Humble Beginnings

by Greg Alldredge

  The bookstore sat conveniently across the street from a food stall. With water to burn, Sam ordered a coffee. She rarely could afford such extravagance, but since she had the units, it would be a welcomed luxury. The table produced a steaming cup of the black liquid. The caffeine would do her good, plus give her a cover to watch the shop while taking mental notes.

  It’s exceedingly strange for a bookstore to exist. So few people read a full paper book, where was the need? The synopsis could be downloaded straight into the brain with essays on what the author tried to say. Time reading a book proved a waste when there were so many other things that needed to be done.

  Sam had to admit the shop had more traffic than she expected. In the time she sat there, three people came and went. That was three more than she expected to see.

  Before she ordered her second cup of black gold, a human flipped the sign on the door to closed and stepped from the building. In a flash, her brain implant confirmed the human as the Mister Lousier she needed to lean on. Better to do it with no witnesses.

  She left the last sip in the cup and fell in behind her quarry. The tail was easy, like the man hadn’t a care in the world. This payday would be one of the easiest she’d ever fallen into. The younger Saravipian must have been pulling her chain.

  He stepped off the sidewalk and turned down one of the cross passageways. It appeared a pleasant area, nicer than the art gallery was in. More affluent than Sam would have expected for a bookstore owner or a gambling den operator. Something seemed amiss.

  The man’s palm opened a sliding door, and he disappeared into the residence. It was time to act.

  Sam followed up behind, and with the quick burst of a slightly illegal aerosol can, she sprayed a thin film of monopolar polymer and placed her hand over the device. She didn’t need to understand the science of how it worked, just that it provided the most effective lock pick she’d ever learned to use. With a slight positive charge from her hand, the film recreated the handprint of the person that just entered. The spray had a short window of effectiveness, but it worked miracles when used right after someone entered.

  The hair stood up on the back of Sam’s neck. Something was wrong as soon as she slipped into the dark room. Why was it dark? The smell of ozone told her a powerful energy weapon had recently been fired. It would not be long before the authorities would show up with weapons drawn. If she were smart, she would have backed out of the door and waited, the fine for breaking and entering would be a lot easier to survive than a weapons charge.

  Unfortunately, Sam was never the one for doing the wise thing. She figured she had a few seconds to inspect the scene and escape. If her entrance had been caught on a camera, it would be hard to disavow, anyway. Her head poked around the first corner. She spotted two bodies on the floor. Not what she expected. The first was easy to spot. Mister Lousier lay dead, face up, eyes wide in shock, a hole bigger than Sam’s head burnt clear through his chest, the floor covering visible beneath. It was obvious the bookseller had flipped to his last chapter.

  Next to him lay a female Saravipian, face down. A high-energy pistol lay between the two. She couldn’t be sure of the manufacturer, but she would bet her last unit of water it was Saravipian in design. The only thing now absent for a murder drama was the eerie music. To preserve the scene as much as possible, she snapped a few stills. If she needed leverage, this would go a long way to help. It would also be outstanding evidence for the prosecution if the Force caught her with the stills.

  This smelled of a setup. Sam was still unsure who the patsy was meant to be. She should have run but instead turned the young female over. It was easy to tell the family resemblance to the admiral. She’d found a younger female relative. There remained a fifty percent chance one of them was meant to take this fall.

  Sam had little choice. She grabbed the woman’s arm and picked her up, slinging the arm over her shoulder. The Saravipian race spent their lives in limited gravity. Their bones were light and hollow like an avian. They were extremely light for their height. Sam, on the other hand, came from a heavy-gravity world. She was made of much stouter material.

  She padded to the front door, half-carrying the young woman, half-helping her walk, taking care to not smack the woman’s head while they fled. From a hidden pocket, Sam pulled a highly illegal device, a DNA bomb. Once activated, it would count down and explode, covering the crime scene with epithelial tissue from dozens of hosts. It might not stop an investigation, but it would slow them down while they sifted through the deckraload of leads the device would generate.

  The door locked behind Sam before she realized some of the best intentions are made without fully thinking through the ramifications of the actions. She saved the admiral’s daughter from the police, but she stood in the open with an unconscious woman draped over her shoulders. She was sure the monitors would pick her up. She lowered her head and took off for the nearest lift. The ever-present hat would need to be her disguise. Her hurried pace brought stares from the pedestrians they passed, but she paid them no mind. Act like you know what you’re doing, she kept telling herself. That was the best she could do. She needed to disappear to the lower levels, where a body over the shoulder was not as uncommon a sight. Drunks needed tending to just like normal people.

  The number for the lowest habitat level punched, the lift door closed off the sound of the approaching sirens. She might be free another day. If she could reach the Saravipian, she still might be safe. She needed to think. The body she carried dropped harder than she intended on the floor of the lift. She needed a good shot of the female’s face when she called the admiral. Her employer picked up the line almost immediately.

  If Sam didn’t know better, the woman looked surprised to receive the call. “You finished?” were her only words.

