Trinity: Atom & Go

by Zach Winderl

  A cry rang out from one of the adjacent rooms.

  “It hurts,” whined a familiar voice. “And she got blood on my new shirt.”

  Margo bared her teeth.

  “Somebody’s going to make that girl pay,” the whine continued.

  “Hush, lord,” a woman soothed. “It’s not fitting for the head of the regional house to speak so. What if the soldiers hear you?”

  “Oh, let them. It burns.”

  “That’s the unfortunate side-effect of a gun discharged against the skin,” a deeper voice stated. “What do you plan on doing with this girl?”

  “Blatt, I’m going to punch the girl,” the whiner replied.

  “But she is just a child, sir.”

  “Doesn’t matter, she hurt me.” A sharp intake of breath preceded a burst of sobs. “If she thinks she can do that to a han elder, she’s in for a rude punching.”

  Margo continued to crouch as she turned from the window to survey the room. She wished for her father. She wished for her father’s strength, his knowledge, she wished for him to hold her.

  The latch rattled on the door.

  Margo froze, her eyes locked on the door.

  With measured slowness, the door eased open to reveal Blatt. Muscles strained against the thin fabric of his shirt as he swiveled his head in search of Margo. “There you are, Mite.” A relieved smile creased his broad face when he found her crouched atop the shelf. “Careful you don’t fall.”

  Margo remained motionless, her eyes hard.

  “That’s quite the glare.” Blatt stepped into the room and clipped the door shut with a quick heel. “I need to know where your da is and if there is a way I can reach him. I don’t suppose you would know either of those things?”

  Blatt sat on a stack of crates and leaned his elbows on his knees. Tilting his head, he stared up at her. “Anything you could give me would help move the process along and keep Kon from doing anything stupid. Between you and me,” he dropped his voice conspiratorially, “I can think of a dozen other folks who should have gotten the seat ahead of him. But ho,” Blatted sighed and then smiled like a sad, faithful hound. “I serve the han, and he’s what they gave me.

  “You got a name, Mite?” The muscle’s tone remained level. “You help me out now, the faster I can get you home to your da.”

  Margo hugged her knees tighter as she crouched. Her flinty glare answered Blatt’s words.

  For a time, the bodyguard sat and studied Margo with his sad, wide-eyed gaze. Eventually he cleared his throat and rose to his feet.

  “I had a feeling this was going to float this course,” he said as he opened the door.

  Margo remained silent and still as the door thudded shut behind him. She listened to see if he would return, but when the room kept silent, she relaxed. Shifting her position, she sat cross-legged with her back resting against the wall beside the window.

  She closed her eyes and waited.

  ***

  “Captain Pico.” Atom met the captain’s glare with his own. “All you need to know is that I’ve been sent by our lord’s son after a closed meeting with the emperor. I have been tasked with a private matter for Admiral Motoki.”

  “You’ll need clearance.”

  Atom spread his hands in a wide shrug. “With the current state of things, I’m not sure how to provide that information.”

  “Then how are we supposed to vet you?” the captain growled, rising from his seat like a shark from the depths. “You think we would let you through to the admiral? I’ve never met you personally.”

  “Do you personally know everyone who works for our heir?”

  Pico gritted his teeth and leaned with his knuckles on the table. “No,” he hissed.

  “Then you are outside this one,” Atom leaned closer to the confrontation and lowered his voice. “There are political wheels turning in court and this attack is not helping our cause. As a result, I have a pertinent message for Admiral Motoki’s ears only on how things need to play out.

  “If you insist on standing in my way, there will be heavy repercussions on all of us.” Atom looked over to where Mir stood staring out the window. “She’s the closest thing to a vet I’m going to find on this piss-poor rock we are losing blood over.”

  “Mir.” Pico never took his eyes from Atom. “Will you stand in for this agent?”

  The woman turned with a surprised look. “I thought I already did that.” Her eyes darted back and forth between the men. “Isn’t that why I’m here instead of enjoying downtime?”

