Merkar slashed out a curse and spun on his heel. Without a signal, his henchmen slid in behind him as he exited down the corridor. After the door closed, Olias remained poised a moment longer. Then he turned to the crew.
“Drama’s over. Get along to your parties or your racks. I have the watch until four o’clock, then you’re on, Rajesh.”
The slender Indian pilot nodded and was the first to leave the room.
Ri followed the others as they drifted from the room. Olias was positively grinning. He’d enjoyed his chance to piss on Merkar’s humiliation. She couldn’t decide if she was glad to see the man knocked down a notch, or if she now had real reason to fear her next meeting with him.
The others moved along faster than she did, and in a matter of moments she was the only one left in the corridor. Without the normal bustle of the crews, the corridor was a vast, echoing space. It was all built on such a grand scale that it was easy to forget she was on a spaceship and not in one of Earth’s great supercities.
The main corridor ranged from ten to twenty meters wide and swept upward in a leisurely curve both ahead and behind. Small shops, restaurants, amusement parlors were tastefully spread along the sides. Gyms, always one of the most popular entertainments in space, had a great deal of frontage along all the levels of the ring. Great clear panels let the muscle enthusiasts and the corridor passers-by observe each others’ progress.
Ri was losing her edge. Her daily workouts with Commander Levan and the most elite guards on the planet had been replaced by a desperate need to keep Stellar One functional. Well, it was a new year and it was time she did something about it. But she didn’t want to be on display like the few muscle-bound crew working out at even this hour, striving to submerge the depression brought on by their last view of Earth.
She continued to follow the corridor through tastefully planted meeting gardens and a clutter of clothing stores. Ri lived in her shipsuit, had no need for anything beyond the spacer-black of the command crew to brush up her ego. She enjoyed her position on the crew. And especially after what Captain Devra Conrad had done to Chief Merkar, she was proud to be a part of that team. Now if only she could learn to do that herself.
Her mastery was tangential strikes. Head-on confrontation was a hazard to be avoided among the street gangs of Nara. She smiled. Nor had it worked for Merkar in the command center.
The red trimwork that indicated the command sector gave way to the green and brown of the Ring One ag-bay as she moved to anti-spinward. The central corridor now split into two narrow side corridors to skirt the massive agricultural bay that grew so much of their produce. Most of the livestock was over in R2 and R3 ag-bays, these were filled with the fruit trees and vegetables enough to supply R1 and then some. But she needed somewhere to work out, and the ag-bays would be no better than the corridors, or the gyms.
She followed the corridor as it jogged around the ag-bay. There to her left, just around the corner, a maintenance hatch was set inconspicuously in the wall. Ri thumbed through and slid down the short ladder.
The Level Zero maintenance corridor was a clutter of green and brown pipes that fed the ag-bay. Behind her she could see the red walls of the command sector. But in the center there was a clear corridor, wide enough for two maintenance teams in service carts to pass side-by-side. It appeared to travel both directions, beneath both command sector and the ag-bay with no turns or obstructions.
Ri trotted anti-spinward between the feeders and drains from the biome. She pictured all that greenery above her, reaching for the artificial lights of the manmade sky. Beneath her feet, a few meters of radiation shield, a triple hull, and the depths of space. She broke into a trot and stumbled as she gained speed, nearly tumbling to the deck. In the narrow passage, the ceiling only a few meters above her, the curve of the ring made the upward-curving horizon close and sharp. It was as if she were running uphill.
As she broke out of the trot, she felt lighter and stumbled again. Anti-spinward. Her speed was decreasing the effective rate of the ring’s rotation. Their gravity came from the spin of the ring, and going to anti-spin negated a small part of that. She slowed back to a trot and finally turned at a slow jog back toward the command sector. As she brought her speed back up, she could feel the weight increase.
