Marcus gave Toman a look of deepest contempt. "Where do you think artificial gravity came from? Think we invented that one on our own?"
Toman blanched. "Holy galloping shit. I've always wondered how we made that leap. No wonder we've barely been able to refine it."
"They've had a generation to prepare for this. All the while, Earth and every habitat in the System has been happy to empty their wallets and swallow their questions. You're just getting started, but FinnTech's already into their end game."
Silence smothered the cushy room. Typically, Toman's confidence was unflappable—you didn't become one of the System's youngest billionaires without it. Now, he gazed out into starry space, face drawn with grave lines.
"Maybe you're right," Rada said. "Maybe they've got too much of a head start. Too many resources. Too many allies to overcome. Insane alien technology that makes us look like monkeys with sticks. Well, here's my question for you: so the fuck what?"
Marcus pinched his upper lip. "What's the point in standing against that?"
"If people had accepted defeat when the aliens hit them with the Panhandler, we wouldn't be here today. Crazy odds doesn't mean you give up. All it means is you have to fight back with all the crazy you've got."
"And if necessary, I am prepared to escalate to full-bore lunatic," Toman said, regaining his composure. "Besides, if you're a dead man either way, you might as well go out in a blaze of glory, eh?"
Marcus grinned, light returning to his eyes. "Do you understand what they're gunning for? A monopoly on next-gen space travel. The upside is that'll mark the end of piracy. The downside is they'll have a lock on everything: shipping, travel, immigration. And here's the kicker. Every military fleet in the System will be provided by them, or powerless against them."
"What's the Swimmers' role in this? Why would they help us after all this time?"
"That's the big unknown, isn't it? I think they're grooming us to be pawns. A servant race, dependent on their favor. But for all I know, this tech is a trap. A way to connect us, make us vulnerable to a second plague." He shrugged. "Or it's secretly embedded with bombs the Swimmers can set off whenever they like."
"Finn must know this could be the setup for a betrayal. Either he thinks otherwise, or he's arrogant enough to think he can turn it against the aliens."
"I couldn't say what Finn thinks. Maybe he does suspect the Swimmers. Could be that's what the secret fleet is about."
"Secret fleet?" Rada said.
Marcus nodded. "I only heard rumors. But it was supposed to be a game-changer. That's all I know."
Toman asked him a few more questions about this fleet, gaining nothing new. "Your field was biology, wasn't it? What did Finn have you doing?"
The man smiled unpleasantly. "Working on an injectable microsubstance meant to bind with the spinal column and brain, making it virtually impossible to remove."
"The purpose being?"
"Couldn't tell you. It was pitched as a way to tag children so they couldn't get lost even if something happened to their devices and the network."
"I don't think Finn is looking for profits in child safety. What inspired him to start such a project?"
"Oh, it wasn't a FinnTech installation. I was just a consultant. The actual work was being done by Valiant."
"Valiant?" Toman said. "The same Valiant FinnTech's merging with?"
Marcus nodded again. "I believe this installation was what prompted the merger."
"You're kidding." Toman laughed, turning to Rada. "Clear your calendar. You've got a new job."
8
In the bustling street, the woman with the knife closed on Kansas. Kansas put up her batons, but her eyes were as wide as a car's wheels.
Close to panic, Ced glanced across the crowds. And spotted Niki standing on tip-toes, trying to see what was happening. The girl was Ced's age, but she was so small she could have passed for five.
He whistled two sharp notes, the second lower than the first. Niki swiveled to stare at him. He pointed to the woman carrying the knife. Niki didn't hesitate, skipping forward, giggling, ignoring her surroundings like only a little kid could. She swept straight into the path of the woman.
Ced sprinted toward Kansas. As the woman tripped, legs tangled by a now-shrieking Niki, he called Kansas' name. She lowered her hands and ran toward him. The woman had dropped her knife in the fall and was scrambling to pick it up from the churning legs of pedestrians. Niki was holding a skinned elbow, chin quivering, plump cheeks wet with tears. A tattooed man bent to help her, mouth open with concern.
