Angeleyes - eARC

by Michael Z. Williamson

  It was another old station, a long cylinder with hub and crossing center spokes. They’re not all the same or evenly spaced. They kept building off the end away from the dock, then built another dock, then added struts for volume.

  We docked, and called for estimates on repair for the powerplant feed regulator management.

  Glenn asked, “I know you don’t work with engines, but any idea who’s good here?”

  “I’ve always heard good things about the Rocket Surgeon—Le Chirurgien de Fusée. He’s upper end, but not the most, and very professional. He provides detailed reports on his work for log.”

  “Who’s good and cheap?”

  “Carrie the Fixer. Avoid the Duct Tape Engineer. He’s for people who need to get to a real outfit and don’t want to spend money here, but why would you do that? I guess they’d rather get to the Freehold, but it’s a long trip with failing equipment.”

  “Will any of them be able to tell we broke it?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly. I guess it depends on how well you did.”

  “We’ll risk it.”

  They got estimates from three shops, and took the Rocket Surgeon on my recommendation. Then Juan asked if they could get a discount by not being in a hurry. Some math suggested waiting three days would save enough to justify waiting, but it meant not earning meantime. Since the money was from our government and we didn’t need a haul for income, we waited.

  We actually did need regular hauls to offset expenses, but we did have some budget for military ops. The whole thing was largely self-funded, though, and there were no official records. It was brilliant. I wonder who came up with the idea originally. I’d at first figured to take ones or twos through to hide and look for intel, not to crew a ship and blow things up using the profit margin.

  In the meantime we did more spying.

  We split into singles and pairs, got bunkies and rooms, and split up.

  I carried some sort of passive sensor around in a purse. It felt weird. I hadn’t carried a purse since tech school when I was ten. I’ve used a shoulderbag or backpack ever since, but they wanted something smaller for even better concealment.

  You can’t get into the government sector easily, though I knew these guys could if they had to, but there’s a passage of bonger clubs, pizza joints and soup cafes literally one frame away. We rotated through there, carrying our sensors. I had some okay clam chowder and decent garlique baguette, made with Russian wheat. That seemed weird.

  I don’t know exactly what they were looking for, but I’m guessing phone signals, and possibly any kind of coding or traffic analysis from the control center. Yes, I’d started learning about types of intel. It was hard not to.

  We weren’t doing any HUMINT, just hanging out, getting known and getting passive SIGINT.

  Still, if you hang out, you get HUMINT. We learned who the bouncers and owners were, and we listened to people bitch about their jobs. That can tell you a lot, too. Their own security protocols were slowing people down, pissing them off, and making work harder.

  I still didn’t think this would win the war, but I was sure it helped. That encouraged me.

  I was out in a club, listening to Undertoad, when I got a ping.

  I let the message scroll across the hat I was wearing. It had a screen on the brim.

  “Emergency. Find us a place.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  I checked the time, swallowed my drink, tossed a chit at the bar, and walked out muttering, “Fuck work,” in case anyone was listening.

  I was sure it was bad. I thought about places I knew here from the one time I’d been here. How old was this place? Right. So they should have engineering crawls on the outer hull, and I did mean “crawls.” What was closer? There was a large volume in Frame 60, Radius 40 that was a homeless camp. We’d have to spread out and act the part, but it could work.

  I got onto a slideway heading axial north, and moved across to the express belt. Then I walked back over to the slow belt, because 60 came up faster than I expected.

  They’d given me an encryption program for my phone that they said they trusted. I shot an image of the Frame Number as I reached it. I went a bit further and got off at 62. It was quiet, which wasn’t what I wanted, so I worked back on foot through stores, trying to look like I was browsing when I was trying to relocate.

  At 60, I got on a local slideway and went counter. When I reached Radius 40, I sent another image. I went past and backtracked again.

