Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  But she had forgotten how violence felt, even if she wasn’t exactly a part of it. The air got a charge to it, made up of the shouts and the smells of fear and anger and blood. Add to that the physical pounding, the movement of thousands of feet, the actual vibration from people’s heads hitting the ground, and she was in the world of her childhood—one she thought she had escaped a long, long time ago.

  The Idonae hadn’t helped that feeling. She had been the one to recruit them—she had sent word to one of her associates that the Etaen terrorists were here and perhaps the Idonae would want to protest—but her involvement didn’t matter. Seeing those feelers, watching those squishy bodies press together in protest, made her queasy.

  She glanced up at the media cars floating above her. They hadn’t gotten close to her; in fact, so far as she could tell, no one had filmed her face.

  Which was a good thing. She was well known in Armstrong, and she didn’t want people talking about her. Although they probably were now that she had been fired from her work at the Cultural Center. She had handled the diplomats badly. If only she hadn’t been so fixated on Döbryn, she would have paid more attention to her own behavior. But between her personal plans and the meal plans as well as running the restaurant, she had had little time for sleep—

  And that was an excuse too. She hadn’t slept since someone had let it slip that the Alliance meeting was about letting Etae into the organization. She had tried not to ask too many questions, but it was difficult. It became even more difficult when she learned that Anatolya Döbryn would be speaking to the committee.

  A body flew past her—someone tossed by the crowd. The body—male, she thought—landed on the pavement and skidded into a corner of her wall.

  She didn’t move. If she moved, she would call attention to herself, and then she would be next.

  Nitara closed her eyes. She was not a child any longer. She wouldn’t get caught and she wouldn’t die. She took a deep breath, willing herself stronger.

  Then she eased toward the man, keeping her back to the wall and her hands pressed against it.

  In front of her, more people surged and fought and pushed against each other. The shouting continued, the police voices rising above all the others, amplified and evil, like authorities who had no idea who they commanded.

  She willed her ears to hear nothing, just like she used to do when she was little. Her parents had fought in the war on the losing side, and her father had been captured.

  And then her mother had found her transport, sending her off Etae to relatives. Eventually, Nitara had found a home and learned a trade, and buried the memories as far as her nightmares would allow her.

  But she never forgot the woman who ordered her father’s capture: Anatolya Döbryn. And Nitara had watched Döbryn’s rise within the ranks even when she didn’t want to keep track of Etaen politics.

  Döbryn was the one who had presided over the slaughter of the former government officials and their families. No one talked about them, the people slain because they’d done nothing more than live in the same house with a government employee.

  Like her mother had. And her cousins. And her entire extended family, all of whom remained on Etae after Nitara had left.

  Nitara slid down the wall to the man. His face was covered with blood, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow.

  Döbryn’s visit brought all this back, and now her presence caused even more turmoil. The riot had little to do with Nitara and her friends. It was Döbryn’s fault, like everything else.

  Döbryn and her people couldn’t come into the Alliance, not after all they had done. At first, Nitara had planned to stop that simply, using her own skills. A badly cooked meal, the loss of a reputation. An accidental death by food poisoning—not common any more, but not unheard of, especially for someone from the outlying colonies, someone whose stomach wasn’t used to certain processed flours, certain reengineered meats.

  But the meal was off, and she had to come up with a new way.

  She crouched beside the man, smoothed his hair back, thought how young he was—maybe the age her father had been when he’d been captured. Someone shouted near her, and the bodies kept surging, people kept fighting, and somehow she ignored them.

  The man’s skin was clammy. He would die without her. She wasn’t a child any longer. She was an adult who lived in the Old Universe, who knew other ways.

  “It’s all right,” she said to him, hoping he could still hear her. Then she sent an emergency message across her links, warning the authorities that this man—and so many others—might die. She sent his image with it, letting them know he was badly injured and in need of help.

  But she didn’t send any more messages. Instead she looked at the crowd, fighting to save Armstrong, fighting to save the Alliance, fighting for her new home.

  She couldn’t go back to the Cultural Center. They wouldn’t allow her there. She even had to wait until the meetings were over to get her equipment.

  But Döbryn had escaped. She might still make her plea before the imbeciles that had decided to hear her case.

  The riot might be enough to incite public opinion, but it wasn’t going to be enough to let those fossilized Ambassadors realize they were making the wrong choice for the Alliance.

  She had other skills, taught to her by nervous relatives who thought she was going to have to go back to Etae. Other skills that would help her now if she so chose.

  If she could make a decision that had a price attached to it.

  Her freedom, her reputation. Maybe even her life.

  She smoothed the man’s hair back, then lifted her hand. She had blood on her fingers. Slowly, carefully, remembering the rituals she had learned as a child, she painted that blood across her face.

  Thirty-six

  Flint got into the Port easily, despite the riot. He knew all the Port’s back entrances—a benefit of having been a Traffic Cop once upon a time—and he knew all the employees. An old friend helped him get in.

