Twenty-Seven
Rouja reclined on a bunk aboard Padre’s ship, the Cronus. A moist towel lay across her forehead. Her body ached from electric shock.
“How did you know?” said Padre.
“Because the asshole uses the same phrases. Alvin made fun of him for it. ‘I have no religion’—who the fuck talks like that?”
Padre nodded and a wry grin spread across his face. “We’re gonna make Washington pay.”
He gripped the chair back hard with hands. She watched the muscles in his thin forearms flex. He looked so old and skinny. Not at all like the man she had once loved. Spite and zero-g had taken their toll.
She sat upright and sipped at a bottle of Refuel.
Back at Armstrong Station, she’d stuffed Watkins’s and Cheng’s bodies in a supply closet with the maintenance tech they’d killed. Then she let the janitorial bots mop up the blood while she waited for her former lover. She told Padre the maintenance man was Chico Perez, despite having killed him onboard The Hope. It was best to have an element of the truth in any lie.
You taught me that.
She said, “You’re taking this lightly. I told you not to use that government comm channel. That Perez guy took out two of us and nearly killed me. You think that spook Aimes is just gonna sit back while we screw up his plans?”
“We’re gonna put an end to him right now. I’ll send the chat dump from our conversation over to Alteris,” said Padre.
“Baylor told me the assignment came straight from the CEO. Send it to Sabrina Meyer and copy Aimes,” she said.
“Copy him? Why?”
“Because that asshole doesn’t like to sweat,” said Rouja. And he deserves it for taking Alvin’s winnings.
“Ha, it’s payback time,” said Padre.
“I don’t give a shit about Washington,” she said. “Let’s forget this goose chase and head back to Earth before it’s too late.”
“You don’t want revenge? For what they did in Greece?”
Don’t you dare.
“You pulled us out of there,” she said.
“Because the place was overrun and Washington disavowed me. It’s their fault we lost your daughter.”
You bastard.
“Our daughter, John. Our daughter.”
He looked away.
“Babe, we know they need this device. If Uncle Sam needs it, then everybody will pay to keep it from them. This is the last job,” he said. “We’re getting too old to keep this up.”
Too old . . .
Their daughter would be almost twenty now. Would Lia even forgive her? It didn’t matter. Lia needed her. She couldn’t let that continue to fester. Leung’s sex-trade ledger was the only chance she had to find her. An off-network decrypt of his DNA would cost a fortune and this job was uniquely valuable.
He’s right. I don’t have time to earn the money any other way.
“We still don’t know what it does.” She groaned and pulled the towel from her face. Her broken nose throbbed.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Padre.
She tapped the wall and examined her face in a video mirror. There were bags under her eyes and her cheeks were beginning to sag.
“I look terrible,” she said.
She set the nano-collar to work at returning youth to her face and repairing her nose.
“I say we hightail it to that asteroid and take it by force,” said Padre.
“That’s your plan?”
“We have to act fast.”
The nanites hurt like hell as they ran under Rouja’s skin, pushing bone back into place and repairing tissue. Normally it itched, but this was something else; the pain of weeks of healing in only minutes.
“We’re a team of two now. We don’t know what kind of firepower they have at that base,” she said.
“By all accounts it’s just a mining camp. Like the one I stole this ship from. We’ll kill anyone who gets in our way,” said Padre.
Alvin’s innocent; he doesn’t deserve this.
“They’ll see us coming in a stolen ship. I need to scout it alone,” she said.
Padre nodded. “All right. I knew you’d be up for it.” A wry grin spread across his face. “As long as I have you, babe, I can pull this off.”
“Yeah, you have me. Babe,” she said.
The nano-collar made a clicking noise. Then it shorted and died. She looked at the mirror again. Her face was youthful again, but her nose was still bruised and swollen.
Watkins’s eel suit must have fried the collar.
“Shit. It didn’t finish,” said Rouja. “I need to get to Baylor before my face comes undone and I look as old as you.”
Twenty-Eight
Barton Aimes sat down on the edge of his bed. Light from a window illuminated his expansive loft apartment. He stared at the far wall. Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States filled his view. It was so large that he felt like one of the assembled signatories gathered around George Washington. The painting had always given him courage. Its enormity conferred the impact of that meeting almost three hundred years ago. The greatest nation in history was not finished. Not yet.
He tapped his right temple, activating his government-issued Opti-Comp, and opened a direct line to Washington. An older woman with medium-length brown hair and a hard expression appeared before him in space.
“Hello, Mother,” he said.
“Hello, Bart,” said Margaret Aimes. “Is it in hand?”
“No. Our contractor has gone rogue.”
She cocked her head to the side and glared sternly.
“Kill him,” she said.
“I sent a drone.”
She nodded. “Has Baylor retrieved the Alkahest?”
“Yes. We’ll have to acquire it at the Alteris facility and get rid of Baylor there.”
“You can’t kill him. You need to send him home quietly before you take it or this will become a media feeding frenzy.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Alvin Baylor is something of a showboater.”
“You mean the gaming tournament? We quashed that. Meyer pulled his winnings and had her pal Xi-Michaels take him off the records.”
