Valhalla Station

by Chris Pourteau

  She should call him. Find out if he was okay. Edith engaged her sceye and inhaled a breath to execute a search query. The cursor on the query screen pulsed, awaiting her command.

  The words seemed reluctant to come.

  Was he alive or dead? And which would she rather be true? He hadn’t attempted contact to let her know he was all right. Maybe he was dead. His body frozen in space, spinning to infinity.

  Edith knew what she should want to be true. Luther was her husband. Bound together by God and law, he was the man she’d chosen for herself. Without him, she’d be—

  Free.

  The lightness in her heart rode the back of that thought easily, then quickly crumbled into shame. It must be the fatigue. Her thoughts weren’t her own. Desiring Luther dead, well, that was—

  Justice?

  Stop it! Just, stop!

  Edith leaned against a cabinet. She was just tired. That was all. She wasn’t thinking straight. She’d be free, yes, but not like that. Edith had a plan. She just needed to be patient, work the plan. Luther was fine—he had to be fine. If she found out he was dead now, the superstitious part of her would wonder if she’d somehow willed the dark fantasy into reality.

  She stared at the flashing cursor, mustering the courage to—what?

  “Contamination event. Possible pathogen released. All station personnel, alert.”

  The Klaxon erupted. The alert repeated. Medical personnel began to stir, cursing their interrupted sleep.

  Krystin moaned on the floor, starting to rise. “What the fuck else can go wrong today?”

  Edith blinked, closing the query screen.

  “Come on,” Estevez said, eyelids struggling to open. There was a plastic imprint on his left cheek from the console. “We’re not done yet.”

  Chapter 14

  Stacks Fischer • En Route to Rabh Regency Station

  “Does it always take this long?” I asked.

  “A man your age must ask that a lot.”

  I gave Smith an eat-shit look and returned to gazing over Callisto as we ascended. The space elevator moved slowly as hell. Another example of low-grade tech in the boonies. The elevator connecting Earth to SynCorp HQ was specially outfitted with inertial compensators, it rose so fast.

  Smith cleared her throat. “Extra safety protocols,” she said, deciding to be helpful after all. “Something like that happens out here…” She gestured toward the ring. It was elegant, a state-of-the-art work of art, a tribute to man’s technical achievement: an orbiting, habitable football circling Callisto, complete with a maglev train for quick access, one side to the other. Badmouthing the boonies aside, the ring was an impressive sight.

  “It’s beyond rare,” Smith said, her eyes locked on the part of the ring no longer pristine. There were work crews still separating ring metal from shuttle hull.

  “The orbital ring?” I said. “The one over Earth is—”

  “Accidents,” she corrected me. “We’re so far away from any real help—our maintenance schedules are aggressive. We have three spare parts in storage for anything that might need fixing. Training is matrixed, so if the chief engineer gets pneumonia, the next guy in line can take up the slack. Our redundancies have redundancies.”

  “So, security is in oh-shit mode,” I said.

  “Something like that.” Her tone was reflective, almost vulnerable. We were becoming buds.

  “Sounds like a well-oiled machine.”

  “The corporate machine is all,” she mumbled, translating the usual Latin of the Syndicate Corporation motto. Smith sounded more like a pragmatist than a true believer. That was interesting enough to file away.

  The elevator slowed, if that was possible, and I decided the sluggish speed of ascent had been an optical illusion. The dull-brown pockmarks of Callisto’s surface spread out below. In the vastness of space, it’s hard to focus on things very far away because distance is so great and most bodies so small. But Callisto was impressive through the window, one inch of life-preserving plastisteel. That particular Erkennen invention was as much responsible for mankind being out here as the Frater Drive or gravity generators. Seeing the vastness of space every day? Well, there’s something that’ll make you dream of bigger things.

  The elevator paused. Hydraulics worked to stabilize the lift. Seals sealed. I imagined—given Smith’s description of the extra precautions after the accident—a computer program running a double and triple check before opening the door.

  “Home sweet home,” Smith said.

