Ced narrowed his eyes. "You wouldn't ask me to deliver something worthless. As soon as I can prove I can get it there safe, that's when the real product comes out. Is it illegal?"
Benson chortled. "On the Locker? We provide thirty percent of the System's supply. Nobody gives a rat's ass about drugs. Except the people whose territory we're trying to expand into."
"Are they too big to fight?"
"They're the Spartans. Smaller than us, but we want to avoid a fight at all costs. Fights bring the attention of the poles. The politicians, however, have seen fit to provide a way to open new drug corners without a fight. If we can generate a track record of doing business in a sector, then we get legal backing to keep selling there." He held his hand out palm-up. "You can see why the Spartans are so keen to keep you out."
"So buy off the poles," Ced said. "Everyone knows they really work for the crews."
"A brilliant idea. So brilliant, in fact, that the Spartans have already thought to do the same thing. Best-case scenario, it turns into a bidding war for the poles' favor. Guess who's the only party that wins those?"
"The poles?"
"Correct."
Ced frowned. In the chair, his legs were finally long enough to touch the floor. "Well, I think your plan is pretty good. It just needs one small tweak."
"This ought to be amusing," Benson said. By the time Ced explained, though, his eyebrows had lifted high enough to scrape his scalp. "That's good. If you can pull this off, they'll have to give you your own juke."
It took Benson two days to set up his end. The following morning, Ced and Kansas hit the streets. A backpack of grapefruits bounced on Ced's back. They picked up a tail five blocks from Hunters Square. Ced strolled on into the park, walked up to a juice vendor wearing a short-brimmed tan hat, and set down his pack. After some haggling, he handed over the grapefruit and the man in the hat transferred money to Ced's device. Ced tipped an imaginary cap and walked away.
Kansas took a quick glance over her shoulder. "That's it?"
"Until tomorrow."
The next day, he headed out with a refilled backpack. Before he could get to the park, a man with a tattoo of a spear and shield on his cheek swooped in from the corner and hustled the two kids down a quiet cross street. Wordlessly, he yanked the pack from Ced's shoulders and dug out a grapefruit.
"Hey!" Ced grabbed for the bag. "Those are mine!"
The man shoved him down, produced a knife, and cut one of the fat yellow rinds in half. Juice squirted over his hands and shoes. The man scowled, tasted a bit of pink pulp, then tossed the two halves aside. He repeated this until every single grapefruit lay cut and scattered on the street.
The man licked his knife clean and sheathed it. "Thanks for wasting my time, punk."
He brushed past, knocking Ced back down with his shoulder. Kansas helped him to his feet, uncertainty in her silvery eyes.
"What?" he said.
"You're sneaky."
"So?"
"So I think I like it."
The grapefruit operation was just the start. It took a full year to establish precedent in the Spartans' turf. By the end, they were working tandem with the Drakes, running missions in and out of the area on a daily basis.
When they finally turned things over to an adult crew, Benson congratulated him. Showed him what it meant for his debt balance. It was pretty cool, but there was something hollow to it. It wasn't the drug slinging that bothered him. It was that he had no choice. And neither did any of the Iguanas. They were stuck with the Dragons until they were eighteen. Even then, it was the choice between sticking with it, and taking on a debt that would take years and years to clear. At night, he dreamed of Earth. Blue skies. Open fields. So much space you could run for hours and never see a single soul.
* * *
The next few years were quiet. He was thirteen when Benson brought the twenty of them into the office and instructed them to applaud. Heddy was being promoted—and transferred.
Heddy blinked, smoothing the hem of her shirt. "I'm already a CEO. How can this be a promotion?"
Benson favored her with a tight, pleased smile. "You're not going to another juke. You're going to the big leagues."
"But I'm only fifteen!"
"They've seen your stats. Scouted you in action. They know you're ready."
