Paloma

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She went farther down the corridor until she hit a bakery that was part of a Moon-based chain. She went in, sat at the human-designed tables with real chairs (unlike the larger tables set to the side for the Disty, who preferred to sit cross-legged on tabletops), and stretched out her legs.

  She punched her order into the tabletop, used her thumbprint to register payment, and then leaned back. She was tired, and she hadn’t done anything.

  Except walk away from a visibly agitated Flint.

  She switched her links back on, and winced as a variety of messages clamored for her attention. News also blared through her inner ear, and a major program—all updates—ran across the bottom of her left eye. She shut that off: she would deal with updates later.

  First, she had messages to sort through. She had one of the high-level programs InterDome Media had paid for when she became a top reporter sort through each message by priority, sender, and time stamp.

  The first that came through was from her boss at InterDome, Thaddeus Ling.

  Contact me quick, Ki. I have an assignment for you. It’s important.

  Then, about ten minutes later: Ki, I hope to hell you’re at this murder thing.

  And fifteen minutes after that: Ki, I have no idea why you’re not answering me, but it better be good. We’re losing ground to the competition on this story, and you’re the only reporter I have who can give it good coverage.

  She put a hand to her ear, then ordered the system to play the messages with video in vision of the lower corner of her right eye. Ling hadn’t used the words reporter and good referring to Bowles in months.

  On the next message, he showed up, face red with pressure. His eyes seemed wild. Bowles, I’m sending in your team. I’ll send you the address. Meet them there.

  That had come in three hours ago.

  The serving tray floated toward her with her tea and a scone, covered in real clotted cream. The real cream at the same price as the fake stuff probably came because of her proximity to Terminal 25.

  She took the food, set it on the table, and waited for the next message to scroll up. Several others came in, mostly from her so-called team, informing her that she was missing the story of the century (as if she hadn’t heard that before), and then Ling showed up again, his face bright red.

  Bowles, if this is some kind of game, stop right now. I need you at that site, but you no longer get on-air coverage. You’re background now. I’ve assigned a new reporter. When you get to on-site, give her everything you know about those Retrieval Artists you are so fascinated with, and do not mention Security Chief DeRicci.

  Bowles nearly put her hand in the cream. What was he talking about? She had done stories on only one Retrieval Artist that Ling would know about—and that was Miles Flint.

  Who had just gone into his yacht, looking agitated.

  But the address Ling kept spouting was nowhere near Flint’s office or his apartment.

  Bowles turned on the public terminal next to the order menu on her tabletop. She plugged in the address, and got this:

  QUARANTINED AREA. INFORMATION

  RESTRICTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  That startled her. Another message from Ling started in front of her right eye, and she froze it. Instead she called up an Armstrong map on the small screen on her tabletop, and searched it manually, looking for the address.

  It was at the edge of a newer section of the dome—one of the ritzier neighborhoods in Armstrong. The condos there were actually built (illegally, some thought) onto the side of the dome so that the inhabitants could have their own private views of the moonscape.

  She knew of many people who lived there—the rich and the famous and the well-connected—but she only knew one of them personally—and that one she hadn’t met more than once.

  A former Retrieval Artist named Paloma. A woman who served as Miles Flint’s mentor.

  The tabletop screen asked for some credits. She used her thumbprint again, and then called up recent news, using the name Paloma.

  She got nothing. But she let that screen blink, waiting for her to ask for more information.

  Then she unfroze the message from Ling.

  He looked furious. This could’ve been your comeback story, Bowles. If you hadn’t shut off your links—

  It wasn’t by choice, she wanted to tell him. No links except emergency links were allowed in ritzy places like Terminal 25.

  —then maybe you could’ve worked your way back into my good graces. As it is, we got scooped by Armstrong Multimedia and United Domes Galactic Network. We’ve been playing catch-up while I waited for you. Now the police have left the scene, and what little you know is probably what everyone else will find out.

  She gripped the warm mug of tea, feeling the plastic burn into her skin.

  Forget coming back here. I’ve had your desk cleared and your personal items sent home. We don’t need grandstanders who disappear when they’re actually needed. And don’t come crying back here, asking to go to Gossip. That time’s past, too.

  He actually time stamped the message and put his signature on it, so that it was an official firing letter. One that would be in the link system for anyone to pick up if they were really searching.

  Tears filled her eyes. She hadn’t expected this. What was the story that had him so upset? And why had he fired her?

  She took a deep breath. She knew the answer to the second question. He had been waiting for this moment since the DeRicci story. When it broke and then shattered, and left its ruins all over Ki, she had been a popular and well-respected local reporter. People thought they knew her. They recognized her, said hello to her on the street, sent her messages whether she wanted them or not.

  Since then, he had marginalized her. He had taken her off her regular time slot, airing her pieces at all hours of the day so that only the most dedicated fans could find her, and often truncating long, involved stories so that they made little sense.

  She had been willing to put up with all of it. She figured the only way to get her reputation back was to earn it.

