Out of the corner of her eye she caught a grin through the fur lining of his parka hood.
“Go on,” he said and followed her in. The snow crunching beneath their boots became a scrape and stomp as they entered Ebudae.
Jody turned down her hood and unzipped, continuing her half-truth. She was born on Tiva Oa, but her family was a member of tribal leadership. “The UDM, the United Democratic Meritocracies, was reviewing Tiva Oa’s petition for protection when Frobisher moved in for the kill.”
“Really? Kill? Seems a little harsh.” His face scrunched in disbelief.
“Yes, kill. That’s what they call it when people die, Ewan.”
“Hmm.” Ewan bit his lip into a grimace as he, too, unzipped his parka.
“The Marquesas Commune was in the free zones on the edge of the Frobisher Milicorp territories. It was taken over by Frobisher when contract negotiations stalled. They re-allocated me into a work camp.” She lied. Frobisher tested all assimilated leadership. “I learned to move packages on a conveyor belt. But when Frobisher folded, Cordoba invaded. Cordoba tracked me to payload specialist.” And out and out lie but part of her spy persona.
“It wasn’t an invasion. It was the consequences of a contract violation.”
Jody bit back a laugh. “That’s what you call embargo, bombings, slaughtering half the population, destroying free state governments by capturing and torturing leaders… sure. I’ve read the same posters on the bathroom walls. What do you call it when people say ‘No’ and they’re made into slaves, Ewan? I call it war. There’s blood on their hands and on those complicit by not doing something about it.”
“Okay, so wait, you’re actually a dalit-caste doing a technoe-caste job?”
Jody blew a stray hair out of her eyes and looked up at him, “No, Cordoba designated me technoe because there is no worker caste in Frobisher Millicorps. I was moving up from T1 class and already hit T3.” Another practiced lie.
Her legal expertise was a product of Frobisher’s education system. Her military experience part of their downfall in having to mine their intelligence corps from all sectors of the population.
She sat back on the chair in the lounge of the crew common area while he put a tapioca snack in the sous-vide. It was rehydrating and cooking. The scent of cinnamon seeped from the food’s synthetic pouches into the air.
Ewan tilted his head at her with question in his eyes.
“In a caste-less system, I earned more by doing more and learning more. But I don’t have that now, and I won’t ever have it again. Not unless there’s something out there…”
The distilled quiet reflected the blanket of snow outside and the darkness shrouding them in the dimly lit crew common area.
The beep of the sous-vide broke the silence.
Ewan didn’t meet her eyes.
Jody decided to let him process it and not push any further. She’d already pushed enough.
He handed her a plate and a grey metal multi use fork-knife-spoon.
Nodding, she took both and sat down at the crew table. He joined her, across the table, putting a condiment tray between them. She shook some sweetener on the tapioca. After a few bites, Jody looked up.
Ewan was regarding her before swallowing and speaking. “I’m sorry about Tiva Oa.”
“You aren’t responsible.”
“You said ‘those complicit’.”
Oh stars. “But you aren’t…”
“No. I didn’t make it any better, trying to defend the people that destroyed your way of life. I promise you…” He reached over to her free hand. Sincerity in his eyes begged belief. “You will surf again, maybe here on Tapagoani XII.”
Words failed her.
“No, I know that it will be hard. But if this project succeeds, I will have an opportunity to move up, like you said, and I will do something about it.”
Jody blinked back surprised tears. “That’s not possible, Ewan.” No, it wasn’t possible. She was going to destroy this project. She looked down, hiding guilt and regret that she could not keep inside. Why did he have to be one of the good guys?
Or maybe. . .maybe she could find another way.
Chapter Seven
“IT’S BEEN A LONG DAY,” EWAN SAID.
“Full of surprises,” she forced a grin. No matter how hard she tried to deny it, he was getting to her. His boyish grin. His mass of red curls and matching beard that framed sincerity in his shining green eyes. And his gentle soul that took her by surprise and cradled her like a lost kitten.
