“Huh,” said Hope. She didn’t like Chartreuse either, but now wasn’t a good time to back down from the house special. Maybe she could feign a heart attack when it arrived? “Where’s your Helm?”
The person beside Nate raised a hand. “Here,” said El, without lifting her head. “House special sucks.”
“You drank enough of them though,” said Nate.
El looked up, eyes unfocused. “Had to be sure, didn’t I?”
The bartender returned with Hope’s drink. It smelled a lot like an acid stripper she used on conduit sheathes. Ah well. She took a cautious sip. Tastes like acid stripper too. Covering a cough, she said, “Well, it was nice to see you again.”
“Say,” said Nate, like she hadn’t said anything at all. “You don’t fancy signing on to the Tyche, do you?”
“No,” said Hope. “Why would I?”
“You look like you know stars and hearts,” he said. “You’re the only one I’ve met here who does.”
“I’m flattered,” said Hope. “But, you know. I’m the chief engineer of Triton Station. It’s just, uh. Your ship is very small.”
“I know,” said Nate, not looking offended. “And the pay isn’t great either.”
“You’ve never had a job in sales, have you?” said El.
“The thing is, the ship likes you,” said Nate. “She put her skids down where you just so happened to come knocking. Right when we needed an Engineer.”
Hope considered her house special. She looked up at Nate through pink hair. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
He shrugged. “Had to try. It’d be a crime not to ask, you know?”
Hope nodded. “Like if you didn’t buy a lottery ticket and your numbers came up.”
“Right.”
“Gambling’s stupid,” she said. “It’s a tax on people who are bad at math.”
“Uh,” said Nate.
“Sorry,” said Hope. “I sometimes find people don’t see the world like I do.”
“Eh,” said Nate. “Most everyone sees it different to each other. No need to apologize for being human, Hope.”
She frowned at her drink. He seemed nice. Like he wasn’t offended at her inability to human like other humans. Even Reiko got frustrated with her sometimes. Still, Reiko wouldn’t very well crew on a starship like the Tyche. And only a fool would give up a chief engineering position. Hope was going to do great things. And that would start by putting down the nasty cocktail and finding Reiko.
• • •
Finding Reiko wasn’t difficult, considering the number of people swarming in here. She was in a privacy booth near the windows, looking out at the hard black. There was a sound dampener pushing the tubba-thump-thump of the club to the back, barely audible. Hope knocked on the table, Reiko’s face turning to her in a tumble of black hair. Reiko smiled, then started to unsmile. “Hope? What are you doing here?”
“Well,” said Hope. “I finished my numbers.”
“You did?”
“I did,” said Hope, settling herself across from Reiko. “And I thought I would join you guys. Where are Jenny and Pierce?”
Reiko’s eyes flicked to the crowd, then back to Hope. “Gone,” she said. “I don’t know. They left not long ago.”
Hope mulled that one over. It wasn’t like Jenny to want an early night, but Pierce had just landed a new job out on one of the spans, overseeing stupid robots who tried to weld metal to the wrong place. Maybe he was up for an early night, and a following day fueled by more sleep and less stims. “That’s too bad. We can still grab a drink though, right?”
“Right,” said Reiko, looking like it might not have been right.
Hope sighed. Reiko was having some kind of internal malfunction, which happened from time to time. The trick was to look at the diagnostics, find the source of the problem. You didn’t worry about the noise of drive, you worried about what was causing the drive to make it. She looked at the tabletop between them, swiping a menu up on the surface. Best to order a cocktail that she wanted this time. “I’m going to order a devil’s punch. You want one?”
“Sure,” said Reiko, looking back out the window.
Hope could see her wife’s shoulders were ratcheting closer to her ears, tension drawing her tight like an overstressed beam. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” said Reiko. “It’s just … why tonight, Hope?”
Hope blinked. “What?”
“Tonight,” said Reiko. “You never come out. Never. In all these years. I say, ‘Hope, you should come out after you’ve finished,’ and you say, ‘Maybe,’ and then you never come. Maybe means no, Hope. It always means no.”
