Chilling Effect_A Novel

by Valerie Valdes

  Vakar said nothing, but the incense smell strengthened. Such a worrier.

  “Back to posts,” Pete barked, and the truateg moved as if coming out of a haze, wandering back to the sides of the room.

  The double doors closed behind Eva and she found herself in the antechamber to her father’s main office. She briefly regretted not letting Vakar wait in here, but he was better off outside. He might get too comfortable in the plush couches and special form-fitting chairs that reshaped themselves for different body types. The food and drink dispensers would probably distract him as well.

  Okay, she should have brought him in. Maybe she’d let him at it when they were getting ready to leave.

  Pete’s office, or at least this front office, was tastefully decorated in faux wood and stone, with more of the carefully selected art and decor that was meant to be taste-neutral so as not to offend as wide a variety of clientele as possible. Though as he had always said, people who were offended by stuff humans did tended to stay away from them anyway, so catering to them was an exercise in futility. At most, he had little touches that would catch the sensory organs of particular groups to make them feel at ease.

  Pete took a seat behind his big desk, which Eva knew was outfitted with various alarm systems that activated on command or in reaction to certain conditions. She had always wondered if he left them on for her, too.

  “What can I do for you, girlie?” he asked, leaning back in his big leather chair.

  “I need a ship.” She stared at a tiny tree on his desk, growing miniature oranges. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real orange.

  “Right, I figured this wasn’t a vacation.” He gestured and a screen popped up between them, showing the rotating figure of a cargo ship. “What do you need? Fast? Sturdy?”

  “Big. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I’m finished with it.”

  He closed the catalogue. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how big are we talking?”

  “Todyk.”

  “No shit. Do you know what kind?”

  “The kind no sane person should be trying to kidnap.” She flicked at a metronome on his desk, which began to tick and tock, swaying back and forth.

  “What do they even want with a todyk?” Pete asked.

  “Me cago en diez, who cares!” she exclaimed, banging on his desk. A tiny red light shined in her eyes from somewhere, and she froze. Well, now she knew. Security systems on.

  “I’m more worried about me and my crew,” she said coldly.

  Her father whistled and the light vanished. He ran a hand over his face and leaned forward.

  “It’s been hard for me, too,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get intel, but people don’t talk. They’re too scared of being targeted, or retargeted. But I’ve been back on this since they got Mari.”

  He waved a hand, and another image popped up between them. This was a list of names, pictures next to them, all kinds of people from aahx to zyfin.

  “I’ve attempted to gather as much data as possible on the victims and their families, to see if there are any connections, anything that makes them significant.” He inclined his head, and the image vanished, replaced by a map of the galaxy with lines crisscrossing it. She could just make out numbers attached to the lines, and the names from the previous list.

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “Some are rich, some are well connected. Some have very specific skills, or access to restricted facilities. Some, I suspect, are . . . shall we say, working near the fringe and more amenable to engaging in activities that would normally require more expensive mercenaries and particular professionals.”

  “I suppose that’s me,” she said bitterly. “Not that I’m amenable. So we’re the janitors, doing the cleanup jobs no one else wants to touch.”

  She wanted to believe the concern in his eyes was genuine. It probably was, or as genuine as he got. “If I could take it on instead, I would,” he said. “They’ve bled me dry, but they’ve still called me twice to do my usual chop and swap. I don’t know why they decided that wasn’t enough.”

  “They told me they ran the numbers and you weren’t as much of a cash comet as they had hoped.” She watched him wince, and part of her enjoyed it.

  “You’re definitely more mobile, and you’ve got a good team,” he said. “After that stunt you pulled on Garilia—”

  “Don’t.” Eva struggled to keep her jaw from tightening. He knew full well how she felt about her part in that, for all that he had washed his hands clean of the whole thing. “After ‘that stunt on Garilia,’ as you call it, I decided some things were more important than money.”

  “Definitely harder to spend it when you’re dead,” he said amiably. “You were always the fearless one. Funny to see you like this now.”

