“Isn’t that how it usually works. I need something fixed, you’re a fixer …”
“You don’t need me. Fortuitous is your fucking ship. You know all the flight codes. You could have flown her out of here without me knowing.”
“Right, I could have.” She chuckled lightly and broke her gaze away to briefly run her eyes over the ship. I might have caught a glimmer of regret, or maybe some sort of pensive reluctance, but she quickly buried the fleeting expression behind a wide, sarcastic smile. “Tink’s Cale? Really? I thought you had some standards, low as they are. But Tink’s?”
Now that my heart had stopped battering against my chest and the shock was wearing off, my thoughts came together. She needed me for something. Something about her job required either information only I knew or one of my rare talents, so rare I wasn’t sure I had any. Whatever it was, she would set me up for the fall. I didn’t need the heat. I had the bar and some shady dealings to keep the blood pumping. I didn’t need her or the black.
I dragged a hand across my mouth.
“No.” There, that wasn’t so hard. “Take the ship if you want her. I haven’t flown her since—Anyway, I told you, I’m done.”
I yanked my gaze away from her and marched back the way I’d come, one foot in front of the other. My refusal had sounded pretty good. Maybe I’d actually meant it? But it didn’t stop my insides from twisting up tighter and tighter with each step.
“You’re not done, Captain. You belong in the black.”
I kept walking, even as her words chased me down. God fuckin’ dammit. Why couldn’t she just stay dead? I had a business to run, and … not much else, but it was a start. It was honest—sometimes. And then there was Jack’s sister, whatever her name was … Luca. She was … nice.
“C’mon, Cale. Barman at Tink’s?”
I stopped, threaded my fingers through my hair, and dragged my hand down the back of my neck, telling myself not to turn the fuck around, and half turned.
“Captain of the Fortuitous,” she continued. “Cruising through the black, fleet nowhere in sight? That’s freedom. That’s you.”
She pulled the classic “cocked head, wry smile” look but stopped short of fluttering her lashes.
“There’s really a job?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s a job. But I need Fortuitous and her captain.
Shit.
She’d had me the second I laid eyes on her. This dance, my protests, was all fake. There wasn’t any chance of me walking away, and we both knew it.
I made a show of scratching at my chin and pretending to mull over her words. “You do owe me a ship.”
Fran’s smile grew, reeling me in. “Says you.”
I started making my way back toward her, taking it slow, like I hadn’t already decided. “How much you payin’?”
“What are you worth?”
Now it was my turn to smile, remembering the credit token and its pathetic thirty credits. “Prices have gone up. These are new times, yah know.”
Stopping up close, I tucked the pistol away and dragged my gaze up the length of her. When I got to her eyes, questions burned there. Questions and humor, and I might have caught a glimpse of wicked delight too.
“We had some good times,” she added, tilting her face once more toward Fortuitous.
“You spied on me, set me up, and tried to kill me. I’m not sure good is the word I’d use.”
“Foreplay.”
If that was foreplay, I was doing it wrong.
I followed her gaze to a section of Fortuitous’s uncovered hull. The ship had taken some damage when we’d rolled into Earth’s atmosphere and burned out the engines. Her panels bore the pockmarks and scars of unguided re-entry. I’d brought the ship down on Ganymede for repairs right after I watched One die, and I’d only taken her up again to return to Old Earth, to the clifftop where I laid One’s body in the earth. I’d tried to keep One, to see if she’d wake up, but those days had been endless, whiskey-soaked waking nightmares. It took a while for me to realize waiting for her to come back was killing me. She wasn’t coming back. She’d lived her life and chosen her fate. At least, where I’d buried her, she had the best view in the nine systems.
I can live forever in this moment.
My view of Fortuitous blurred. I blinked and swallowed a stubborn knot in my throat.
“What happened to Hung?” Fran asked as though reading my thoughts.
