Chilling Effect_A Novel

by Valerie Valdes

  Chapter 12

  El Que La Hace La Paga

  “That is not what I wanted to hear,” Eva said, scowling.

  Pink, sitting across from her, shrugged. “If we’d brought La Sirena Negra here, she’d be impounded. We had no choice. You’re lucky she even made it out in one piece, after what happened to—”

  “Did we have to meet here?” Vakar interjected. “It is somewhat distracting.”

  “Music’s loud so no one can hear us,” Pink said. “And the drinks are good.”

  “I think he means—” Eva gestured with her chin at the stripper hanging from a cage above their table, gyrating in time with the music.

  Vakar smelled briefly of grass.

  “I’m enjoying the view,” Pink said, swirling her drink and watching the dancer with a tiny smile.

  Eva had to admit, the man was very limber. “Okay, so first we have to get me off Nuvesta, then go to New Nogales to get the ship back, and then—”

  “Slow down, sunshine,” Pink said. “What’s this ‘we’ business?”

  Eva paused, looking back and forth between her two crewmates, apparently former rather than current.

  “You lied out your ass and almost got us all killed,” Pink continued. “More than once, I might add. You sold us out and disappeared. And then Min finds your message in a cached memory, so we haul ass over here only to find you’re wanted for—” She snapped her fingers at Vakar. “What was it again?”

  “Petty larceny, assault, possession of unlawful weaponry, contempt of court and disturbing the peace.”

  Pink steepled her fingers. “I agree, my peace is quite disturbed.”

  Eva had given a lot of thought to this conversation: how she would handle it, what she would say and how she would say it. She had imagined their reactions, from anger to disgust to indifference. If she had managed to find well-paying work, she had intended to offer them money by way of apology, to fire them properly and send them on their way.

  Until this cycle. Until this moment. Now she knew how much she needed them, and she had no idea where to begin begging for their forgiveness.

  “Well?” Pink asked. She and Vakar stared at Eva.

  The dancer in the cage above them was human, though other dancers above other tables were kloshian, or tuann, or buasyr. There was even a quennian off in one corner, not moving very much but probably exuding a range of interesting smells for his audience. All of them doing what they did for money. Mercenary. Disconnected. Few of them bothered to make eye contact with their viewers, though of course some of them didn’t have eyes in the first place. They weren’t people so much as products, interchangeable and replaceable. Like furniture or artwork.

  But many businesses were more like family, or what a family should be, watching out for each other and taking care of each other and sharing in the pain and profit of the establishment equally.

  She hadn’t seen her ship and crew that way at first. Pink was around from before she even had a ship of her own. Eva had pulled Min out of the bot fights for an unrelated mission and kept her on because the girl was frankly a much better pilot than she was. Bigger cargo opportunities had arisen, so she’d scouted out Leroy as extra muscle.

  And then there was Vakar. An accident, really. A whim. She remembered him standing there, facing down a trio of skinheads with their stupid bar code tattoos, to signify they were made on Earth. His hands up, palms out in front of him as he backed away. The ringleader, grinning, hefting a rock and throwing it. Vakar dodging, quick as a snake, which made them angrier. He’d had a gun, she remembered, but hadn’t drawn it, and that had made her curious. Interested.

  She had wandered over, extra swagger in her step, extra sway in her hips. By this point Vakar was bleeding from a crack on his face, and she could smell him even though she didn’t know what it meant yet. Vinegar, but also vanilla, a combination that had brought her back to her abuela’s house in a flash.

  It had gone basically as he’d told her father. Eva stood between him and the skinheads, one hand on her hip. They sneered and called her names, and she turned to Vakar, stood on her toes and licked the blood from the side of his face.

  The ringleader had drawn a vibroblade, and Eva had broken the woman’s arm in two places before smashing her face with the same rock that had hit Vakar. The other skinheads had flanked her and attacked, but they weren’t fighters, just angry kids with grievances bigger than one quennian. Eva broke them both quickly, efficiently. She enjoyed doing it. She felt righteous.