  “I’m not ten anymore.”

  “You’re not thirty anymore, either. But that’s neither here nor there.” He steepled his fingers. “I need you to give me the intel on your handler. Another piece for that big puzzle.”

  Another token on the Reversi board, she thought. This simple spaceship dealer, on a backwater human settlement, in a system that had been left alone for eons because it didn’t have any resources to strip-mine or any worthwhile sentience to speak of. And here he was, playing at power, as if he had anything like the resources or contacts to do a fraction of what people like The Fridge were doing.

  “Let’s get back to this ship I need,” she said.

  “Eva-Bee, come on.”

  “You know I hate it when you call me that.”

  He raised his hands defensively. “All right, you’re the boss. I’ll trade you, then. Information, for a ship. A loaner, to be returned once the job’s done.”

  It was the best offer she was going to get, but she didn’t have to like it. “Fine. Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said, smiling.

  Her stomach hurt at the pride she couldn’t help but feel when he said that.

  Twenty minutes later, she had the codes for a big junker her dad called the CS Malcolm. It was a kloshian ship, close enough to human physiology that it needed only a few quick control program swaps to make it run smoothly. It had a jack instead of wireless; Eva hated flying that way. It always put the taste of peaches in her mouth for cycles. Disgusting.

  Her father opened the door and she strolled out to find Vakar pacing. He smelled like incense and mint.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure,” Pete said. “Peter Larsen. And you are?”

  “Vakar Tremonis san Jaigodaris,” Vakar replied. “Engineer.”

  Eva sighed internally. Vakar must have heard Pete use Eva’s alias earlier, but even so, he could never manage to come up with a good lie.

  “Surely someone with your expertise should be on one of the Home Fleet battle cruisers?” Pete said. “How’d you end up with Bee here?”

  Eva tensed, throwing a glance at Vakar that tried to tell him he didn’t have to answer.

  “It is a long story,” Vakar said cautiously.

  “I love stories,” Pete said, smiling jovially.

  Vakar’s palps twitched, his gray-blue eyes darting between Pete and Eva. “She intervened in an argument between myself and a group of human supremacists. I needed a ride off-world, and she offered transport if I would fix a faulty rotor coupling.”

  Pete clapped a hand on Eva’s shoulder, grinning. He was almost a third of a meter taller than her, and a fist taller than Vakar. “She’s a good one, eh? What, did she tell them off? Shoot her way out? I taught her how to shoot, you know.”

  “She was very . . . persuasive.” Vakar’s smell took a turn toward fresh-cut grass.

  “I licked his face and told them he was my boyfriend,” she said. “Then I beat the shit out of them.”

  Pete stared at her for a moment, then let out a hearty laugh. “You would do that, wouldn’t you? You’re such a troublemaker.”

 
; She didn’t mention the part about how she’d had an allergic reaction and hallucinated for three cycles while Pink pumped her full of drugs. Though he probably would have found that funny, too. Especially if she told him about the vivid purple owls she was sure were following her for weeks.

  And now she was thinking about licking Vakar again, allergies be damned. Madre de dios, she told herself, get your shit together.

  “She does sometimes make trouble,” Vakar said cautiously. “But she is capable of handling it.”

  “Yes, I’m an excellent captain,” Eva said. “Speaking of which, our clients are waiting for their deliveries. Thank you so much for the ship, and I’m sure I’ll probably get it back to you in one piece.”

  Pete laughed, and she smiled, even though she hadn’t been joking.

  “See you then, Bee,” he said. “Tremonis.” He squeezed her shoulder and let go, walking back into his office and closing the door behind him without another word.

  Eva avoided touching the banister as she walked down the stairs. She didn’t want to get her hands dirtier than they already were.

