by M. D. Cooper
“How are they going to know?” Zanda asked.
Starl shot him an angry glance, urging him to shut up with his eyes.
“They’ll know,” Fug said. “If you knew anything about real hacking, you wouldn’t ask that question. The whole place is a minefield. They’re tracking everything. Even that ridiculous spectrum scanner you’ve got in your shirt.”
“Hey,” Zanda protested, flexing his shoulders. “It’s not ridiculous.”
“It’s like picking apart a flower with a screwdriver,” Fug said, unimpressed.
“You ready?” Starl said, wanting to separate the two of them before Fug changed her mind. He was beginning to wonder if they were attracted to each other. The barbs were a little too sharp.
Fug nodded curtly and turned for the path that would take them to the Crash hangar’s entrance doors. Starl hung back a second, stopping Zanda with a hand on his arm, then followed.
Behind them, the parrot squawked and called, “Ngo-ba! Ngo-ba!”
Starl turned to give the parrot a wave before he lost sight of the fountain behind a vendor’s leaning booth.
7
In the Crash hangar, they kept a good distance from Fug, hanging back as she walked idly through the thin crowd, following the plan she had laid-out. She wandered around the various groups of fans gathered inside the empty space, then turned abruptly and walked straight for the platform where two players were standing with their heads close together.
With the room mostly empty, Starl got a better look at the security guards arranged around the perimeter. He quickly spotted the door to Slarva’s club, now watched by four guards instead of two. At other points around the wall, guards stood next to unmarked doors. There were also guards arranged at the edge of the platform as if they expected the crowd to try to climb up beneath the projected avatars. With the lights up, it was also possible to make out the projector high above the platform, now just a pale series of turning lights.
Keeping a watch on Zanda so he could pull him back whenever he tried to get too close, obviously trying to figure out what Fug was doing, Starl continued to watch the various groups gathering around them. It was a good mix of Cruithne people, from freight handlers to spacers to people who looked like they beat things to death for a living. A few heavily augmented people moved among the growing clots. He spotted a woman covered in fur with piercing blue eyes, as well as a man with what looked like pulse weapons embedded in his bare forearms. Despite the weapons, he walked around with a vacant smile on his face.
“What’s she doing?” Zanda said in a low voice.
Fug was standing next to the players but hadn’t tried to engage them in conversation. She stared at her shoes for a while, adjusting her green visor every so often, or pulling it off her head to tuck her lank hair behind her ears and pull the visor back down on her forehead. Then she crossed her arms and shuffled from foot to foot like she had to pee.
“Should we go ask if she needs help?” Zanda continued. “If she’s doing a scan of some kind, she should have accessed everything ten minutes ago. This is weird.” He bit his lip, looking at Starl. “Do you really trust her? I don’t trust her. She’s shifty.”
“I trust her enough. She’ll do what she says she will.”
“Yeah,” Zanda said. “I don’t trust her.”
“Trust isn’t all that important in this situation,” Starl said.
Just as Zanda looked ready to launch into another round of anxious complaints, Fug did an about-face and walked away from the players, who never appeared to acknowledge her presence at all. She took a path around several groups of fans who had formed near the stage beside the console, then turned to stand strangely close to one of the security guards. The guard, wearing black glasses and a blocky projectile pistol on his belt, didn’t seem to notice her. He continued scanning the room, looking directly over her head.
Dance music started pumping from speakers in the ceiling and the crowd seemed to double immediately. Starl and Zanda spread out on either side of Fug, far enough away to respond if she needed them but close enough to keep a direct line of sight on her.
A fog of light grew on the platform and then two giant figures stood towering over them. The first was a crowd favorite named Hondo, a cowboy with rocket boots, and his opponent was Urgis, a turtle-shaped creature with a cat’s head and missile-spikes lining its bright purple shell. The music grew more intense as the two avatars paraded around the platform, smiling however they could and waving at the audience. Urgis shot missiles off his shell that wound around each other and exploded in fireworks near the ceiling. Showers of sparks rained down on Hondo’s cowboy hat.