Ri ran the numbers in her head. L1 was about three-quarters gee, and L0 was eight-tenths. A decent run could increase her weight as much as, she did the numbers again to make sure, at least another tenth-gee. Nine-tenths gee running uphill, or at least appearing to, the upward curve of the corridor was enough to fool her eyes and body.
And here there were no gawking crowds. No ultra-engineered gym equipment, no perfectly designed surface of the low-gee track around the outer edge of L5, barely a half-gee. Here there was nothing fancy, nothing dressed up. It reminded her of the streets of Japan.
If she narrowed her eyes, she could pretend that the scattered worklights were little more than reflections of the sun off the occasional unbroken window. The haphazardness of the pipes were reminiscent of the debris cast across the face of Nara on which she and her cadre of hunters had run so often.
If she closed her ears to all but the sounds of the wind in her ears and the slap of her shipshoes against the deck, she could almost hear their bare feet padding along behind her.
Ri leaned into the hill and reentered the red zone.
# # #
“We need to replace them goddamn it.” The drunk at the far end was roaring loudly enough to be heard half down the length of the bar.
Bryce just kept filling orders while the raving continued. He wasn’t the loudest, only the closest.
“Thish bloody crew failed. Didn’t shave Earth, can’t get us to the stars. Damned failure. Get ‘em outta there. Then we get things movin’.” His blue suit marked him as science and research. He turned on the greenie to his left.
“Come on, Parrot Man. You know they’re all full of crap. Earth is prolly down there all beautiful and they juss want to keep us under their control. Keep us here where they’re in charge. Protecting their friggin’ status quo.”
Bryce worked his way down the bar, wiping the surface clean with a damp bar rag. Parrot Man. Bryce should have recognized him. Just six months before, Bryce’s shuttle had brought the first load up to the jungle biome which had included this man and his parrot. They’d had to sedate the man to stop his screaming. Now he was sitting as calmly as could be at the end of the bar, his beer perhaps a quarter gone.
“Well now, Samnal. I don’t know about that. The Captain seems to be an honest woman. What purpose could be fulfilled in lying to us?”
“Purpose? I juss tole you their purposh. Theys in charge and wanna shtay there.”
Samnal turned on the ag-worker to his right and was confronted with a broad back, its owner far more intent on the short brunette he was chatting up. While the technician tried to process that there was someone in the room not listening to him, the Parrot Man took a swallow of his beer, tossed a credit to Bryce, and slid away.
Bryce dropped the warm coin into the spittoon and moved off.
The drunk swung back, the empty stool even more confusing than the indifferent expanse on his other side. As he focused down into his beer, Bryce heard him curse once more.
“Fuckin’ biome dweebs. All uselesh.”
A half-dozen orders pattered across the plas as he worked his way down the bar. Just beyond the far end a smashing redhead leaned her chair back against the wall. Her long legs were crossed casually on a chair before her. Her beer rested, half-finished, on one of the tables that had survived the night intact. A big ag-worker, covered in a liberal dusting of pollen, strolled up uncertainly on legs well softened by alcohol, and placed his hands on either side of the table. He leaned toward the redhead across its narrow surface, his loose height looming over her.
Bryce moved down to wipe that end of the bar so he
could hear the pitch.
“Hey baby, how about you and me find out if I’m the right one to be sittin’ here?”
Bryce almost laughed. He’d used a lot of lines, but never one quite that stupid. At least he hoped not. One thing he’d sure learned was that “right for you” was all an illusion of false comfort. Reality was, it worked nicely until things went wrong. And they always went wrong.
To Bryce’s chagrin, the stunner kicked the chair loose from beneath her feet and managed to shuffle it around to the far side of the table. The ag-worker settled in like he’d just spiked the ball in the proverbial end zone, which he had. Once he was settled with a happy grin splashed wide across his besotted features, the redhead rose.
She winked at Bryce as she casually, out of her suitor’s view, lowered the front opening of her shipsuit revealing a startling amount of cleavage. With a turn and a forward lean that must’ve sent the man’s head spinning, she cornered the ag-worker.
