Girl From Above #4: Trust

by Pippa Dacosta

  One stood inside the door, out of sight against the controls. I kept my eyes away from her. Hung would see the slightest twitch in my gaze.

  C’mon, that’s right, just a few more steps. My aim trembled, my body about ready to give out on me.

  Hung slowed, the good half of his face the picture of smug satisfaction.

  A couple more steps …

  He paused outside the pressure seal, inches away from One. If he leaned inside, he’d see her.

  “You wanna live forever, right?” I blurted.

  His head twitched.

  “That’s your primary objective or whatever?”

  Fuck, just one more step. Why wasn’t he moving? He’d know One was close, but he couldn’t know she was inside the airlock with me.

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s the point? You’re alone. Who wants to live alone forever? What kind of fucked-up dream is that?”

  He reached out and gripped the door seal. My gaze flicked to One’s composed face—inches from his fingers—and then back to his face. His eye narrowed, like he knew. He fucking knew. I fired the pistol, but the shot went wide, or he moved, because in the next second, he sprang, hands thrust out like claws, his face a twisted mask of ugly half-made expressions.

  I fired blind, saw his cheek explode, and then got a face full of silver hair and a lungful of sweet cherry smell. One. She got between us, grabbed hold of my shoulders, and spun me around, then shoved me out the airlock. It all happened so fast I wasn’t sure where I was until the door slammed down behind me with a resounding boom, jarring me back into the present.

  “What the—”

  Chime.

  Shit. The airlock was sealed with One and Hung inside. “One!”

  Fuck no, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I lunged at the locking panel and punched the release pad. Nothing happened. “Open, dammit!”

  One’s calm face filled the oval airlock window.

  “It won’t open from out here.” I jabbed at the pad again. “Something’s wrong.”

  I kicked the panel.

  “Fuck.”

  Chime. No, no, no … The door had to open.

  “Disengage it from the inside.”

  When I saw her face again, watching me in that cool, calm way of hers, I knew she had no intention of opening the door.

  “Chen Hung must not be allowed to escape,” she said, quite reasonably.

  “Open the door, One,” I growled. Lead-like dread was getting way too comfortable in my gut.

  “I tore out the controls.”

  I froze, not hearing the words—not wanting to hear them. No lock controls. No opening the door. No escape.

  “No, One …” She’d torn out the controls and my heart along with them.

  “Hung is already waking. Had I left the lock intact, he would have opened this door and killed you. I couldn’t stop him. Nothing can stop him. This must be done.”

  I ignored her words because this wasn’t over. There had to be a way. There was always a way, a Plan B. The pistol. I fired at the seal, squeezing off shot after shot, but the phase bullets twanged and ricocheted, chipping off lacquer but otherwise barely making a dent. Airlocks couldn’t be breached. They were as thick as the ship’s hull. There was no way to open that door without industrial cutting gear. Once the outer airlock door opened, the bitter black would rush in.

  One had seconds to live.

  I threw the pistol at the door and sank my hands into my hair. “No! No, One!”

  “Caleb.” So calm. How could she be so calm?

  I couldn’t look at her face. I couldn’t. She would die in there, in the cold, with that bastard. It was his fault—again. How could this be happening?

  “Caleb?” She smiled.

  I fell against the door, forearms braced on either side of the window. “How can you do this to me? Don’t do this.”

  She looked even prettier through my tears. Her eyes so fucking bright, her smile light and real.

  “Don’t make me watch you die. Please … by the nine, please. I can’t … not again.”

  Her smile was sorry. The sight of it cut through my chest.

  She blinked and said, “Chen Hung gave me life, but you showed me how to live it.”

  Chime.

  “We could have gone anywhere.” Just you and me, One. Why, why are you leaving me?

  Grief raked through my insides, ripping them out. I pressed my fingers against the glass, wishing I could feel her.

  “You don’t have to do this.” The words rang hollow and empty. There was no undoing this.