  The problem was, there was still a homeless camp, but it was a lot smaller than last time. It had held a couple of hundred. Now it held about thirty in eight boxes and sheets. Ten of us would show. I figured I’d stick two “couples” here, and the rest of us would go somewhere else. But where?

  There was a spot at 85/26/1. Outer hull. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but we could hide.

  I sent the message with first initials only. “J&T, M&M, here.” I’m sure Mo had a tarp or something they could sleep under.

  As they started arriving, I made distant eye contact. Mo was first. I watched him sweep his vision across the volume, stretch and make an “ok” with his right hand. He’d take it from there.

  Roger was next. I turned with a bit of emphasis and started walking. I figured the rest would follow.

  I took slow slideways and stepped off early this time. It was an enclosed passage with an actual stop. We were near the industrial section for station maintenance, storage and support.

  I faked it with my phone as I got closer, talking into the air with my bud in.

  “I understand his schedule, but if he wants this delivered he’s got to respond. I’m going to try to get a count now, so they can be on pallet at the site when the crew arrives. We may have to bring some from the other stowage, and if there isn’t enough, there’s going to be a delay, so we need to start ASAFP.”

  There was hardly anyone around, and a woman in a coverall talking about a late project was nothing anyone would pay attention to. I walked right past a lone monitor. Lone. This was a decently safe area. Though I figured the team would fix that problem in time.

  There wasn’t exactly a hatch here. There was an expansion joint with a pressure curtain. The curtain closed with a magnetic airtight seal which had two gaskets that interlocked. It was cheaper and I guess easier than having a separate lock.

  Behind that was dead space to the outer hull. It was pressurized, held in place with crushable columns in case of impact, and pretty much empty, because it was black, cold and had nowhere and nothing to use for shelter or concealment once inside. I’d found it when one of the maintenance guys thirty-foured me into going there. It was neat to feel warmth on one side and cold on the other, but it got unsexy as soon as the thrill ended. I didn’t know if we could stay long, or if we needed two, but Juan had said, “Now.”

  I stood with my back to the curtain and waited.

  Roger came up and asked, “So what’s the problem?”

  I understood he was covering and said, “The pallets were short. Someone miscounted. I’ve called Mathews and told him to grab a couple of spares from stock, but we may need to pull some from the other project. This has the shorter deadline.”

  While I talked I indicated, and he eyed the joint. When I finished, he said, “Yeah, we’ve got until Tuesday, right?”

  “Monday.”

  “Crap. Let me think.”

  Then he muttered, “I guess if that’s all there is, but that’s going to be fucking cold.”

  “He said fast.”

  Bast arrived then, pulled out some small tools and ran them over the joint, while waving his phone around in between like he was doing some sort of inspection. I hoped he didn’t take long. We were cool for now, but eventually someone would start asking what we were doing.

  He got the gap open and shimmied through. It was about a meter overlap, and there were cold breezes as he shifted. And I mean cold. Holy hell.

  We kept up the chatter as Shannon, Juan
and Glenn arrived. Shannon was through and Juan in the joint when that monitor came back.

  The first thing he said was, “Someone better have a work order. There’s no orgies in the connectors.”

  I said, “Oh, sorry. We didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Messing with those is considered sabotage. Get your buddy out of there, I’m going to have to arrest you all.”

  I’d never seen Glenn fight before. Glenn moved so fast I barely caught it, and kneed the guy in the chest so hard I thought his lungs were going to come out. He dropped and curled up and started twitching. He obviously couldn’t breathe.

  Then he twitched a lot more. Then he stopped.

  Glenn had fucking kneed him into a cardiac arrest.

  “Get him in there,” Glenn said. “We’ll find his chip later.”

  We stuffed a dead, oozing body into the gap, then went through behind him. There weren’t any actual smears, but there were wet streaks. Uck.

  I got inside and it wasn’t quite black. Someone had a light set on a low lumen level so we could move about. I took the ladder down three steps to the outer hull, and had to get into a crawl.