  Vakar sped up to walk next to her. “Who was that?”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “Was that—”

  “Later,” she said sharply. Other customers had come in, a pair of humans who looked perfectly normal, like a young couple shopping around for their first ship. Ready to start a life of high adventure together in the glittering darkness of the uncharted seas of heaven. She remembered all that romantic nonsense from when she was younger. Not that she’d had anyone to share it with. Not that she’d wanted anyone. She wanted to explore the universe, no attachments, nothing to tether her to any one place like a space elevator to an orbiting station. Besides, she had seen what happened to her parents’ marriage, and it looked like way more trouble than it ever could have been worth. No relationships meant no nasty breakups, which meant no bad memories trailing after her like the tail of a comet.

  As if there weren’t plenty of other kinds of bad memories to make, she thought bitterly. The scar across her cheek tightened for a moment, as if in sympathy. She could have had it removed, but she kept it as a reminder of how stupid she had once been, a reminder that failure happened and it sucked plutonium exhaust.

  A reminder that she was alive, and a whole lot of Garilians weren’t.

  They made it back to La Sirena Negra, assembling in the mess to plan their routes. Eva briefed the rest of the crew on their assignment, an easy enough pickup on Kugawa with a drop-off on an asteroid mine near the Virgo Fringe. She’d already negotiated everything with the client, who would be meeting them on-site. It was perfect. Safe. Boring. Eva’s head ached.

  “Mine should be about as easy,” she lied. “Wish I could take one of you with me, but the client is being finicky about that confidentiality clause.”

  If they didn’t believe her, she couldn’t tell. But the crew simply nodded assent, or in Vakar’s case, tapped his fingers on the table and smelled like rain.

  “So we’ll rendezvous back here at the dealership after I deliver the cargo, then move along.” They had split up before, she told herself. Everything would be fine. That feeling that she would never see them again was just a feeling, and it would pass, probably some time after she saw them again and they had been traveling for a while.

  Feelings were such crap.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  Nobody seemed interested in moving. Vakar smelled . . . off. Like himself, but wrong somehow.

  “You need something, Vakar?” Eva asked.

  His palps twitched. “No, nothing,” he said. Then he got up and left.

  Eva shook her head. Pink leaned against the table with her arms crossed.

  “How’s Leroy?” Eva asked.

  “Getting there,” Pink said. “Coming back to himself. But it’s taking time.”

  Eva sighed and rested her forehead on her hand. “Is he going to be okay?”

  Pink pulled out a chair and scooted it over to Eva, sitting in front of her so they were at eye level. “You want me to tell you it’s all gonna be fixed, like magic. Back to how it was. But you know I ain’t got no crystal ball, and I’m sure not gonna lie to make you feel better.”

  “Do I at least get a maybe?” Eva asked.

  “Girl, you got a handful of ‘gimme’ and a mouthful of ‘much obliged.’” Pink’s uncovered eye stared at Eva.

  Eva swallowed a retort and nodded. “Fair enough. You take care of everyone while I’m gone.”

  Pink snorted. “I take care of everyone when you’re here, too. You don’t need to tell me my business.”

  A loud purr alerted her to the fact that Mala was already in her lap. Eva had no idea how long she’d been petting the cat, and she resented that immensely. Especially since it made her feel a little better.

  She let her legs be kneaded for a few more minutes before rising to head toward her cabin. She wouldn’t need to pack too much: a change of clothes, her usual complement of weapons, a few tools that might come in handy, and a first aid kit with some stims in case things went really badly. If anything happened to her, she figured it would be easier for the rest of her stuff to be sent to her mom if it was all here and not on some strange ship in another sector, with no one to collect it.

  And it makes it less likely that your dad will end up with everything, a little voice whispered. A cruel voice. She didn’t like that one.

  Eva opened the door to her cabin, revealing Vakar sitting on the corner of her bed, staring at her fish. The whole place smelled like air freshener, vanilla cherry almond.

  “I thought my door was locked,” Eva said, stepping over to the cabinet that held her clothes.

  “It was.”

  “Rude.” She knelt and opened a drawer under her bed, pulling out a duffel bag. “What do you need? I have to shove off already.”

  “Take me with you.”