“Yes.” He pursed his lips as though he was about to say something but his eyes darted down to his plate. “You know… we… there’s… it’s cold in here.”
“And?” She prompted.
“And the captain’s quarters is very large…”
“I hear it has a large bed.” Jody added.
“Very comfortable.” He nodded.
“Great for combining body heat.” Standing up, she put her hand out to take his. “Take me there.” She whispered. Their eyes met. She could barely see the beautiful green of his eyes for the ever-widening pupils. At that moment she didn’t feel alone. For once, she was truly with someone. Someone who cared about her. And that hadn’t happened since Tiva Oa.
His hand reached for hers…
The crew mess door behind Ewan flew open to reveal a bull of a man holding a pulse rifle. “Well, hello lovebirds,” he said.
Jody palmed the multi-use utensil. Her first instinct was escape but that would leave Ewan defenseless. She couldn’t do that to him. No matter what, Ewan was coming back to the resistance base with her.
“Now, now,” the disembodied voice said, coming from somewhere behind the man. “Just follow my man Alice, and we can all get to know each other better.”
Jody realized the voice was not coming from the man in front of them. The voice coming from ‘Alice’ was emitting from a transceiver on his massive shoulder. That meant there was more than one of them.
With Alice’s weapon trained on Ewan, she couldn’t risk a fight. She had to wait, pick her moment.
“It was so nice of you to make that entryway for us. It would have taken us a long time to get to you otherwise.” The disembodied voice continued. “Now, follow Alice and everything will be fine.”
Jody wondered if she could take him down. She got up from the bench and watched the man’s eyebrows shoot up in bushy arches. It was as if she was naked. He sneered with a feral glint.
“Hey, keep your eyes off of her,” Ewan tried to stand so that he blocked the pulse rifle and the man holding it. As he did, Jody pushed the palmed utensil up into her sleeve. Smart man…
“Get out of my way.” Alice’s thick-tongued accent ordered.
“Ewan, he has a weapon and you do not.” Not right now you don’t, but when I get free, you’ll have one all right.
“He needs to keep me in his sights,” she explained to Ewan who, though he’d blocked her with bravado, was not doing well with the current situation.
His hands shook.
“Don’t worry.” She squeezed his closest hand. “We’ll be fine.” Her eyes looked up into his and she willed him to trust her, praying he saw something there that calmed and gave confidence.
She took a step forward and held up her hands at her side.
Alice smirked again and licked his lips.
“I am not going out in the cold without a parka, tell your boss,” Jody said.
“Let them get their coats on,” the voice said. Boredom oozed from the transceiver.
Alice didn’t take his eyes off of them, nor move his gun, as he took their two parkas off the hooks by the door.
“Yep, that’s it, toss it over here,” Jody encouraged.
He tossed it at her and she caught it deftly, gave one to Ewan then put the smaller one on. Half behind Ewan she turned away from them both, making sure to distract the gaping ape by giving her ass an extra wiggle. She moved the utensil to her EVA suit’s leg pocket.
The
black body suit she wore beneath it all hugged her body, forming around her the protective layer of armor that she always wore. As long as she wore it, she would be safe, but Ewan was not a trained assassin. That body armor was hers from the disbanded elite Frobisher corps. The special material of the suit and her enhanced reflexes had saved her in the crash.
“You look tasty,” smirked Alice.
“That’s enough, Alice,” the voice said. “Now bring them both into here, please.”
She could see the panic in Ewan’s eyes. Ewan raked his hands through his rumpled mess of red curls. She longed to take him in her arms and make it better. To tell him that the world wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it was. To assure him that he had the strength inside to do what needed to be done.
But right now, he didn’t need coddling. He needed a good quick dose of self-esteem. She squeezed his hand letting the stable touch communicate all the trust and teamwork he sought.
They were led out of the tunnel from Ebudae as the lights of a vessel above them lit their path. A sleek conical craft with a bent nose, half the length of Ebudae, descended into the snowy patch that once held the hoppercraft.
