“Hey!” He shouted at the men docking the missiles. “Don’t load up one side first, you’ll tip the ship over.” He received curt nods in return. The camaraderie level wasn’t particularly high on the team, but it didn’t have to be. They were all professionals.
“Janse, join me for a few?”
The tall, lanky man finished popping the lid on a crate then came over to where he stood near the hangar wall.
Janse’s skin was as black as unburnished onyx, a rarity in a world where racial and ethnic distinctions had blurred to the point of virtual meaninglessness. The man liked to claim his family were aboriginals living in the Australian outback until twenty years earlier. It was a blatant lie—he had been a third-generation hoverflyer racer before becoming a mercenary—but one which served to enhance his already fearsome reputation.
Thad projected an aural in front of them displaying the flyover layout of Palluda’s single city. “I’d like to go over the targets and assignments again. No need for us to be crashing into each other on our flight paths.”
“Yue, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to not crash into other vehicles in close proximity.”
“Be that as it may, you’re not the only pilot and I don’t want to take any chances. Now I’m reasonably happy with the target choices, though I would like to fit this industrial machinery building in if we can.” He pointed to a flat, rectangular building near the top left corner.
Janse leaned against the wall and shrugged. “Thirty-two missiles man. No more, no less. Unless you’ve figured out to make missiles blow their payload then keep going, turn left and detonate again, you’ll have to trade something for it.”
Thad allowed himself a small smile. “Well, let’s do a walkthrough and see what we can find.”
20
SIYANE
METIS NEBULA, UNCHARTED PLANET
* * *
ALEX GLARED AT THE TWO LENGTHS of fiber conduit in annoyance. Also a trace of disgust.
They insisted on entangling one another every time she tried to secure them in place alongside their brethren against the hull wall. The aft navigation line really shouldn’t be so cranky about the whole situation. True, she had removed it from where it typically rested to repair the section which had been sliced almost in two; that was no excuse for it not to go nicely back where it belonged.
The dampener field conduit on the other hand, being a recent addition, didn’t natively integrate into the cabling layout of the other systems in the first place. In Seattle she had had the time and tools to devise a relatively elegant arrangement which kept it safe and secure. Well not from errant pulse lasers obviously, but at least from normal dangers. Here, though, she was using spare supplies and jury-rigged fixes and…
…they just wouldn’t fit. No matter what she did, it ended with a jumbled pile of conduit in her face. She blew out a breath through clenched teeth.
“Hey, could you come help me a minute?”
No response.
Maybe he couldn’t hear her over the music. She worked better and faster when music played in the background, and the last two days had needed every edge available to her. She gestured toward the small embedded panel by the ladder to mute it.
“Caleb, you got a second?” His name rolled off her tongue with surprising ease.
Still nothing. She frowned, suspicion flaring about what nefarious deeds he might be engaging in while alone on the upper decks of her ship. She was two seconds away from crawling out of the aperture and sneaking upstairs to catch him in the act when he leaned into the hold at the top of the ladder—
—wearing nothing but a towel wrapped loosely around his hips. Loosely and low around his hips. His head tilted into the hatch opening. “What do you need?”
Long, lean muscles rippled subtly beneath tanned skin, confirming her earlier assessment of a well-built, athletic but not overly muscled frame. It was the type of body one developed from an active, physical lifestyle rather than a weight bench. A neat pattern of dark hair tapered in from his pecs to trail down the center of his abdomen and disappear beneath the towel. The Greek/Italian genetic heritage of the initial Senecan colonists asserting itself no doubt, and more chest hair than the current fashion. Then again she’d never particularly cared for the prepubescent look. And it wasn’t as if it appeared unkempt or….
She arched an eyebrow to stare at him with exaggerated incredulity.
“What? I’m washing my clothes, remember?”
Right. Should not have forgotten. “Right.” She gave him a tight, close-mouthed smile. “You know what, it’s fine. I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure? Cause I can—”
“No, that is o-kay. Really. You just concentrate on getting dressed.”
He returned her smirk. “All right, but don’t say I didn’t offer.”
Offer what, exactly?
He vanished from view, leaving her to drag a hand raggedly down her face. “Well, where was I? I think I was…connecting one thing…to another…thing…of some sort….”
His yell echoed in the hold. “Are you talking to me?”
“Nope!” She cringed and slid into the aperture, dropping her voice to a murmur. “No sirree, not at all. Merely having a little chat with my libido, ordering it to kindly go back into hibernation before it gets me into far more trouble than I need….”
She stared at the two lengths of fiber conduit sagging freely in the open space in annoyance. The trace of disgust she reserved for herself. Not getting led astray, dammit.
In a fit of redirected energy she shimmied deeper inside the gap, suspended one line out of the way using her toes and right pinky and balanced the other in place with her left knee while she secured it. The final line then fit taut along the outer row.
There.
Diagnostic screens hovered in front of her when he climbed down into the hold—mercifully fully clothed, she noted through the translucence.
“So should I hang out back here again, or what?”
