“What did you do?” said Nate.
“I tased them,” said Hope. She nudged the melted remains of the Frankenstein spider-bot-stun-rod weapon. “Sort of. I didn’t have a taser so I used the water as a kind of distance extension mechanism.”
“You what?”
“Electricity,” said Hope, like that explained everything. She started rolling over guards so they wouldn’t drown in the water.
Nate bent to help her. “I guess that was smart,” he offered.
She wiped water off of her face. “It would have been smarter if I’d set up the sprinklers to turn off too.”
• • •
Further down the corridor, they came to a closed door. Nate swiped the borrowed security badge, the door hissing open. Inside was a cornucopia of items.
“This is the evidence locker,” said Nate. “I’m getting my, uh, evidence back.” He keyed the master control, lockers opening around the room. He started to rummage, coming up for air occasionally.
“Okay,” said Hope, not moving from the door.
“You should look too,” said Nate. “For what they’ve got on you.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Hope. “I keep telling people that.”
“It’s far easier to convince people when you’re outside jail and they have no evidence,” offered Nate. “Makes sense.”
What makes sense is not being here in the first place. Where is Rei-Rei? But Hope moved forward anyway, scrabbling through the boxes without much interest until her gaze fell on a familiar shape.
It was her rig. She freed it from the box of items it was nestled in. Alongside it was her personal console. Hope fired up the rig’s controls, and it clambered around her, hugging her tight like a friend. The arms articulated out from the back, their test cycle completing without incidence. The visor lapped over her face, HUD lighting up, all lamps green across the board, before pulling back into the rig’s collar.
“That is freaky and weird,” said Nate. “Looks like you’ve been eaten by an insect.”
Hope brushed pink hair from her eyes. “I guess. I mean, it’s metal, and insects aren’t made of metal.”
Nate studied her for a moment. “You really are an Engineer, aren’t you?”
“Not anymore,” said Hope, feeling miserable. “Not ever again.”
“Huh,” said Nate. “Well, let’s fix one problem at a time.”
They left the evidence locker, continuing down the wet corridor. They passed another couple of downed guards, each time righting them so they wouldn’t drown in the water. At the end of the corridor they came to a guard station, door closed, the interior warm and dry. Hope remembered passing it on the way in. The guard station controlled the egress door to the jailhouse. Beyond it was a small visitor’s area, and the almost-freedom of the greater Triton Station.
Inside the guard station was a lone woman, red armor covering her body, visor down. She held a plasma rifle. Nate knocked on the glass between them. “Care to open the door?”
The door he was referring to was the massive airlock that separated prisoners from free citizens. The guard looked at him, and said, “You’re a funny one. In five minutes a legion of troopers will arrive. The only reason they’re not here yet is the riot on deck sixteen. And I don’t think you’re going to cut through that airlock with that tiny blaster of yours.” She gestured at the airlock for emphasis.
Nate looked at his blaster, then at the guard. “Might do well enough to cut through to you though.”
“Nate,” said Hope. “We aren’t doing that today.”
“We’re not?” said Nate.
“You’re not?” said the guard.
“No,” said Hope. “I am … I was Chief Engineer of Triton Station. I know the plans. I know them all.” She walked to the wall next to the airlock door, then fired her rig up. The visor lapped over her face, HUD lighting up conduits through the walls. There. Just like the plans said. Stepping back about two meters from the door, she faced the wall and started keying in commands to the rig. I need a doorway one meter wide and two meters tall. The rig’s arms articulated out, a plasma cutter gouging into the skin of Triton Station. It hissed and spat, bright white-yellow molten metal trickling to the ground. As a cut opened in the wall of the corridor, the rig’s arms reached out to grab the metal.
In less than thirty seconds, a one-by-two meter hole had been excised in the wall. Behind it was a one-by-two meter air cycler conduit. Hope gestured. “In here is a passage to the other side. When they built this prison area, they had budget problems. Affixing this door to the stations substructure was expensive, because there wasn’t another way to easily route the air.”
“So they didn’t,” said Nate. “Who the hell says, ‘affixing,’ anyway?”
“Hey,” said the guard. “You’re getting away because of budget cuts? Those assholes.”
“They didn’t,” agreed Hope, ignoring the guard like she’d never spoken. “What they did was bolt the airlock in place and then cut a hole behind this wall for the air conduit. Which gives us a nice one-by-two meter passage.” She eyed Nate. “You’ll fit.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ll fit,” said Hope. Being careful to mind the still-hot edges of the entrance, she stepped inside.