In the days leading up to her graduation party, rumors about her replacement swirled like the clouds of Jupiter. Marly was a good choice. She could sell dirt to Earthers. Jole, who was still COO, was a natural successor. And Flesco was a real dark horse—he'd only been with them the last two years, but he'd already gotten more done than some of the Iguanas' founding members.
Ced, though, he knew better. It would be Kansas. She was too forceful to deny.
The party was a blast. In the morning, with Heddy gone, Benson called them together to hold the vote for her replacement.
"You're going to be tempted to vote for one of your friends," he said. "That makes sense. You're going to have to work with—and under—your new leader for years. However, as you cast your vote, I want you to consider this: it might be easier to work under one of your buddies. But a smart, capable CEO can shave years off your care debt. Until that's paid off, you won't be able to move into the next phase of your life."
They tapped their votes into their devices. The process barely took two minutes. As Benson tallied the results, he smirked like a fox on one of the old cartoons.
"Won by a nose," he said. "Congratulations, Ced."
In a daze, Ced shook hands and slapped backs. Their smiles looked real. After he'd circulated the crowd, Benson led him into his office.
"Congrats, kid!" Benson stuck out his hand. "Bet you never knew they respected you that much, huh? Which is ironic, because that means you've kicked off your reign by underestimating the people who put you on the throne."
He didn't sit down. "Could you have protected her? From the draft?"
Benson scowled. "Why do I always feel compelled to answer your questions?"
"Because they're good ones. You let her go on purpose, didn't you?"
"Ol' Heddy was getting on in years. She'd be joining the big boy crews soon either way. Anyway, she had a good run, don't you think?"
"What if I step down?"
"I would advise you not to do this."
"Because this is what you wanted," Ced said. "Why?"
"I enjoy watching baby eagles spread their wings." He pointed to Ced's device. "You've got a lot of reading ahead of you. Don't let your head get so big you can't keep it propped up."
Sensing Benson was done playing Q&A, Ced headed across the hall to his room—over the years, Benson had successfully lobbied the powers that be to house his juke together, on the same floor as their offices. Ced threw himself in bed. He wanted to lie there like a big pillow, let himself relax after the shock of the last few days.
But he couldn't afford that. He was CEO now. And he owed it to his crew to do the best he could.
He threw himself into the files. The first thing he learned was how drastically he'd underappreciated Heddy. The job was about far more than assigning people to a job and letting them go do their thing. Her notes indicated she'd had to check in on them all the time, adjusting their workload, managing their morale, plumbing them for ideas. All that on top of her other responsibilities. It was pretty crazy. He was going to need Kansas' help.
Something else caught his eye. On top of personnel notes, Benson's files contained a full list of earnings for the entire roster of the Iguanas. Ced had a rough idea where he stood, but was surprised to see himself as leader of the pack—Benson insisted on giving them each an equal share of the juke's profits, but you could spend on extra net access, better desserts, walking-around money, and so on. What surprised him more, though, was how meager the newer members' accounts were.
He fell asleep reading. In the morning, his device beeped. Benson had scheduled him for a full day of one-on-ones with the other members of the crew. They all we
nt okay except for Jole, who acted so resentful about getting passed over that Ced nearly reminded him it had been a vote.
Kansas was last on the slate. He hurried through the same patter he'd delivered to everyone else.
"I'm going to need your help," he said after. "There's no way I can do all this on my own."
"You won't be alone. You have a crew."
"Yeah, but we're partners. None of them can do what you do."
"They were right to pick you." Her eyes were more thoughtful than usual. "Good luck."
With meetings over, he spent more time looking at the numbers in Benson's report. There was only one conclusion: the care debt was increasing. He hadn't kept track of it, but he knew that Wesley, their finance guy, would have.
Wesley was short and awkward and didn't change his expression much. It was easy to decide he didn't have the stuff for crewing. But when Ced asked him for the numbers, he was able to recite them from memory.
"So I was right," Ced said. "The care debt has gone up. A lot."
"It always rises," Wesley said, his tone like Benson's during a lecture. "To match inflation. Cost of doing business. Stuff like that."
