“Here are the coordinates.” She pinged them over to the pilot. “We’re playing sky cab for some scientist. Quick and easy. Five thousand credits apiece.”
That got their attention. Leroy whistled softly, and Pink put a finger on her pursed lips. But now Vakar smelled like a fart in church, literally.
“That is a high price for such a simple assignment,” he said. “Is this an extraction?”
Eva waved dismissively. “The client didn’t say anything about trouble. We’re passing through contested space, but that’s only illegal if you’re smuggling goods. Which we aren’t.”
Vakar didn’t smell convinced.
“Quick and easy,” she repeated. “We deliver the passenger and get our money.” She stood up and laid her palms on the table, leaning forward. “Come on. New client. Retainer, which means steady work. If they screw us over, we’ll pass through that Gate when we reach it.”
Eva waited, looking at each of them in turn. They couldn’t know what it would mean if they pushed back. She steeled herself for the worst, for having to fire them all, for running a whole ship by herself or finding a new crew who didn’t care enough about her to ask questions.
Leroy didn’t object. But then, he’d never much cared how they earned their money, provided he didn’t have to kill anyone. And five thousand credits would buy him some choice memvids, or new tattoo designs, or presents for his moms back on Earth.
Min was also silent. Her opinions of laws varied but were generally ambivalent at best, so long as there was no chance of her family finding out if she’d broken them. And she had never been afraid of a fight, if she was controlling a few tons of metal and malice.
Vakar’s gray-blue eyes met hers. He smelled like hot cooking oil, which her translator tentatively indicated was suspicion, but he broke eye contact first. He had trusted her since they met, and she still wasn’t sure why, but she was flattered. It made her want to be worthy of that trust, usually; now, it just deepened her shame.
That left Pink. Pink, who had literally watched Eva’s back through her sniper’s scope more times than Eva could count, who spoke her mind but always supported Eva in the end, who sometimes knew what Eva was thinking or feeling when Eva was still struggling to figure it out herself. Pink, who had once pulled shrapnel out of Eva’s chest as she lay gasping in pain, and had told her matter-of-factly that if she wanted to run with the big dogs, she had better stop whining like a little bitch. That had made Eva mad enough to live, and while she was lying in recovery after a handful of surgeries and a new mechanical heart implant, she realized that had been the idea.
Pink’s cybernetic eye was hidden—the tech was delicate, and she’d always been a little sensitive about it—but her natural one considered Eva as if it could see inside her head, to her thoughts, better than any machine could. Eva wanted to squirm; it took every ounce of self-control to leave her palms on the table and return Pink’s stare.
With a click of her tongue, Pink shrugged. “Whatever. You’re the captain.”
Which meant the consequences were on her head, whatever they might be. El que la hace, la paga. Hopefully the price wouldn’t be unconscionably high.
Eva slapped the table and straightened. “Great! Off we go.” She pointed at Vakar. “You. Sit tight. The rest of you, get the probes ready so we can scrape some fuel together.”
Vakar waited for her to finish making her coffee, then followed her, limping, past the crew quarters to her cabin. She opened her door and gave him a mock bow, waving for him to go in first, then shutting the door behind them. Sipping her drink, she gestured for him to take the one small chair in the room, but he declined, so she sat down and crossed her ankles as he fidgeted next to her bed.
“Where did you get an isosphere?” she asked. They weren’t impossible to find, but they weren’t common as croquetas at a party.
He wagged his head in the quennian equivalent of a shrug, but didn’t answer.
“Is that what was in the box for me?”
“No.” The smell of grass again—bashful—and that other one she still couldn’t place. “Let me retrieve it.”
She waited, watching her fish drift aimlessly in their water, until a minute later Vakar returned with the black cube. It had a special combination lock that took him a few tries to open, but he finally managed and the top slid sideways with a hiss of air.
The contents were, sadly, a big red mush, but the smell . . . Eva nearly fell off her bed. She dipped a finger in and licked it clean.
“You son of a—” She shook her head. “Pastelitos?”
“They are difficult to make properly,” he said. “That is what you tell me, anyway. These were certainly expensive enough.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She scooped more up with her hand and practically inhaled it. Guayaba. Cream cheese. People used to think heaven was up in space somewhere, but it was a place on Earth, and that place made Cuban pastries. How the hell he had managed to get them on Omicron was beyond her, but she didn’t care.
Vakar was staring at her as if he’d never seen her lick her fingers before. Maybe he hadn’t.
“You don’t want to see me eat the rest of this,” she said. “It’s not going to be pretty.”
He shrugged again. “I will be resting in my quarters if you require anything of me.” He left, that weird smell of his trailing after him.
Licorice, that’s what it was. A strange sense of relief fell over her at finally figuring that out. She’d eaten it only a few times, and she didn’t really like the taste, but the smell was kind of nice.
Her translators still didn’t know what it meant, though.
She forced herself to chew slowly, to savor every bite. And most importantly, not to think about how many people had died on Omicron, how many she herself had killed before that, and all the ways everything in her life might fall apart at any moment until The Fridge was finished with her. That thinking led to insomnia, to sleeping and waking nightmares, to the feeling that her lungs couldn’t suck in enough breath, that her chest was too tight and her skin was on fire and she might as well give up because everything was fucked.
