“Your clearance documents detail a code-eight fugitive but no name?” Holt’s polite enquiry filtered through the comms link, interrupting my concerns.
“That’s correct, Captain.”
Fran had hesitated. Holt wouldn’t have caught it, but I had. Maybe my bullshit radar was finally working on Fran, for all the good it did me. Or maybe I could filter through her lies when I wasn’t distracted by her getting in my face.
“Warbirds aren’t known for their prisoner facilities. Where are you keeping him?” Holt asked.
“In an aft cabin.”
“The harrier you’re towing is his?”
“Stolen goods. I’m returning it to Old Earth for processing.”
“And the fugitive? Where are you taking him?”
“What makes you think I need to answer that, Captain?”
A smile crawled across my lips. Right about now, Holt was getting the military glare. The one that had probably made recruits quiver in their pristine whites.
“We’re on an extreme alert level, Commander. In this case, my authority supersedes yours.”
My smile grew. “Man, you do not want to get on her bad side. She’ll stab you in it.”
“I’d like to see the prisoner.”
Oh joy. I gave my cabin a quick once-over. I hadn’t spent long enough in it to leave any incriminating evidence on display, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any. For all I knew, Fran could be setting me up to take the fall for a whole world of shit I wasn’t even guilty of. Although, fleet only suspected me for a fraction of the crimes I’d committed. Toss in a few arms deals, drug hauls, and sabotage, and they’d be getting closer to the true extent of my talents.
The cabin door opened. I saluted Fran with my cuffed hands. “I really need to piss. Could you help with that, Commander?”
Holt looked down his straight nose at me. I arched a brow. Late thirties, slender frame, wiry, clean-shaven face. Typical fleet.
He curled his lip and he asked Fran, “Why is he wearing a lieutenant’s uniform?”
“Thought he could slip through the gate checks posing as an officer.”
Holt scoffed and peered down at me. “It takes more than a uniform to make an officer.”
“Like the ability to bend over and take Chitec up the ass?”
Holt’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a problem with fleet officers, sir?”
I opened my mouth to speak but Fran beat me to it. “Knowing when to mind his manners is one of many, many problems this man has.”
Manners? I’d seen her teach some of the most barbaric smugglers a whole new vocabulary of insults, drink them all under the table, and then rifle through their pockets for credits. “Honey, you say the sweetest things.”
Holt caught my overly familiar tone. “Do you know this man, Commander?”
Fran didn’t dignify the remark with anything other than professional distance. “In his fantasies, he likes to think so. Have you seen enough, Captain Holt?” She turned away. “I know I have.”
I showed Holt my middle finger as he closed the door. I still had the comms in, so I heard all the wonderful things Holt had to say about bottom-feeding scum, but Fran was entirely professional, and she kept my name off the record. If we ever got out of this, I’d be grateful for that.
I had a while to stew on whether she’d be back to let me go or hand me over to fleet to get safe passage through the gate. After what she’d told me about Treno, it would appear she didn’t need me to press the remote trigger. She’d seemed pretty cut up about the idea back on the Island though, like maybe she wasn’t the cold-hearted bitch she’d been in fleet. Who was I to judge what she’d done in fleet? It wasn’t like I hadn’t watched Hung kill his daughter to get a promotion.
I bumped my head back and thought my way around the inevitable guilt trip I was heading for. A synthetic killed Haley. It didn’t change anything; it didn’t bring her back. I could even argue that, had I played the hero that night, we both would’ve died. At least this way we were trying to do the right thing, even if that meant killing a whole lot of people. When did the right thing become the wrong thing? Where was the line? It sure felt like this was the line, and if I pressed that trigger, I’d be crossing it. There had to be another way, but I’d yet to find one, and if we got through the gate, we’d be that much closer to mass murder.
The cabin door rattled open. Fran leaned a shoulder against the seal and crossed her arms. “They’re gone. We got clearance.”
I couldn’t bring myself to smile up at her.