  When it did open, the relative quiet of the lift vanished. Personnel bustled about Regent Adriana Rabh’s castle-in-the-sky. Smaller than SCHQ (of course), it was the Texas-sized belt buckle of Callisto’s orbital ring. I suspected on a normal day station natives would be a bit less hurried, though Regent Rabh’s appreciation for efficiency would never have embraced a leisurely work pace. The staff and upper crust of Regency Station got to look down on the rest of Callisto and its squatters—literally. Only an idiot would take that for granted.

  “Come on,” Smith said, “this way.”

  I followed her into the bustle. Despite their own hurry, people made way. When you’re the lead enforcer for the richest faction leader in the solar system, folks tend to give you a wide berth. I know because I enjoy the same respect aboard SCHQ. But out here, I doubted anyone recognized me, especially done up like a grunt from a scooper ship.

  A few lift switches inside the station to get us to the tippy-top, and we were walking through Adriana Rabh’s outer office. Adriana’s bulldog at the front desk glanced up, saw it was Smith, and went back to whatever he’d been doing at his terminal. I almost stumbled when we walked into the Queen Bee’s office—we’d entered a rainforest, complete with the ambient sounds of animals and reptiles and chirp-chirp-chirping insects. Adriana had her office walls skinned like an Amazonian jungle.

  The Bosswoman looked up.

  “Well, as I live and breathe,” she said.

  “Still doing both, I see,” I replied. Adriana Rabh had been ancient when I still had hair on the top of my head. And that was a while ago.

  “Eugene Fischer, you sonofabitch,” she continued. She smiled, and it seemed genuine. “Daisy claimed it was you, but I had to see it with my own eyes.”

  “Daisy?” I took a seat across from Adriana. For a regent, she kept a plain office, if you didn’t count the expensive tech wetting the walls with fake rain. I’d always assumed Adriana’s affinity for Spartan accommodations was a pretension of the rich who claim they got that way by being frugal.

  Adriana nodded briefly at Smith, who’d kept her feet and settled herself with her back to a wall full of 3D human-sized ferns. Like a good guard dog should. The one-hundred-eighty degrees of her forward view were filled with Adriana and me. She had her hands behind her back, close to her weapons. She’d checked off all the boxes you do when your boss might be in danger.

  “Your name’s Daisy?” I asked. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “Glass houses, Eugene,” Daisy said.

  Touché.

  “Daisy Smith?”

  “Daisy Brace.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want to whip it out and see whose is bigger?” Adriana asked, impatience in her eyes. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s Daisy’s.”

  I winked at Daisy. “I’m pretty sure you’re right.”

  Any one-hundred-ten-pound woman who killed for hire for Adriana Rabh and had the guts to go by Daisy—well, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to tangle with that, pants on or off. Caution is a virtue I’ve tried to perfect.

  “Good, then we can get down to business,” Adriana said, leaning forward. “Tony sent you here. Why?”

  “Why, Adriana, whatsoever do you mean? I just came to visit. Take in the Callistan nightlife. Maybe fly a glider on Titan—”

  “Dressed as an atmo-miner?” Daisy said. “You should do a dress rehearsal for lying. You don’t ad-lib well.”

  I gave her broad smile. “Maybe I’m no
t trying.”

  Adriana held up a hand. “Stacks, it’s been a long time. But I recall your service to me fondly.”

  “I’m touched,” I said, “considering I failed.”

  It wasn’t as smarmy as it probably sounds. I have a fond place in my heart for Adriana Rabh. Our previous association had been a failure, but it set my life on a certain course, gave me a certain code to live by. And kill by. Meanwhile, she’d built a financial empire that fuels the Company’s economic engine. And she’d been fiercely loyal to Tony and the SynCorp power structure for three decades. Dependable. Hard as nails. A no-nonsense kind of gal.

  Adriana stood and walked round the desk. I kept my seat. Daisy stood up off the wall, more ready to move if she had to. Another checkbox in the good category. When Adriana sat on the edge of her desk in front of me, her silk dress settling around her still-alluring curves, I considered falling in love with her again. Power is a perfect enhancement to beauty.