  “In a way, yes…” Sam lifted the younger female’s face. “Do you know her?”

  She was answered by silence when her boss put her on hold. Her face froze with the look of surprise. Not suspicious at all. The line came alive again. “I have your position. I will send a pickup. Don’t get caught in the meantime.” The line promptly went dead.

  There was something strangely unnerving about the conversation. Odd, she never answered the question. Sam had little choice. She would need to find a safe place to hold up while she waited for her savior. It would be a miracle if she weren’t quickly arrested for murder.

  Her level approaching, she had little time to debate with herself. The lift doors opened, and she let them close again. Better to be safe than sorry, she pushed the next level down. The mech decks should be easy enough to stash a body. If only for a few moments.

  The doors opened and there across the hall stood a set of public restrooms, all five of them. Sam pushed the door open with the female humanoid sign. Better to be a male caught in a woman’s toilet than a woman caught in a man’s, she figured. It sat empty. It proved easy enough to prop the body up, sitting on the can. She did her best to jam her into the corner of the stall. The floor would have been much easier, but she hated to think what covered the decking.

  Out of habit, she nearly used the elevator to return to make the rendezvous. Sam moved down the hall and reached the emergency stairs instead. Much safer that way. Each level stood 30 meters tall. That allowed for three floors of buildings in most sections of the station. The space between floors more dependent on the height of the creatures destined to live in the area. The mech sections were all based on ten-meter-tall floors. It was still work to haul her body up the steps. She had spent too much time sitting in that bar booth. Exercise time needed to be fit into her routine.

  At the next level, she cautiously cracked the stair door open, and down parked before the elevator doors stood a police cruiser, lights flashing, armed men ready to open fire when the doors opened.

  The sound of the ding indicated the lift came to the level, and the Force opened fire before the doors fully opened.

  Sam let the door close. That wasn’t the sign she
expected. Her immediate thought, I’ve been set up, time to leave. Too bad for someone’s bad luck to be in that lift. Better them than her.

  She took the steps back down two at a time. She checked the hall outside the stairwell door. The coast looked clear. She nearly walked off, leaving the unconscious woman in the crapper, but at the last moment had a change of heart. She returned to where she’d left the sleeping woman. Creeping down the hall would do little good if the door opened. The authorities had her dead to rights. What she needed was to get that woman awake and on her own two feet. Then maybe they had a fighting chance.

  Sam didn’t know how the young woman got involved, but the whole setup made her believe her innocence before she knew all the facts. The layout of the dead body remained simply too pat. Worse yet, either the admiral’s communications were tapped or the older woman turned her in. Both situations sucked.

  The small facilities were still empty, save the Saravipian youth. It was time for sleeping beauty to wake up. With no water to wake the female, she used the next best thing. She slapped her. It took three smacks to get a reaction, but she finally started to come around slowly.

  The bitch screamed before her eyes were fully open. Sam held her hand over her mouth. Her face began to bruise from the abuse. Sam would need to watch how hard she slapped the woman around. The youth’s eyes shot open with fear. Sam was certain the look on her face didn’t help much, that and being dressed as a Luska male didn’t help either. The males of her species earned a reputation among other females.

  Sam hissed, “If you want to die, scream again. I will snap your neck like a twig.” She really didn’t want to hurt the woman, but if she kept roughing her up, she might die by accident.

  The younger woman began to cry but nodded her head that she understood.

  “I’m trying to help you, but if we are caught, I will sell you out to save myself, understand?”

  The young woman nodded again.

  “I’m going to remove my hand. I want you to tell me if you killed that human male.”

  She shook her head before her mouth became free. She blurted out, “Killed who?”

  “That’s what I thought…” Sam pulled up a snap of the crime scene before she pulled the woman’s snap out. “This is how I found you.”

  The woman turned pale. The dead body did little to bring the color back to her complexion.

  “You got a name?” Sam asked.

  “Chantel, Chantel Mahalia.” The young woman bit her lower lip as she mumbled.

  “Your mother is the admiral.” Sam didn’t ask so much as inform her.

  The woman nodded agreement.

  “We need to keep moving. Do you think you can walk to stay ahead of the law?” Sam glanced over her shoulder. She knew they could be caught at any moment.

  “I think so. It seems I have little choice.”

  “Good girl.” Sam stood and pushed open the stall door. It only took a moment to confirm the coast was clear. The two women slipped out of the facility, and Sam led her to the stairs down.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Somewhere safer than here.” That was the best answer Sam had. She knew the lower levels would be hard for the low-gravity woman, but it would make it easier to bypass the security cameras that lined the halls. A few sections closer to Sam’s part of the ring, and they would pop up to the main deck and the lighter gravity. “You are going to have to be strong… I can help you if you need.”

  The words sounded stupid when they came from her mouth, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  In the stairs heading down, she asked, “Who was the human to you? What do you remember?” Sam had hundreds of questions but now was not the time to overload her. If she was still under the effects of what knocked her out, she might not remember a thing. Better to start slowly.