"We're making them money hand over fist. Compared to our debts, though, we're barely squeaking ahead. And the newbies are treading water. Look at Flesco—two years here, and he hasn't cleared ten percent of his debt."
"The rate has been increasing more quickly lately. Perhaps that's a function of the added expense of running multiple jukes. The others aren't nearly as profitable as we are."
"Could be," Ced said. "Thanks, Wesley."
He wasn't sure if that made sense. Before the jukes, the kids would have been in gen ed, racking up expenses and contributing nothing. He could believe the other jukes weren't profitable, but they all earned some money. If anything, adding more junior crews should have decreased their care debts. Ced went to his room and got out his device, paging through the figures.
Unless the jukes were horribly expensive, there was only one answer: they were being screwed. Management was soaking them for every dollar they could earn. Rather than applying this to their debt, they were just cranking up the debt to match.
He had to set down his device before he could throw it across the room.
He stood, so angry his head hurt. He didn't know what to do, but he knew who would: Kansas. He jogged across the hall to the office. She wasn't in, so he messaged her device. When that got no response, he went to Benson to ask if he knew where she was.
Benson shut down his device and set it in a drawer. "She's gone."
"Where to? On delivery?"
Benson sighed through his teeth. "I mean she's gone, Ced. She transferred out of the Iguanas. She's with the flight teams now."
9
"Hell with that," Rada said. "Last time I snuck into a secret corporate research facility, I almost died. Repeatedly."
Marcus gestured over his device. "You won't have to sneak in. This is at Quarry. It's a public habitat."
Info arrived on Rada's device. Quarry was in the Belt, only a few dozen million miles away. A hybrid station, the colony had started life inside an asteroid, then had a domed city grafted to the outside. It looked big enough, but according to the stats, it contained less than six thousand residents.
She glanced up. "If we're not crashing Valiant's party, what do you suggest we do there?"
Marcus shrugged. "I'd start by talking to Jeri Carlton."
"Is she a Valiant employee?"
"I don't think you're going to get very far pursuing their employees. Security is up every orifice. Besides, when I was there, I got the impression the only person who understood what was happening was Iggi Daniels."
"So who's Jeri Carlton?"
"The only one who might care enough to help you."
"How about you save us the runaround and just tell me what she knows?"
Marcus laughed dryly. "You don't understand. I made it my business to not know anything beyond my research. On Quarry, employees who take too much notice of local affairs get transferred somewhere so remote that there are no affairs at all."
Rada mumbled to herself. But this was the way of field work. If the info in question was easy to gather, you could do it all from the net without leaving your room.
Since they were headed to the fringe of enemy territory, that meant changing their faces. While Toman arranged a flight, Rada, Webber, and MacAdams headed to the Hive's chameleon. The man adjusted their nostrils, earlobes, the planes of their cheeks. Enough to throw off facial recognition. Though it was strictly temporary, Rada couldn't stand to look at her new face for more than a few seconds. It was just close enough to the real her to be utterly creepy.
For the same reason they couldn't wander in wearing their real faces, they couldn't take the Tine. They'd head to Ares Orbital, then shuttle from there to Quarry. As they prepped to leave, Toman pulled Rada aside.
"Sidebar," Toman said. "That maneuver you pulled out there. The one that took down the FinnTech bogey?"
"I know. It was way too risky."
"You were up against a top-of-the-line fighter. Equipped with an MA of its own. The real risk would have been to not throw everything you had at it." He grinned with a raw excitement she never saw except when he was talking spaceships or Swimmers. "I'm going to throw the video of your fight at LOTR. See if they can model a few more stunts to round out your repertoire. And you keep pushing the envelope on your end. As much as computers can help us with this, they're never as creative as human beings fighting for their lives."
"How inspirational," Rada said. "What do you think the attack was about, anyway?"
"Opportunity. I don't think they knew Marcus was on board. I think it was about taking down the Tine—and its crew."