Hope sat still, watching Reiko watching her. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Yes,” said Reiko. “No. I don’t know. But why, Hope? Why tonight, of all nights?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” said Hope, feeling a little sick. She hoped her devil’s punch would arrive sooner rather than later. It’d give her something to do with her hands, and make her stop feeling confused. “I can go,” she said.
“No,” said Reiko. “Stay.”
“You’re saying one thing but meaning another,” said Hope. “I’m not good at people, but I’m good at Reikos.”
Reiko gave her a sad, sorry smile. “You are, love. You are.”
Hope looked away, because she felt like she’d done nothing wrong but was being blamed for something regardless. She scanned the crowd, hoping for the saving grace of a waiter with a couple of drinks. Instead of that, she saw the two lean, hard people that were at the docks where she’d met Nate and El. That is a funny coincidence. “Huh,” she said.
“What?” said Reiko.
“Those two,” said Hope. “I saw them earlier today.”
“At the fire,” said Reiko.
“Yeah, at the … how did you know it was at the fire?” said Hope.
“Makes sense,” said Reiko. “You said you had a strange day.”
“It’s getting stranger,” said Hope. “They’re coming towards us.”
“Hope,” said Reiko. “You know how I said you shouldn’t go?”
“Yes.”
“You should go,” said Reiko.
“I should?”
“You should run,” said Reiko, hand covering Hope’s.
Hope looked away from the two thugs, saw Reiko’s eyes. Saw the fear, and the pain, and about a hundred other things in them. “Uh, no,” said Hope. “Whatever this is, we’ll work it out together.”
“You can’t work this out,” said Reiko. “This isn’t a machine, Hope.”
Hope was given a little more time to come up with a response by the arrival of the thugs at their table. The woman stood by Reiko, so she couldn’t leave the booth. The man stood at the end of the table in the middle. They wore blasters and hard stares. “It’s time,” said the man. He was looking at Reiko as he put his hands flat on the table. “It’s time, and the buffer stopped transmitting.”
“No,” said Reiko. “Andy, that’s not possible.”
“Reiko,” said Hope, thinking, buffer? And then thinking, Reiko knows these people by name? “What’s going on?”
Andy straightened, looking at Hope. “You Hope?”
“That’s Hope,” said the woman.
“That’s not Hope, Kim,” said Reiko.
“You’re holding a stranger’s hand,” said Kim. “I get it. Totally normal.” Reiko’s hand jerked off Hope’s like it had been burned.
“Howdy, friends,” said Nate, as he eased up alongside the thugs. “How we doing tonight?”
“Fuck off,” said Kim. She was trying to give Nate that same hard stare, but Andy being in the way confounded that a little.
“Hey, now,” said Nate. “We barely know each other. Hardly a good way to start.”
Andy made for his blaster, but Nate’s gold hand was on top of Andy’s, faster than a striking snake, stopping the thug from drawing. They were close enough to each other to kiss, Nate slightly behind
Andy, giving him a clear line to Kim. Nate’s blaster had already cleared his holster like some kind of magic trick, the muzzle trained on her. Andy struggled to pull his hand, and with it the blaster, free. Hope heard a whiiiine from Nate’s metal hand before Andy screamed, the bones of his hand making an audible cracking noise. Nate let Andy’s hand go, his blaster not wavering from Kim’s face a millimeter. Andy raised his crumpled hand, face at least seven shades lighter. Nate fished the man’s blaster free of its holster, a pirate’s hook dipping for treasure, then handed it behind him. El, who Hope hadn’t seen despite her eyes being wide as saucers, took it from him.
“See,” said Nate. “If only we’d done introductions, that wouldn’t have happened. You’d have known that the only people I despise more than those who try to work over my friends are bullies, and you’re both of those things. Amirite or amirite?”
“Oh, Jesus,” said El. She slouched against the side of the privacy booth.
“You’re a dead man,” said Kim. “Tell him, Andy.”
Andy just nodded, mute with pain from his hand. Hope said, “I’d like to go. Reiko, we should go.”
Reiko shook her head, mouth pulled down, looking like she wanted to cry. “We can’t, Hope. There’s nowhere we can go. Did you turn off the virus?”
No. “Rei-Rei. You knew about the virus?”
