Koi! She nearly shouted his name, flinched at the white-hot turmoil of his distress.
“Dane?” She let herself slow, a fist of pain clenched in her chest. “Koi, tell me what happened?”
“They killed… they killed…”
“Not Dane?” She whispered it, could not say the words out loud. But he was shaking his head. A flash of image and voice briefly filled her mind — a slender shape tumbling, limbs ugly and slack… “They took him away.” Koi’s words emerged as a howl of grief. “Down!”
A dozen shapes burst from the greenery, Koi’s family, darting and spinning in agitation.
“Koi, where are the people who took Dane?” Ahni asked urgently. “Are they here?” He didn’t need to answer. Images flooded her mind, glimpses of blue clad figures seen through a screen of leaves, flashes of motion and waves of fear. Dizzy, Ahni closed her eyes, sorting out the kaleidoscope of image. “Are they up here?” she gasped. “Koi?”
“Yes.” His milky eyes were wild and blank. “That way. Far.” He pointed with his chin. “They have nets.”
“Kyros, they’ll have scanners.” Anchoring herself on a tube, she faced the miner.”We have to get them out of here. Safe.”
Kyros was shaking his head.
“There has to be someplace they can go… not on the plattform, Kyros. Outside!”
“Maybe, yeah. There is.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s go. It’s going to be damn crowded, but I don’t think we have time for two trips.”
Ahni looked around for Ren, discovered him hanging from Koi’s waist as he pushed off to follow Kyros.
The school of Koi’s relatives darted along on either side of them, sleek androgynous shapes twisting effortlessly through the green jungle. Suddenly, with a single fluid motion, Koi stripped Ren from his back slung him precisely into Ahni’s arms. She barely managed to grabthe kid and push off from a tube as his momentum slammed her off course.
Koi vanished and a moment later, she heard an exclamation.
Felt someone’s shock.
Oh, damn. Caught? She stretched her awareness, feeling for that hunter’s-focus, for searching CSF, felt only Koi and he felt…pleased.
A moment or two later, he appeared, towing a body after him.The Administrator.
“I’m okay,” he was saying thickly. “Let go of me, Koi. I can swim.”
Koi released him and the man floundered, grabbing for the nearest tube, still disoriented. Koi must have hit him hard, she thought, and felt a small satisfaction at that.
“Sweet Buddha, you’re all here?” He was looking around at the hovering shapes of the Koi’s family.
Then he focused on Ahni. And Kyros.”You, huh? Well, I guess we’re all on the same side for sure.”
Ahni wasn’t sure to whom this last was addressed, but Kyros grunted, and he wasn’t at all happy about this.
“Let’s go.” Still no CSF close, but that could change in a heartbeat. “Move, Kyros.”
“I don’t know—”
“Look, the rules have changed,” Laif said urgently. “I’m out, I’m not Admin anymore. Anything I see, I don’t see as Admin, remember, okay?”
Kyros grunted, still not happy, pushed off. There wasn’t time to argue. Koi scooped Ren away from her, which made the boy giggle, and tlley took off once more. The trip back to the dock seemed much longer than she remembered, With the fear of CSF breathing on her neck.
Together, they packed Kyros’s ship like fish in a can. Squeezed next to Laif with Koi beside her, Ren still clinging like an infant monkey to his back, Ahni caught her breath. As the ship cleared the lock she twisted to face Laif. “What about… Dane?” Her voice caught on his name.
“I think they took him straight down,” Laif grated. “And the… body. They killed one of them. By accident, I think.”
“They’ll do a DNA scan… that’ll clear him.”
“I hope so.”
His doubt chilled Ahni. She fixed her eyes on the holofield in front of Kyros. It displayed their path as if seen through a window. The ship arrowed away from the platform and she kept her eyes on the angle of their path, the view of Dragon Home in the distance, the plant’s bulk, storing it all in short term memory.
Just in case.
Thick silence filled the small craft, the only sound that of Laif’s harsh breathing. Ren hid his face against Koi’s shoulder, and his family merely… waited.
“We’re almost there.” Kyros’s voice finally broke the thick siilence. “It’s pressurized, but pretty stark.