  “I thought so.” Atom raised an eyebrow to Pico.

  “Fine,” Pico grumbled, dropping back into his seat in weary defeat. “I’ll put you on the next transport up to Motoki’s flag. You’ll have to skip through the platform, but it shouldn’t be too much of a wait.

  “Frederickson,” Pico said into the com on his desk before recalling the EMP. “Frederickson,” he yelled loud enough to be heard outside his office.

  In a flustered scurry, the officer slipped through the door. “Sir?” He knuckled his forehead.

  “Send a runner and find me a transport to lift these two up to the admiral’s flag.”

  “Sir,” Frederickson gulped, and disappeared like a frightened woodland sprite.

  “I guess we have a little downtime.” Atom turned to Mir. “Do you guys have a lounge or rec area I could crash for a touch? Maybe you could grab that shower while I close my winks.”

  Mir sighed and rubbed her eyes with weary indifference. “Yeah, I’ll show you. Cap, with your permission we’ll be down in the squad lounge until you have that transport lined up.” She looked to Pico with deference and then a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “And if you could see fit to take a little extra time on that transport, I wouldn’t mind resting my ocs to get the grit out.”

  Pico nodded and picked up a paper file, dismissing them without another word.

  ***

  A switch flew and a loud snick filled the cramped storeroom, like a fly-fisher on a quest for pain.

  Margo’s head snapped to the side and a tear slipped down her cheek, but she remained silent in the face of her aggressor. She pushed herself up from the floor and settled back into her cross-legged, straight-backed seat. Grim determination steeled her expression. A long, red welt rose on her cheek.

  “Who are you?” Konstantine Markins Adler spat. “What is your family name?”

  The switch snapped out again, this time catching Margo on the arm. The girl sat naked to the waist with her jumper pulled down to expose her arms and back.

  She folded her hands in her lap and glared.

  “You might want to ease, boss.” Blatt sounded calm, bordering on bored, but a touch of worry crept to the corner of his eyes as he leaned against the wall just inside the door with his arms crossed. “We don’t know who she is. If she has connections to one of the major hans, or gods forbid, the Adlerians, we could be in a world of hurt.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Markins snarled without shifting his eyes from Margo.

  In rapid succession the switch caught Margo on the shoulder, the back of her hand, and the insole of her bare foot.

  Margo narrowed her eyes. She focused on her father. She allowed her mind to drift.

  “This is not a child,” Markins screamed, spittle flying from his lips as he raised the switch over his head. Before the tool descended on Margo’s unflinching form, the door opened. Blatt stepped forward and shielded the girl, taking the switch on his broad back.

  “Love,” a soft voice intervened before Markins could lash out further at his bodyguard. “I thought we discussed this. There is more to be learned from this girl than brute force could ever hope to uncover. She is a beautiful mystery.” The woman slipped past Markins, soft as a cool spring breeze, and traced a finger over the welt threatening to seal Margo’s eye.

  “What child is this that refuses to cry out in pain?” she murmured with theatrical flair as she lifted Margo’s face and searched. “Th
ese eyes haunt me. They haunt my dreams.

  “Husband, I have seen these eyes before.” Her voice grew chill. She turned from her crouched position and looked up to Markins, the look bore such commanding force that the man shrank down before his wife. “There is much more to this mystery than we can plainly see. She carries death in her eyes. She has the look of a man who has passed through the crucibles of the damned and emerged on the other side. Yet she can be no more than three.

  Rising like Aphrodite from the sea, she towered over her husband and asked, “Where did you find this lovely urchin?”

  “She was in a pram.” Markins shrugged. “It looked like someone had jimmed it open after the EMPs hit. She was just sitting there, kind of like she is now, with her eyes closed. I thought she was sleeping.”

  “She is separating herself from pain.” The woman spoke just above a whisper as she turned and studied Margo’s face. “What did she do when you removed her from the pram?”

  “She shot Tonsy with my pistol.”

  “How did she know you had a gun?”

  Markins shrugged.

