by M. D. Cooper
The implants flashed as the man stared at her, his face sagging, before turning his attention back to his records.
“Maybe I have it,” he mumbled, clearly displeased. He nodded at his display. “There’s the list. What’s the number you’re looking for?”
Brit told him the registry number and the clerk nodded. “It’s there. We picked it up four hours ago.” He frowned at his list. “Looks like the autodoc is malfunctioning in this one. I’ve got another one with a clean bill of service.”
Brit straightened, remembering Cal’s broken hand. “Where’s the nearest medical kiosk?”
“Med kiosk?” the clerk asked, sounding irritated that she didn’t want to buy the pod. “I don’t know. There are a couple I guess. One is up near the administrative office and there’s another one down between two bars off the cargo docks.”
Brit reached out to pat the man’s cheek and he flinched. She pointed at him. “You need to lighten up.”
Turning, she quickly checked in with the local wayfinding net that had led her to the salvage business and pulled up a list of nearby medical kiosks. The clerk had been correct; the closest autodoc was two levels below, next door to a night club called Wandering Fury.
Interesting name, anyway, she thought, as she pushed her way through the crowded corridor for the nearest public lift.
Unlike the clean medical districts of the Cho where they had gone to find a doctor for Tim, the shipping district looked grimy to her. Every surface carried a patina of oil and dirt collected over years of freight moving in and out along with the humanity and poorly maintained drones that did the work. Walls looked cobbled together from various bits of ships and transport containers. Advertisements for sex or various drugs—including the hallucinogenic briki flower they’d synthesized on the Resolute Charity—covered the corridor walls. Street food vendors stained the deck above and below their carts with steam and drippings as they shouted for the attention of passersby.
Someone slid against her, brushing against her holster, and Brit remembered that she was going to need to ditch the weapon or find a security pass that allowed her to carry it. She cursed silently, not wanting to waste time getting to the club since it was her best lead yet; also knowing she wasn’t going to get far into a commercial zone with the weapon.
She continued to walk, scanning the edges of the corridor where people stood in small groups between the food vendors, looking for someone who met the profile of a data broker.
An access request tickled her Link. It was Andy. Pausing with her back to the corridor wall, Brit accepted the request as she continued to watch the faces of logistics workers and third-class passengers flow by, dragging luggage and other supplies.
Sunny Skies was over twenty light seconds away, and she waited nearly a minute for the response, keeping a watchful eye on the crowds around her.
Brit realized she should have said more, but she waited for Andy’s voice anyway. He probably would understand what she meant, he’d always been good at that.
You keep telling yourself that.
Was that her thoughts or what she knew Andy would say? Someone had to catch Kraft and punish him for what he’d done, everything he’d done. She didn’t know how far back his involvement with Heartbridge reached, but she needed to find out. People like Kraft were the only way to tie the corporation to anything real. If Kraft couldn’t be flipped or made to talk, another one would arrive in his place, another layer of separation between crimes and accountability.
Why did she ask that? Of course, he was still there. There shouldn’t have been any reason not to trust Fugia Wong, but she still hesitated. She could give up her security token now but had to remember to update it later.
Brit waited as the Link went quiet. A customs official in a Jovian Space Force uniform walked past, absorbed in his Link, but she turned her holstered-hip toward the wall all the same.
Waiting nearly a minute to get the answer to a joke took all the fun out of it, and Brit wished she hadn’t wasted time on it.
Brit said.
Fugia grunted.
Brit sighted.
Andy said. The fatigue in his voice hit her unexpectedly. She blinked, feeling tears at the edges of her eyes.
Andy’s anger crossed the Link.
There it was. She bit her lip, letting her gaze jump around the crowd flowing by. Somehow, she wanted to believe they could depend on her in a greater sense, that she was focused on things that would benefit them. But Andy was right. They couldn’t depend on her where it counted. It was better that they figured that out now.
Fugia cleared her throat and answered awkwardly,
she said suddenly.
There was another pause where she thought she had lost the Link again.
he said. The signal warped, leaving a slight echo on his words. She lost a phrase, then heard: <—For Tim. You had better punish that fucker.>
The bad signal stretched his last word into flicker and then the Link closed. They were gone.