  Vakar had watched it all with his gray-blue eyes, but when she was finished, he hadn’t thanked her. He had said, “Why did you do that?”

  And she hadn’t known how to answer him. Because she thought he was in trouble and she wanted to help? Because he was clearly trying not to hurt anyone and they were bothering him anyway? But really, she thought, she had been in a terrible mood and was looking for a reason to hurt someone else. He was a convenient excuse.

  She had shrugged, smiled. “Does it matter?” she had said.

  Then things blurred a bit, because of her reaction to his blood, but they made it back to La Sirena Negra and Pink took care of her and Vakar was there when she woke up. He’d been there ever since.

  “Ship to Eva, come in, girl,” Pink said, snapping her fingers. “Do you need a script or something? Because this little show’s about to end with us walking away because you can’t remember your lines.”

  Eva shook her head. “I’m sorry. I did a lot of stupid things. I’m going to tell you why, but only because you deserve to know. If you want to forgive me, that’s up to you.”

  She told them everything. About her father, her sister, The Fridge. The mission gone wrong and the aftermath. They listened, and stared at her, and didn’t interrupt except to ask about specific things that had happened.

  By the time she finished, the cage where the dancer had been was empty; presumably he’d gone on break. She hadn’t even seen him leave.

  “Eva-Benita,” Pink said. “You are the biggest pile of crehnisk shit I have ever seen.”

  Eva shrugged and nodded.

  “Why did you not tell us?” Vakar asked.

  “Does it matter?” she said softly.

  Pink leaned back. “You dragged us into a bunch of sketchy-ass situations. And you did it knowing full well they were sketchy.”

  “I thought I could handle it,” she said.

  “Things got handled, all right. You remember when we left Tito because he was pulling this kind of shit with us? And what did you say?”

  Eva closed her eyes. “I said I’d never be able to follow a captain I couldn’t trust.”

  “And yet, here we are.”

  “I’m not Tito.” Eva spat each word like a curse.

  “Tito probably wasn’t Tito at some point,” Pink said.

  She was right. Once you started lying to yourself, everyone else was easy. The road to hell wasn’t a road, it was a slide greased with good intentions and a whole lot of bullshit.

  “I promise I’ll do better,” Eva said. “It’s not like I can do any fucking worse.”

  Pink rolled her eye. Vakar smelled like a perfume store after a fire. Eva couldn’t look at him.

  “Your sister remains in cryostasis?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eva said. “She could be. Or she could have been moved to an asteroid mine already, like they said she would be. Or they could have shot her into a star for all I know.” My fault, she thought, her stomach twisting with guilt.

  “What’s your plan, then?” Pink scratched the eye under the patch. “You stewed here for a few weeks, let people shoot at your fool ass, busted a few heads. You wanna get your ship back and go do that somewhere else instead?”

  “No,” Eva said. “I want to find my sister, and if I’m too late, I want to fuck up these sinvergüenzas and shut them down for good.”

  Pink barked out a laugh. “And then you’re gonna find the lost colony of New Venus? And convince the rogue AI on Henop
e to live in peace with organic life? Maybe reverse-engineer a Gate and make your own and retire to a tropical paradise?”

  “I guess, if I don’t have anything better to do. Everyone needs a hobby.”

  “Damn it, girl.” But Pink hadn’t stopped grinning. “You’re ten kilos of crazy in a five-kilo bag. Have I mentioned your hair looks like shit?”

  “I didn’t do it up like this for you, mija.”

  “You certainly didn’t do it for Vakar, unless it’s got a special perfume I can’t smell.”

  Vakar’s aroma took on a greenish edge but was still muddled, laced with fiery anger.

  Pink settled their tab with a gesture. “I’m not promising anything, mind. But we got a rigged box to hide you in, get you on board our borrowed tub. We’ll see where it goes from there.”

  “Thank you,” Eva said. “It’s more than I deserve.”

  Pink stared at her as if waiting for more, but Eva was all out of sarcasm.