She raised a finger. “Hold one sec, confirming all the power flows are stable.”
“Holding.”
After a few seconds she killed the screens to find him leaning against the opposite wall, one ankle crossed over the other to match his arms. She regarded him a moment. “You seriously want to help?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Okay. Grab a welding torch and metamat blade from the cabinet, get suited up and head outside.”
His mouth twitched while his eyes did the damn sparkly thing. “Dare I ask why?”
“I suppose. Right now the plasma shield is extended out about two meters beyond the body of the ship to encompass all the shredded pieces of the hull. I’m going to pull it in to the rim. You’ll heat the shards, shear off the jagged edges and bend the pieces as flat as possible against the hull, after which I will re-extend the shield and we will try to mend the hull back together.”
“Sounds reasonable. And what are you going to be doing while I’m braving the elements?”
“I’m going to be telling you which pieces to work on, how much to shear off and when to stop, of course. From the comfort of my insulated, heated ship.”
“Of course…” he gave her a positively evil look as he pushed off the wall and went to the supply cabinet “…I’m likely to get all sweaty and need to wash my clothes again afterward, though.”
She snorted and reached for her water bottle. “Don’t think so. Just strip before you put on the suit—” his head had already begun whipping around “—in private, please.”
“Hmm, should have thought of that myself.”
He ran a fingertip along the contour of the blade then slid it easily into a notch on his pants and quickly checked over the torch. The fluid, efficient motions left no doubt as to his proficiency in their use.
For a few minutes she had almost forgotten what he was. A mistake on her part.
“Let me know when you’re suited up and I’ll open the airlock. Once the inter
nal hatch has closed, the external one can be opened by pressing the panel beside it, and a ramp will extend to the ground.”
“Got it.” He nodded sharply and ascended the ladder.
She stretched out on her stomach at the edge of the hull rupture. With no sun in sight, as the pulsar would provide no day-night cycle, the meager yet ever present light came solely via the glow of the Nebula.
The wind had died down somewhat compared to the gale forces it had exhibited during her arrival, and fine dust particles danced about in the air. The overall effect bore a slight resemblance to the heavy, misty fog of a winter Seattle morning, albeit doused in pale sallow paint. She loved to go for a run on such mornings, when the dew blanketed so thickly it bowed the tree limbs and turned the grass silver and the fog brought silence to a noisy world.
“Ready!” His shout echoed down from the main cabin.
She waved at the panel behind her to open the airlock. A moment later Caleb arrived under the ship from the left, gloved hand already flicking on the torch as he glanced up at her. “It sucks out here. You know this, right?”
“Hell yes I know. I had to drag your unconscious body through it, remember?”
“Well, you didn’t have to. You could have, for instance, not shot me, and instead asked me politely if I’d like to come aboard where it was warm and cozy.”
Her eyes narrowed in feigned non-amusement. “Easy for you to say now. Start with this long piece here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pulled the blade off the belt of the environment suit and raised the torch to the piece in question.
“Smooth the ragged corner, but only a little. I don’t want to lose any more material than necessary. Okay, now heat it along the bend. Not too much or it’ll melt!”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’ve got this.” He eased the sheet of metal up toward the hull and her. His tone was conversational. “Carbon-based metamaterials become pliant at around 1340°C and don’t begin to lose their atomic structure until 1920°. The torch is set to 1460°, which will create malleability without damaging the integrity of the material.”
“They teach you that in spy school?”
The metal shimmered as it met resistance at the plasma shield, and he lowered the torch. He stood less than a meter beneath her, only the shield and the faceplate of his helmet separating them. “Engineering school.”
He looked up at her, the curl of his lips clearly visible through the faceplate. “Yes, I have an engineering degree. Try to contain your shock. Where to next?”
She worked to keep her expression neutral and unaffected. So he possessed skills beyond subterfuge and selective removal of criminals from the gene pool. And culinary endeavors. It didn’t change anything.
She pointed to the narrow piece at the end of the rupture closest to her.
“This one.”
21
KRYSK
SENECAN FEDERATION COLONY
* * *
IN THE LATE 22ND CENTURY, a number of social philosophers asserted their belief that the expansion of humanity beyond the bounds of the Sol System would usher in a new era of civility and order. With unparalleled prosperity and a galaxy to explore, we would at last put behind us petty foibles such as crime and violence in favor of higher, more noble pursuits.
But through the Renaissance and the discovery of the Americas, the Industrial Revolution and the taming of Earth, the invention of computers and the advent of space flight, human nature had remained fundamentally unchanged. It was foolhardy to believe this latest advancement would bring about some profound transformation in the souls of men.
In reality, those predisposed to violence did not give it up; they simply developed more sophisticated methods of going about it. Avenues for physical and mental pleasure only became more refined and powerful, and thus an ever greater temptation. Physical addiction was now able to be cured easily enough—but many didn’t want to be cured.