“Who are they?” Ewan leaned over to ask.
“That is a damn good question,” Jody nodded at him. “You said you thought it was your project. A rival? Someone who wants to get their hands on your data?” The engines masked their conversation.
Alice stood off, a yard away, talking into his transceiver.
“But it’s not my data,” he said. “Or they’d have taken that from the uploads. Anyone could have hacked that. If it’s not my project, then what? We’d already be … I don’t know?”
Dead?
She thought about it then said, “No, you’re right, that doesn’t make sense either.” Are they after me? She looked over at Alice. He wasn’t wearing a uniform or badge that she recognized. His massive arms were covered in a dark gray jumpsuit. He wore no EVA, no parka, and only a simple knit cap in brown and forest green.
She wondered how he’d snuck up on Ebudae, but then saw the snow sled. The ship must have landed further on and dropped him off until signaled. “Mercs. They’re mercenaries,” she said to Ewan.
Alice turned his head from the transceiver on his shoulder. With the pulse rifle, he motioned for them to walk towards the now lowering ramp.
Ewan and Jody walked up the ramp, stamping the snow from their boots. Jody could see nothing but plain gray metal walls and deck plates.
Alice pointed towards a door. He tapped his finger to a square black pad on the threshold. The door slid open into the wall revealing a chamber and in further, a small holding cell.
Alice shoved them into the room towards the empty cell. “Wait here,” he thumbed them in.
They shuffled forward.
Jody turned and leaned up against the back of the cell. Ewan started towards Alice but stopped at the whine of the pulse rifle charging. He stepped back and lined up next to Jody.
The merc left them alone, but not before turning on an energy field, one they could both see as it distorted the room beyond the threshold. “Don’t go nowhere.” He smiled and tapped the tip of his pulse rifle to the energy field. It flickered, driving home his point. “Hey, you and me missy… I got plans.” He lolled his tongue and began to wiggle his midsection at her in a vulgar gesture, moving his hips back and forth in hard thrusts. “You’re mine.”
Jody was repulsed. It wasn’t hard to look shocked. Inwardly, she felt relieved. If this ass tried to rape her, she’d at least be in a position to neutralize him.
Ewan was as red as his hair, fists balled at his side.
She shook him. “Don’t… We have other problems besides that dickless wonder.”
“If he touches you…”
“You’ll what? Throw him in a spectrum analyzer and bore him to death with a long talk about microbes? No. Play to your strengths. Use your brain. The guy at the other end of the transceiver didn’t sound like he was as brainless as Alice.”
“Maybe.” Ewan glared at the empty room beyond their cell.
“What about Six?” she asked, trying to distract Ewan while they puzzled out the reasons for their kidnapping.
“What about Six?” He stood up straighter. “You can’t be accusing Six of…”
“What if they were compromised? What if Six’s the one that’s been feeding data that somehow is helping this other … whatever… I don’t know. Maybe going to the other site was an excuse?”
“Never! Six would never!” Ewan pounded a fist into the palm of his hand in righteousness. “Anyway, why would they take control of Six? They’re just a drone with a complex set of instructions that…”
“Are you out of your mind?” Jody hissed. “Keep your voice down. We don’t know how much our captors can hear.”
Wordlessly, he nodded.
“You can’t be serious about that drone. At times Six is more human than most people I’ve met in Cordoba.” She was on a roll now her face close to his ear. “That drone has the ability to reason, to make intuitive leaps, to puzzle and be proactive. Six is more important than your terraforming project. AI like that? On the black market Six is worth, I don’t know, a fortune. A couple of fortunes. Whoever wants Six has money. And power. Maybe that’s what this is about: taking Six for their department, like militia? Cordoba’s brahma casters are always trying to one up each other. Get the edge. Be the top dog.” She leaned her head back and watched Ewan’s face turn ashen gray.
“Six? Militia?”
