by Watson Davis
Three men in casual ship gear stood before her, moving out of the side corridor, arraying themselves in front of her. The one in the middle, the one who spoke, appeared to be the leader, the others glancing at him for cues on how to move, on where to be.
He smiled, his teeth not straight but not too crooked, his eyebrows slanting down around his eyes, like he was sad or like he was empathetic. He nodded. "Santina, right?"
"Mmm-hmm." She swallowed the bit of ice cream in her mouth without tasting it, lowering her right hand but letting the cup slide around so it didn't spill. "Is there a problem or something?"
"I guess you could consider us friends of your family," he said, his voice dripping with a sugary sweetness, sweeter than the mango ice cream.
Santina threw the ice cream at him, trying to hit him in the face, but he dodged, moving quicker than she’d expected. She turned to run, but the janitor, the one with the bad mood, was waiting behind her and grabbed her; the other two ambled in from the sides, confident and cocky.
"Now, let's not be difficult about this, chikki." The man stood before Santina, patting her on the head.
Santina stomped down with her right heel on the janitor's instep, stomped with all her weight, throwing her head back, striking him in the chest—not in the chin she had aimed for—expelling the air in his lungs with an audible woof.
The guy before her stopped patting her head, shocked at her action, staring at her like she had morphed into a bomb.
She shifted her weight to her left leg, sending a snap kick up into the crotch of the man in front of her, using her momentum to twist out of the janitor's grasp and continuing her arc toward the guy approaching from her left, then whipping around into a spinning back kick she drove into the man's stomach, just below his solar plexus. The impact stopped him in his tracks, his jaw dropping, his eyes flying open.
Santina's world tilted as the fourth guy tackled her from behind, taking her down hard to the carpeted floor; her right shoulder slammed against the floor, with his body pressing down on her, pinning her. She squirmed, wriggling beneath him, jabbing with her elbows, twisting to lash out at him with her knees.
His hands searched for her wrists, clawing at her forearms. She slapped at him, pushing her heels against the carpet, searching for a way to slip out from under him.
"Dammit, she's just a kid."
Someone spat. "Fuck the bitch up."
Santina's knee found the man's testicles, ramming into them. His body stiffened, curling up, his hands flying to his genitals.
She popped up to her feet, too slow to dodge the fist coming down at her face, and her reaction too slow to spin away. It struck home and she crumpled to the ground, trying to bring her fingertips to her temple, but the men descended upon her, binding her wrists and blocking her connection to the web.
# # #
"...and that should cover everything. I'd just like to say, well done, soldiers." Admiral Gentili smirked from across our table, her eyes singling each of us out. "Besides saving Vice President Satele's family, we acquired substantive leads on the Unity's recruitment program and activity within the asteroid belt."
I raised my hand.
The admiral nodded toward me. "Yes, Second Lieutenant Ohmie?"
"Second Lieutenant?" I lowered my hand, blinking.
"I believe we can remove the provisional status from your title at this point." She tilted her head. "Did you want to ask me about something?"
"Yes. Thank you. About the beggar?" I asked, finding it hard to trust my voice. "She saved my life."
"A station detective who received separate intel on the Unity attempt and decided to stop the abduction alone even though her station chief refused her request for assistance," the admiral said with a grin. "When we offered her a job with FountainCorp Security, she said she wanted to thank all of you for the assist."
Everyone laughed.
"Speaking of begging”—the admiral hopped out of her seat, standing and inclining her head to the team—"I have to hoof it back up to the executive deck for a conference. I'll let Gus close this meeting. Good job again, everyone."
She left to a chorus of thank yous, the door clicking shut behind her.
"Well, I hate to be a noodge." At the head of the table, tapping his fingertips on the table to make the charts and figures from the mission disappear, Gus ran his eyes across the table to look at each of us, pausing, pausing on me, darting away. "I have a dinner engagement tonight I need to run to, and this debrief ran longer than scheduled. Does anyone else have anything they want to share with the group?"
I glanced over at Edmund. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth sealed, eyes on Gus.