“You,” she slid a long, fine finger down his cheek, “just wait here and Ms. Right-For-You might just come along. Then we’ll both know if you’re supposed to be sitting here.”
With a turn somewhere between panther and python, the redhead eased out through the crowd. A passage opening before her, brushed aside by the wave of her blatant sexuality. Just before it closed behind her, Bryce felt a chill. She had looked back at him with amusement. Had someone recognized him? What would the crowd do if they knew who his parent was? What he was a carbon copy of?
# # #
The crowd had thinned and the ag-worker was long gone, headed off to his quarters alone. Samnal snored noisily at the far end of the empty bar. Bryce had cleaned up most of the place before he noticed her return. Ms. Right-For-You. That was the illusion they all sought. That was what he should name this place. Offer them the illusion they came to find—and never would.
R4U. It worked well along with his bar being on Ring Four. Maybe he could even get someone to stamp it on the mugs.
The redhead sat with a female constructor, still in her faded spacer oranges. Welder, according to the faded patch on her arm. He was gathering empties and the line of them at their table was impressive. He eased one of the toppled tables back into place and collected a few scattered mugs from the floor.
“Shit! Ya know we had it good.” The welder with short blond hair barely kept her head aloft with the support of her planted elbow and the palm under her chin.
“We wuz pullin’ down good creds, girl. ‘Nother tour, maybe two, and I’d’ve had ‘nuf set ‘side to settle in, ya know. Find someone good for me and jus’ cruise. Now, those fuckin’ scientists. Shit. They get it wrong and now it’s all fried up and blown away.”
Bryce circled in closer and kept his ears perked.
“Would you rather be toasted? Cooked like all those poor bastards down on the rock? Come on.”
The redhead’s speech was slurred, but still careful. Her breeding showed, she wasn’t likely a plas handler, despite the claim of her patch sewn so neatly above one of her perfect breasts.
“Naw. That ain’t it. I’m glad I din’t burn, or turn into an icicle like that Arctic Lady. But shit, Emilia. This place is no great shakes either. Jus’ give me a moly torch and a couple hunnert meters o’ plas. Poetry, I’m tellin’ ya. Fuckin’ poetry. Diggin’ dirt in a goddamn box to raise goddamn food. Well it just sucks, thas all.” Her chin slipped off her palm and she was lying with her cheek just missing the beer slick on the table by the thickness of her forearm.
Emilia rose to her feet and stretched with a joint popping reach that showed off every glorious curve of her body.
Bryce knew that she was teasing him, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out why. He took the tray back to the bar. Emilia followed him.
As he loaded the mugs into the cleaner, she leaned against the bar. Less cleavage than before, but still that incredible sensuality. She glanced around, but they were the only two at this end of the whole space other than the sonorous presence of Samnal. The next nearest was her welder friend who had also just lost the battle with consciousness.
She moved in closer. Bryce found himself leaning across the plas countertop even though every alarm in his head was screaming danger.
“Hi, Brycie.” Her eyes sparkled like some little girl who’d just won the prize at the carnival. “You don’t know me.”
She laughed and danced back a step from the bar and twirled lightly on her toes. A part of him awoke. A part deep inside. A part he didn’t like.
His parent looked out of Bryce’s eyes and lust and knowledge coursed through him in a wave of heat and anger. Anger that this woman was alive and free. Only by conscious control was Bryce able to keep his hand on the bar. The demon within. The demon that was Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. wanted to reach out and snag that hair. Grab her. Control her.
“Celia.” He barely breathed her name, but she flinched like the Old Man had gotten loose and slapped her.
For a moment, her shoulders hunched and that incredible inner light switched off. She closed her eyes for a moment and then stood a bit straighter.
“Sorry, Brycie, that was stupid. I shouldn’t have said anything. Too much of your good beer, I suppose. Please don’t tell.”