She reached inside her coat and retrieved her dagger, the one with the tarnished flanks and notched blade. The same one that had seen my insides. Probably the same dagger that had killed the foxes in their bunks.
I held out my cuffed wrists. “Reckon you can cut me free.”
She pressed the tip of the blade against her finger and gave it a thoughtful twirl.
“Any time now,” I added, rattling the cuffs. “What with me trusting you an’ all.”
“If I let you go, you gotta promise me something.”
“Don’t you mean when you let me go?”
“I have a plan.”
“Oh?” Something told me I wouldn’t like this plan.
“You agree to hear me out and consider it.”
“Sure. I can do that.” I shoved my bound wrists forward. “Now do the honors.”
Whatever her plan was, my agreement to listen to it brightened her smile. She leaned in and cut the wrap-cuffs with one quick upward thrust. I made a show of rubbing my wrists while side-eyeing her dagger and got to my feet. “So tell me about your plan.”
“Once we’re through the gate.”
* * *
We passed through the gate without a hitch. Holt must have been eager to get processed and away from his responsibilities.
We’d powered unmolested through the choked gate zone in the original system and were a few universal hours out of Janus. Fran was sitting in her flight chair, hunched over her holoscreen. She had shrugged out of her jacket and ruffled her hair, deliberately shedding her fleet persona. I preferred her this way, scruffy and steely-eyed. I was sitting beside her, watching the stars drift. Last time I’d been in the original system, fleet had tried to shoot me out of the black and then thrown a firing squad at me on Ganymede. Seemed like a lifetime ago. Now I was back, carrying with me a fuckload of explosives for the Fenrir Nine that was destined for Hung, Chitec, Janus, and all those poor bastards going about their daily lives. Life sure did have a fucked-up sense of humor.
“You ever think about what might have happened if you hadn’t joined fleet?”
My mood, already sour, turned acidic. “I try not to.”
The old scars on my back itched.
Fran shot me a frown. She’d clearly forgotten fleet had been a way out for me, an escape from the hell I’d grown up in.
“I was going to manage my own shipping fleet,” she added, remembering quickly enough to divert the attention away from my past. “The routes through the nine systems, they’re based on old shipping lanes from before the Blackout. Out by Calisto, for one, there’s a route that runs wide around an old recycling rig. That rig probably broke up years ago. It’d save on fuel and time to reroute right through that sector.”
“You, a shipping merchant?”
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t see it. She didn’t have it in her to shuffle ships around the nine systems; she’d rather be front and center, staring adversity in the face while giving it the finger.
“You don’t think I could do it?” she asked.
“You could, but it would be the wrong move. You’re not that person.”
“I might have been. Fleet changed me.”
I smiled a lazy, drawn-out smile and sent it her way. “The nine systems changed you. It does that to folks. The black gets under your skin until you only feel right when you’re out here, no strings attached and looking at that.”
I swept a hand at the obs
window and the masterpiece of stars beyond. Saturn, the old girl with her rings, hung to Fran’s right, little more than a smudge against the black, but a smudge I recognized well. The original system and Old Earth, for all its faults, had been my home.
She was looking out at the blanket of scattered diamond dust. The glow from the warbird’s instruments moved over her face, smoothing out the lines around her lips and eyes.
“What about after?” I asked. “After all this, when we split, what are you going to do then?”
Her focus stuttered and her gaze dropped. “Check your screen.”
I lingered a little longer, watching the light fade from her eyes, and then checked my screen. All I saw was a crisscrossing maze of intersecting lines.
“Janus maintenance plans.” She flicked her screen and mine changed, pulling back to reveal Janus in all her spinning-top glory.
“I know what Janus looks like,” I grumbled. She zoomed in again, fast enough to make my head spin, and we were back to the lines again, this time intercepted by channels and numbers. “Now I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
“You don’t need to.”