  “Leroy’s gonna be happy to see you,” Pink said finally. “These chumps took bets on which part of you I’d stab first, and he won thirty creds.”

  “First?”

  “Yeah, first. Min had your right arm. Leroy said I wouldn’t do it because then I’d have to fix you after.”

  “And you?” she asked Vakar.

  The cut-grass smell intensified. “Your posterior. It seems meaty enough to absorb damage.”

  Taking bets on scalpel injuries. Maybe things would be okay after all.

  Min sat in the bridge of the borrowed ship, staring at the control screen. “Welcome back, Cap,” was all Min said. It was enough.

  Leroy rested in his bunk, his facial hair long and a bit scraggly. His muscles sagged under his pale flesh, like he was a spacesuit without a person inside. But he looked better awake than he had in a coma. That seemed a million years ago now.

  “How’s your brain?” she asked.

  “It’s mine,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure what else to say. She settled for “I’m sorry.”

  He scratched the tattoo on his left arm. Right now, it showed a Dragon-class starship on a field of blue, lasers firing in the front. “Shit happens. Better than being off in some corporate war fighting for stupid stuff nobody cares about.”

  How would he feel fighting for something he did care about? “Is it really?”

  He considered this, then nodded, cracking a smile. “Not everyone can say they survived a brain parasite, right? Loads of people get shot. That ain’t no story.”

  She smacked his shoulder and walked to the door, stopping on the way out. “What happened to that thing, anyway?”

  “I think Pink has it in cryo somewhere. I told her you said it was supposed to get flushed out the airlock, but she said you didn’t get a vote when you had stupid opinions.”

  “Fair enough,” Eva said, closing the door behind her.

  Min’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Cap, we’re ready to go if you are.”

  Eva stalked up to the bridge, where the pilot was fully immersed, her face tranquil. On her lap sat Mala, her hazel eyes blinking sleepily. The cat yawned and put her face down on her paws, purring louder than the FTL drive.

  “Didn’t want to get left behind, huh?” Eva said. The purring intensified, and she grinned despite herself.

  “All right, Min,” she said. “Punch it.”

  Silence fell for a moment. “Did you forget something, Cap?” Min asked.

  “Oh, right.” Eva walked back to the hallway between bunks and yanked up the floor, exposing a crawl space underneath. She climbed in, tucking her knees against her chest, and pulled it closed above her.

  She hoped they could get out of Nuvesta quickly. Hiding always made her want to pee. But within minutes, curled up as she was, out of the reach of bounty hunters at long last, she quickly fell fast asleep.

  The trip was quick and quiet, with Eva feeling as if she were a passenger instead of the captain. She tried to help, but Min was busy flying, Pink was busy taking care of Leroy, Leroy was busy resting and doing PT, and Vakar was busy hiding in the bowels of the ship. So she kept mostly to her bunk, doing push-ups and ruminating on how much of a jerk she was. She had no idea how she was going to make all of this up to her crew, but she’d be damned if she didn’t earn their trust back somehow.

  She’d rather take a naked spacewalk than end up like Tito and her dad.

  But she was also planning. Finding her sister and taking down an enormous galaxy-spanning organization wasn’t as easy as picking up shady cargo. She was tired of running, tired of defending herself against one bounty hunter after another, tired of constantly looking over her shoulder until she was spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. As long as The Fridge existed, she would never be free. If they were so ready to screw her over for a hefty fee from Glorious, then she was ready to make herself an incredibly expensive nuisance to them until they regretted ever hearing her true, full name.

  And once she found out what had happened to Mari, well, she would decide how to handle that situation, whether it ended up being a rescue mission or a funeral. If it was the latter, what happened at Garilia would look like a statistical anomaly compared to what she would do to these fuckers.

  So she plotted, and she schemed, and she brainstormed. She thought up and rejected a hundred different ideas. It all came back to a single problem: information. She didn’t know where The Fridge kept their cryo storage, and she didn’t know who might know where it was kept, so before she did anything, she had to figure that part out.