  Eva paused to look up at him. “I told you, I can’t. Client’s orders. Total privacy and secrecy. If it weren’t good money, I would have told them to move along.”

  Vakar grabbed her arm and she shook it off, frowning. “Why are you lying?” he asked. His smell took on a strange sharpness, like licking an old battery terminal.

  “Why would I be lying?” she said carefully, tucking her disassembled sniper rifle into her bag.

  “I do not know,” he said. “But I do not like it. You have lied to us before, but not like this.”

  “Oh, so I’m a habitual liar. Nice. Am I a thief, too? A killer?”

  “Eva—”

  “No, please, I want to hear all about it.” She could feel the anger rising, but another part of her said, He’s never called you that before. Always “Captain,” never “Eva.”

  “No, you do not,” he said softly. “And I do not want to tell you, because it does not matter.”

  “Get out of my room,” she said. “I need to change.”

  “What are you so afraid of?” he asked. “You have been smelling strange for cycles now—”

  “I’ll take more baths.”

  “Stars above, can you take a single nanosecond to look around you and stop making jokes?”

  Eva closed her bag and stood. “How’s this for serious: I don’t know what you thought the two of us had going, but you’re an engineer on my ship. That’s it. I’m the one in charge here, not you. If you don’t like it, you know where the airlock is. So use it.”

  His inner eyelid closed as if she’d hit him. Quietly, slowly, he got to his feet and staggered to her door, opening it with a thought. It closed behind him, not with a bang but a whisper, and left her more alone than she’d ever felt.

  There it was. Orders given, orders taken. The wedge was hammered in, and now it was only a matter of time before the crack split them entirely.

  Pink will be proud, she thought, but that was a lie, too.

  She shouldered her bag and took a deep breath, trying to stop her body from shaking. Her whole room smelled of licor
ice, so strong that she thought she would never be able to get the scent out of her hair, her clothes, her skin.

  Chapter 10

  El Orgullo y el Prejuicio

  A flock of brightly colored birds broke through the tree line and took off into the azure sky of Ayshurn as Eva crept through the underbrush, swatting at clouds of bugs with the hand that wasn’t gripping the stock of her sniper rifle. Her quarry was nearby, as evidenced by the birds, but for a two-ton tower of muscle, he was surprisingly quiet.

  Luckily, he left a trail of broken brush behind him that even she could follow, and her tracking goggles helped with chemical trails and other layers of visual marking, like heat sensing and minute motion detection. She kept having to tinker with that one, though, because of all the damn birds. Why the todyk seemed to like them so much, she wasn’t sure. Maybe for the same reason humans liked monkeys; they reminded them of another branch of the family tree.

  Eva clicked on her gravboots and climbed a tall tree, slowly so as not to attract attention. Once the tree started to bend under her weight, she stopped, flicking on the zoom function of her goggles to catch sight of the elusive Jardok. He should have been just over . . . there.

  As tall as the trees were, and as well as his feathers blended in, Jardok could only partly shield his bulk from her array of sensors. She had trailed him out here, all the way from the main spaceport and the city that surrounded it, and she still had no idea what he was up to.

  Another form appeared in her sights, almost as large as Jardok. Eva zoomed in to look at the other todyk’s plumage, delicate browns and creams instead of the vibrant red and green that Jardok sported.

  She climbed down from the tree and stalked the path of broken branches and flattened grasses and brush, trying to place her feet carefully to make as little noise as possible. Whenever she heard movement, she froze, even though her research assured her it was a myth that the todyk couldn’t see you if you stood still.

  Her sensors showed they had moved a bit southward, toward what appeared to be a body of water. Crap. If they crossed it, she might lose them on the other side. Eva sped up as much as she could, trying to stagger her movements so that they sounded more random, less like pursuit. As she neared their position, the sound of splashing grew louder, along with the vicious roars that haunted the dreams of many a child raised on images of enormous, ancient bones painstakingly unearthed from beneath dirt and rock. How foolish the scientists must have finally felt when confronted with the reality, in the flesh.