  “I don’t expect you to betray Tony’s confidence,” she said. “I wouldn’t insult you by tempting you to do that.”

  Too late.

  “Appreciate that,” I said.

  “But that shuttle crashing into the ring on the same day you arrive on Callisto…” She swept a fold of her gown from one leg to the other, revealing a long calf. Adriana was in her eighties, but her calf seemed to have missed the memo by forty years or so. Maybe the new troubleshooter implants really could give the middle finger to growing old. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” she said.

  No wonder you and Tony get along so well.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Tony didn’t tell me you were coming, which means he didn’t want me to know. You’re dressed like an atmo-miner, which means you’re undercover.”

  An amused grunt sounded from the rainforest. Adriana held up her hand again, and Daisy resumed her adopted profession of observant gargoyle.

  “I doubt Tony is moving against me,” she said, searching my face to see if kicking over that particular rock revealed a nugget of anything. Apparently satisfied it hadn’t, she continued, “But that wouldn’t make much sense. He knows the Company’s profit margin is maxed when the rudder is steady.”

  I nodded. That was Tony’s unwritten rule, and all the faction heads knew it. An even keel is good for business.

  “I can tell you that I’m not here to assassinate you,” I said. Daisy tensed behind me. I might even have a stunner pointed at the back of my head by now. Instant electric chair. “I said, I’m not here to assassinate your boss.”

  “I heard what you said,” Daisy said. Now I was sure there was a stunner pointed at my head.

  Again Adriana raised a placating hand. “Put it away, Daisy. This man can’t kill me.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” warned the woman being paid to keep Adriana alive.

  “I don’t kill women,” I said, turning to stare at the business end of Daisy’s stunner.

  It’s true. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not some throwback chivalry or some contemporary inverse misogyny. I’d killed a woman once, a long time ago. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake. Things like that stick in your craw, even when you do what I do for a living. I’d made it a rule now, not killing women, so I’d never make that particular mistake again. Now, paying someone else to kill them … well, there’s principle and then there’s business.

  “Well,” said Daisy, sounding unconvinced but more relaxed, “you could’ve led with that.”

  “Stacks,” Adriana said, leaning toward me. Her face, elegant in its lines, her silver-gray hair full and flowing like the mane of a lioness, the old-fashioned cameo hanging in the air over her still-distracting cleavage. The cameo was embossed with the profile of an ancient woman who looked Egyptian. I remembered Adriana had a thing for Isis, the sky goddess. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  “First,” I said, tracing the profile of Isis with my eyes, “why was Daisy on the Promise if you didn’t know I was coming? What was so important that you sent your personal bodyguard to Earth?”

  Adriana sat back. Isis rested, content, against her breastbone again. “There’s a new drug problem,” she said. “It’s starting to impact production here. New drugs always come from Earth. Always. I sent Daisy to try and discover its origin.”

  “It’s not a drug,” I said. “It’s an algorithm.”

  “I know that now, thanks to Daisy,” Adriana said, rising and returning to her seat behind her smartdesk. She swiped left and up to project a schematic of the SCI. Next to the implant scrolled some tech gobbledygook that was complex enough to solve the secret of the universe. “On the market it’s called Dreamscape.”

  “Okay.”

  Marketing!

  Daisy decided to join the conversation. “Programmers sell it. Once installed, it drowns the user in a sea of their own endorphins.”

  “Hackheads,” I said.

  “What?” Adriana said.

  “Users are called hackheads. Maybe someone was high on hack when that shuttle crashed.”

  The room was quiet for a moment while three brains turned over that idea.

  “Maybe,” Adriana allowed. “But back to my question, Stacks. Why are you here?”

  “The pirates operating out of the Belt.”

  Adriana’s eyes narrowed. Even the troubleshooter couldn’t cure crow’s feet, I guess.

  “Pirates?” she said.