"Okay." Gus closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and opened them again. "I'm glad we got through this without losing anyone else." He motioned toward me. "Even though we did flirt with the possibility of losing someone. I will be working to pick up three more recruits to add to the team, but as the admiral said, you guys did a masterful job. I will contact each of you tomorrow to schedule sessions; there are some things I need to discuss with some of you in private, but they will wait. Nothing to be done tonight."
Gus seemed to be talking to me, trying to say something but not quite saying it. I nodded to him, figuring I would be joining a new team soon.
Then Gus bustled out, the others in the room standing and shuffling out after. Sly patted my shoulder, yanking his hand back when he realized he was patting my bandages. Across the table, Malordo stood, caught my gaze, winked, and pointed at me, nodding with satisfaction.
Vanessa, following Sly out, bent down and whispered in my ear, "You're such a damned hero." She laughed and walked out, stretching, saying, "Yay! Nap time!"
Kevin, Unit Two leader, tapped my good shoulder with his knuckles as he walked by. "Good job, Unit Three leader."
They all walked out, talking, laughing.
I waited, sitting in my chair, in that uncomfortable seat with its unforgiving back, still staring across the table where Gus had been standing, pursing my lips.
Edmund sat with his head bowed.
I cleared my throat, considering getting up and walking out, considering screaming recriminations, considering fracturing his neck and being done with him.
"I figure we should talk," he said, turning his chair toward me.
I angled my chair away from him—not completely away, but turning my left side to him so I could examine the wall better, the flat gray Nemesis-be-damned wall, because fuck him.
"Yeah…" He took a deep breath, rapping on the edge of the table with his fingers, reaching up and scratching his head. "You did a really great job, saved the mission, Satele's family, all our asses."
"Thanks so much." I shook my head and sighed, looking away from him, looking at the damned gray wall.
"I have a— I mean… Fuck." He stood and slammed his right fist into his left palm.
"Hey." I stood, glaring at him, and stepped toward the door, raising my hand, palm toward him. "I'm sure Gentili and Gus already have the transfer arranged. It's no big deal. Maybe you won't ever have to work with me again."
Edmund stomped to the door, getting there a few steps before me and slamming it closed with his elbow, then leaned against it. "What were you searching for on my computer?"
I stopped and looked up at him, at his scarred, brutish face, his thick nose and little eyes, with the best expression of incomprehension I could manage. "What the…? What? Searching on your computer? What are you blathering on about?"
"You conducted database searches on my computer, logged in as me, using my credentials to get access and to hide your tracks, and you deleted the history when you were done." He set his shoulder against the door, crossing his arms over his chest, his forearms huge mounds of corded muscle.
"So fucking what?" I was never at my most eloquent in emotional situations. I punched him in the chest. "I should have been searching for whether you were cheating on your girlfriend with me. I shoul
d have been looking for all the other girls you'd been sleeping with over the past few months to make sure you're not a walking encyclopedia of sexually transmitted diseases. Are you?"
"Answer my question and stop evading the issue." He grabbed my wrist, dragging me to him, his fingers crushing my bones. "Are you a mole? Are you here to spy on the company? For whom are you really working? Hellas? Olympus?"
"I am not a goddamned spy." I twisted my forearm, driving out against the weak point in his grip like the Sergeant Major had taught me when I found my way back home, like all those combat courses teach you. I yanked my forearm out of his grasp, the force pitching him forward, making him lose his balance.
"Why don't I trust you?" he growled.
"Why didn't you tell me about her?" Rotating my hips, I swept my arm back around the other way, striking him across his chest with it, my right leg looping around and sweeping his right leg. "What's her name? Christal?"
"Hey." Edmund toppled to the ground, his years of experience kicking in, breaking his fall so he didn't take any injury, his head held up so the back of it didn't strike the floor. "Wait just a second."
"Did you tell her about me?" I jumped on his chest, my knees on his shoulders, my hands gripping his collar, hauling his face up toward mine, ignoring the pain radiating from my side. "Did you?"