Brit took a deep breath and wiped her face. Her eyes were moist. She squeezed the bridge of her nose, breathing slowly, until the sound of Andy’s voice had faded from her mind. She squared her shoulders, checking herself quickly. The light armor was unchanged, encasing her in black iridescence. She set her hand on her pistol, then stepped into the crowd again, moving with a purpose toward the night club where she expected to find Cal Kraft.
CHAPTER FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 10.05.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Departing Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Andy silenced the proximity alarms and brought up the Resolute Charity’s shield controls. With the holodisplay zoomed out to encompass the alert, Jupiter was the size of a basketball and Europa had long since become a speck.
The system highlighted an object burning on a trajectory that would intersect with his current flight plan. The sensors hadn’t verified a registry ping yet, though the mass profile matched a small transport ship. Unless it was headed for some unmarked location, it was too far out for its fuel capacity, meaning that whoever they were, they meant to reach the Resolute Charity.
Andy cursed under his breath.
Andy shifted his display to show the regular travel lanes out of Europa. They had been off the regular lanes for two days, moving to the transfer point where he would start the major burn for Uranus, where he’d planned an orbital maneuver to slingshot them out to Neptune. Andy set the astrogation computer on an adjustment using Saturn instead of Uranus, frowning as the fuel levels all came back too close to empty for comfort.
The holodisplay refocused on the Resolute Charity as a wave of icons separated from Sunny Skies and spread out in an evenly spaced arc around the two ships, matched velocity, and then widened their formation. Andy felt a small swell of pride as he watched Lyssa work.
In another few minutes, Fran had achieved coordinated fire control between the Resolute Charity’s state-of-the-art attack systems and Sunny Skies’ cobbled-together defensive network. While the Resolute Charity had all the trappings of a hospital ship with apparent defense systems, its attack capability went much deeper than expected. A full menu of long-range missiles, drones, x-ray cannons and point-defense systems could encase the ship in what Fran liked to call a “hamster ball of death.” Only Andy had understood the reference.
Andy was alone on the Resolute Charity. The other option was for him to get across to Sunny Skies and dump the larger ship if the inbound vessel turned out to be the vanguard of a Heartbridge assault. That would mean losing their peace offering for Alexander, the SAI who awaited them at Proteus. There might be other ways to impress Alexander than a stolen ship, though. Caught between two unknowns, Andy tucked the idea away as a last resort.
In the meantime, he left the command console for the lockers back by the entrance to the command deck, fished out a set of light armor and pulled it on over his ship suit. The armor had limited EV capabilities and a helmet with a wide face shield designed more for external maintenance than defense. He selected a pulse rifle from the rack along with a bandoleer of multi-use grenades.
With the suit in place, Andy walked back to the holodisplay and sat heavily in the chair, readjusting the armor where it jabbed him in the legs and abdomen.
Andy sat up straighter.
A few seconds passed as Andy waited for Fran to say more about the communications link. He switched the observation menu on his console from the navplan to the communications scrolls. One small wind
ow showed the close-range communications traffic as a series of thin graphs.
Andy blinked several times, not sure he had heard her correctly.
Fran asked sarcastically.
Andy flexed his shoulders.
The air above the holodisplay grew opaque and flashed, showing Andy a reconstruction of a small cockpit. The head and shoulders of the slim young man he had met on the Cho appeared in the window, brown eyes looking as mischievous as the first time they had met.
Xander’s brown eyes found Andy and he grinned.
“Captain Sykes,” he said, nodding. “I’m so pleased to see you. Is your Lyssa here as well?”
“I’m here,” Lyssa answered.
“How wonderful. I know I had explained to May Walton that I intended to stay in the Jovian Combine, but my plans have changed and I find myself traveling in the same direction as you. I’ve come to ask for a ride. But first I should say how pleased I am that you accomplished such a challenging task as stealing a Heartbridge dreadnought and disrupting their entire JC fleet.” He clapped, hands just visible below the edge of the window. “That’s truly something special.”