That thinking wouldn’t get Mari back. She needed to keep it together for her sister’s sake, and to shield her crew as much as possible from whatever sketchy shit she might end up doing.
Something did stick in her mind, though: Her handler, Pholise, had said her dad was already involved. Which meant he knew what had happened and hadn’t told anyone. Or at least, hadn’t told her. Not surprising, perhaps, if The Fridge went around swearing people to secrecy. And given how their last conversation had gone, neither of them had been particularly pressed to make contact.
Maybe it was time to give him a call.
Eva routed the link through a dummy relay, in case The Fridge really was monitoring her outgoing comms somehow. The low buzz of the connection attempting to resolve made her head ache.
Finally, the sound cut out, replaced by a distant radio playing jazzy music.
“Eva-Bee, is that you?” Her dad sounded tired, but he had always managed to sound tired when she called him.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked.
He paused. “My what now?”
“Favorite color.”
He sighed, and she could picture him rubbing his nose as he thought. “Let’s see, it’s . . . chartreuse?”
“Right.” She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved he had remembered the countersign; part of her had wanted an excuse to hang up. The dark red fish in her tank swam out of its coral cave, as if it knew who she was talking to, its mouth opening and closing as it moved.
“Well, gosh, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “A while.”
“It’s nice to hear your voice. Things are good here. Weather has been a big mess, coldest summer we’ve had in ten years.”
“How’s the market for used spaceships? Still selling them as so
on as they land on the lot?” The red fish swam in lazy circles through the kelp, eyes black and empty.
“No, no, not anymore. Harder for my customers to get financing, the way our damn government is tightening regulations to get ready for BOFA compliance.”
Eva gritted her teeth. “And how is Mari doing?”
If he hesitated, she couldn’t hear it. “Mari is good, last I heard, still working at that settlement on New Albany, running tests on old pottery and whatnot. With that boyfriend of hers, the one in the skin ads?”
“I think she broke up with him,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s pretty cold where she is, too. Super cold. Frosty the fucking snowman.”
Now her father did pause. “Yeah, huh. Hey, hold on there a second, I was just going outside to fill the bird feeder.”
Her dad did love his birds. Some of them were even real. The rest were just really attentive, sometimes with lasers or proximity mines.
“You ready yet?” Eva asked. She toyed with the coffee cup on the table next to her bed, wishing she’d gotten a refill before calling.
“Hold your horses,” he said, his easy demeanor rubbing thin. “I know you’re relayed, but let me run a scrubber real quick.” The quiet of his front yard was broken by a squeal of static that lasted a dozen seconds. “All right, that should be good.”
“How long has she been gone?” Eva’s voice was soft, slick as a buttered knife.
“They contacted me a month ago,” he answered. “Damn it, Bee, I’m sorry you got dragged into this. Business has been bad since the regulators got proactive. The timing couldn’t have been worse.”
Eva’s lips thinned as she pressed them together. Bad timing. Her sister was in cryo and her father was griping about business. Typical.
“Did they take the Minnow?” he asked.
“La Sirena Negra,” she said reflexively.
“Right, right. That’s a shame. I’ll see about getting you a new ship on good lease terms. It’s the least I can do.”
It really is, she thought. The absolute least. “They didn’t take my ship.”
“But you don’t have any—” He stopped. “I see. Well, you always could take care of yourself. Tito wouldn’t have tolerated any less.”
He had nice things to say about her when it suited him. She tried not to let it get to her, just as she tried to ignore the ways in which her hazy reflection in the fish tank resembled him—same black hair, though his was going gray, same brown eyes that were dark enough to look black in most lighting. Same fucking mouth, right down to the shit that came out of it when she wasn’t careful.
Compared to him, she was much less careful.
“Is there anything you can tell me about them, anything at all that could give me any leverage?” she asked.
Now it was his turn to fall silent. A snippet of birdsong trilled in the background, and she wondered whether it was a real one or a warning.
“They know what you’re capable of,” he finally said. “You’re no good to them dead, but you’re also expendable. They like their money quick and dirty, and half of what they do is for favors and secrets anyway.”
The real galactic currency. Eva thought of the impending job. What kind of favor might they get out of mystery passenger Miles Erck?
“They’ll let your sister out, eventually,” he continued. “No one would deal with them if they didn’t. But they’ll squeeze what they can out of you, like a lemon.”
“And then they’ll pulp me and zest me,” she murmured. “But none of that is dirt. Leverage. Something I can use to my advantage if I have to.” If they ask me to do something and I can’t bring myself to do it, she thought. If I end up with another Garilia situation on my hands. She leaned against her closet door, pressing her forehead to the cool metal surface. No time to worry about the past now, or a future she couldn’t predict. Stay in the present.
“No one even really knows who they are,” he said. “It’s all agents who report to other agents, and none of them are connected and all of them are under the same invisible thumb. But I’ll tell you my opinion, and you know what I always say.”
“That and ten credits buys you coffee.”
