen. You’ve already passed inspection.
But in purging her records, Kate might have erased herself from the elevator schedule. And if she came in without a reservation, they might look her up to see what had gotten confused. They might want her to fill out another reservation then wait for Earthside approval. Or worse: they might notice that, according to records, she’d never officially arrived.
They wouldn’t simply inspect her if that happened. They’d open her Beam records wide, wondering how something so strange could have happened. And that, she felt sure, would be enough time for someone to realize that one of the inspector stalls was unmanned. Eventually, they’d find the body. Everyone in the area would be an immediate suspect — chief among them the woman with no official record who wasn’t even supposed to be on the rock.
Kate looked at the lunar elevator’s enormous base. Then her gaze crept to the right, toward one of the airlocks.
“I won’t go back to prison,” she muttered.
The shuttle’s canvas chirped.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she added.
She steered toward the airlock, passed it, and rolled onto the surface with the black ceiling of infinite space above. Then she turned a corner and pulled into a service lot filled with row after row of stalled and inoperable shuttles, rovers, and miscellaneous equipment. The lot was a step up from a junkyard, but it wasn’t a large step.
She found a cozy spot for the shuttle, donned her suit, and climbed out. She stepped back and looked at her vehicle, knowing she was leaving it to die. Maybe they’d find it, and maybe they wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter to Kate or Omar’s operation. The shuttle had a spoofed ID and, once purged, wouldn’t be traceable to her cover at Baris, her Digger Base connections, Jimmy or Omar, or Kate herself. Thanks to her self-destructing smuggler’s DNA, not even a fallen eyelash could give her away.
Peering around for onlookers, Kate slid a few pieces of scrap over the shuttle’s rear to hide it. A Beam camera might be watching, but there was nothing she could about that right now.
She took two steps back, watching her boots make permanent footprints in the gray lunar surface. Until someone swept them away or drove atop them, they’d stay there forever.
She should move on, but she found herself immobile, staring at the mostly concealed shuttle.
There were fifty meterbars of Lunis hidden in the holds. It was a fortune of merchandise, and enough to satisfy an army of junkies. But it wasn’t how many junkies her haul would serve that intruded on her mind as she stood looking at the shuttle’s bunkered rear. If the junkies in question were already low, a fifty meterbar shortage would mean a death sentence.
Trust me, Kate, we’re going to be in some serious fucking shit if that particular string of dominoes starts slapping the deck.
She hadn’t brought any of Ryu’s engineered tapeworms. There’d been no point. This wasn’t a body-hold operation. This was a mass operation, and even the fattest man couldn’t hold fifty meterbars inside a worm.
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she mumbled.
Kate walked back into the depot, doffed and stowed her suit, and headed for the train-car-sized conveyance she’d seen earlier. The passengers had disembarked for docking and were preparing to reload, huddled around the thing in a knot. It was a sizable group, but there was always room for one more.
She saw a man in a uniform cap. It was the conveyance’s driver, who would tally passengers as they boarded, and make sure his numbers matched.
Kate didn’t have a ticket. But did have a saleswoman’s smile and a few parts that the man in uniform would almost certainly want to see and touch.
“I’m not an intrepid reporter for nothing,” said Sam Dial, speaking to his cabled-up, anonymized laptop canvas. “You think I can’t figure out what’s going on here? I’m Clark Motherfucking Kent.”
Sam’s laptop didn’t respond. The arrow merely blinked where he’d left it, over the failed connection sniffer program he’d bought from Stefan at the cost of several favors to be redeemed in the future — surely at a time that was most manipulative for Stefan and equally inconvenient for Sam. Stefan knew that Sam was actually the Beam outlaw Shadow — an arrangement that proved to Sam that nobody should know a superhero’s secret identity. Stefan kept trying to get Sam to turn Shadow’s followers to work on his personal errands, as if they were a large concierge group rather than one of the most powerful (but faceless) forces in the NAU. Sam had told Stefan (the most crooked but oddly loyal son of a bitch in existence, who just so happened to also be his brother) in a moment of weakness, when he’d been short on payment for a Fi converter and had needed a good reason for Stefan to help him.