"Come on." Ced grabbed Kansas' arm. "Time to get out of here."
Behind them, the woman was calling out names. Men in pea green jackets converged through the crowd.
"We have to stand and fight!" Kansas said, dragged along behind him. "We can't outrun all of them!"
"If we stay here, we're dead!"
He sprinted along the faces of the buildings, weaving between towering adults. He thought about ducking into a storefront, but that would be a dead end. Everything on the Locker was so tight there were almost never gaps between buildings. No alleys to escape through. They could make a run for the tube station, but the Orc thugs could summon reinforcements with their devices, beating them there.
That only left him with one option.
It had been months and months since he'd used the crypts—he didn't know what they were really called, but that's what he thought of them as—but he could still remember every entrance he and Stefen had found. One was just around the block on Deacon Lane, the strip with all the rowdy bars and the apartments full of people too poor to live anywhere less noisy. He dashed to the intersection and hung a right.
Footsteps pounded behind them. As he reached the next turn, four green-clad Orcs spilled into the street. Ced swung onto Deacon and ran for a convenience store, veering toward its service entrance where it took in cargo carts. This was dim and smelled musty. Ced slipped behind a rack of dusty shelves and opened an unmarked door. Inside, a round hole gaped in the middle of the floor.
He closed the door behind Kansas and turned up the light on his device. Plastic rungs set into the side of the hole led down twenty feet, spitting them out in a wide hallway. The walls were made of dark stone cut from the tiny moon the Locker had enveloped. The tunnel was thick with graffiti of all kinds and smelled like old, damp laundry. Ced oriented himself, then jogged in the direction of the Dragons' building.
Kansas tipped back her head to read the words painted sloppily along the ceiling. "What is this place?"
"I don't know," Ced said. "I found it with a friend of mine, but we were too scared to explore it much. Sometimes we saw people down here."
"Some of the crews must know about this. Think ours does?"
He shrugged, keeping his device's light pointed ahead. Scraps of trash lay on the floor, but for the most part it was clean. Intersections spoked away here and there. Every eight or ten blocks, a set of rungs led up to the surface. The cross streets were scratched into the walls behind the rungs. In time, Ced led them to South Street, just three blocks from their building.
Out on the street, Kansas clapped her hands and laughed. "Those stupid idiots. We beat them!"
Before Ced could say anything, she leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. Her breath was warm. A tingle shot down his spine. She pulled away and ran toward the front doors. He followed, laughing all the way.
* * *
Everyone made it home okay, but that marked the end of the open-air Swimmer Attack! business. For the Fightin' Iguanas, though, it was only the beginning.
While they continued to move a dwindling number of the toys through net sales, Benson assigned them their next project: offloading a pile of vitasnacks one of the pirate crews had picked up alongside their main haul. Benson tried to tell them it was important to engage their existing customer base and do something called "laddering out," but Ced didn't see any way they'd be able to rile up the same buzz around some gummy
snacks that didn't even taste that good.
Despite that, and the fact they stayed far away from Orc territory this time, Marly's team did all right hand-selling them in the streets. Ced got Heddy's okay to offer bulk discounts to the established vendors. They weren't super interested in the vitasnacks—every store had them—but Ced knew some of the guys from his fruit days, and used that to twist their arms a little. Mostly it was a matter of hustle. Between Benson's encouragement and the knowledge they'd be in for a cut of the sales, they never lacked the will to get out on the streets.
A couple weeks later, well on their way to burning through their supplies, a strange man walked into the office. He was old like something made from wadded paper and the hairs that collect under couches, but his back was straight and his jaw looked like something a wolf wound envy. Seeing him, Benson shot up from his chair. Kansas gawked without an ounce of shame.
"Mr. Benson," said the old man.