Not a fun place but noobody’s gonna look for us here.” He didn’t quite look at Laif.
“I have a very short memory for places,” Laif said sharply. “And a long one for friends. Okay?”
Kyros didn’t say anything, but he relaxed a bit. A moment later, a tiny jar suggested that they had docked and a brief vibration shivered through the ship as the lock pressurized. “Wait,” Kyros snapped.
“Be right back.” He wriggled through the press of bodies to the hull, which melted open for him, giving Ahni a brief glimpse of total darkness and nothing more.
“How come you were in the hub?” Ahni asked Laif softly.
“Looking for Koi. I apologize for getting rough with you. We ran out of time, anyway.”
The hull melted open again, a larger hole this time, and cold, dry air flowed into the ship. Weak light glowed in the distance but it merely accentuated the utter darkness. “I’ve turned up the heat, but it’s going to take a while to warm up,” Kyros said.
Koi went first and his family followed. Ren still clung to Koi, curious and unafraid as they passed through a wide lock door and into a cavernous space, made larger by the shadows streaking the spherical hull.
The light came from a couple of emergency globes tethered to the hull. The air was cold — not freezing cold, but winter cold. Ahni made out odd, bulky shapes also tethered to the hull in nets, but couldn’t make out the contents. A matte black plate on the hull radiated heat and they gathered around it, their breath visible. Ahni noticed Laif’s eyes on the netted goods, saw him lift a shoulder in a shrug and smile crookedly.
Smuggler’s warehouse, she thought. Kyros’s stock?
“Well, there’s some food here. Not fancy, but you won’t starve. Water. Enough air.” Kyros was looking at her, Ahni realized. “It’ll even warm up eventually. So, now what?”
“I go back to New York Up.” She glanced at Laif. “Unles there’s a reason I shouldn’t?”
“Don’t know.” The Administrator gave her a cold look. “I had no warrant out for you. What the hell can you do?”
“Li Zhen is going to look for me there. He’s the only lever we have and Koi, he needs to see you again.
He needs to talk to you.”
Koi flinched.
“He’s not going to hurt you. Or your family.” She reached out to touch Ren’s dark head lightly. “This is his son, Koi. He doesn’t understand yet, and he needs to understand.”
Koi looked down at the boy, who smiled up at him, his arm tight around Koi’s waist. Looked back at Ahni, still scared, lifted one shoulder. Reluctantly. She touched him lightly.
“What is Zhen up to?” Laif grumbled. “He takes care of his own yard and doesn’t mix with the neighbors.”
”We’re on the same side.”
“I hope you’re as right as you think you ary.” Laif clearly doubted that. “And how does this brother of yours fit in here, anyway?”
“I don’t know. What happened to that data dot that I gave Dane?” She eyed Laif. “Was there anything on it?”
“Gods, I forgot about that.” The Administrator shivered, drifting with his arms wrapped around himself.
“A kid named Noah has it. I sent him up to the hub when the CSF boarded. I don’t know what the hell happened to him or the dot.”
“I can find Noah.” Hopefully. Surely the CSF had no reason to arrest him. “Kyros?” She looked at him.
The miner… smuggler… shrugged. “Might as well tr
y someething.” He gave Koi a grim smile. “You and your family would do real well out in the Belt. We just need ships for you is all. That can be arranged. Let’s go.” He jerked his head at Ahni.
”You are coming back, right?” Laif’s face looked strained.
“Maybe.”
Laif shrugged and closed his eyes.
Kyros relented. “There’s a link. It’s with the water and food.”
He jerked his chin toward one of the hammocks. “Don’t use it unless you have to. I’ll be back. I don’t plan on getting dead.” He turned and pushed off toward the dock.
“What was this?” Ahni asked as she pushed into the ship on his heels.
“They called ’em lighthouses. Ask Dane why, I don’t know my Earth hystory. Early rock jock hangout, maybe. Way back when. Primitive. Rock jocks live good, now.” The ship shivered as it left the dock.
“You really think Li Zhen is going to do anything but take you apart slowly for stealing his kid?”
“I hope so.” She made it light.