  The body was down here with us, stuffed against a support pillar. Someone had cut open his hand and pulled his ID tag, and then ripped open his shoulder for the monitor ID.

  It was cold enough we weren’t going to smell that body for a while. I had a thin jacket in my pack, with really good insulating properties, but that meant ten degrees difference, not twenty, and it didn’t help my head, hands or feet. I huddled as best I could. I tucked my hands and shoulders up, and let my hair fall over my ears. I exhaled warm air down my collar.

  Once everyone was accounted for here and above, Juan got our attention.

  “UN intel caught up with us. It seems one of Chesnikov’s people informed them on our ship logs. We have a reasonable guess who, because that person was killed in a creative manner. They were given an oxygen mask and then exposed for slow vacuum trauma. So it wasn’t him, as best we can tell.”

  Wow. That was worse than being spaced, and probably worse than being zapped.

  “However, that let them confirm our presence in Salin. Then they must have checked out all vessels of similar size and class. They’ve seized Camby and you should assume anything aboard is compromised or confiscated. Which is why no one had anything of relevance to intel there, right?”

  I thought about that. I had my phone. I had the chips for all my personal files. I didn’t think anything aboard had my name on it, other than initials to ID them in transit or laundry. Those were my cover initials, not real.

  I shook my head, and no one confessed to anything.

  “Good,” he continued. “So everyone kill your phones.”

  I’d already done that as soon as everyone was accounted for.

  “It’s fucking cold down here, but we need to hold out as long as we can, unless we can find somewhere else. Then we have to see about transport.”

  Glenn asked, “What type of transport?”

  “Anything that lets us continue the war.”

  He was crazy. At this point, it was likely the next raid would ID us personally. We were going to keep at it until we died.

  I realized I had signed up to save myself and others. They’d signed up to save others and themselves. It made a difference.

  I really, really needed to talk to someone for emotional support. I knew the best way to survive was to win, but I wanted to fucking run. Fake another ID with their help, and just disappear, and wait for things to die down.

  But we couldn’t. We had to keep the pressure up, even if we died.

  I didn’t want to die.

  I didn’t realize Teresa was near me.

  “Scared?”

  I wasn’t going to even pretend to be brave.

  “Yes. Gods, yes.”

  “It’s all we can do, Angie. No matter what, we need a ship.”

  She was right.

  “I’m not sure I can get on that ship,” I said. “I know I should. I also know I can hide pretty well here, and get onto something else later. Except I probably can’t anymore.”

  “You said it yourself. If we lose, all that goes away. They’ll tag everyone everywhere, and track every movement. Everyone will be a ward of the state, working for it, not themselves. Disposable.”

  I was starting to wonder if it was so bad. Earth managed with a population of billions. People survived and existed. Was it really that bad? Were we really right?

  It didn’t matter.

  Either I kept going until we won or died, or I gave up and I was likely to die.

  I was disposable.

  But not everyone had to be.

  CHAPTER 35

  My choice of the shell had been desperate, after my first choice wasn’t available. It was definitely secure, but it was terrible otherwise. It did keep us out of sight, but our only latrine was a bucket someone had grabbed outside, and the overhead was barely enough to allow room to squat. My shipsuit was in the way. It was nasty.

  We waited, shivering, through an entire day cycle.

  Not just shivering. We sat in a huddle, between the next person’s legs and holding them for warmth, and changing every few minutes so the outside people moved inside. We could babble jokes to each other, and not much else.

  Mira was ahead of me at one point and said, “We did things like this in Blazer training. I never figured we’d do them for real.”

  “I guess it came about from somewhere,” I said. “Or we’re just lucky.”

  “Some of each.”

  Every couple of hours we took a break to use the bucket, then we exercised and ate a bit of food. “A bit” is all we had—some energy bars. It was two bites each, but it helped keep us hungry, not ravenous.

  When day cycle ended, Mira and Glenn snuck out. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I felt pretty damned low, between our situation, my crappy attempt at cover, the cold, short food and the long day.