  “The man was named Lousier. He was a friend of my mother’s. She introduced us… I know he is a friend of the family… but I’m not sure how. What happened to me?” She started to cry again, but at least she headed in the correct direction. “I can’t remember what happened.”

  Sam had never been accused of having the best bedside manner. “Any number of things could have happened. You might have been out before they killed him. A number of drugs will cause memory loss. They might have fiddled with your implant. I can keep going if you like. I do know one thing, crying about it will not help.”

  “You’re right, I don’t know why I cry.”

  “You’re crying because the world we live in is unfair.”

  “True.”

  “It won’t help. Tears are a weak person’s pain relief.” Sam wasn’t sure she believed the line she peddled, but she needed the younger woman to shut up now so she could think.

  She didn’t stop the tears, but the vocal sobbing did stop, which made it easier to think. With no specific destination in mind, she had little choice. It seemed the best place to take the woman would be her mother. If the admiral were behind the events, she would eventually catch them, anyway. They were in a large metal tube surrounded by vacuum. With few places to hide and constant surveillance, they were bound to run afoul of the wrong people sooner or later. Better to grab the rhino by the horn and castrate if she could.

  The lower levels of the station were not meant for pedestrian travel, but if a person was clever enough, the security became easy to bypass. Sam learned long ago the special marks and signs smugglers developed to point out the routes through the maze of cameras and checkpoints they had taken down.

  Everyone assumed every monitoring device on the station remained in perfect working order. However, no station authority would willingly admit that, at any one time, up to fifty percent of the monitors were disabled, either from hacking or blatant sabotage.

  This part of the station provided a means for the less desirable elements of the station a way to travel without raising the eyebrows of the upper crust. It proved a perfect place for Sam to bring his newfound ward in search of a safe path to her mother’s home.

  Down here, the halls were full of merchants that carried their wares along with them in two-wheeled push carts. They were too poor to afford the self-powered rigs. Technically, people didn’t need to work if they didn’t want to, but there was always a way to make a quick credit if a person looked hard enough and found a hustle.

  “How much to let me rent your cart?” Sam asked the nearest sunglass vendor.

  “My stall?” the human asked.

  “No, just your cart. Nothing inside, I need to haul something.” Sam took a risk with the half-coherent woman still clinging to her arm, but if they planned to reach the girl’s home, Sam needed to get creative.

  The human female inspected the pair. Sam couldn’t tell what went through her mind. She always had a hard time reading a human’s expressions. They all looked alike to her. “Give me a liter of water, and it’s yours for the day.”

  “Deal.”

  Technically, Sam was lucky. She would have paid any price she could afford to get the young Saravipian off the street. The human stuck out her hand to shake, and Sam obliged the backward custom. She even went as far as to elicit the help of the shop owner to unload the cart and load the half-dazed female into the container.

  “You stay in here and keep quiet. I will get you home, then we can decide what to do once you are safe. The goal is to keep you safe from the Force.”

  Chantel didn’t argue as much as cringe when Sam mentioned the Force. Most people that knew better stayed away from them.

  The cart loaded, Sam pushed her through the lower levels without so much as a second glance from people around her. In this part of the station, the carts were commonplace and easily passed unobserved, as a prostitute would be in the party district.

  Sam learned long ago it was all a matter of bearing. Act like you belong, and more than likely, you can sneak past anyone unnoticed. While hiding in a man’s world, she learned most people didn’t really give a shit about what went on right in fro
nt of them. They were too busy with the electrons beaming into their heads to notice.

  On cue, Sam received an incoming call that overrode the private mode on her link. It must be the Force. Someone must have fingered her, and they overrode her connection, so they knew her location. “Deckra,” she muttered to herself. She had little choice but to answer the incoming call.

  She moved to face the nearest wall. Lucky for her, the walls all looked the same. The only thing that might give her away remained the sound that surrounded her. There was little she could do about that. Theoretically, the Force could not ping her location without a warrant.

  “Yes?” There was little need for niceties.

  “Sam Angel, do you know this man?” The voice on the other end never showed the caller’s face, and for once, Sam didn’t recognize the male’s voice. It could have been all computer generated. If it was the Force, she didn’t know them.

  The picture of the admiral’s Prod lacky popped up in her visual cortex.

  It would do no good to lie. They would be monitoring her vitals for sure. Technology proved to be a wonderful thing unless directed against you.

  “I might have met him this morning. They all look alike, but you know that, or you wouldn’t have bothered me. What about him? Who is he?” She tried to not act too flippant, but she hated abuse of power. They didn’t have enough to charge her with, or they would be coming to pick her up. The best bet would be to stay off their radar as much as possible. She knew little why the man came to her, only that he represented the admiral. The woman’s name kept popping up. Perhaps she was more involved than just a parent.

  “He decided to take a walk out of an airlock without a suit. We thought you maybe showed him the way.”

  “Bull, we both know that isn’t true. If you thought I killed him, you would be on me in a second.” Sam kept facing the nearest wall, not giving away her location.