“Exactly. I think maybe, it’s like a game of Reversi. You remember playing that with me, when you were little?”
She did. It had taken her forever to figure out the rules of the game. They’d play over the q-net, light-years away from each other, and she would make a move and the pieces would change color and she’d have no clue what she’d done, really. And then her dad would make another move and all the pieces on the board would cascade from white to black in an instant.
“I hated that game,” she said.
Her dad laughed. “But you got the hang of it. Now, in this case—” He stopped, and she heard another call ringing in on a different comm.
“Listen, Bee, I have to go. But you think about what I said, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” She’d have to, because he hadn’t bothered to explain it.
“Love you, girlie. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye, Dad.” The call disconnected, though perhaps she imagined it took a second longer than usual. Perhaps not. If nothing else, The Fridge was good at making you more paranoid than ever.
Eva threw herself into her chair with a sigh. Damn that man. She wasn’t even sure why she had bothered to call him. To argue? To scream? To tell him what a selfish prick he had been? They’d had that fight years ago, when she quit Tito’s crew after Garilia, and dear old Dad had given her the ship to shut her up about the trail of dead they’d left behind. He somehow managed to deflect her every time, like they were playing dodgeball and she was trying to hit him, but he wasn’t there anymore, he was behind her, and did she really want to play this when they could be playing laser hockey instead? And before she knew it they’d be so far past the point of confrontation that she was almost embarrassed at how mad she’d been in the first place.
It was what made him a great criminal, frankly. But a shitty father, and an equally shitty husband.
And Eva had played the same game with other people, and every time she did, it left a fresh stain on her soul. She was supposed to be finished with all that, but here she was, letting herself be dragged back in.
Mari would do the same for me, she told herself. For all that they had fought, Mari always had her back when it counted. Love wasn’t an outfit you slipped in and out of when it suited you; it was your skin, your bones, your blood. She’d sooner open a vein than let Mari die.
Eva thought about Reversi. Turn the pieces. Pick the right ones and soon you’d have an army. Maybe she could find more of The Fridge’s agents, the ones who were being blackmailed themselves? But then, she’d never been good at making those choices.
And anyway, she could handle this. She’d be careful.
Eva sat on her bed and watched her fish swim in their tank, bright and oblivious.
Vakar and Leroy were already in the mess when Eva stalked in, still annoyed from the call with her father. She didn’t look at either of them, just went straight for the cabinet with the protein powder to make herself a shake, intending to take it back to her room to continue misery-wallowing in private.
“Okay, so what about Sergeant Eagle and Momoko?” Leroy said. His chair was pushed back until it touched the bulkhead, but he was sitting on the edge.
Vakar crossed the three steps between table and counter to pull a cup from the sanitizer, which he handed to Eva. “Is Sergeant Eagle the one who announces he is going to kick you?” he asked.
“It’s not an announcement, it’s the name of his signature move. Eagle Kick!” Leroy leaned back to demonstrate, thumping the underside of the table, which was, thankfully, bolted to the floor.
“Would it not be a more effective signature move if he did not shout it before—”
“Naw, man.” Leroy waved his hands in front of him. “You’re missing the point. And the question is, who would win in a fight?”
“If Momok
o does not warn her opponents of impending attacks, then she would be the logical winner.” He looked to Eva as if for confirmation, and she shrugged, stirring her shake.
“Not a chance!” Min’s human body wandered into the mess, but her voice still came from the speakers. Her fine blue hair framed her oval face, the round, dark eyes slightly vacant, as if she weren’t using them at the moment. “Momoko is super fast, and she does this awesome butt move, but the Eagle Kick would knock her into orbit.” She dug into her secret stash of black bean sauce and noodles and started to prep it as Eva watched enviously.
“Would she not know the kick was coming and simply avoid it?” Vakar asked.
It was Pink’s turn to stroll in. “You all know that Crash Sisters stuff is fake, right?” she said. She pulled a meal bar from the cabinet next to Eva and leaned against the counter.
Leroy and Min exploded into an indignant tirade about the athleticism required and the different fighting styles the competitors specialized in and how they would all definitely beat Pink in a fight, for sure, so she shouldn’t talk.
Pink smirked and tore her food open, taking a bite and cringing. Eva sympathized; they were out of every flavor but seaweed and lentil.
The crew continued to bicker as Eva finished making her drink. It was so nice to hear them be themselves, be normal, but knowing she’d have to keep up a shield of lies between her and them until Mari was safe sucked any pleasure out of the situation.
“What’s with the grouchy face, Captain?” Leroy asked. “Did the protein powder get bricked again?”
Eva wavered between brushing him off and throwing him a bone. Pink raised her eyebrow, which Eva could ignore with some effort, but Vakar’s worried smell got to her.
“Just talked to my dad,” she said. “He’s still a jerk.”
A chorus of sympathetic noises and smells responded.
“It’s been what, five years since you and Pete had words?” Pink asked.
“Three,” Eva said sourly. “I had to call him when the auxiliary port hazcam stopped working and we couldn’t source the part.” And he’d made sure she knew what a huge favor he was doing her.
Chilling Effect_A Novel Page 6