Stupid Stefan. Sam never should have said anything. It was a mistake to believe in anyone.
Sam stood then briskly brushed his arms with his opposite hands. It was a shivering sort of gesture, but Sam wasn’t at all cold. If anything, he was overly hot and moments from going shirtless. The ancient radiator heat had come on for no reason, and the apartment was sweltering. Sam guessed that the entire complex had one master set of controls. The superintendent had probably turned the heat up for some old biddy, and because the building was technically Directorate (Sam’s current spoofed ID was similarly Directorate), the heat would cost nothing. Sam didn’t like it. He was Enterprise through and through, but the only Enterprise-centric building in the area with a vacancy had come with Beam environmental controls. Sam had seen them when taking a tour and had immediately crossed the building off his list because baked-in Beam meant security leaks he couldn’t afford. What were the odds? None of the other ghetto buildings were that connected. The kingpins at the top acted like everyone had a full-suite canvas, but Sam, who’d scraped the gutter ever since leaving his reporter job, knew better. AirFi was everywhere, and you could pick up a signal whenever you wanted, but nobody’s walls or coffee tables were talking down here. This far below the line, furniture was just furniture. Wood was wood…and Plasteel, more often than not, was just old aluminum.
Exhibit Sam, rubbing his heavily tattooed arm, wondering if he should start walking around naked.
“Where are you, Costa?” he said aloud.
After breathing the four words into his empty apartment, Sam slumped into the chair beside the table. He always went to great pains to shield his connection and didn’t interact with The Beam in the ways most people did, using intuitive webs and voice commands. It made sense because if someone was surveilling you or if your room actually had Beam pickups, whatever you said aloud could give you away no matter how anonymized your connection was. But it all kind of fell apart if you talked to yourself or inanimate objects, as Sam constantly did. What’s he working on through that secure connection? a spy might wonder, rubbing his small spy’s goatee. And then Sam, thanks to his nervous ticks and habits, would come right out and announce the answers.
“Where are you, Ricardo Costa of Buena Vista, Maine?” he added loudly, attempting to cover his gaffe.
He wanted to slap himsel
f, suddenly more concerned that his Beam page’s followers (they called themselves “Null” and numbered in the millions) would see how stupid Shadow was in real life than that NPS or anyone else in power who would discover and arrest him.
Regardless, now that the non-fooled listeners who didn’t exist had been pacified by Sam’s vocal deflection, he clamped his mouth shut and returned his attention to the canvas screen where Stefan’s connection sniffer program was telling him it was unable to locate Nicolai Costa. Even though Sam had resolved to stay quiet, he knew he wouldn’t be able to. He was almost always alone, and silence made a mediocre companion. When your mind was as active as Sam’s, keeping all those bouncy thoughts inside was simply too hard. Sometimes, an intrepid reporter needed an out-loud medium as a kind of verbal scratch pad.
He stared at the screen and felt the burden of looking stupid effortlessly slip from his mind. Other things went with it, like the thought that he was hot, that he hadn’t eaten yet despite having been up for seven hours, and that his credit balance was again negative. The only thing in Sam’s world became the blinking arrow and the message: Connection not found.
It didn’t make sense.
Every structure had a weak spot. Sam thought he had found the Beau Monde’s weak spot — and, if he was lucky, the Ryan brothers’ weak spot as well. Nicolai didn’t appear to be Beau Monde (he didn’t have the trailing identifier on his Beam ID that Beau Monde usually had; Sam thought of it as a “get out of jail free” card even though those who had the identifiers probably didn’t even know they existed), but Nicolai was certainly on the cusp. Nicolai had access to at least three Beau Monde flag carriers that Sam had identified with the help of Null members. Once Shadow’s people (many of whom were hackers and all of whom spent an inordinate amount of time beneath the Beam’s surface, checking bolts and looking for leaks) had found the identifier, plucking the most privileged members from society became easy. All of the Ryans had it. Nicolai, who had far less security than true Beau Monde, worked with three people who had that famous last name. He had to be close to that secret upper class…and, if Sam was lucky, might just be the weak spot he needed to learn more about it.