Fug stood in front of the security guard with her arms crossed in front of her waist, gazing up at the pretty lights like any enraptured fan. Her green visor cast the same shadow on her face but she didn’t appear to be doing anything special.
A voice boomed over the cheering crowd, announcing the players and their boring bios: “Born in the Heather Neighborhood in High Parts, Hondo grew up fighting for his life in the Artifact Forums.”
Starl yawned. He didn’t consider forum games any sort of fight for survival. Thinking about survival made him wonder where he was going to sleep, but he pushed the thoughts away. He’d reassess the problem when he had Fug’s credit in his pocket.
“Crash is sponsored by Zurli, the drink with a thousand candy stars. Drink Zurli for vigor!” A glass full of sparkling liquid appeared in the air, boiling with what looked like stars. It tipped and poured sparks on the Urgis as Hondo tried to push in to dunk his head in the yellow flow.
Starl rolled his eyes.
“We’re Heartbridge Health,” a friendly looking woman in a white uniform said, smiling warmly, “and we want you to experience the best that life has to offer. Our clinics are available twenty-four hours a day in locations throughout Sol and the Mars Protectorate. Come see us for your daily medical needs or major surgery. We can help with implants, too. Our specialists are here to help. Want to get your Link? You’re old enough now. Find out what you’ve been missing. Visit a Heartbridge clinic today. Crash on, friends!”
Starl frowned, glancing around. Did they have facial scanning somewhere? The ad seemed a little too targeted toward him. Seeing the faces around, however, most of them with sugary drinks in their hands and zits covering their faces, he supposed most of them fit the pre-Link profile. He turned his gaze back to the security guard near Fug, still standing impassively. He was probably watching porn on his Link right now.
The match started with Hondo trying to snap Urgis with an electric whip. The cat-turtle creature pulled its arms and legs inside its shell and started spinning around the platform like a top, shooting off missiles in every direction. It turned out the missiles didn’t cause much damage, but a strike from the edge of the spinning shell sent Hondo into a reeling stupor and his health bar shrank.
Starl reminded himself not to watch the match. He glanced at Zanda and was glad to see he wasn’t going to have to remind him to keep his eyes on Fug. Riggs was focused on the woman like he was trying to see inside her clothes.
Fug had uncrossed her arms and now let them hang at her sides with her fingers straight. As Starl watched her, she made barely perceptible movements with her fingers, tapping her thighs. It took Starl a minute of watching before the motions started to correlate with the match. She was slowing Hondo’s responses – or was she? It was hard to tell if the player was making mistakes or if she was affecting the match somehow.
Urgis’ player was masterful, sending the odd creature into side spins that shot missiles horizontally across the platform, or kept him spinning like a coin on its edge, generating a crackling energy ball that Hondo’s whip couldn’t touch.
Floating platforms appeared and the two characters started hopping from ledge to ledge. Here Hondo had the advantage: he could camp out above Urgis and hit him with the whip before the cat-turtle could get off its ledge. The whip caught Urgis’ soft underbelly and nearly ma
de a one-shot kill. The crowd cheered and booed simultaneously.
Fug’s posture didn’t change. She craned her neck to stare up at the avatars like everyone else in the Hangar, tapping her sides idly to some music only she could hear. Starl was caught by surprise when Urgis ultimately lost, taking another whip-shot in the belly that sent him spinning to the space off the platform. The avatar burst into a shower of sparks and shiny blood that washed over the watching faces. The fans erupted in thunderous applause.
Starl glanced at Zanda, who gave him a shrug. Starl had to admit that he couldn’t tell if Fug was doing anything. She didn’t look particularly excited about the outcome of the match.