It all made sense. His father’s memories of breaking Celia Wirden’s spirit was as clear as the night he’d killed her husband to gain the premiership of the Earth. She had found an escape. She’d changed her looks and stowed away on Stellar One and headed for the anonymity of space. She hadn’t reached it, but just as good for her as for him, his parent was dead beyond torturing her.
“No one to tell,” he offered. “Wouldn’t anyway.”
She visibly relaxed and, after the briefest of hesitations, settled onto one of the bar stools. He started to draw a beer, but she shook her head, then indicated a half. He slid hers across, and took a full one himself.
“You always were a good boy. And, damn, Bryce, you always were incredibly handsome.”
So easily she blurred the line between the nightmare of memories pumped into his head and the person he had struggled so hard to create. Separate from the Old Bastard. Separate from the remembered past that wasn’t his.
His hand reached out, but it wasn’t Bryce Jr. moving it, so he pulled it back. He took a long pull of his beer.
“Look, there are some things I can’t do.”
She reached out to stroke his hand, but he shifted farther away. Her eyes narrowed, and he could see by the shift in her shoulders that she was preparing to attack the challenge of him.
His memories crowed with avarice.
Bryce moved back another step.
“I have memories.” He’d never told anyone what was going on inside his head, except one woman who’d tried to kill him while he slept later that night. Never told anyone that the world’s most brutal dictator had planned to gain immortality by moving his memories into his clone’s body and then driving Bryce’s memories out. And he’d almost succeeded. Another year, and the Old Bastard’s pet scientists could have excised all that was Bryce Jr. Then he truly would have been a younger version of his parent. But the world had ended too soon.
“Yes,” Emilia agreed. “I remember that night he did something to you. You looked horrible afterward. He was a cruel man, so we just won’t mention him.” She reached again, but it was only a token gesture. He hadn’t offered the reception she’d expected and she was still puzzling it out.
“Celia.” That got her full attention. “That was the night you figured out I was his clone.”
She nodded. “That’s where you got your fine looks. But if you think that matters—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. The soft, familiar feel of them brought a flood of remembered sexual memories to the fore. Bryce Sr. had actually seduced her, or she him. Either way, well aware that he was plunging deep inside her at the very instant her
husband and his friend, the World Premier, finally succumbed to the poison Bryce Sr. had used. Bryce snatched his hand back and wiped it on the bar towel.
Celia crossed her arms around her belly and leaned back from the bar, the whites showing around her irises.
“I…” he wanted to explain. He truly did. “Just don’t come near me. There are things that you must not know. Don’t want to know. They nearly drive me insane, and I’m the one inside my head.”
He slammed back the rest of his beer, cast the mug to the floor, and stumbled to the door behind the bar. He coded it open, staggered through, and held his breath until it slid shut. Let it block out the beautiful, desirable woman who was driving his parent’s memories wild with Bryce’s denial. He leaned against the hard plas and struggled to breathe, his body burning with lust pounding up from his throbbing groin.
He could feel her still sitting at his bar, waiting for and perhaps fearing his return. To distract himself, he checked the brewing tanks he’d set up in the crammed space. The tall gleaming shapes filled the room, rich hop odors coming from the standing tank assured him that this batch was on track. The temperature was riding at just thirty-six degrees, just skin warm. That was…high? low? he didn’t even know at this moment. He looked at the hammock, but no rest awaited him there. He’d be up and back into the bar thirty seconds after he lay down.
No longer able to stand the strain, he pulled open the floor hatch and slid down the ladder into the maintenance ring. He secured the hatch behind him and even set it for a full hour’s lockdown. Even if there was a crisis he couldn’t reopen it to return to the bar. It was the least he could do to protect her. If she returned, he didn’t know if he’d be able to again win the battle with his inner needs.
He strolled to anti-spin with nowhere to go. Some timeless amount of turmoil later he arrived beneath the blue-and-white piping of the Arctic biome. Frozen to death. They’d carried the Arctic lady out of her dead biome still ice solid just this afternoon.
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