She nodded slowly. “And now we’re going to die.”
“You’re gonna die, alright,” said Kim.
“Settle yourself,” said Nate. “We’re all still talking.”
“Cap,” said El.
“Not now,” said Nate. “In the middle of a thing.”
“You’ve got another thing closing in.”
Hope could see Cesar Grosvenor making his way towards their table and the expanding puddle of space devoid of people around it. Cesar had two of his station security goons with him, body armor on over his sagging frame. Hope watched as Nate’s eyes flicked over, just for a moment. That’s all Kim needed, batting Nate’s hand — this one flesh and blood, no super-strength fingers there — aside. To his credit, the blaster didn’t fire. Hope thought, He doesn’t want to shoot into a room full of people.
Kim cleared her own blaster from its holster, smooth as silk, fast as a bolt from the heavens, and Hope could only sit there — table between here and the thuggish woman — as she raised it toward Nate. Kim hadn’t planned on Reiko Crous-Povilaitis, who had sprung forward, knocking Kim’s arm as it came up. Kim, unlike Nate, wasn’t concerned with casualties, her blaster firing wild. Luck or tragedy, Hope wasn’t certain, but the blast hit one of Cesar’s goons. The plasma blew the security officer into burning, meaty rain, the pieces of smoldering flesh scattering back across the Cajun Station. Reiko stood up, ramming her elbow into the side of Kim’s face, the other woman dropping like a stone. The crowd in the bar turned from partiers to panicked humanity in the blink of an eye, screams and terror the general order of the day. Hope watched, dazed. This day is really weird. This is strange. None of this can really be happening, can it?
“Hope!” screamed Reiko. “Run!”
Andy was by this time trying to do something useful, his good hand reaching down towards his boot. Hope didn’t wait to find out what it was he was reaching for, just hustling out between Nate and El with an, “Excuse me,” trying to catch a glimpse of Reiko. She saw black hair in the crush of people at the Cajun Station’s second exit, and headed towards it. Behind her, she heard a boom like a bolt of thunder, and spared a glance. El was standing, stance wide, a strange sidearm with a smoking barrel leveled at Andy, who was missing most of his chest cavity. Hope thought, That gun is smoking. Smoking! Is it a kinetic weapon? before the crowd grabbed her like an undertow, dragging her along.
Hope made the exit, her plastic jacket torn away in the surge of people around her. Someone’s elbow or shoulder or other pointy body part hit her in the face, and she almost went down. Hope clawed onto someone’s arm for support, thinking, Where is Reiko? Where is my Rei-Rei? She couldn’t see her wife anywhere, and behind her people were shooting plasma and kinetic weapons at each other.
Outside the bar, people bunched into a crush, and Hope felt like the air was being squeezed right out of her. Cesar’s goons were everywhere, their red armor threatening rather than supportive. Hope pushed towards them anyway, because they weren’t shooting at them. She almost collided with one, all blank faceplate on his helmet. He collared her, and said the weirdest thing. “Got her!”
Hope was dragged out of the press of people, manhandled by many armored goons, until she arrived at a small oasis of calm. She touched her upper lip, fingers coming away bloody. Her nose? Her lip? She felt confused, like someone had hit her on the head.
Arms grabbed her, rough hands shaking her. “Hope Baedeker?”
She looked up into the face of Cesar Grosvenor. “Oh. Cesar. You made it out!”
He blinked at that, then blanked his face as Natsumi Warn joined him. The station head leaned forward. “Hope? Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” said Hope. “It was the thug who shot first. I didn’t even have a gun. Blaster. Thing.”
“The money,” said Natsumi, like she was talking to a child. “Where is it?”
“What money?” said Hope.
Natsumi gave her a look of disgust. “Book her.”
“With pleasure.” Cesar nodded. “Hope Baedeker, you are under arrest.”
“What?” said Hope.
“You are charged with misappropriating Republic coin. Do you have anything to say to this charge?”
“What?” said Hope, again. “No.”
“Guilty, as I thought,” said Cesar. Hope wanted to find Reiko. She wanted to run. Hope wanted to know what was going on. But she didn’t get to do any of those things as restraints were clamped around her wrists. More blank faceplates stared at her as she was hurried into a wagon, the electric motor whining as it took her across Triton Station to wherever bad people went to die.