  But apparently, she had miscalculated. Ling had never planned to let her back into the fold. He had always planned on firing her. He just hadn’t had an opportunity before now.

  She leaned back in her chair, blinked, and willed the tears to recede. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. She had covered high-level firings in the past, and the response of the fired had always irritated her.

  It wasn’t their fault. They hadn’t known. They had no idea what was coming. They hadn’t realized how much their boss hated them.

  Ling hadn’t hated her. But she had thought he respected her. She had actually thought he’d been giving her a second chance. She was as big a fool as the clueless people she had interviewed.

  And, of all people, she should have seen this coming. The offer to go to Gossip had been a real one: a person could report lies there and no one cared. The label Gossip and the subheading: RUMORS OVERHEARD AROUND THE CITY protected InterDome against all kinds of lawsuits.

  Ling had just never trusted her to do real reporting again. That was why he had assigned the team; not because he was demoting her, but because he didn’t trust her.

  She slid her tea mug away, so that she couldn’t reach it easily. The old Ki Bowles, the arrogant one who had reported that story on DeRicci, would have thrown that mug. But this Ki Bowles knew better.

  Something big had happened, and the old Ki Bowles would have run to that address Ling gave her, fired or not. Maybe Ling was actually doing this as some kind of reverse psychology. Maybe he felt if he fired her, she’d work even harder and give him what he considered to be the story of the year.

  But she wasn’t going to run. She wasn’t even going to backtrack and talk to Miles Flint, who clearly knew something. He deserved his privacy. He had begged for it, and she had never really respected that.

  She sighed. She was different. The DeRicci story had shaken her up, too. Ki had once had such faith in her ow
n ability to interpret facts, to understand how one action led to another.

  She hadn’t expected DeRicci to be good at her job. She hadn’t expected the Disty crisis to be something that required quick action. She hadn’t expected to find shades of gray in the universe.

  Perhaps that was the problem—the shades of gray. They made being a hardheaded, judgmental, holier-than-thou journalist—the kind she had always admired—impossible.

  She had to figure out who she wanted to be. What she wanted to be. Obviously, hardheaded and judgmental didn’t work for her. Neither did Gossip. She actually cared about accuracy, even though Ling probably didn’t believe that.

  She had some savings and a bit of time.

  She needed to figure out what came next for her. Who she was, and who she wanted to be.

  Who she was capable of being.

  She couldn’t run from one story to the next. She needed some time to reflect, some time to chose.

  The very things journalists never had.

  The firing gave her the luxury to become someone new.

  She needed to take advantage of that.

  Thirteen

  Flint sat in the Dove’s empty cockpit, his heart pounding. He couldn’t move. Paloma still felt very real here; the shock of her disappearance—her hologram’s disappearance—hit him almost as hard as the sight of her body.

  It felt like he had lost her twice in one day.

  He forced himself to stand up. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced.

  He had to assume his movements would be tracked, not just by the police but also by the Wagners, maybe even by Paloma’s killer, whoever or whatever that might be. If he went directly from here to the Lost Seas, he would lead everyone there. But the Wagners already knew about it; they might even have secured that site, if they knew of Paloma’s death. Had she rigged something to notify them as well?

  Or maybe she even left something old, something she hadn’t thought to undo. Flint had found all sorts of old systems still running in the office long after Paloma had left. She was good at setting things up, but not so good at remembering they existed.

  Which reminded him: he had better make sure the Dove’s internal system hadn’t recorded anything that transpired in the cockpit. It would be just like Paloma to set up her hologram to work only on Flint’s voice print after the ship had confirmed his presence and to destroy itself when it was done, but not to set the other systems to work properly.

  He sat back in the pilot’s chair and immediately called up the last hour’s security recordings. Sure enough, there was the hologram, with all of its explanation.

  When he was a new Retrieval Artist, he had thought Paloma would do these things with some kind of devious purpose in mind. Certainly then, he might have thought she left this so that her sons could find it and know exactly what Flint was working on.

  But after years of dismantling Paloma’s systems, Flint knew she had simply forgotten that the ship itself was designed to keep track of all that happened inside it. She was careless—had been careless (damn his mind, unable to accept that she was gone)—and because of that, he gave a lot more credence to her words than he might have if she hadn’t been.

  Lucianna Stuart. Part of Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor. Lucianna, reborn as Paloma. No wonder Ignatius had spent so much time with Flint when WSX had tried to hire him. Ignatius had known his mother had never treated anyone like she had treated Flint, not even her sons.

  Flint rubbed his eyes, feeling an exhaustion he knew hadn’t come from any physical activity. Paloma had been right: it was wrong for a Retrieval Artist to get involved with anyone. Then he wouldn’t feel so betrayed.

  But how could anyone stop involvement that he hadn’t even realized was happening? If asked, he would have said he liked Paloma, and that he respected her greatly (although, over time, he had lost respect for her computer skills and her attention to detail), but he never would have said that he cared for her deeply enough to mourn.

  He shook his head. He didn’t have time to mourn. He had information to deal with, a murder to solve, and an entire intergalactic law firm to fend off.