“He upset some very big names. Rick Zuck is the best player in the world, is he not?”
“Mother, I told you he’s been wiped off the record. The info never made it to Earth. Baylor’s a washed-up nobody.”
Her mouth drew even tighter than usual.
What does she know?
“Not for long. There was a reporter on The Hope, a hack named Anton Vance. We just got word of an article. He’s calling the tournament a scandal—a poor working man robbed by the upper classes. It will be all over the Earth-net in minutes. Baylor will be the most famous has-been in the world.”
Barton Aimes felt his stomach drop.
“Have your inside man kill Vance,” she said.
She’s going to kill me.
“I . . . can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because he’s dead. Killed by some woman working with our rogue contractor.”
Her lips parted just a hair and he could see her teeth.
“Go to Meyer. Have her tell her buddy Xi-Michaels. He’ll kill Vance for us. He won’t allow that kind of negative publicity to go unpunished.”
You mean you won’t allow it.
“Get details about the test of the device,” said Margaret Aimes. “I need to plan something that won’t make noise. Time is short.”
Yes it is. How long till Meyer knows about me?
“Okay, Mother. I will do this. She’ll want Baylor off the project when she gets wind of this. Maybe that will help us.”
“I hope so, Bart. You’ve really fucked this up.”
“I know, Mother. I’m sorry.”
The connection dropped.
Barton Aimes stood up from the bed and walked over to his desk. He pressed a hidden button in the leg and the elec
tronics inside shorted out with a pop. A small waft of smoke rose from the desktop. Then he opened the top drawer and pulled out a translucent ultrasonic pistol. He placed it in his inside chest pocket, adjusted his tie, and buttoned his jacket.
If Meyer knows about me, she dies. Mother will understand.
“Room off,” he said.
She won’t forgive, but she’ll understand.
Various objects around the giant room disappeared. All that remained were his bed, the smoldering desk, and a twenty-by-thirty-foot painting created for posterity. He looked at George Washington’s face for a moment and then out the window at the blue sculptural headquarters of the Alteris Asteroid Excavation Company. Then he turned, chin held high, and walked out the door. He didn’t bother to shut it.
Barton Aimes entered Sabrina Meyer’s office with a sense of urgency in his gut. His window of innocence would close soon. She was seated in her high-backed chair, a pleasant smile on her face as she poked around her Opti-Comp. It would have been concerning to find her undistracted. She couldn’t hold a meeting without running a chat or checking company correspondence or the news. She was barely focused on him.
She doesn’t know yet.
As he walked down the short steps leading to her desk, her security guard, Rashad, stepped behind him and shut the door. Barton paused a small distance from her desk and looked back. Rashad was dapper as always in his fitted suit, but his eyes told a different story.
He’ll be the one when the time comes.
Aimes nodded at the security man and sat down. Meyer cocked her head and looked through him. She was quiet.
Drones glided by outside the wall of glass while bright cumulus clouds drifted slowly in the distance. The top floor had been designed as a sky lounge to entertain guests, but when Meyer was brought on she scrapped the plans and took the whole floor for herself. She knew how to make an impression. PR was her strength. Aimes knew that he didn’t command her kind of charisma, and he found her casualness repugnant. Alteris was involved in the theft of United States property, and like any common criminal, Meyer’s day would come. Perhaps her office would be an entertainment lounge again.
“Have you heard the Baylor news?” he asked. “Who knew that reporter Vance was going to make a scene like that.”
“Chan Xi-Michaels informed me of the possibility. It adds a new wrinkle,” she said.
“It’s an undesirable bit of publicity. Do you think we can manage it before anyone gets too curious about Baylor? Perhaps Xi-Michaels can assist,” said Aimes.
Meyer’s eyes roved around in her Opti-Comp. “Hmmm, hold,” she said.
Aimes reached up to adjust his coiffed hair and masked a quick blink that enabled his direct line. It began streaming directly to Mother. He noticed a new message had come in. He ignored it.
“Is there a problem with Baylor? He should be nearly to Ida by now,” he said.
Meyer went on looking in her Opti-Comp. Then her eyes focused forward. She was looking at him squarely now.
“I’m concerned,” she said. “There are breaks in Baylor’s Opti-Comp feed. He’s been hiding something. He’s started a relationship with some dubious woman and there’s this business with the gaming tournament. It’s as if he wants someone to find out about him. Such attention seeking. Why did we pick him again?”
Certainly not for attention.
“We had few options. Rinsler’s device sent back a short list of names from my department. Baylor was the one with the best synaptic skills and he had no family.”
“Mr. Rinsler is a complex man with paranoid delusions. He must have chosen those names for a reason. He correctly suspected someone would attempt to kill him, yet he didn’t suspect Baylor of duplicity. Curious.”
“I don’t understand,” said Aimes. “Do you really think Alvin Baylor is up to something?”
“Mr. Aimes, this is a difficult job. Very tough. Tougher still if I can’t rely on discretion.”
Aimes shifted in his chair, conscious of the weight of the plastic pistol in his pocket.
“Dr. Rinsler warned me not to disclose his involvement . . . to anybody,” she said.
Aimes’s heart rate jumped.