Through gene therapy, stem cell manipulation and biosynthetic treatments the medical profession cured the great diseases of the body: cancer, Alzheimer’s, muscular dystrophy, paralysis, the list was endless. Diseases of the mind, however, proved to be another matter entirely. The brain represented the most complex organism ever to exist, and impossible to tame. Morality could not be spawned by tweaking a few genes or shutting off a few neurons. Not yet.
So though humanity conquered the very stars, it remained unable to conquer the darkness within. Thieves, rapists and murderers continued to occur in roughly the same percentage of the population they always had. The weak continued to be preyed upon by the strong in the prolific shadows not policed by any government.
The Zelones cartel was the strongest criminal organization in settled space because its leadership had always understood certain core truths and harnessed them to maximum effect. Some people desired nothing more than to spend their lives on a synthetically induced high and merely needed the chimerals to do so. Cutthroat businesspeople needed thieves and hackers. Thieves and hackers needed tools and funding. Bullies and thugs needed targets and outlets for their aggression.
One who could not only recognize these opportunities but channel and exploit the disparate needs was as a puppeteer pulling the strings of the world.
Olivia Montegreu knew this, because she was one of the puppeteers. It wasn’t arrogance on her part, but simple truth. The veil had been ripped away and the lie at the heart of ‘civilized’ society bared to her a very long time ago.
She had watched her older sister—weak-minded, impressionable, helpless to take care of herself—eschew their upper-middle class life to hook up with a gang and get addicted to a particularly nasty chimeral. The drug of choice created a state of utter bliss for half an hour that felt like days, then swung in the opposite direction for twice as long. Her sister spent two years as a literal sex slave to the gang’s local leadership before she ended up dead in a back alley in the slums of Buenos Aires, naked and strangled.
Olivia had watched her parents wail and gnash their teeth and pull at their hair, then resume living their lives. She had watched the authorities take statements and nod in feigned sympathy and close the case as ‘gang-related.’ She had watched the world proceed onward, as if nothing at all had happened. One family, one girl, one death among the multitudes.
Six months later she joined the same gang. The ‘Montserrat Matónes,’ they called themselves. In reality they were financed by an arm of Zelones, one of thousands of such street-level interests, but not even the leaders realized it.
At first she played the innocent, impressionable young girl her sister had been. She slept with who she needed to but carefully avoided the chimerals in copious supply. She made herself useful and displayed enough capability to get close to the leadership. In time she learned the details of how the gang worked. Though it gave the impression of being an unorganized group of thrill-seekers and dropouts, it did have structure and rules. They procured chimerals from a larger, more powerful group; they were given targets for shakedowns and small-time thefts.
Once she was satisfied she had learned everything she could, she slid a gamma blade into the base of the Matónes leader’s neck while he fucked her. She killed his lieutenant when he found them—he had been the one who strangled her sister, after all. Then she took over leadership of the gang.
The year was 2229, and she was sixteen years old.
Olivia instructed the pilot to wait with the ship at the Krysk spaceport. She didn’t expect to be long, and did not require a chaperone.
She was meeting the head of the Ferre ‘corporation,’ in all likelihood alongside a retinue of his lieutenants, at their headquarters in the center of downtown. On New Babel she traveled with a small entourage of bodyguards and lieutenants; it was expected and projected the correct image. Here on his turf, Ilario Ferre would doubtless do the same. It wasn’t a problem. In fact, she was counting on it.
The sweltering heat from the midday sun burned against her bare arms. She w
ore a sleeveless, lightweight white tunic and loose, breathable linen-style pants to temper the heat.
The oldest and largest Senecan-allied colony, Krysk offered a robust urban infrastructure. As she walked along the moderately busy sidewalk, she looked to the world like any other young, fresh-faced professional; perhaps a mid-level marketing executive or entertainment director. For she spent a notable percentage of her considerable annual income on cutting-edge cellular regeneration therapies, and would appear to the world—as she had for more than eighty years—in her late twenties.
No one she passed had the slightest idea one of the most powerful people in the galaxy walked among them. A face scan by a high-end ocular implant might have revealed it, but anyone who tried would find themselves inexplicably unable to capture such a scan. The invisible, nanometer-thick shield coating her skin blocked any and all intrusions of her body and cybernetics and scrambled the signals of any such attempts.
Her destination was located in an unremarkable midrise just off the main thoroughfare. It claimed to house a company called Fotilas Services, which she suspected didn’t exist beyond a government filing, if that. Senecan Federation regulations were after all notable primarily for their absence.
She gave the receptionist, a woman with flowing mahogany curls and skin the color of sun-bleached toffee, a charming smile. “Would you tell Mr. Ferre his twelve o’clock is here? I’m expected.” While the receptionist frowned and readied a protest, she added a courteous nod to the camera hidden in the ceiling.
A second later the woman cleared her throat and stood. “I’ll show you to the conference room, ma’am.”
The room was deep in the complex. A windowless affair consisting of a conference table and little else, no inner workings of the business would be on display in this venue. As the receptionist stepped in to announce her presence, Olivia nonchalantly ran the bracelet circling her right wrist over the small embedded panel in the wall.
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