“Long story, but I burned that bastard down to scrap, pissed on his remains, and dumped what was left in Old Earth’s ocean.”
She snorted appreciatively.
Back-in-black … I wasn’t sure I could fly Fortuitous again. But the thought of it—getting back out there, among the stars, among the dreams—the thought of it trilled excitement through my veins like nothing else—no drug, no high could beat it. No rules but my own. No tethers. My only responsibility to my ship. Go anywhere, do anything.
“My ship, my rules,” I drawled, checking Fran’s expression out the corner of my eye.
She pursed her lips, chewing it over, then offered me her hand. I closed my fingers around hers. We shook, sealing the deal.
“Aye, Captain,” she said, a hint of irony in her voice.
The game was on.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Brendan Shepperd
Chitec Undisclosed Reserve & Data Storage Facility
Decommissioned Mining Outpost
* * *
I regarded the debris scattered about the mess hall with a studious eye. The outpost had been turned over, that much was clear as soon as we’d docked our transport vessel. It appeared as though anything of value had been stripped and hauled away cycles ago.
Pirates, if I had to guess. They were getting braver, venturing into the original system with more regularity.
Some things never changed.
At least they had left the power converters. Searching the outpost by torchlight would have slowed things down considerably.
“Commander, where shall we start?”
I sucked in air through my nose, tasting the outpost’s musty, stale odor at the back of my throat, and turned to Miles—an overly eager fleet rookie who’d barely gotten his feet wet in the black before fleet dissolved. Now he was part of my reconnaissance crew, and despite my many requests for him to call me Brendan, he insisted on using the now defunct rank. I was starting to get a feel for how annoyed my brother must have been when I persisted in using his full name.
“Take Gordon and Carroll and recon the sub-sections, see if there are any intact storage bays.” The mess lights flickered, buzzed, and then steadied. “And check the converters. I don’t want to find ourselves without power.”
Miles didn’t salute, but he twitched like he’d thought about it, and then waved Gordon and Carroll after him. The three of them filed out of the mess hall, leaving Lena Fitzgerald—or Fitz, as she’d been dubbed on another ship, another life—with me. She’d joined the Nine as a refugee, just like the rest of us. I gave her a nod, and she followed studiously behind.
On the flight over, I’d scanned the outpost’s maps and knew the interconnecting passageways well enough to find my way to the private quarters. Besides the occasional buzz from the overhead lights and the sound of our boots on the passageway grating, the outpost was quiet as a tomb.
“So, this station used to be a mining outpost?” Fitz enquired, rooting around common knowledge in a way that prompted for more information.
“Something like that.”
“Why are the Nine so interested in an old outpost?”
She’d been dying to ask since we departed the Island, but the journey over in the tight quarters of the transport vessel had left few opportunities for private conversations. The other crewmembers didn’t care about the why, or if they did, they knew better than to try and tease answers out of me. Fitz was new. She didn’t know how you had to work your way up to knowing the Nine’s motives. I might have left her behind if it hadn’t been for her past as a low-l
evel Chitec lab technician.
I pulled a rolled up screen from my coat pocket and handed it out to her as she fell into step beside me. She took it, questions widening her eyes, and stretched it out to scan the contents.
“This is a Chitec ship manifesto departing from … Janus?”
I nodded. “I ran the destination manifesto. The stock on that list never made it to its final destination.”
“So where did it go?” she asked, rolling up the screen and offering it back.
“I need you to hang on to that.”
She tucked the roll inside her jacket and looked about her at the rusted passage and grime-obscured lights. “This isn’t a decommissioned outpost, is it?”
“Five months ago, a hijacked Chitec transport docked here. The hijackers marooned the crew and went on their way.” I intentionally omitted the part where I knew the hijackers personally—One and Doctor Lloyd. Fitz didn’t need to know my involvement went beyond normal orders, nor did she need to know that I’d deliberately requested this mission on the back of the increased activity and a gut feeling. The fact Doctor Lloyd had been here and we had missing Chitec technology on a vessel that had strayed suspiciously close to this outpost on numerous occasions had been enough to prompt a visit. “The abandoned crew called it in, and Chitec came to their rescue. Activity around this supposedly abandoned outpost has since caught my eye.”