  Her father, at least, might have someplace to start, some stray thread they could pull so the whole tapestry would start to unravel. It was just as well they’d left La Sirena Negra with him, because she could take the opportunity to shake him down for everything he knew. Assuming he would help her at all, if he thought she was going to run off on a fool’s errand.

  Assuming The Fridge wasn’t watching him, waiting for her to resurface so they could scoop her up like a wayward toddler.

  They arrived at New Nogales to find the dealership reduced to a handful of ships, scruffy dust runners and secondhand speeders and a conspicuous lack of Eva’s own starship. She jumped out of the borrowed boat and half jogged over to the building. Vakar came with her, while Pink stood in the doorway with her sniper rifle ready.

  Inside the showroom, all the displays were turned off, most of the artwork was gone and half the lights were dark. No security greeted them, and no salespeople, either.

  Upstairs, the door to her father’s office was open. Eva tiptoed up, drawing her pistol. She told herself this wasn’t a trap, because they would have grabbed her outside. She told herself that her father couldn’t be dead, because he was worth more alive than dead. She told herself a lot of things so she wouldn’t stop taking one step at a time into the unknown.

  To her surprise, she found Pete standing behind his desk, facing away from her. The room was otherwise empty.

  “You got extra valuable all of a sudden,” Pete said.

  “To some people,” she replied.

  He turned around, looking older. Exhausted. His forehead was lined with worry and his lips were wrinkled from frowning.

  “They took it all, and they told me it still wasn’t enough,” he said. “I’m supposed to get a crew together and pick up where you left off. Work for them until my vital organs decay.”

  “So forever, then,” she said.

  He didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he sat down, folding his hands together and resting them on the top of the desk.

  Vakar stood behind her, and she considered sending him out. No, she thought. Not anymore. No secrets.

  “I need the information you were collecting,” she said. “I’m finding Mari, wherever they’ve stowed her. Whatever it takes.”

  Now Pete did laugh. “Of course you are. You made up your mind. I know how you operate, little girl.” He rubbed his face with both hands, leaning back in his chair. “I remember once when you and y
our sister were kids, and you found where your mother had hidden a stash of candy. You ate that stuff until you were about ready to barf, but as soon as your sister took one, you ran to tell me all about it.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “You must have been six or seven. My point is, you grow morals when the mood strikes you, and then you prune them back like a wild rosebush when they get too thorny.”

  And like a rosebush, that stung her. Was she really that bad? She’d always thought she had a code, even if it wasn’t as strict as other people’s. But then, who was he to talk about morals?

  “Are you going to help me or not?” she asked.

  “I should send you to bed without dinner, is what I should do,” he said. “But then you’ll just climb out onto the roof like you always did and be gone before the moons rise.”

  She waited, eyes locked with his. Brown, like hers, so dark the pupils were hard to see. She hoped hers were less bloodshot, but after weeks of stunted sleep, she wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same.

  “Think about it,” she said. “This is your only chance to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new venture. Otherwise you get to read about my exploits in the Freenet News like every other pirate and scavenger in the ’verse.”

  He snorted. “You mean this is my only chance to be part of the plan instead of watching you get yourself killed from afar.”

  “I don’t die easy.”

  “It hasn’t occurred to you for a second that maybe I don’t want to lose both my girls, huh?”

  It hadn’t. Partly because she refused to admit she might lose. Partly because she’d convinced herself a long time ago that he didn’t give more than half a shit.

  “You won’t,” she said.

  He gestured and the files he’d shown her before appeared. With a flick he sent them to her commlink; the information arrived with a soft ping. “That’s everything I have. Names, places, amounts of money. Anything I could scrounge up, be it half-truth or rumor.”

  Her dad stood, walking around the desk to stand in front of her. Still a big man, he wrapped his arms around her like he had when she was little, when she felt like he could do anything and no one could hurt her because his arms were too strong. Now this felt like goodbye, and she hated it, but did it anyway, trying to reclaim that lost piece of her young self.