  You know those moments when you have a split second to make a decision before appearing to do it? In one word, Adriana had claimed ignorance of the topic. But something in the way she’d said that word pirates sounded off. Nervous. Like she hadn’t run through one of Daisy’s suggested dress rehearsals for lying. I filed that away.

  “Small, almost immeasurable amounts of fusion fuel are being leeched off the tankers before they reach the inner system,” I said, deciding transparency was my best strategy. “I’m here to shut them down.”

  “Why didn’t Tony inform me of this?” Adriana demanded.

  I shrugged.

  “He thinks I’m involved?”

  I shrugged again. Daisy was back on alert.

  “To my knowledge? No,” I said.

  Adriana seemed to make a quick decision. “I have a request.”

  I opened my hands.

  “Maybe there’s a link between the pirates and the ‘accident’ over Callisto, too. You and Daisy work together. Start with the pirates.”

  “I work alone,” I said.

  My voice had a slightly higher register shadowing it. That’s because Daisy had said the same thing at the same time. We were twins from different eras.

  “Now you work together,” Adriana said. Her eyes held her fixer’s. “I’ll inform Tony.”

  Thinking about it, Adriana Rabh was probably the only faction leader that could inform Tony about anything. Okay, maybe Ming Qinlao too. I decided: let’s see how this plays out. Having Daisy next to me instead of behind me would at least keep her where I could see her.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I’ll need to report progress on the pirates to Tony. Soon.”

  “No sense wasting time, then,” Daisy said. Her tone was downright unfriendly. She clearly didn’t like the idea of having a partner. Join the club, sister. I’m president.

  “Agreed,” I said, rising, and with a proper nod of respect to Adriana. I needed to retrieve my hand artillery and get out of these farmer duds. I turned and looked above Daisy’s set jaw to find her eyes hard as stone. “But shove the attitude up your ass. We’re either working together, or we’re working apart. I’m not gonna spend time worrying about you or about myself with you. Understood?”

  Daisy cocked a hip out. Her chin dipped.

  “Daisy,” Adriana said. There was a warning in her voice.

  “Fine,” Daisy Brace said. “Just don’t slow me down.”

  I flipped her the bird and led her out of the regent’s suite. I wondered if I was escorting her, or she me. Which one of us was keeping tabs on the other? And w
as Adriana more involved with Tony’s pirate problem than she’d let on? Then I suddenly didn’t give a damn about any of that when the PA system started screeching again.

  “Contamination event. Possible pathogen released. All station personnel, alert.”

  Chapter 15

  Ruben Qinlao • Lander’s Reach, Mars

  Ruben’s finger hovered over the door chime. Ming’s summons had come unexpectedly, in the middle of the night. They’d barely spoken since Tony Taulke had maneuvered her from power and put Ruben in her place.

  A part of him had always been intimidated by Ming, ever since he’d met her when he was only fourteen. They shared a father in Jie Qinlao, but she’d been Jie’s first child. Lovely and distant. Smart and accomplished. And then Ming had become more than an older sister. She’d raised him after Sying, his mother, committed suicide.

  Even in his mid-forties, it was hard for Ruben to see past his boyhood awe of her, despite her worsening health. Ming was barely a shell of the woman who’d been so ruthlessness, so heartless over the years as she murdered and manipulated to ensure the Qinlao Faction’s survival. Yes, intimidated seemed the right word. Maybe there was just a little fear, too. Maybe more than a little.

  The meeting of SynCorp’s full board would happen two days hence. It would be Ruben’s first time representing the Qinlao Faction to the other four. His coming-out party, Ming had called it. For some reason, she’d insisted they talk in the middle of the night, far in advance of the meeting.

  He pressed the chime.

  “Come in,” she said formally. Her voice sounded different somehow. Surprisingly strong, in fact. Ruben entered. “Thank you for coming.”

  To ease her mobility, Ming kept her quarters set to half Mars’s natural gravity, twenty percent that of Earth. Sometimes she turned the gravity off altogether here, giving her true freedom from the maglev-chair she’d been confined to for so long. Ruben had to consciously underpower his movements to avoid inadvertently leaping across the room.