  I mentioned it and Teresa shrugged. “We lost a ship due to planning errors. You found us a slightly less than perfect hiding spot.”

  I guess.

  When Mira and Glenn came back, they had clothes.

  “These should fit everyone pretty closely. Get dressed and we’ll relocate for the evening. We’ll have time to find another spot.”

  Roger asked, “Where are we going?”

  “An astrophysics conference.”

  That was a new one.

  I lay on a frigid, dusty surface and pulled on a skirt suit. I’d never worn one. The shoes were glossy on top, but still shlippers underneath. I could walk. Mira actually put on heels. So did Jack. He had a nice set of boots under a twill kilt.

  I was amazed we got out unchallenged, with all the foot traffic and a dead cop underneath us, but Mira went out first, then poked a walking stick through to indicate safe times. I came up third and she handed me a phone, with a map showing.

  I glanced at it and started walking.

  Along the way, Glenn came up and said, “Oh, hello, Researcher Kiro. Here is your notepad. It’s been updated and the files cleared.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Behind it was an ID badge with a picture that could be me. It said I was from the University of Machlan, Caledonia and a visiting researcher. My other ID said I was from a habitat around Meiji, and originally from New Liverpool, Caledonia. I could fake all that believably.

  If they thought I could fake any knowledge of astrophysics, we were all in trouble.

  It was clever, though. We were all in suits. We all were supposed to be ranking professionals. We shouldn’t get too much attention in public, as long as we stayed in the right crowds.

  There was a manual ID check at the conference hall. They glanced at mine and let me in.

  Mira and Jack signed us in, and she had a card from somewhere that was apparently legit.

  Soon, we were gathered around a table near the rear, and several of them had larger data screens plugged in. I messed with my phone a
nd notepad and tried to look like a professional. That kind of professional.

  We even had a catered supper, with soup, fish and rice cakes. I guzzled about three pots of hot green tea with honey, to warm up from the day in a freezer.

  I kept my thoughts to myself and ignored the lecture. I didn’t have a clue what any of those equations or images meant, but I pretended to whisper and nod to Glenn and Jack from time to time.

  Mira actually pinged in and asked a question.

  “In your transfer equation you reference an oscillation ratio. Do you yet know if this is related to the mass or diameter of the particle? If it is, what form does the relationship take?”

  “Excellent question!” I heard. “We have found the ratio follows two curves, one for mass and one for diameter, which matches optimal particle size as shown on Page Four. Interestingly, the ratio does not seem to . . .”

  It still meant nothing to me.

  “What about you, miss?” he asked, highlighting me. “You’ve been quiet. Any feedback?”

  I slung words. “Right now I’m just taking notes. It seems very well supported, and I’m looking forward to the follow up and any refinements of the numbers.”

  That was odd. It was almost as if they were testing us.

  They might actually be testing us.

  We had lunch together and hung in the back, as a small group, chattering about these other people we knew outside the field, and keeping to ourselves.

  It worked, though I spent the entire day staring and nodding, and faking making notes. I had not a clue what was said or if it was feasible or complete BS.

  Then we went to a floor suite at the Hotel Obernal.

  Mo rolled in with an entire dolly of sandwiches, soup, baked chicken and fish for dinner.

  Juan briefed while we ate. I understood that most of these briefings were for me, but they did clarify points for the others.

  “So, the ship is gone. We’re unhurt and unhindered, and they’re looking for ‘leads,’ which suggests they don’t have much. It could be they don’t want to share what they have in case they give intel to us, but it doesn’t seem that Mil Intel is involved, just BuLaw locally. I’d expect them to try to scare us out or into hiding, and have rewards out. So they don’t seem to be sure. It’s noteworthy that Angie isn’t mentioned, despite being a previous detainee. They may think they killed several of us during a previous attack. There’s no mention of the attack on the Salin station. They’ve kept that out of the news.”