  The very fact that he had a yacht docked in Terminal 25 gave him special privileges. They were one of the many things he paid an extraordinary storage fee for.

  As he hurried to his ship, he realized he’d have no trouble getting off the Moon. Although the roads heading to the Port were closed, the traffic flowed in and out of the Moon’s orbit, just like normal.

  The Emmeline lived in Terminal 25, along with all the other rich people’s space yachts. He had trouble thinking of himself as rich. In fact, he had trouble thinking of himself as the sort of man who owned a space yacht.

  But the Emmeline was his only indulgence—and he spared no expense for her. He had named her for his daughter, and somehow his affection for them both crossed in his mind.

  Terminal 25 was one of the largest terminals because the ships docked there were among the largest privately owned ships allowed in Armstrong’s port. The Emmeline had her own berth several docks down; she was a state-of-the-art space yacht with several upgrades—some standard and many not.

  Because of his experiences on a case last year, he had had the Emmeline custom-fitted with every weapons system he could think of. He also had her defenses upgraded so that they were better than anything the traffic cops used on the Moon. Every time a new system came on the market, he had it put into the Emmeline.

  The Emmeline also had other features: she was the only place that he allowed himself to spend his fortune. Her captain’s quarters were so luxurious that the first time he took her out, he slept in one of the guest cabins and worked his way up to that higher level of comfort. She had a fully equipped galley, several serving robots, and several more cleaning bots.

  The ship also had her own brig (something he’d missed from the Traffic ships) and little hooks on the sides of the chairs that would allow him to easily handcuff prisoners. And the ship also had several redundant security features, each of them not linked to the other.

  Someone would have to be very determined to break into the Emmeline, and un
like other ships he had dealt with, no one—not even the best security hacker—could break into her quickly.

  Even though part of him was embarrassed by the extreme luxury, another part felt pride as he walked past the docked ships to his own. Outside, she was no glitzier than the other space yachts. In fact, she had fewer thrills.

  Her hull was black and bird-shaped, with a nose that bent slightly downward. Her design was sleek, built for speed and not for impressing others.

  He’d tested that speed in his early runs; she had been the fastest ship he’d ever flown—and that included some of the souped up Traffic ships that he’d commandeered in his last years as a Traffic cop.

  Even though he’d named her to honor his daughter, he didn’t have the name etched into the black frame. She was as anonymous as a space yacht could be.

  The thing he loved the best about her, though, wasn’t her size, her shape, or her luxury; it wasn’t her weapons, her defenses, or her speed. It was the fact that she had been designed as a one-person ship, that no copilot was needed to run the helm, no assistant had to monitor the engines. She was meant to fly solo, and that made her perfect for him.

  He walked up to her side and pressed a small depression near the oval-shaped main door, and a ladder eased out. The depression had responded to a preprogrammed command, triggered by his DNA and his warm fingertip, to let him climb into the ship.

  If he tried the other door while the ship was docked—what most folks would call the main door—and opened it in the conventional way, all the ship’s internal defenses would turn on. If he didn’t shut those down as he stepped through the airlock, the ship’s internal and external weapons systems would rise to alert status.

  And if he still did nothing, he would have two minutes before the ship locked him inside, shut off the environmental controls, and did its best to isolate any intruder.

  He climbed the ladder, entered through the maintenance hatch, and pulled himself into the engineering section of the ship. It smelled of too-fresh air and new chips in here, with a touch of plastic added in. He loved that scent. He hoped never to lose it.

  He closed the maintenance hatch and used the auxiliary command center to request an immediate departure and to fire up the engines.

  Even on the quickest days, an immediate departure took at least half an hour to verify. This was the part of the trip that made him the most nervous. If the police had decided to start looking for him already, they would keep a watch on the Emmeline. Any request she had for disembarking would reach their files.

  He left the engineering section and walked past the storage compartments to the main part of the ship. The storage areas and engineering themselves had no real luxuries—just the same smooth black material that also encased the hull.

  But once he walked through the door to the main part of the ship, the luxuries began. The air had a tinge of lemon to it, to keep him alert and to keep the sense of freshness. The floor was carpeted, and a sound system pumped in soothing music—which he had shut off at the moment.

  When he was in flight, the walls disappeared, showing instead a star field—or the current space around the ship, whichever he preferred. In addition to the guest quarters, he had a formal dining area, a game room, and a luxurious main cabin where he and guests could enjoy any one of a million digitized movies, plays, and entertainments. He also had games and books and more music than he knew what to do with.

  If he wanted to, he could leave Armstrong forever, live on the Emmeline, and land in space docks only for refueling and repairs.

  He kept that as a backup plan, one that seemed more tempting on some days than on others.

  This was one of those days.

  He sealed the ship, turned on her external shielding—mostly to keep any intruders out—and sat at the pilot’s chair. The approval had come in quicker than he expected: he was free to leave.