  “I’m not a good person inside. We were built to kill. All synthetics must die. This is the right thing.”

  “Fuck the right thing.”

  “Caleb …” She pressed her fingers against the glass, against mine. She was so close—right there—and I couldn’t feel her.

  I curled my fingers into a fist, drew back, and punched the glass. A howl of pain rushed up my arm. The glass didn’t budge.

  “One, you don’t know what you’re saying! You’re the best person I’ve ever met. Don’t leave me.” I hated her, hated her for being behind that door, for standing there, so fucking calm, so fucking right. Why did I have to be surrounded by good people? Why couldn’t they all be selfish bastards like me? “Don’t you let me go, One. You hear me? Don’t you fucking let me go!”

  Her smooth brow furrowed. The words had hurt her and I instantly regretted them, but her smile stayed, because she understood. My hate dissolved as quickly as it had come. A hole opened up inside, and what little hope I’d been clinging to drained away. She was saving me, one last time.

  She saw the resignation on my face, the moment I stopped fighting.

  “I would rather have lived through those moments with you than not have lived at all.”

  Words clogged my throat—stupid, angry, pathetic words that wouldn’t change a thing. “Fuck you, One. Fuck you for making me believe we had time.”

  “We did have time.” Tears glistened in her eyes then broke free and rolled down her face.

  I wanted to wipe them away, to wipe the pain away. She should live. She deserved it, more than me.

  “Caleb, don’t you see? You gave me forever in those moments. Please, don’t be sad.”

  I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the glass. “I need you.”

  “You don’t. You’re a good man inside. I see you.”

  A warning buzzed. I opened my eyes and looked into hers, so brittle, so fragile. I wished I’d held her longer, said the things I’d wanted to say, taken her away to all the places, lived the dreams.

  “I see you too.” It wasn’t fair. “Count the stars, One.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  No, she wouldn’t be afraid, because she was One. I wish we’d had more time.

  The buzzer grew louder and deeper. Escaping air viciously hissed behind the door. I spread my fingers on the glass, over hers, and looked into her eyes. Ice crawled across her hair, her cheek, and snapped over her lips. I watched its terribly slow progress through unfocused tears. Hoarfrost clouded her eyes. As she breathed her last moisture-rich breath, the window fogged, and frost scattered across the glass. I knew when she’d left me. A hollow, empty place opened up inside, and even though I could still see her face, see the smile resting on her lips, she was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Caleb

  Five months later.

  * * *

  “Mister Shepperd, are you quite sure you don’t know anything about these illegal gambling rumors?”

  “Quite sure.” I poured Officer Jack a shot of Old-Earth whiskey—one of the finest I had in stock—and shoved it in his direction. “You’re welcome to check out back.”

  His eyes brightened, like he’d hit the jackpot.

  “After you get a warrant.”

  The delight in his eyes clouded. He threw the whiskey back in one gulp, hissed, and grumbled an imaginative curse that brought a smile to my lips.

&nbs
p; I liked Jack; he was a smart guy. Naive, but smart, and new enough around these parts to think he could clean up Ganymede and all the other original system stopover ports. He also knew I’d won Tink’s Bar from Bruno in an illegal card game like the one Officer Jack was now accusing me of organizing.

  “Luca says hi.” He shoved the empty glass back in my direction.

  I poured him a few more fingers. “She does, huh?”

  It was early. The cruiseliners with their cargo of tourists had come and gone. Paying customers were few and far between, and the staff had all bounced off shift before they had to clock in again in a few hours. The pause between mayhem: one of my favorite times and about the only time I manned the bar.

  “Still sings your praises,” Jack added, the grumbling undertone making it perfectly clear what he thought of his sister’s appraisal of me.

  I smiled, tucked the whiskey out of the way beneath the bar, and leaned an elbow on the bar top. “That’s odd, seein’ as we’ve never officially met.”