The next three fights were mostly the same: seeming to go one way, so that Starl thought he knew which player was getting Fug’s help, then ending with the opposite player winning. Was she milking out the matches to raise bets? That seemed possible. Maybe she was good enough at manipulating the player that she could stretch out the play; change the odds mid-match. Starl often glanced over at the players next to the platform, staring intently into their small screen, but their impassive expressions didn’t give away much.
He only saw Slarva once, standing behind the last pair of players with his red cape spread theatrically. His hair was the same blue, like a spiky sea-creature sitting on top of his head. After waving for a solid minute, Slarva dropped his arms and scanned the crowd, his gaze conceivably taking in Fug’s location. But he didn’t seem to be looking for anyone in particular. He looked immensely pleased with himself.
In the air near the ceiling, glowing numbers shifted as the odds on any particular match shifted from one side to the other. All around Starl, money changed hands.
He got bored watching the fights, trying to figure out something he wasn’t certain was happening, and instead thought of all the ways someone might use the Crash games to move large amounts of credit. You could bet on someone you knew was going to lose, controlling both betters, and filter stolen credit through a bookie. Various options and configurations of the scenario played out in his mind. In the end, he figured Slarva had the best deal, taking small percentages of every transaction that flowed through the official channel. Those were the big bets, the ones that kept the crowd coming back.
When the last match was finished, the air full of fireworks and the house lights coming up, Starl spotted Slarva where he had been before, hamming it up for the vid producers. Fug had turned her back on the platform, looking even more ghoulish with exhaustion. She must have been doing something, though Starl still wasn’t sure what it had been.
She walked past him and gave him a nod. He glanced at Zanda, waiting a few seconds, then nodded and turned to follow. Whatever they had done, it was over for tonight.
8
Starl sat with his back against the corridor wall, knees in front of him, balancing a plate heaped with his favorite spicy rice and sticky protein balls. Zanda, sitting across the narrow corridor, took a long drink of his canned beer. Starl patted his pocket for the hundredth time, feeling where he’d secured his new roll of cash, reassuring himself, then dug into the plate.
They were back down in Lowspin, far enough from Mama Chala’s that she wouldn’t know he was there, but near enough to visit their favorite rice stands. A chicken wandered past, idly pecking the concrete deck. The hen stopped to eye Starl’s plate, tilting her head. He shooed her away and she pulled her head back, clucking at him. She dropped a dollop of green-white poop at his feet before scurrying away.
“Whose bright idea was it to put chickens on a space station?” Zanda said, burping loudly.
“People who wanted to eat, I guess,” Starl answered.
Zanda was already showing signs of being buzzed. “Parrots, crows, chickens. You think they know they’re in space?”
“Sure. The bird god tells them.”
“Don’t fuck around about the bird god,” Zanda said, pointing at Starl. “Those parrots knew your name. They chose you.”
“Shut up and hand me one of those beers.”
Zanda patted the bag next to him like it was a nest egg, then fumbled around inside until he pulled out one of the twenty-three remaining beers. He leaned forward to hand the cold can to Starl.
Starl leaned back and popped the cap. The beer was too cold as it hit the back of his throat, and it immediately made him feel lightheaded. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling.
“Hey,” Zanda said.
“Yeah?”
“I got your stuff for you. It’s in a storage locker down by the Port Authority. Look here.”
Starl opened his eyes as Zanda tossed him a small metal key. The fob was a worn piece of plas that looked like a small animal had chewed on it at some point.
It might have been the sudden rush of the alcohol, but Starl felt overwhelmed by gratitude. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about what Mama Chala had said, how she’d kicked him out so easily. She was right: he wasn’t a child anymore and it was time to move on. He had known the moment was coming for a long time, but he kept thinking he could push it off, that she wouldn’t make him leave; or she would at least ask him to stay for just a couple more days, give him a chance to say goodbye. He didn’t own much. He’d been ready to let his few belongings go if necessary, but the knowledge that at least one person in all of Cruithne was looking out for him, that he wasn’t alone in this new adult world, made his heart feel like it was going to pop.