Benson pointed his right index finger upward in salute. "Admiral Garnes. How can I be of service?"
"I'm not here to be served." Garnes sounded almost but not quite annoyed. "I'm here to chat."
"Then how might I be of chat?"
The old man took his time gazing around the room: the crew of kids, the desks with their devices, the walls plastered with self-printing posters of space fights and dinosaur-filled jungles.
"I've been reading up on your little experiment. Your unit metrics are very impressive. Your profit, however…" Garnes waggled his hand, palm-down. "Toys and snacks aren't exactly our core competencies."
"And my debtors thank you for keeping us in more lucrative lines of business," Benson said. "But these are items that our other departments, in their wisdom, saw as worthless. If these kids can move things no one wants, think how they'll do when they're working with the finer product."
"I'd say we already know how to sell the 'finer product.'"
"And we're great at training our people in the methods we know. But what I'm trying to figure out is whether there's value in exploring methods we don't know."
The old man eyed him like he was trying to figure out whether Benson was trying to sell him an empty bag, then nodded once. "Let's take this into your office."
Benson closed the door behind them. Ced said, "You know that guy?"
"Do I know him?" Kansas stuttered with laughter. "That's Admiral Garnes. Commander of the entire Dragons. I've never even seen him."
"Then we must have done something pretty cool."
"Or pretty bad. I'm not sure Benson knows quite what he's doing with us." She smacked her fist into her palm. "I can't believe he's here!"
Ced grabbed a seat. "What's the big deal?"
"Because that's who I'm going to be."
"An old man?"
She shoved his shoulder. "The boss."
"Who cares about being the boss?"
"That's the only way out. The only place where your life depends on no one but you. I have to get that."
"You don't need to be boss to survive. We're still here and we're nobodies."
"That's exactly why we get sent into the streets to tangle with the Orcs." Her face was suddenly fierce. "He could make everyone in this crew die for him if he wanted. And they'd be happy to do it."
"I wouldn't," Ced said.
"You can be so dumb." Her voice was soft, like a knife pulling free from a sheath. "Don't you ever think about why you're here? They bought you. They don't care. They'll burn you like a bullet and buy someone else to replace you."
"Who was it you lost? Your mom or your dad?"
"Both." Her face was cold like metal in the shade. "These people don't care about you, Ced. You're a walking dollar bill. If you're not the boss, some day, you're going to get spent."
He wanted to tell her she was wrong. That Benson cared—and so did he. But the look on her face was so far away he knew she wouldn't hear.
* * *
Whatever Benson and Garnes talked about, Garnes must have left impressed. The Iguanas were back on the streets the next day.
On most tasks, Ced and Kansas worked as a pair. Ced thought they were perfect together. He had good ideas, and she was fearless. Over the months, he learned a new lesson: you could get away with more than you thought you could. Because most people weren't like Kansas. They were even more scared than you were. If you pushed forward, they fell back. He had always felt at home wherever he was in the Locker, but the more time he spent with Kansas, the more he felt like he was a part of the station, or that it was a part of him.
They sold more leftovers from pirate runs. They played elaborate games of hide-and-go-seek and capture the flag, first in designated neighborhoods, then across the entire station, learning the territory as well as how to move through it without drawing notice or getting into trouble.
Admiral Garnes authorized the creation of a second group like the Iguanas. It got shut down a few weeks later following the death of a seven-year-old, but two more junior crews—jukes, as they became known—sprung up after that. After all, the Locker was never short on kids who'd lost their parents. Ced saw new faces in the cafeteria every week.
Before he knew it, a year had passed. Benson threw a big party. Halfway through, Garnes showed up. It was the first time he'd come to the office since his initial chat, but when he left, Benson didn't look happy.
"Gather around, crew," he said a week later. "We've done so well that Admiral Garnes himself has decided to promote one of you to one of the other jukes. I'm pleased to announce that as of tomorrow, Donner will be joining the Drakes—as CEO."