"No." He arched his back, squirming beneath me, so strong he picked me up, my weight nowhere near enough to hold him back. "Damn you."
I shoved myself off of him, rolled to the side, and came up on one knee. "When are you going to tell her? Or are you going to slide by without owning up to all your cheating-assed bullshit?"
He reached out to grab me, but I captured his massive wrist, threw my legs forward, wrapped them around his chest, and jerked his arm through, stretching it into an arm bar.
"Never." He hoisted himself up, his free hand on my leg. He lifted me almost level with his shoulder, dropping me down with my back on the tabletop.
I cried out from the agony in my side, channeling the torment and anger into pulling on his arm, wrenching it around, squeezing my legs, pushing with all my strength, trying to pull his damned arm out of its socket.
"I broke up with her." He gasped, falling to his knees, trying to twist out of my hold.
"What?" I released my pressure a little bit; not enough to let him out, but enough to let him speak. "What did you say?"
"I said I blew it off with her, you fucking bitch."
"What do you mean?" I stopped twisting, letting his arm relax. "You said you didn't tell her."
"I didn't tell her because I didn't want to hurt her feelings," he grunted through gritted teeth, pulling against my leg with his hand, trying to create room to breathe. "She deserves better."
"You're damned right she deserves better." I let him go. "You're a damned coward."
He spun, grabbing me, drawing me toward him. A red light flashed in my peripheral vision. I ignored the call, figuring it could wait.
We fucked until the explosion.
Damage Control
The door to Gus Perisho's apartment opened, releasing the signs of a party started thirty minutes earlier: mumbling voices, casual laughter, the tinkling of glasses, the seductive scents of a dinner nearing completion, the savory seared steaks resting and tented and almost ready for the green peppercorn sauce made with a veal demi-glace and a side of grilled asparagus and toasted bread with an aioli dip.
Late again. Mouth watering, Gus hopped down the steps to the living room where Major Erick Meccia, an engineer who worked with Gus's partner, Don, with a high opinion of his opinions, was engaged in a heated conversation with Ms. Karels, an out-system friend of Gus and Don's with an impeccable sense of style and a knack for forcing people to see her side of things. Beyond them, Lt. Chad Golon from the Kinetic Weapons Research Division backed away from that discourse right into where Steven Philavanh was gesticulating, flinging his arms in all directions, his drink sloshing, a radical sequence of expressions crossing over his face, with Adela Simms from Human Resources and Lance Corporal Juliette Hollarn laughing in response, whether they were supposed to or not.
"There he is." Chad pointed at Gus with his tumbler. "Mr. Missing-in-Action, too busy to come to his own birthday party."
"Oh?" Don glanced up from the cutting board with pursed lips. "Better late than never, huh?"
Gus weaved through the crowd, through Ms. Karel's cheap perfume, Steven's lack of a recent shower, and Adela's affinity for baby powder, through everyone's greetings—"Happy Birthday," "Birthday Boy," "So glad you came"—to give Don a kiss on the cheek. Gus whispered, "I'll put away my things and be right out."
"You missed appetizers," Don said, his voice exasperated, his shoulders carrying his tension, a condemnation of Gus leaving all this to him when he had a life and a job as well.
"I know." Gus patted Don's rear. "Thank you. I'll make it up to you."
Don grunted, not looking up. "You better."
Gus scooted back through his friends, a word here, a word there, back through the side to his office. He slid his briefcase under the desk. Tapping his temple to access his on-board, Gus transferred the message he had composed regarding his meeting with CounterEspionage to his home console, requesting clarification from his boss; he added some attachments, remembered something else he wanted to add and sat down at the desk to include it.
"Don told me to check to make sure you didn't start working in here." Erick leaned against the door, swirling the drink in his hand, smirking. "What will you give me to tell him you weren't?"
"Ah." Gus laughed, hoisting his hands in surrender, pushing his chair away from the desk. "The guilt is almost too much to bear."
"Come on." Erick waved back toward the party. "Whatever you are working on will still be waiting for you after we all leave."