  “Safety off?”

  Markins hesitated. “No,” he said with slow puzzlement. “I never float without safety unless I’m expecting trouble.”

  “And there was no trouble in sight?”

  “Just a girl in a pram,” Markins laughed.

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, the shot burned my side.” He held up his arm and gestured to his wounded torso. “So, I dropped her and she bolted.”

  “Straight away?”

  “Yeah, headed for an alley.”

  Blatt cleared his throat.

  “Something else?” The woman’s eye drifted from the girl up to the towering guard.

  “Ma’am, she stopped just before entering the alley and stared us down.” The big man closed his eyes and grimaced in thought as he tried to imitate Margo’s posture. “She kind of floated on her toes for just a second, like she was ready to throw on us, but she had no gun.”

  The woman zeroed in on Blatt, like a cat spotting a mouse, all attention turned to the guard’s stance and words. She took a moment to absorb the imitation of Margo’s posture. Then she hissed and spun on her husband. Her hand darted like a serpent to strike the top of his head. The clap startled Margo from her reverie.

  “Fool,” the woman spat. “Do you have any idea what you’ve brought into our home?”

  “Just a girl.” Markins blinked, startled by his wife’s blow.

  “How many gunslingers have you heard of that wander the Fingers with their daughter in a pram?”

  Markins shrugged and shook his head with genuine ignorance.

  “I’ve only heard of one.” She narrowed her eyes and swiveled to study Margo.

  “Atom Ulvan.”

  Margo’s eyes widened a touch.

  “I thought so,” the woman whispered, her shoulders slumping. “Even if I’m reading this incorrectly, we can’t be in a good place. Too many things wrong with this girl. Too much danger. Too much, too much.” Her head drifted in a slow shake as she pressed her knuckles to her lips. “So many things I have been able to guide and manage, but this is beyond me.”

  “I could dump her somewhere,” Markins said, trying in vain to sound helpful.

  “No,” the woman spoke without malice, as one resigned to her fate. “That would only make things worse. People saw you take her. They know we are at fault. Ulvan will follow the trail like a wolf that has scented the blood of his pup.

  “At least we have a chance to plead our case with her alive.” The woman spun and swept from the room. “We must plan to placate.

  “Blatt, lock her in the study. We cannot give the appearance of ill treatment, but we can’t let her wander from our custody.”

  Blatt hesitated. “What do we do about her face?” he asked Markins.

  “Don’t know.” Markins’ ashen face betrayed his mental upheaval.

  “Go rest, boss. I’ll take care of it.” Blatt lifted Margo from the floor and carried her from the storeroom with distracted care.

  As the guard walked down the hall, he passed three servants in livery who stepped to the side to allow Blatt room to pass. From her cradled vantage point, Margo caught sight of the girl who had helped pry open her pram to rescue her from the darkness.

  The girl’s face first broke into a genuine smile and immediately slipped to a scowl as she caught sight of the bruised lump forming below Margo’s eye. The girl opened her mouth to speak, but her companion placed a restraining hand on her arm and the pair dropped their eyes to the ground. Blatt swept past without a comment and left the group to return to their business.

  The stoic look returned to Margo’s face.

  “What’s your story, Mite?” Blatt prattled as he strolled down the hall, his focus elsewhere. “Seems the mistress knows your da and she’s none too thrilled at our chances. He a famed slinger or such? Probably,” he continued, not expecting a response. “Any which, it can’t be good for us.” He seated her on a low couch, and with a sad smile, left her alone again.

  ***

  “Which helped more, the shower or the winks?” Atom asked Mir as the pair shuddered through the upper atmosphere aboard a light shuttle.

  She winged a two-fingered salute his way and dropped her head back against the padded rest. The vibrations of the shuttle jostled her back and forth, but that seemed to do little to interrupt her repose.

  Huffing a sharp laugh, Atom stretched his legs out and propped his feet on the seat beside her. All the other seats lining the walls of the shuttle remained empty and Atom wondered at their situation. He tried to rationalize the deployment of an empty shuttle with the chaos of the EMP attack visibly straining the entire Mirogi transport system.