Jody put her fingertips to her forehead and leaned in again. “Wow, you really haven’t got a clue about that drone, do you? I’m here with you for a day and I can see the military applications. A soldier that can be put into any situation, learn what it needs to on the spot, and be fully capable to act?” There were dozens of times Jody could have used a drone like Six. Instead of losing friends to raids on Cordoba assets, they could have sent one Six. That would have been enough to save a dozen lives.
Ewan kept up the whispering. “What are you talking about? Six is just a modified lab drone. There’s some glitches in the system. They make Six unpredictable at times.”
“Okay,” Jody crossed and uncrossed her arms. “So, can you explain to me about something, just a hypothetical because I’m not the genius astrobiologist that plays around with finding and nurturing new life.”
“Six isn’t ne—“
“Tut tut tut.” She waggled a finger. “Again, I don’t have your advanced Cordoba eddy-cashun.” She pulled a face and batted her eyes. “But I seem to remember something about self-replication of small chains of data strings being considered a form of a-life.”
“No, that’s not Six, they can’t …”
“So, like I remember that if, hypothetically, a tiny 80-byte long string of code copies itself and that copies itself and so on, there’s this chance that the self replicators don’t always make perfect copies. You know, that’s like an analogy of the nucleic-acid-based genetic code of biological life.” Jody finished with a tight smile.
“How?”
“You blather. A lot. I listen.”
“Oh, stars! We need to get to Six, then. We need to get to Six before whoever this is, does... Six can help. Six can …” Ewan began.
“Six is a battle drone, too?”
“No, but they’re capable of creating protection for us. Six is capable of a lot. I just thought it was my programming.” The light dawned. “This isn’t about terraforming or revenge. This is about Six. About kidnapping Six!”
Jody sighed. “Yes, I think this is about Six. At least I think it is since none of your equipment has been taken. They haven’t actually threatened you. They haven’t stopped the project.”
“They eliminated the crew.”
“Exactly.”
“But they didn’t kill me.”
“Ewan…” Jody turned, trying not to show the fear in her eyes. “Who knows about Six?”
“I didn’t think anybody
did.”
“It’s time to start thinking who might have been looking around at your projects. Who sponsored the terraforming project? Who gave an astrobiologist free run to terraform?”
Ewan’s face turned white. “I... Doctor Meydenbauer was my supervisor.”
“Did he have connections to the brahmi?”
“He was, his wife…” Ewan covered his face. “Oh stars. She was a model. Even though he was upper technoe, they travelled in the brahmi caste circles.”
“There’s a great black market for under-caste tech.” Jody paced. She needed to find a way out. Moving to the corner of the cell she paused, staring at the ceiling as mathematical calculations flashed in front of her eyes. Jody’s head snapped down to look at Ewan. “You’d better hope Six is on our side.”
“Why?”
“Just play along…”
Ewan pursed his lips. “Play along? With what? How are you so cool and calm? Jody…”
She turned, her face steel and her eyes cold.
“Who are you?”
The door to the outer room swished open. “Commander Benson,” said the voice of Alice’s controller, “it’s been forever.”
Chapter Eight
“COME WITH ME, COMMANDER.”
The man that stood in front of her was lean, grey skinned and all muscle. He was dressed in a grey camo armor for the ice and snow. His hair was white, slicked back away from his face, and thin.
Jody moved towards the holding cell field. “Nice to see you, too, Carl.” Carl. One of the most bloodthirsty mercs she’d ever come across. He didn’t care who paid, just as long as it was in cash.
“Funny how we’re both in the same place at the same time, again?” Carl oozed ostentatious sleaze.
“Real funny. Changed your ship and got a new goon, I see.” The force field light shone, casting a glow on Carl’s gray face.
“Yes, he’s a strong one, he seems to be taken with you. I think he’s preparing for a real party…”
“Me too.” Jody grinned widely. “Oh, me too.”
“Come into my parlor—” The containment field disappeared as she walked through, head held high.
Baby, it's Cold in Space: Eight Science Fiction Romances Page 18