She had expected Kyros to take her to a new dock, but when the ship hull opened for them, she found herself on the hub dock they had left from.
“I know the CSF can’t see this one,” Kyros said, in reply to her questioning look. “The private elevator is close, so you got a good chance of getting down to skin without getting netted. Have a story ready.”
He wasn’t coming with her. Ahni wondered briefly if he would stick around or just take off for the Belt and forget that he knew anybody down on the platforms. No, she decided. Dane had considered him a friend. “I’ll need to bring Li Zhen to the lighthouse.”
“Yeah. Right.” Anchored to a handhold, Kyros extended his hand. “Palm it.”
She hesitated only an instant, laid her palm against his. Yeah, he was hardwired, too, and their hardware talked. She felt the tingle in her flesh as his system overrode her interface. That shocked her. She’d dismissed Kyros, she realized, as a peasant who only knew ice and rocks. Turned out his software was a hair better than hers.
She laughed out loud as the link surfaced in her personal interrface.”You paid a lot for that upgrade,”
she said.
”Yep.” He lifted one shoulder, turned back to his ship, hesitated, then looked over his shoulder. “Luck,”
he said.
“Thank you.” She pushed off then, arrowing through the thick green light and the brush of leaves/fruit/seed to the small private elevator that Dane had used. Took it down to the level where Noah sold his grilled lunches.
The corridors hummed with tension. The marines had landed Ahni thought sourly and wished she could read exact thought and not just emotion. Knots of natives clotted the corridor space, their anger burning like scalding currents from a deepwater volcanic vent. She could almost smell the sulfur. The park was thick with bodies and the sour/sulfur stink of rage. No sign of Noah, but he could be right next to her and how would she know it? She pushed her way through the crowd, feeling as if the currents of rage coupled with the marginal gravity might bounce her right to the ceiling at any minute.
At least she hadn’t been spotted as a downsider. Ahni reached the far side of the park. Turned back to try again. ·Why had she thought she’d find Noah blithely peddling his food to a normal crowd? Stupid.
She thought about the scrum field, but he wouldn’t be playing. She passed an artfully crafted carved-rock bench, heading for the elevators, thinking that getting out in one piece was an achievement at least. A young, skinny native was haranguing the crowd about th excesses of the CSF and Laif’s government as well. While a lot of folk weren’t paying attention to him, some were, and the crackle of their anger sparked through the crowd. Time to get out of here.
“Geeze.” Fingers dug into her arm. “Are you nuts?”
Noah. He smiled into her eyes, his face a few centimeters from hers, his expression that of a man who has just encountered a long lost good lay. Scared and furious.
”You want to die? What the hell are you doing down here?”
“Looking for you.” I love you, darling, she said with her body language, crooking her arms around him, pelvis tilted forwar head back, throat exposed. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Damn good idea.” He hooked an arm through hers, his smile totally believable while his anger/fear/grief burned her like acid.
Didn’t say anything more as they strolled through the crowd, but he did a nice job, keeping up the fake of a man with his chica on his arm, worrying about her.
As they passed a public restroom, he did quick up-and-down to check the corridor, palmed them both in, then pulled a tiny black box from his pocket, stuck it on the door.
It would kill any security ear as well, she was willing to bet. Ahni glanced at it, then up at him. He knew about Dane, she felt his grief. Closed her eyes, opened them.”Noah, what about the dot?” She couldn’t keep the urgency out of her voice. “Did you get it figgured out?”
He hated her for not speaking of Dane. But what was there to say, and what would it do besides to fog the moment?
”Yeah, I did.” He spat the words.”What does it matter now?”
“It might matter a lot.” She drew a deep breath, because he had no intention of giving it to her. “Dane could end up a scapegoat. They’re going to blame somebody for this and they have him. Historically, that has been a damn good way to end up the public spectacle everybody wants.”
“He didn’t do it.” Noah’s eyes burned at her. “He didn’t make those people in the hub.”
He didn’t call them kids. Interesting. “That might not matter.” Ahni held his stare. “They might not bother to mention that before they execute him.” She said the words harshly, brutally, saw Noah flinch, even as she stilled her own reaction. Held out her hand.