I was getting that sinking feeling in my gut again, the one that went all the way down and grabbed my balls, and not in a pleasant way. Fear—but not for me. “Spit it out, Fran.”
“A explosion like the one from our tonnage will rip Janus dock wide open and breach the habitable environment. It’s a clumsy attack—a scattergun approach. Blow it all to shit and nobody survives.”
“You got a better idea?”
She faced me, her eyes cool, lips grim. “I do, but you won’t like it.”
“I already figured as much.”
“There’s a way to get a ship inside the station.”
“Well yeah, it’s called a dock. C’mon, Fran. Just tell me what the fuck you’re skirting around so I can get with the arguing.”
Her grim lips slanted sideways. “I’m going to fly the harrier inside Janus and strike right at Hung’s towers.”
I waited a beat, expecting a “Ha, fooled you,” and then, when she looked back at me, her face the picture of deadpan, a laugh jolted free. She had to be high.
“Oh man, that’s priceless. Tell me again how you’re going to”—I cut the laugh, gritted my teeth, and growled—“fly through a fucking maze.” I stabbed a finger at her. “Because that kinda shit right there is what’s called suicide.”
A muscle in her cheek twitched. “Are you done?”
“Honey, I haven’t even gotten started.” I kicked my boots up on the flight controls and sank in my chair. “You can’t. And this isn’t my ego sayin’, ‘I can’t handle girls who know their shit.’ Even if you could get a harrier inside Janus, there ain’t no airspace to fly in. It’s all spokes on a wheel in there. Impossible. Even for you.” The best damn pilot in the nine systems.
I met her stalwart gaze and knew she wouldn’t give up on this. What she was suggesting, even if it were possible, was madness. She couldn’t land the harrier outside Hung’s towers without all of Janus Security coming down on her. She couldn’t walk away. That meant, when the cargo blew, she’d be right there at ground zero.
“No,” I snarled.
“I’ve gone over the specs again and again. It can be done.”
“No.”
“The artificial gravity will screw with the harrier’s gyros, but the harrier’s grav dampeners will level her out. I’ve already plotted a course. It might get tight around the elevator hub, but the numbers say it’s doable. Simple.”
Flying through or around crisscross trusses, pipes, ducts, and shit not on her maintenance charts? Sure, simple. Jaw glued shut, I glared out of the obs window and searched the black for another solution.
“There’s another way,” I mumbled with zero conviction.
“Is there? Then why don’t you tell me all about it, Captain Shepperd? I’d love to hear your plan, because we’re a few hours out, and besides following the Nine’s orders to the letter, I’m not seeing you come up with anything.”
“I’ll go talk with Hung.”
Her chair creaked, drawing my eye. She’d sat back and twisted in her seat to look at me like I was the insane one. “Right, because that’s worked well for you in the past. What are you going to say? You can’t negotiate with a synthetic.”
“He could have killed me—twice—and he didn’t.”
“Don’t give him a third chance.”
“He should have killed me.”
“He sent One after you.”
“We don’t know for certain that was him. Think about it. Maybe it’s like with One, and Chen Hung is still in that synthetic head somewhere, still calling the shots? I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”
She snorted a laugh. “It’s a lousy, reckless shot in the dark.”
“So’s your plan.”
“But I can fly through Janus. Your plan reeks of desperation.”
If anyone could fly through Janus, it was Fran, but that wasn’t the part that had my guts all twisted up. It was what happened after. There sure as shit wasn’t any way I could blow the harrier’s cargo knowing Fran was at the center of the blast. I still wasn’t sure I could press that trigger whether she was there or not.
I chewed on my lip while the warbird’s bridge closed in around me. Everywhere I looked, there was no way out—no solution. This whole fucking mission was a trap. Short of flying right past Janus, blowing the harrier in some deserted corner of the black, and disappearing in Jotunheim, I couldn’t see a way out of this that didn’t involve the death of two hundred and fifty thousand people or mine.
“No,” I said again, although I’d lost some of the anger that gave my order any meaning.