CHAPTER THREE
THE TABLE BETWEEN Hope and Cesar was smooth and white. It was made of polished ceramicrete, fixed to the floor by a series of bolts that wouldn’t be easy to shear through even if she had her rig. Which she didn’t. What she had was her clothes and a set of manacles around her wrists. Cesar hadn’t even let her get cleaned up. Blood still crusted her lip.
Against one wall was a giant mirror, which meant it wasn’t a mirror at all. There was probably someone like Natsumi behind it, watching. And if Natsumi wasn’t there, she’d be able to review what happened later on a holo. Cams watched her from every corner of the room, silent, unblinking judges awaiting her first mistake. The room wasn’t large, about five meters a side. It wasn’t warm either, the air cyclers bringing the temperature to well below what was comfortable without the jacket she’d lost at the Cajun Station.
Attached to Hope’s left forearm, above the manacle, was a small spider-like robot. Cesar had put it there, and the little legs had dug in like they were mining for blood. It then stuck fangs into her skin, and she’d yelled and tried to pull it off, which hurt more. Cesar had said, It tells us if you lie, and Hope had asked, Lie about what? And that question had led them to this room, with its white table and bad air cyclers.
The only other thing in this room apart from Hope, Cesar, the table, and the nasty spider bot, was the console from Hope’s apartment. It looked just like she’d left it, except the screen wasn’t locked anymore. Someone had sliced through the computer’s protection, laying secrets bare. Except Hope didn’t have any secrets. Unless they were secrets even she didn’t know about, which would make them very secret indeed.
“Where is the money?” said Cesar.
Hope startled, because Cesar had been staring at her for about ten minutes without speaking. “I don’t know why you keep asking that,” she said. “I don’t know about any money.”
“Five million good Republic coins,” said Cesar. “Siphoned from Project Redemption’s budget like they’d never been. Director W
arn knew something was amiss. It only took us this long to find it because you were not a likely suspect.” He leaned forward, armor clacking against the table. “It’s always those you suspect the least. The people you should trust the most.”
Five. Million. Hope had never imagined having that much money, ever. “Five million?” she said, like saying it would help her make sense of it.
Cesar tapped the personal console on his wrist, and the mirror flickered into a 2D screen. On the screen, Bobbi Harford was in a similar room, with a similar robot attached to her arm. There was an interrogator with her, a woman Hope didn’t know. The sound was muted. Cesar said, “We’ve got your accomplice in custody.”
“My accomplice?” said Hope, feeling more stupid and lost with each thing Cesar said.
“We’ve got the communications between you about mass loadings and funding for Triton Station,” said Cesar. “We know you were planning to redirect cash flow.”
“We were planning an Endless field to lift the station,” said Hope.
“That’s ludicrous,” said Cesar. “Even I know the math would never work.” Despite his derisive tone, his eyes flicked towards the spider bot. It didn’t do anything. “Must be glitching,” he said. “Let’s start with the console.” He patted Hope’s console like it was a clever dog. “I can see you tried to wipe it. Slip-shod job, Engineer.” He paused, then smirked. “Engineer. Hmm. Not for much longer, I warrant. The Guild takes a dim view of your kind.”
“My kind?” Hope wished she could stop asking questions but nothing was making sense. She needed a little more data, and then she could get out of this and find Rei-Rei.
“Thieves and traitors to the Republic, under whose flag we all sail,” said Cesar. He leaned back, eyes hooded as he watched her. “Your personal console had a data feed going somewhere. Who were you sending the funds to, Baedeker?”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “What funds?”
“Five million Republic coins—”
“I know that part,” said Hope. “You said it already. I mean, why do you think it was me?”
“That’s how you’re going to play it? Fine. Let’s see if a few layers of evidence will help you reconsider your approach. You Engineers think you know everything. Let me tell you, you don’t know how honest policing works.” Cesar’s hands flexed, like he wanted to do something violent with them. “We’ve found your accounts already cleaned out. Only the guilty try and hide the trail, Baedeker. We’ll find where you’ve taken the money eventually.”
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