  He had to move quickly.

  Still, it took him nearly an hour of searching before he found the security recording that showed Paloma making the hologram. Flint fast-forwarded through it—the perspective was very different from the one he had seen (in two dimensions instead of three)—and he couldn’t bear watching her vanish yet again.

  Only when he got to the end of the sequence did he realize she wouldn’t vanish. She simply reached out, shut off the equipment, and then leaned over the controls, setting up the entire system that had snagged him when he came into the ship.

  He looked at the time and date stamp. She had made the holocording only a month before. Had something prompted it? Or had she simply intended to do so and finally gotten around to it?

  He had no way of knowing, no way to ask her. He felt like a child who had just lost a parent—all guidance in his small world had vanished.

  He truly was on his own now.

  He downloaded the security files onto one of his personal chips, then, on a whim, added everything from that past month. Then he wiped the security system clean. The police department’s computer techs would know he had done this, but he didn’t care. All they would be able to figure out was that he had been here and decided something in the security recordings couldn’t be seen by anyone else.

  That made him even more of a suspect, he knew, but his very presence on the Dove had done that. And it would keep some of the information from the Wagners.

  He hoped.

  He stood and paced again. He wasn’t sure how to proceed from here. He had two ships now—the Dove and the Lost Seas. He could claim ownership on both, but that wouldn’t help him. The Wagners and their staff could just as easily get into the ships and tamper with them just like Flint had.

  He could take the ships out of Moon territory, but there were drawbacks to working alone. No one could ferry him back to Armstrong. Besides, he would have to go a long, long way to get out of Alliance territory. And the Wagners clearly knew more about interstellar law than Flint did. There was probably something in the various Alliance agreements that gave the Wagners the right to confiscate a ship even though it was light years from its home base.

  What he had to do was twofold: he needed a lawyer to help him secure both properties, and he had to take as much information from those properties as he could get. The problem was that the lawyers he knew, with the exception of Ignatius Wagner, were lawyers who worked for the City of Armstrong. They wouldn’t help him. And he wasn’t sure how many of the lawyers who practiced privately in Armstrong had the ability or the money to go up against Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.

  Finally, his last problem was one of logistics. He had no idea where the Lost Seas was docked. Paloma said it was somewhere in the port, but Armstrong’s port was the largest on the Moon. It went on for kilometers, and finding a ship that someone had been intent on hiding wouldn’t be easy.

  Unless Paloma hadn’t been intent on hiding the Lost Seas. Flint returned to the pilot’s chair one final time. He had the onboard computer search for the Lost Seas.

  To his surprise, the ship was in Terminal 35, in a dock marked secure. Flint sighed. Secure docks meant that the ship had been seized, but because the ship’s owner had standing (usually meaning clout in the community, a significant bribe paid to port officials, or both), the ship hadn’t yet been turned over to the proper authorities, whoever they were in this case.

  What it did mean was that Flint would have to figure out which port official was in charge of that ship. Then he would have to find out how to get a release to enter it.

  Sometimes his past history as a Space Traffic cop helped him. In this case, he suspected, it would hurt him. He had had a reputation for extreme honesty in the port; someone who took bribes wouldn’t admit anything to him.

  Unless he reminded that person that Retrieval Artists w
orked on the edge of the law.

  Or unless he found a way to bribe that person himself.

  Flint shuddered. He was crossing lines he didn’t want to cross.

  He had a hunch he would cross a lot more before this thing was over.

  Fourteen

  Nyquist had just stepped out of his office, feeling frustrated, unable to find any information on Paloma but knowing he couldn’t put off his meeting with Noelle DeRicci any longer.

  He would seem like a fool in front of her. Normally, that didn’t bother him—not knowing things was often as much a part of investigating as knowing things—but in this case it did. He really wanted to impress this woman and he had a hunch he never would.

  As he rounded the desks that made up the First Unit of the Detective Division, he saw a man step through the door. The man was short, with black hair and a long tailored coat that only the well-to-do in Armstrong wore. He looked around for a moment, as if he were unfamiliar with everything on this floor, and then he saw Nyquist.

  Nyquist cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was some civilian with a lost dog. Judging by the way the man moved—head up, arms swinging easily as if the unfamiliar surroundings were merely an inconvenience to him—Nyquist wouldn’t be able to easily shake him off.

  Nyquist looked around to see if someone—anyone—was nearby. But no one was. Everyone else was on a case or had hidden when they saw the man come through the door.

  “Detective Nyquist?” the man said as he approached.

  Nyquist stared at him. He’d never met the man before. The department didn’t keep its detectives secret, but it also didn’t broadcast their images, trying to give them as much privacy as possible so that they could do their work. The man would have had to do some work to identify Nyquist by sight.

  “Do I know you?” Nyquist asked.

  The man extended his hand. It was long and slim, the fingers manicured, the nails covered with some kind of gloss to make them shiny (or worse, had been enhanced to look that way). Nyquist didn’t want to take that hand, not even to be polite, but he did.