“Say no if it makes you feel better, but I’m doing what I have to.”
“Not if I cuff you to your bunk.”
“Try it.” That fierceness was back in her eyes, the same fire she’d returned from Asgard and the Cande pirates with. She might not have the heaviest punch, but she sure knew how to wield her dagger. I didn’t fancy ending up like the foxes she’d fought, bleeding out in my bunk. What was the death of one lousy fixer to save hundreds of thousands of people? She knew the right thing to do when she saw it. She’d kill me and herself to save those people if it came down to that. Fran was the hero I never dared to dream I’d be. Wishes are dreams.
“Fine,” I sighed. “Tell me how you’re getting out of there after you’ve ditched your payload, and maybe I’ll go along with your plan.”
A smile teetered at the edge of her lips.
“I didn’t sign up to die a hero,” I added.
“Few heroes do.”
Chapter Sixteen: One
When the lights rippled through the length of the warehouse, bathing its motionless stock in startling brilliance, it seemed like only yesterday Haley had begged for her life inside these very walls.
Her cries echoed through my processes as though her ghost were here. Don’t! What are you doing? Daddy, please … I won’t talk. I won’t …
Synthetics stared blankly at a nonexistent spot somewhere behind me. Nine hundred and ninety-nine of them. One was missing. Tarik, I assumed, although I couldn’t know for certain. Their faces were reflected in each other’s, their bodies identical in every way. Cold. Empty. Exactly as they had been on the night Caleb and Haley stumbled upon the secret that would kill a bright young girl and change the naïve fleet captain forever.
Chen Hung stood beside me, his hands clasped behind him. He held his head high while his eyes absorbed the sight of his legacy with the selfish pride of a machine admiring its own perfection.
“I had them all in place. It was sublime, really. But …” A hesitation, a moment of doubt. The delay wasn’t a programmed one. “They developed a fault,” he finally said. His rich, rhythmic voice travelled deep into the hollow space. “I had them all recalled.”
“A fault?” A smile threatened, but I held it back, buried it behind cool resolve. That fa
ult was me.
“A simultaneous hard reset,” Hung said with a brief dismissive gesture. “The technicians explained it away as a string of incorrect code buried deep in their original calibration. Still, the fault gave me the perfect excuse to bring them home.” He turned, graceful and smooth. The artificial warehouse light pooled in his eyes and accentuated every imperfection on his face. “And with you here, we are complete. A family, you might say.”
I pulled my gaze from his and cast it over the silent army. So many faces, so many figures, and yet among these synthetics, I was alone. I stepped forward and drifted between their ranks—synthetics to my left and right as I walked. My heartless brothers and sisters. I brushed my hand over their gray Chitec clothing and reached up to their faces to touch their synthetic skin. Cool, like my own, but their faces were smooth and clean. I touched my own cheek, where the scars cut deep. I was not like these synthetics. Perhaps I was never meant to be. Lloyd had said I was different inside too. Different from the code out.
“Perfection.” Chen Hung’s smug voice sailed above his synthetics.
I checked over my shoulder, but I’d lost him somewhere along the edges of his silent sentinels. I knew the minds of these vacant soldiers. I knew them because they were hollow, and I’d once filled them up, once seen through their eyes, and as I’d lain dying, I’d made them all fall alongside me. A fault, Hung had called it. Perhaps I was a fault among their numbers. I was content to be the wrong one, the broken one, the rogue one, a ghost in the Chitec machine. I am One, and I will not be stopped.
The smile I’d been holding back broke through and lightly settled on my lips.
I reached for the cloud, for the endless stream of nine systems’ worth of knowledge and for the door through which I’d once controlled my brothers and sisters. And there, I found it open to me once more. Nine hundred and ninety-nine empty minds, waiting to be filled.
“The technician I arrived with …” I said, my voice cutting through the quiet. “He tried to kill me.”
Girl From Above #4: Trust Page 11