He fished a small data disc from his pocket, slapped it into her palm.”What are you going to do… for Dane? You’re a wildcard. You can do anything you want.”
She ignored that. “If there’s anything you can do to keep the situation from boiling over into violence, do it,” she snapped. “If CSF starts shooting, nobody is going to be able to fix things.” She met his glare, held his stare. “I think I have a lever, but it won’t work if CSF are killing you all. It can’t start, Noah. If it does… whether Dane gets out of this alive or not, everything that matters to him is lost.”
Noah looked away, his expression tortured. “He’s on there.” He jerked his head at the disk in her hands.
“The guy who does the agitating. There’s a couple of other people on it, too.”
Ahni tilted her head. Sensing guilt. ““What about the Con, Noah? That was a lot of the problem. Is it still being manipulated?”
He jerked as if she had stuck a blade into him. “Cleo,” he said softly. “She didn’t realize… what would happen. Didn’t think it through.”
Cleo. Ahni blinked. The scrum player. His lover.
“I… we got it straight.” He kept his back to her, his tone bleak.
“They got used… the ones who were doing it. They thought Dane was… you know… too careful.
And the guy who conned ’em was real slick. I should have caught it.” This, bitterly. “But Cleo knows how I work. Too late.”
”Not too late.” She grabbed his arm. “Get everyone you can and work on keeping the lid on. Use the Con.”
“They shut it down.”
“Get it back up again. It worked to get everybody hot, cool ’em off with it. I told you — I’ve got a lever.
If you give me time to use it–we have a chance to stop this.” No time to argue now, she headed for the door. Noah was looking at her with the first faint light of hope in his eyes. He jerked into motion, scooped the lock from the floor.
A1ull shoved through the door and into the corridor, the disk safely stowed in her singlesuit, headed for the elevator, felt Noah’s hand on her arm, his presence beside her. Convoy. But nobody bothered them, and at the elevator he turned away, vanishing into the crowde
d corridor before the doors closed.
She rode the elevator to skin level. Three CSF stood in the elevator plaza, stun guns at their belts, watching the elevators with narrow, cold eyes. Two unselected Latino-types, one unselect Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese woman stepped forward, glanced at a small handheld reader. Her eyebrows rose and she gave a tiny shrug… stepped aside with a nod.
Ahni headed to her hotel. CSF blue filled the corridors. A slender African-euro mix approached, blue and white light fiber woven into his braided hair. “Ma’am, this level is safety-curfewed,” he said with a heavy West Indian accent.”You need to return to your hotel.” He radiated annoyance. “You did not hear the announcements? We will provide transport to the Elevator for you.”
“I’m on my way to my hotel right now.” She smiled timidly for him. The last thing she needed right now was to end up in protective custody somewhere. “I’m sorry. I was visiting an old friend and I didn’t hear the announcements.” She put on dumb blonde tone and body language. “Thank you for being here. I feel very safe now.”
He grunted noncommittally at that, but she caught a whiff of belief in her story. Still, he walked with her, keeping an eye on her, which was all right. She didn’t need to go anywhere else anyway. Li Zhen would come to her.
At the hotel, the doorman had been replaced by a CSF, a young female Private, who exchanged quick hand-sign with her convoy. The African-asian man nodded to her, gave Ahni a brief courtesy bow.”You must remain in your room, ma’am. Until we can escort you to the Elevator.”
“I understand.” She watched another exchange between the pair. Probably instructions about making sure she stayed put. His belief in her story only went so far. She marched straight to her room, her attention focused on the CSF behind her, hoping that they didn’t decide after all that she would be better off somewhere else. It wasn’t until she stepped through the doorway that she realized the room hadn’t greeted her. An instant too late, she started to leap back, but a hard hand caught her arm, spun her in the direction of her automatic reaction, then flipped her neatly onto the floor. She hit the carpeting hard, shoulder tucked automatically to roll, but the edge of a hand chopped across her neck. She went down again, red light flashing in her vision this time, going limp to let her attacker yank her to her feet, then pivoting to use his triumph and certainty to throw him across her.
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