“You think someone is stashing illegal Chitec equipment here?”
“We’re about to find out.”
We stopped outside a crewmember’s quarters. An outpost crewmember who, after some research, I discovered didn’t exist. I gestured at the locking panel and its blinking red light. “If you’d do the honors.”
“Huh?”
“Hack the lock. It’s in your skillset?”
“And here I was thinking you brought me along to get me alone.”
She clicked her tongue and popped open the panel to reveal a tangle of wires and a rudimentary access pad.
I steered my thoughts away from how we were indeed alone and how I might have, on occasion, thought about her in a more physical capacity. I definitely did not think about what she might be implying, or how she’d taken every opportunity on the flight over to brush up against me. I’d figured it was because of the close quarters; now I figured many other things—none of them having to do with the mission.
“Done,” she announced, stepping back from the door.
The lock mechanism made a heavy clunking sound, the door seals hissed, and the light blinked green.
“Man.” Fitz whistled. “That sure sounds like some heavy-duty reinforced locks for a crewmember’s quarters.”
“That it does.” I gave the door a shove with my left hand, flicked my coat back with my right, and hovered it over my holstered pistol. The door whispered open on well-oiled hinges and the lights rippled on, bathing row upon row of flight-grade locking containers—the type that held valuable and sensitive cargo. Crates, bundled parts, and more were stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall. I ventured a few steps inside and ran my finger along the edge of a shelf. It came away clean.
“Someone’s been here recently,” Fitz whispered, echoing my thoughts. Beneath the whoop-whoop of the air filters, I heard her free her pistol.
Pirates couldn’t get past the lock, but someone had clearly been storing Chitec equipment here. I stalked my way deeper between shelving aisles, scanning the crate identifiers. Spare parts, I gathered.
“Do you know what this equipment does?”
“You’ve got reserve power generators here, some experimental weapons, but mostly generic lab tools.” She paused, and I looked back to see her pulling a flight case forward to get a better look. “Lots of backup data storage. Enough to store half the datacloud.”
At least the Nine would be pleased with the haul. Anything Chitec related and they were all over it like water on Mimir. I wouldn’t be going back empty-handed, always a good thing when dealing with the Nine. I wasn’t sure they entirely trusted me. The feeling was mutual. They’d sent my brother on a suicide mission. Any trust I had for them had burned up alongside Chitec. But I was in a position inside their echelons and I intended to stay there. As for this mission, there were unusual items on the manifesto I had a particular interest in.
I pulled up in front of five lockers. No windows, no tags, just serial numbers stamped into the doors at eye level.
“You got that list?”
Fitz unrolled the screen and scanned for the numbers. I watched her, my heart beating a little faster.
“Serial numbers match a wheat harvester attachment.” She looked at me, then at the doors. “Five, right?”
“Now why would you put harvester parts in lockers and store them with military-grade weapons?”
“You wouldn’t.”
She checked me, received a nod, and got to work on the first lock. The above lights flickered. I tapped my wrist comms. “Miles, how’s the search for spoils going?”
“Nada so far. Gordon split off. I’m having trouble getting through to him and Carroll. Have you heard from them?”
“No. It’s an old station, lots of pre-Blackout anti-radiation cladding. Probably comms black spots. Did you find the converters?”
“Yes. All present and correct.”
“Any idea what’s causing the power surges?”
“None. Like you said, old station has its glitches. Could be some power-hungry equipment somewhere.”
Fitz popped the lock. Before I could stop her, she pulled the door open and stumbled backward. Her hand shot to her pistol. She had the weapon cocked and ready in a blink.