  One other benefit of docking in Terminal 25 and paying her exorbitant fees was that he didn’t have to log a flight plan. He was leaving Armstrong, and that was all the Port had to know. They weren’t required to check his destination or figure out how he was going to get there.

  The ship rose effortlessly toward the roof of the terminal. It had opened, revealing his small section of the dome, which was also open. Above him, ships sped through Moon space—little blips on his navigational array.

  He placed his hands on the controls, and shut off the automatic pilot.

  He was flying the Emmeline now, and she would go where he commanded her.

  Thirty-seven

  DeRicci was just thinking about taking a short break for dinner when a team of techs invaded her office, led by Barbara Passolini.

  “Move away from your desk, Noelle.” Passolini’s too thin body looked formidable in the enclosed space. “Back up quickly and step away.”

  DeRicci resisted the urge to raise her hands, as if she were under arrest. “What’s going on?”

  “Tracers,” Passolini said. But DeRicci couldn’t tell if the word was directed at her, or at the team of even skinnier techs, most of whom she hadn’t seen before.

  All of them had eyes too big for their faces and skin that was the lumpy consistency of bad cheese. They clearly ate poorly and didn’t care much about their appearance. And none of them had muscles—the kind needed for beat officers or anyone who joined the force on the physical-enforcement side.

  DeRicci continued to back up until she hit the windows. The see-through plastic was warm against her back. She glanced out—Dome Daylight was continuing, even though she would have thought it time for Dome Twilight already.

  “What’s going on?” she repeated.

  “You got markers in your system,” Passolini snapped. She had already moved behind DeRicci’s desk and was poking her finger against DeRicci’s screen. Two of the other techs were underneath the desk, and a third had taken a small portable computer and attached it to some wires in her wall unit.

  “Markers?” DeRicci asked.

  “Someone is tracing your every movement on here, and it’s not from inside.” Passolini sounded irritated. “Now shut up and let us work.”

  “No.” DeRicci surprised herself. She usually let the techs do what they needed. “Not until you talk to me. Are all these people crime scene?”

  “Computers, mostly.” Passolini was still poking the screen. DeRicci wondered if it would take the force.

  “How did you find out about these so-called tracers?” DeRicci asked.

  “Some of our backup alarms went off. We found the link, saw a few other markers, did a search. It’s been a quest all afternoon, but the only other place we found anything was leading into your system.”

  “I don’t let anyone else in my office,” DeRicci said. The lock was coded to her handprint, and she had a combination above it for added protection.

  “They didn’t come through your office.” Passolini sighed, stepped away from the desk, and gestured at one of the thin young men to take her place. She walked over to DeRicci.

  DeRicci took a step forward. She didn’t like standing with her back against the window. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone knew your codes and broke into your system from the outside. The tracers are very sophisticated, and our only hope is to follow them from the inside back.”

  DeRicci frowned. Why would anyone put tracers in her computer?

  “How many cases are you working on?” Passolini asked.

  “Just the one we’ve been working on together. The rest of my work is review and evaluation,” DeRicci said. “You don’t think someone from inside the department—”

  “The only people inside the department with these skills are with me right now,” Passolini said, “and none of them is under investigation or review. I already checked.”

  DeRicci nodded. But she scanned the crew anyway, turning on her internal link and downloading their faces into the networked police files. She got all the names in an instant, playing across her eyes in the way that she ha
ted, and recognized none of the techs.

  “I told you,” Passolini said, not trying to hide her irritation. “I already checked.”

  DeRicci shrugged but didn’t justify her action. A double-check was always worthwhile. It did bother her, though, that Passolini knew she had checked the internal link database.

  “Your partner know your code?” Passolini asked.

  “I don’t have a partner,” DeRicci said.

  “Really?” Passolini sounded skeptical. “Because there’s this Detective Cabrera who’s been hounding my office every hour wanting updates on the Lahiri case.”

  DeRicci felt her cheeks heat. She had forgotten about Cabrera. “We’re only partnered on this case. And as you can probably tell, he’s not happy to be working with me.”

  “So he would feed into your system maybe and get what he needed that way?” Passolini asked.

  “Check him,” she said, “but I doubt he has the skills. I’ve only had one partner with the kind of skills you’re talking about and he…..”

  She stopped herself, but too late. Passolini’s dark eyes sparked with interest.

  “He?”

  DeRicci sighed. “Miles Flint.”

  “He was good,” someone said from under the desk. “You know he designed most of our fail-safe systems.”

  Passolini stared at DeRicci.

  “That’s twice, Noelle,” Passolini said softly.

  “Twice what?” DeRicci asked.

  “That you’re not following the rules of evidence.”

  “How do you mean?” DeRicci asked. “I had no idea there was a problem with my system until you showed up.”

  “Everything changes if this was an inside job,” Passolini said.

  “It can’t be inside,” DeRicci said. “Miles hasn’t worked for the force in two years.”

  “But he designed the systems.”

  DeRicci nodded, feeling tired. “He didn’t design them exactly. He improved them.”