  It wouldn’t do for Jack’s sister to associate herself with someone who skirted the law, someone like me. Not even if I’d hypothetically saved her shapely ass when she’d gotten herself mixed up with the wrong sorta folk out of Calisto.

  Helped by the interesting information I had about his not-so-sweet sister, information that could jeopardize his rising career as an original systems peacekeeper, Jack wouldn’t look too closely at what I may or may not be organizing in the back rooms.

  I smiled, he smiled, and we both gave a light chuckle, because this was how the nine systems worked, and sometimes when the new law didn’t have teeth, people like me did.

  “I never thought I’d be patrolling Jupiter’s moons, trying to keep the peace,” Jack mused, tapping his fingers on his glass.

  I’d done some digging when he came to me for help; I’d been stung before. A year ago, he’d been a grunt in fleet. Since fleet no longer existed, Jack had signed up as a peacekeeper, same as a lot of fleet’s throwaways. Still, I knew that look, caught it in the mirror sometimes. He missed the black.

  “I hear that.” I trailed off as the doors opened and a hooded figure drifted in from the orange-lit boardwalk.

  Jack shot me a side-eyed questioning look. I raised a brow and stepped back from the bar, giving me enough room to reach the pistol taped under the bar top. I’d never gotten along with hooded folk.

  “Captain Shepperd?” the girl asked, pushing her hood back. She was a slight thing, a few years younger than me—without the mileage. She had close-cropped, black hair, pert lips, shrewd brown eyes, and a confident swagger.

  Jack’s side-glance had turned curious. I tensed. Now the tame police officer would go checking after a Captain Shepperd and I’d have more questions to answer. I should have used a pseudonym, but then, it wasn’t like I’d planned to settle on Ganymede.

  “Ain’t nobody called me captain in a while,” I replied, sizing the girl up. She didn’t look like much. She wore a multitude of layers like many of the port-drifters who literally wore what they owned.

  “But you do have a ship?” she asked, planting herself on a stool and looking up at me, head cocked, eyes expectant.

  “Who’s asking?”

  She shrugged.

  Two could play the vague game. “Nah, I don’t have a ship—”

  “The Fortuitous?”

  I snatched the pistol free from its hiding place, cocked it, and aimed it square between her eyes. “Who are you? No bullshit.”

  Nobody knew the name of my ship. All those who did were dead.

  She blinked and peeled back her ragged coat, checking me for permission before reaching inside. My trigger finger tightened as the little voice in my head told me to scare her out of her wits and send her packing. But curiosity—that fucking bitch curiosity—had me holding fast.

  She slowly, carefully, withdrew a folded slip of paper and held it up, letting me get a good look at the innocent folded square. I glanced at Jack, who shrugged but eyed the pistol warily. I wasn’t about to shoot a girl in Tink’s—not in front of a lawman—but neither of them knew me well enough to take a chance on playing the hero.

  The girl set the folded slip of paper down on the bar and pushed it over.

  I snatched it up in my left hand, making them jump, and unfolded it. A credit token fell out, the kind with a fixed value determined by the sender. The display on this one held a steady 30C. A memory tugged from somewhere deep, where I’d buried it cycles ago. Thirty credits … I turned it over in my hand—I was worth at least thirty credits—and tucked it in my pocket.

  “Who sent you?”

  She dropped her gaze to the piece of paper. I did the same and noticed a scrawled message inside.

  Debt’s paid.

  Fuck.

  “Watch the stock,” I told Jack, tucking the pistol against my back, veering round the end of the bar, and heading out the door.

  “What?” he spluttered.

  “Just watch the bar,” I called back. “And don’t go poking out back. I’ll know!”

  I broke into a run, heart pounding the same as my boots on the boardwalk. Ganymede’s orange-tinged haze swirled beneath inadequate lamps. Humid, heavy air laced my tongue.

  Thirty fucking credits.

  Debt’s paid.

  It couldn’t be.

  By the time I reached the old maintenance hangars, sweat crawled down the back of my neck and the old wound in my side radiated the kind of protest I’d suffer for later.