“I grabbed this too,” Zanda said. He dug in a pocket and tossed Starl a bright blue bow tie with the ribbons trailing from either side.
When he caught it, Starl couldn’t stop grinning.
“This was the only thing I really wanted,” he said.
“So I lugged all your shit out of there for no reason?” Zanda nodded, raising his can. He frowned abruptly, shaking the can, then tossed it down the corridor and dug another beer out of the bag. He popped the cap and raised the can in toast.
“To the bowtie,” he said.
Starl took a long drink, finishing the beer. He tossed his can after Zanda’s, then held the bowtie suspended between his hands. The iridescent fabric shone even in the low illumination of the corridor lights. The tie had been a gift from a woman named Petral who had entertained both of them for a while. She was an information broker who operated mostly within the TSF areas of Cruithne. Zanda and Starl had met her at Night Park one late afternoon.
What had started as a bit of harmless flirting with an older woman turned into a full week of Petral dressing Starl and Zanda up in matching outfits, complete with bowties, then parading them nightly around the club districts until she pulled them back to her place for hours of sensual labor. She directed them up and down either side of her body, followed by top and bottom, wearing nothing but the ties, until she was satisfied. It took a long time. Petral left them the bowties as souvenirs and Zanda promptly lost his.
Starl wrapped the ribbons around his throat and connected the clip. He stretched his neck out, settling the tie in beneath his curly new beard.
“Everyone should have a trademark, yeah?” he said.
Zanda squinted at him. “You look like somebody’s houseboy.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Starl said, giving him a grin. He motioned for another beer and Zanda tossed it across.
They drank for a while, telling stories about Mama Chala and the squat, how maybe her cuddles weren’t so bad. Zanda agreed that he needed to get out, too.
Starl patted the pocket full of cash. “We’ve got it now, brother. We can start our own crew.”
Zanda laughed. “Start our own crew? You and me? What are we going to do, roll toddlers for their candy money?”
“Cargo, like we’ve been doing. Only we stay smart about it. We hit the small stuff, but consistently. You make it so the loss isn’t worth the investigation. You almost hacked that drone back in the TSF box. You figure that out, we can set the drones to deliver to us. Everywhere you look on Cruithne, a drone’s taking a box somewhere.”
“All that is designed and watched by humans, and we’re lazy.” He reached for the small of his back to pull out the TSF pistol. He was drunk, but not so far gone that he didn’t check the safety and keep it pointed at the ceiling. Was it Petral who had taught him that?
“And maybe we’ll need to escalate,” Starl mused.
“You think one weak pulse pistol is going to turn you into a hard-ass?”
Starl shook his head. “I’ve got big plans, Zanda. Big plans for Cruithne, for my life. Yours, too, if you’ll come along. I’m not going to be some street rat my whole life. I want power that reaches off this trash heap, to Terra and Mars, even.”
Zanda’s head fell back against the wall. “Dreams, Ngoba. You can dream all you want, but we have to live in reality, man. We’re going to find a place to live. We’re going to find jobs. We’re going to do what people do. Maybe go to the Crash Hangar. Maybe huff some briki when we get paid. You wake up and do it all over again.”
“You’re about as ambitious as that chicken,” Starl said.
“Ambition gets you pushed out an airlock. I’d like to live my life. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be.”
“I think we can keep this deal with Fug going for a while. It’s easy money.”
“If it’s easy it probably ain’t right,” Zanda said. He cracked another beer.
“That’s Mama Chala talking.”
“She’s managed to live long enough to get old.”
“I’m sick of being poor, Zanda,” Starl said abruptly, angrier than he had been before. He wanted his friend to support him, not throw up obstacles. “I’m sick of looking like I’m nothing.”
“That’s your problem, Ngoba. You’re worried about what other people are thinking when the truth is they aren’t even thinking about you. People got their own problems. They don’t have time to think about you. Unless you steal their shit; then they’re going to think about you long enough to kill you or get you locked up.”