Why is she still focused on me?
His eyes wandered to the message indicator floating in his view. “Losing him was lamentable, but we’ve recovered his device. Everything is finally moving again,” said Aimes as he peeped open the message. He skimmed it.
She knows.
A drop of perspiration formed at his temple.
“Oh, we didn’t lose him. We lost his double. Rinsler is safe at Ida waiting for his delivery,” said Meyer.
Aimes felt his heart pound in his chest.
What? Mother, are you watching this?
“Rinsler’s alive?”
“I agreed to some extreme measures to calm his paranoia,” she said.
“What kind of measures?” said Aimes.
“Really now, Mr. Aimes . . . I thought you were my problem solver, but it seems you’re somebody else’s.”
The bio-implant in Aimes’s arm began sending alert signals. He saw the words “Elevated Heart Rate” flash in an ugly red font across his Opti-Comp projection. A drop of perspiration began to roll down his temple.
“Sabrina, please explain. I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
Aimes shifted in his seat and leaned forward slightly, allowing the gun to pull away from his chest.
“You killed his brother,” said Meyer. “And you’ve received this same message, yes?”
Meyer activated the touch-field display on her desk with an upward swipe of her finger. The output from Aimes’s Opti-Comp appeared above her desk. It multiplied his vision like a hall of mirrors.
The message from John Padre floated there, and then “Warning: High Heart Rate” flashed over it and echoed a thousand times.
Rashad stepped to Aimes’s side. A black-gripped handle dropped into his hand from under his jacket sleeve.
“You have created a difficult situation for me. I am not well practiced in violence or interrogation. Thankfully, Rashad enjoys this kind of work. He tells me his weapon won’t stain the carpets, either.”
Mine will.
“Sic semper tyrannis!” yelled Aimes.
He drew the ultrasonic pistol from his pocket and kicked off the desk. As his chair fell backward to the floor, he fired. There was no sound.
The ultrasonic blast vibrated the golden desk until the wood supports splintered. Meyer’s bronzed Pizza award went flying and bounced off the window behind her, cracking the glass. She made an animalistic noise as she shielded herself from the flying debris.
Rashad whipped his arm and an electric blue arc flew from the black handle. The blue line snapped through Aimes’s outstretched arm and the gun went airborne with his finger still on the trigger.
The severed limb fell to the floor still firing. It blasted Meyer in the shoulder. She screamed in pain as Rashad leaped atop the weapon. His nose and ears began dripping blood as he ripped the gun free from the tensed hand.
Rashad stood, then fell backward against the cracked window. He panted and the whites of his eyes turned pink. “Are you okay?” he said to Meyer.
He sat on the floor while she sat in her chair, wincing from the pain.
“Yes,” she said while rubbing her left shoulder.
She wasn’t afraid, she was angry.
Aimes grimaced as he saw his arm ended at the elbow. The stump was cauterized, no blood to be seen. Rashad aimed his pistol back at him.
Mother will retrieve Rinsler and finish you.
“You can’t steal this nation,” said Aimes.
“I’ll tell your mother you died for the company,” said Meyer.
“She knows I died for my country. She’s watching.”
Meyer roared with anger. She picked up an award from the floor and ran at him through the debris of her desk. With an overhand swing, she buried the metal pizza slice in his eye socket. His
Opti-Comp sparked.
“Rashad, we’re going to have to clean the carpet,” she said.
Twenty-Nine
Alvin awoke from a nap, floating above the surface of his cramped bunk onboard the Alteris shuttle. His Opti-Comp showed he’d been out for several hours. A few feet away, the black orb floated in the air. Its deep black surface caused it to disappear into the shadows. Since the unlocking there had been no further light shows from the device. He reached out and tapped it with a finger and felt a tingling. Then he wrapped both palms around it. It felt like static electricity. He considered using the synaptic cable again, but was not anxious for another headache.
He was clueless as to the sphere’s use. It might be amazingly important to Alteris, but what could one do with it? He’d expected a revelation by this point in his journey, something to clarify the significance of this task. Knowing its creator to be Mohammed Rinsler generated nothing but more questions and a new fear. Who killed the scientist and when might they come for him? He thought it best not to handle the device until he understood it. He released his grip and it went back to hovering in the air. The tingling in his hands ceased.
Hopefully they’ll send the damn manual and some answers soon.
Alvin’s apprehensive mood was exacerbated by the shuttle’s drab interior. He missed The Hope.
This place is toxic.
He missed Katy.
I need to get in touch with her.
He hit Record and aimed his wrist to capture a video stream of himself and his environs. He spoke of how he was thinking of her and how this place held no distractions. “I’ll call again when I’m there,” he said.
Talking to her again felt good, even if he’d have to wait for a reply.
He pressed Send on the message and slumped back into his bunk. For two minutes he looked through his Opti-Comp at the empty inbox floating in space and straight through it at the blank wall of his cabin. Then his Opti-Comp flashed and alerted him to a new message.
Yes.
He peeped it. The message was from Alteris. Disappointment hit him.
The text showed an odd return address. It looked like an automailer from the system.
Alvin Baylor Lives! Page 17