"True." Gus stood, holding his hands up, the message unsent. "Just got too close to a habit."
"That's never happened to me." Erick laughed and sipped from his glass.
A red light appeared in Gus's peripheral vision, a request for a comm link. He hesitated but muted the notification, putting work on hold for once, following Erick into the living room; he squeezed through the gap between the black leather sofa and their new Pucci coffee table, the white fur rug tugging at his shoes, toward Chad, who stood alone. "So what are you up to Chad?"
"Oh?" He peeked up, smiling, relieved. "You know, the usual. Nothing I can tell you about, but some very exciting projects. Of course."
"As ever." Gus laughed, patting Chad's shoulder. "So your team played a bad match the other day."
"They did not." Chad rolled his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. "The damned refs robbed us."
The request for a comm link reappeared in Gus's peripheral vision, blinking orange, urgent.
"Just a sec." Gus raised his left hand to Chad, his right hand touching his temple, bringing up the request. "Santina?"
Heavy breathing seeped through her comm.
Gus retreated from Chad, bending over, closing his eyes, concentrating on the sound in his ears. "Is something wrong? Are you there?"
"Help!" she panted. "They're taking me away."
"They told me," Gus said, chest tight, throat constricting. He glanced down, peering back at his office behind him. "I'm trying to put a stop to it. I'm doing everything I can."
"Gus!" Don shouted from the kitchen. "No working, Nemesis dammit!"
"You knew about this?" Santina asked, her voice strained and on the verge of tears. "You okayed this?"
Don stomped up before Gus, fists on his hips, his face pinched.
"What are they doing?" Gus held up his palm toward Don, asking for a moment. "Where are you?"
The room jerked to the side, the floor moving like someone pulling the world out from beneath him. Gus found himself floating toward the hardwood they had discussed for weeks before selecting, the vase on the coffee table drifting into the air, the water surging up faster than the bunch of roses, coalescing in elong
ating globules.
Don climbed into the air, his feet soaring from the floor. "What—?"
A wall of sound roared past Gus, slamming him against the floor, the wood veneer splintering; pieces of the wall flew past him, an avalanche of glass and steel shards flowed over him. Don was lying on the floor straining his arms toward Gus when the coffee table crashed back to the ground, its leg piercing Don's torso, the leg driving into the ferrocrete under the flooring and pinning Don to the deck.
"No!" Gus screamed, reaching toward his lover. Gus rose from the ground away from Don, the artificial gravity gone, his body clumsy with nothing moving in the right direction. He kicked his legs, trying to find some traction against the floor, or even the wall rushing toward him.
"Don?" Gus bellowed, realizing his stomach ached. Bad. He looked down to see his intestines floating in the air, trailing out from him, a cloud of dark fluid billowing out.
Gus had to get to Don. He had to let Don know he was all right, it was okay, everything would be fine. Don would be scared, Don would…
# # #
Frankl slid his ID over the door controls and entered the empty office. He slammed the door shut behind him. Flipping on the light, he saw the globe of Titan, the books and the chairs, and he smiled.
He placed the briefcase on Gus's desk and opened a secure comm channel, waiting for the appropriate filters and adapters to click in, then opened up Gus's private console and logged in.
A rough voice spoke. "Is the job done?"
"Not quite, but random chance has given us the perfect stooge." Frankl issued a command to copy all Gus's data to Frankl's own on-board.
"I don’t like the direction this is headed."
"What do you mean?" The copy command finished. The cursor blinked, awaiting further instructions. Frankl executed a program to wipe all traces of all the files.
"The job's 'not quite' done, 'random chance,' and 'perfect,'" Roscoe said. "Do the damned job, don't leave anything to chance, and don't trust anything that's perfect."
"Point taken." Frankl nodded, smiling, glad the Family goon on the other end could not see his face on this connection, could not see him rolling his eyes. "Let me put it like this: the package is on its way to you, I've personally destroyed all the data, and I'm awaiting word on the people investigating the issue, expecting them to have either stopped or died. And after looking at the reports, I have someone to blame."