"What does FinnTech care about us?"
"Why would Finn want to take out one of the biggest thorns in his side? Beats me, Rada. Maybe he's one of those weirdos who doesn't like pain."
Not all that long ago, she'd been an anonymous rock-lugger on a two-bit mining crew. Now, she was a thorn in the side of one of the System's most powerful men? Rada didn't think she ought to be happy about that. Yet on the way to the ship, she found herself smiling.
* * *
On the shuttle's screen, the irregular lump of Quarry grew in size. Half of it was gray, cratered rock. The other half was sealed with a bubble. Usually, bubbles were transparent or monochrome, but Quarry's, while mostly clear, was spotted with broad patches of green, blue, and yellow.
Webber squinted at the screen. "The hell's that? This some kind of artist refugee camp?"
"I think," Rada said, "those are patches."
"Like…to stop it from leaking?"
"I imagine that was a high priority."
The shuttle touched down outside the bubble. There were hangars nearby, but theirs was the only ship on the tarmac. A two-person crew hooked the umbilical to the shuttle's airlock. Rada crossed inside the terminal. There, a handful of people awaited the other passengers. The rest of the port was vacant, still. It had the stale smell of atmosphere scrubbers in need of changing.
The streets outside were no rowdier. Right outside the port—prime real estate—half the storefronts were dark, empty. The residential towers were fifteen floors high, but only a fraction of the apartment windows were lit.
"Huh," MacAdams said. "Looks like we'll have our choice of rooms at the hotel."
Rada wasn't completely surprised. It turned out that "Quarry" was short for "Quarantine." Early in its existence, the place's lack of docking fees had turned it into a thriving trade hub. Forty years back, though, a series of virulent pathogens had swept through it. The government had managed to prevent a complete breakdown, but they'd had to shut the port repeatedly, for months at a time. Commercial traffic dried up. So did the population. And so did its reputation. With nothing to reverse these trends, it continued to dwindle. If things kept up, the last one alive would have to turn out the lights.
They rented a
car. As it drove to the hotel, Rada gazed up at the dingy buildings. Many of the windows had been sealed up with opaque plastic. Small dogs with ratty fur sniffed around the quiet streets, but there wasn't much to find. The blank black windows stared down like parchment-faced skulls.
The hotel's exterior was about two shades cleaner than its neighbors'. A lone man crewed the lobby. He checked them in and showed them upstairs himself. The room was big, but it smelled musty. The walls were yellowish, greasy.
Webber opened the sliding door to the balcony. No city noise whatsoever entered the room. "This place is spooky. If my bed's empty in the morning, start by checking for ectoplasm."
Rada tried to contact Ms. Carlton, but got no response. She had an address, though, and headed down to the car alone. This was one trip best accomplished by herself.
23 years ago, during one of the outbreaks, the government had announced a new vaccine. Mandatory. A week after treatment, Carlton's daughter Edi, six years old, had died of illness.
Jeri Carlton insisted Edi hadn't been sick beforehand. That she'd kept the two of them quarantined. She launched an investigation, then a lawsuit against the inoculation's manufacturer, Horton/Kolt. This was unusual—Quarry was one of those anti-litigious places where if you lost a lawsuit, you faced fines and/or jail time—but Carlton hadn't cared. She was a mother whose daughter had died.
She lost the case. The judge decided that since this was a matter of public health, the damage Carlton's lawsuit had done was substantial. Even so, when she got 25 years with no chance of release, the public had been shocked by the draconian sentence. Afterward, several emigrants had cited it as their reason for leaving Quarry.
With the outbreaks dying down thanks to proper vaccination, interest in the case faded. Ten years later, with fifteen remaining on her sentence, Carlton was released early from prison, to hardly a flicker of interest. That had been thirteen years ago. Since then, she hadn't said a word about H/K (who, LOTR had discovered, had long ago been bought out by Valiant) or her daughter.
Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) Page 11