“Whoa.” I knocked the pistol high before she got a chance to squeeze a shot off. “Take it easy.”
“It’s one of them,” she snarled, peering around my shoulder.
I’d wondered about the mystery items on the manifesto, wondered exactly why someone would collect harvester parts alongside weapons and tech. I turned slowly, unease crawling up my spine. Empty eyes stared front and center out of the gloom. A male synthetic, clad in slim-fitting Chitec grays, not a single hair out of place. It looked exactly like the one that had stalked Caleb and his crew on Lyra.
“Open the other doors,” I said, slipping into the familiar authoritative tone, the one I hid my fears behind.
“Are you nuts?” Fitz squeaked.
“They’re dormant.” And yet they look like they’re alive, just daydreaming. I rallied my wavering bravado and moved closer to the locker.
“I was on Janus. I saw what they did!” She shuffled back. “I thought all their remains had been destroyed?”
So did I.
“It’s not active, Fitz.” I gave the male synth a poke in the chest. It rocked in its locker and stared those icy eyes right through me. “See?”
I knew from experience that you couldn’t keep an active synth anywhere it didn’t want to be. A locker door wouldn’t stop it. Not much could.
“Open the other lockers.” I got a stern look and added, “Please.”
“Why?”
“The Nine want to know about everything that’s in this room.” It was a small lie, the Nine couldn’t know there were synthetics here, but a lie I could live with if Fitz focused on something other than the killing machine.
Her face had turned from a warm umber to a washed-out wheat-like color, and I inwardly cursed. I’d forgotten when asking her to come that she had been on Janus when the synths had torn Chitec apart from the inside out. She’d probably lost colleagues and friends. I could have told her it wasn’t the fault of the synthetics, that they had been following commands, but official reports had declared all synthetics broken. Those that had been retrieved from the rubble of Chitec towers were destroyed. All but these five, it seemed.
“You sure it won’t wake up?” she asked in the kind of small voice that made me remember she was only twenty.
“I’m sure.” Another lie. If it wanted us dead, we would have been dead as soon as we’d o
pened the door.
“Bren, you owe me a drink after this.” She sighed, took her time tucking her pistol away, and set to work on the next lock.
I pushed the locker ajar on the male synth, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. I didn’t expect him to wake up and finish what they’d started on Janus, but it didn’t hurt to keep my pistol free, just in case.
The lights buzzed bright, flickered, and died. Grays swirled in the dark. Fitz spat a sharp curse, and the lights flicked back on again.
“Two drinks,” Fitz grumbled. She popped the locker and this time revealed a female synth. It looked exactly like One, before she’d been torn apart and put back together again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
Fitz gave a dramatic all-over shiver.
“These things screw with my head.” She turned to the next locker. “Huh?”
“What?”
“It’s not locked.” She flicked the keypad, dislodging it so it hung by its wires. “Broken.”
The locker door swung open, revealing the vacant space inside.
Five lockers. Five harvester parts on the manifesto. Five serial numbers. Four synths.
“There’s one missing,” I said, blurting out the obvious.
“Do you think it’s here somewhere?” She looked around us, her eyes wide and her hand sliding to her pistol grip once more.
“Open the last lockers.” I freed my pistol and scanned the rows of storage shelves with a sickening sense of dread. It had to be here. Tapping my wrist comms, I pinged Miles but the link bounced back. I tried again—nothing. A comms black spot, nothing more.
“Two more dormant synths,” Fitz announced after opening the final locker. “Just the one missing.”
About to check her findings, I caught a blur rushing by the door in a flash of silver hair and Chitec gray.
“Fitz, stay here!”
If she replied, I didn’t hear it. I was already bolting out of the room, down the passageway.
The rapid beat of the synth’s soft pumps hammered on the walkway. It was too far ahead for me to see, but I followed the sound—until it stopped. I skidded into a junction, froze, and held my breath, listening.
Girl From Above #4: Trust Page 18