  I dashed through my old hangar’s rusted side door and skidded to a halt. I’d expected the warbird gone—stolen. Debt’s paid. But the raptor loomed large, her bulk filling the hangar from floor to ceiling, untouched and still where I’d left her for months, with patched-up covers draped over her outline. Fortuitous.

  And below her overhanging bridge section stood a woman. She had her hands on her hips, within easy reach of the two holstered pistols, and her face turned up at the ship. I wasn’t sure she was real. A diffused orange glow flooded in through the filthy hangar windows, throwing her long shadow far beneath Fortuitous while hiding the details of her face. I didn’t need to see her face to know her. “Bring it, little man,” that cocky stance seemed to say. “I’m too good for you.”

  “No.” I threw my hands up, pistol still palmed. “No”—turned on my heel—“no-no-no.”

  The denials echoed around the hangar, chasing each other into the murk.

  “Cale.”

  Fuck.

  I spun and marched toward her. “You died!”

  She turned her head and raised an eyebrow in a precise arc. She’d dyed her short hair scarlet red, the same color as the Candes’ home planet sunset. It shone, even in this pathetic light. The shadows cut her Asgard scar deeper into her cheek. For someone who’d been declared dead, she looked mighty fine in her flight fatigues. She’d tied the flight suit’s arms around her waist. Her tank top clung in all the right places, revealing toned arms and the infamous dragon tattoo coiled around her bicep. I had no doubt.

  “You definitely died!” I said, failing to keep the shrill note of alarm from my voice. “I was there.”

  She didn’t say anything, just watched me stride toward her.

  “How-in-the-fucking-how?!”

  “Escape pod. It embedded in a residential block.” She paused, her green eyes flicking to the pistol in my hand. “I used the remote to blow the harrier, once I was free. I kept my head down, waited for the dust to settle, and then bribed my way off Janus.”

  Escape pod. A fucking escape pod. “How wonderful for you. And you didn’t think to tell me this part of your plan?”

  I kept walking, not yet sure what I’d do when I reached her.

  She shrugged. “You said we’d go our separate ways. I was doing you a favor.”

  Doing me a favor.

  “Making a clean break,” she added.

  Making a clean fucking break.

  Rage fizzed through my veins, or shock, or both. Fo
r the first time in five months, I needed a fucking drink—the whole bottle. She did that to me. Made me nuts. Made me want to wrap my hands around her neck and throttle her.

  “You … You …” I stopped a few strides away. I mean, what the fuck could I say? Five months ago she’d flown the Candes’ harrier into Hung’s towers. “Fuck, Fran.”

  I took a step closer and forcibly stopped myself, not entirely sure if I might do something stupid like kiss her, or punch her, or maybe shoot her. Instead, I loosely pointed the pistol at her middle. “I’m gonna kill you, and I’m gonna make it stick.”

  She gave me a knowing look. “C’mon, Cale. We both know this is just foreplay.”

  Foreplay?! I laughed. The sound of it came out all twisted and wrong. “I’ll dump your body out of a Mede trash chute. How’s that for foreplay?”

  Fran snaked her arms crossed and sighed, not the least concerned that I’d carry out any of the threats. “Before you do, I have a job.”

  “A job?” I deadpanned and glared. She comes back from the dead, looking right as Old Earth rain—more than right, she looked hot, all straight-backed and commander-like and shit, goddammit—and she had a job?

  I scrambled around my head for something to say and came back empty.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m on a schedule here. Can you have this”—she waved a hand at me—“breakdown or whatever it is later, once we’re back-in-black?”

  I made a noise—part scoff, part fuck-off growl—and backed away a few steps. “I’m not going back in the black with you, sweetheart. You’re bad for my health. You couldn’t pay me a million credits to fly with you.”

  This was insane. She was insane. How was I even talking with her?

  “I will,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  My runaway thoughts stuttered. I shut my mouth, not entirely sure how long it had been hanging open. “Why?”