Donner smiled, uncertain at first. But as the others congratulated him, he looked more and more pleased. Benson had a wistful look on his face. After things quieted down, Ced cornered him.
"What's this really about?" Ced said.
Benson looked him over, mouth quirking. "Management believes Donner will be more useful in service to the Drakes."
"Then that means the Drakes must stink."
"Or maybe you guys are just really, really good."
"What if he didn't want to leave?" Ced said. Benson shrugged. Ced crossed his arms. "He should be able to stay if he wants. It isn't fair."
"Maybe, maybe not. I got first pick of everyone. They think it's time to share the wealth. Strengthen the other jukes. This won't be the last time they tap us for talent." He stretched his gangly legs, wistful again. "There is something special about you guys, though. It's more than raw talent."
"It's you, dummy. You made us believe." He licked his lips. "So what happens if next time they choose me?"
Benson's eyes crinkled. "Don't worry. I get to protect five members of my team. You ain't goin' nowhere."
That made him feel better. When he looked around the team, though, he knew some of those faces might not be around much longer. Some of them, he wouldn't really miss. Others? He wouldn't know what to do.
* * *
Three years in, Ced's cut of their earnings was a quarter of the way to being able to pay off his care-debt if he chose to leave at eighteen. Three more of their people had been drafted to other junior crews, but the core was still there. Kansas had started to gripe about being stuck on sweeper duty, roving the streets for opportunities and threats, but Ced was right where he wanted to be.
The Iguanas got mired down in a long campaign to unload three looted crates of device accessories. It was a hard one. Devices were the status symbol for most kids, meaning they only wanted the good stuff, and it was obvious at a glance that the Iguanas' were junk. After three full weeks, they had yet to move a fifth of their supply, and the trends weren't positive.
When Benson called Ced and Kansas to see him, Ced's stomach knotted. The man's face was coated in thick black stubble, his eyes frustrated and red.
"We're doing all we can," Ced said. "But these things are so lame. I think most of the kids are only buying them to give as joke gifts to their younger brothers."
"There's a thought." Benson shut off his device and set i
t on his desk. "But this isn't about that. I've got a new job for you. I need you to make a few drops."
Ced bobbed his head. "Who else are we working with?"
"It's just you two. For now, we're keeping it low-key. Don't wear your colors out there. If you're made, abort the drop. Head somewhere else. Doesn't matter where."
"What's the package?" Kansas said.
"Doesn't matter. Here's your first assignment."
He handed Ced an unmarked white thinbox, then sent a coordinate to their devices. The drop was in Hunters Square, kind of but not really all that close—in the gray area where it was far enough away to be a long walk, but near enough that you'd feel lazy taking the tube.
Walking kept you in the street, so that's what Ced did. The kind-of-sleazy neighborhood around South Street shifted to the totally sleazy neighborhood of Aster, but as they neared Hunters Square, it fancied up, with wide glass windows shining from the faces of the towers.
"Know that guy?" Kansas nodded across the street. There, a man in a long brown coat appeared to be fixated on his device. The edge of that device was pointed straight at them.
Ced walked on. Two blocks later, with the park two more blocks away, the man was still there. Ced turned left, paralleling the park. The man turned too. Ced made one more turn, confirming the tail, then called it off.
Two more attempts drew two more tails. On their way back to the Dragons' building, Ced shook the box, hearing nothing.
"I don't get it," he said. "They're on us like static. What's the big deal?"
Kansas picked up the pace. "It's the package, smart guy. Bet you anything it's drugs. I'm going to Benson."
"I'll do it. I think he likes talking to me."
She pursed her lips. "Okay, but no wimping out. If you don't get answers, I will."
Ced was still grumbling as he entered Benson's office. He set the box on the desk and nudged it toward a seated Benson.
"What's in the box? Drugs?"
"It's nothing," Benson said. "Just a box of candy."
Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) Page 10