  That alone should have been a disruption for the Adlerians to launch a counterattack. Minimal planetary transport should have given them the needed window.

  Or had his ploy delved into deeper roots than he had anticipated.

  Had he stumbled into a preexisting power-play?

  Atom leaned back into his seat and studied the resting Mir.

  Something set in his mind, an irritating grain of sand, rubbing a raw spot, that left him uneasy in the presence of the woman. She appeared simple, straightforward, and aggressive in her military authority, but he made a note to never turn his back to her.

  Slitting his eyes like a cat, he relaxed his body into the vibrations of the journey into the Black.

  The first leg of that journey only lasted an hour, and ended as the shuttle docked at a run-down waystation more accustomed to ore than passengers. The One Way Ticket had bypassed the station on the inbound flight, so the dinginess caught Atom by surprise as he stepped off the spotless military shuttle into the flickering light of the transfer bay.

  Several sullen porters sat on a bench against one wall. As Atom and Mir disembarked, a few of them lurched to their feet like the undead and wandered over to the craft.

  “Any portage?” one of them asked, his eyes flickered up from the floor.

  “Just the two of us,” Atom replied with a grin, gesturing to Mir. “She’s tired enough that she might not mind if you tossed her on a cart.”

  The porter studied the floor plates in sullen silence.

  Atom’s grin faded. He studied the men with a puzzled expression. Only when the docking doors hissed shut and Atom felt the station’s clamps disengage from the shuttle did Atom grasp their solitude. Realization set in that he had stepped onto a small factory city with an indigenous population who viewed him as the enemy.

  “Peace, chomps.” He held up his hands. “I’m not looking for any trouble. I’m just a boke trying to get from one point to another. Could you point us to the relay? We should be catching another flight out of here on the short.”

  The spokesman grunted and jerked his thumb towards the lone exit from the bay.

  Only when Atom and Mir approached the hatch did the man call out after them, causing Ato
m to hesitate. “Watch yerselves up here,” the porter said. “You might’a conked us, but that don’t mean all Adlers’ll take it on the float. We en’t lookin’ fer troubles, but don’t want nothin’ comin’ back on us if you cross anykins.”

  “I’ll take the advice.” Atom waved to the man. “Nothing on your heads.”

  “Think we should take them?” Mir asked as she ignored the men and scowled at the hatch. “Technical speak, that was a threat and we’re in enemy territory.”

  The hatch cracked and Atom took several steps in silence. “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “The information I have to relay is too important to delay with low-level malcontents. I should have been talking with Motoki yesterday, but the chain of command keeps beating me down.”

  “Fine, but I’m going to have to put it in my report.”

  “It may save lives up here.”

  They continued down the hall to the central hub for the dozen docking spokes radiating outward. The entrance hatches staggered about the hub to conserve space and Escher-like stars dropped to the floor below.

  Atom mapped the room in a single glance. On the main floor, a pair of clerks sat behind a wide desk. One of them played on a screen with idle boredom. Her eyes flicked up and registered Atom and Mir before retreating to her repast. The other clerk slouched with his head bobbing on his chest to the rhythm of his slow, slumbering breath.

  Trash spilled from a silent recycler mounted in the wall near the hatch to the main hab. Iridescent graffiti danced over the door as station power pulsed enough to cause a low-level flicker.

  “Seems hard times are come to this station,” Atom said as he headed down the stairs.

  Reaching the bottom, Atom breathed a weary grunt and trudged across the floor to lean his elbows on the counter. Neither clerk moved. Only when Mir joined him at the counter and rapped her knuckles in a sharp cadence on the grimy board, did either of them acknowledge the newcomers.

  “Help you?” The slumbering man coughed as he blinked with startled bleariness. He smoothed his beard and grinned through the fur. “Apologies, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “We’re to catch an outgoing transport to the flag, snap.” Mir glared daggers.