Nate joined her, and they moved on in silence until they reached the other side of the airlock door. Hope told the rig to repeat what it did before, and it cut another one-by-two meter hole. They stepped out into the relative quiet of the jail’s reception area.
“Okay,” said Nate. He turned to Hope. “I guess that was … a new approach.”
“You don’t need to kill everyone,” she said. “You don’t even need to kill most of them.”
“People often don’t give a man that choice.” He looked sad while he said it, like he believed it himself.
Hope sighed. It had been a weird, crazy day. She didn’t know people very well at all. But she did know something for certain. “No one makes you do anything, Nate. People do what they do because of the clockwork inside them.” With that, she turned to the jail’s exit, wondering about the clockwork inside Reiko, and how Hope might be able to help her wife get out of this mess alive.
CHAPTER FIVE
HOPE AND REIKO had met at a bar, orbits colliding on the dance floor, too many stims and booze and designer drugs inside them for them to really grok what was going on. They’d danced, and kissed, and had the best damn sex of Hope’s admittedly short life.
They’d woken in Reiko’s apartment, and she’d taken Hope to an amazing place. It was a hydroponic garden, the kind Hope had read about that recycled everything from food scraps to air. Great green vines grew everywhere, troughs taking sludge through the plants. Water was misted on the air, and the cool moistness of it was so different from the hot dry outside Hope had loved it immediately.
Hope remembered that morning’s illicit visit to a garden paradise, and knew where to find Reiko. Triton Station was entirely unlike the crust she’d met Rei-Rei on, but it still had a vast hydroponics area. Two whole decks dedicated to keeping air and water fresh for fifty thousand souls.
Nate followed on her heels, looking like he wanted to say something, but also looking like he knew what it might be like to have an estranged family. The man kept his peace, and Hope was thankful for that. She didn’t want to cry again.
She saw Reiko first, settled in among tall tomato vines. “Rei-Rei,” said Hope. “Baby.”
Reiko turned, anxious eyes finding Hope’s face, then turning flat and hard as she saw Nate. “Him. You brought him.”
“He’s a friend,” said Hope, knowing it was true, but not knowing why she knew that. “He helped me.”
“He put us here,” said Reiko. “If he hadn’t shot those two agents—”
“How did you know they were agents?” said Hope. “Why were you dealing with agents, Rei-Rei? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that Reiko needs to tell
us where the money is,” said a man’s voice. Hope had a Guild Master during her studies who’d suffered an accident with hydrochloric acid vapor. His voice and face hadn’t been the same after that. As Hope turned to face the newcomer, she saw the same thing here: a man with a ragged face, one of his eyes dead and white. At his side was a woman, pure white hair, striking in all the ways the man was horrific. They both had simple body armor, blasters belted at the waist. Both of them had their hands resting on the butts of the blasters. “The money, Reiko. Where is it?”
“We don’t have much,” said Hope. “But what we’ve got, you can have. Just leave her alone.”
The man looked from Reiko to Hope, back to Reiko, and then back to Hope. He blinked. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Ho—”
“She’s no one,” said Nate. “I think a better question is, who the fuck are you?”
“We’re not going to play the who-the-fuck-am-I game,” said the man, his dead eye glinting in the gloom of hydroponics.
His companion shook her head. “Dante, you need to relax. This is just business.”
“Easy for you, Wedge. You don’t have the cartel chewing on your ass.” But the man with the dead eye — Dante — didn’t look upset by Wedge’s admonition. “Eh. She’s right. Reiko, we just want the money. It’s all we’ve ever wanted. You pay us what you owe, plus the interest, and we’re square.”
Reiko was looking around. Hope wondered if she was after an escape. “Reiko? What are they talking about?”
Wedge snorted. “Agent Kelland here,” and she jerked her thumb at Dante, “has an interest in your friend. Perhaps we can come to some kind of arrangement. Avoid any unpleasantness.”
“Well, see,” said Nate. “That sounds nice. There’s one problem.”
“I feel like we should play a little who-the-fuck-are-you,” said Wedge. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Nathan Chevell,” said Nate. Hope noticed he didn’t say my friends call me Nate, which was nice, because this didn’t seem like the making-friends kind of moment. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
“No,” said Wedge. “What’s your problem, Nathan?”
“My problem?” said Nate. “No, no, no. It’s not my problem. It’s our problem.”
“Friend,” said Dante, teeth gritted, “you need to start talking more sense. Patience grows thin.”
“Our problem is that you do not look like the live-and-let-live kind of people.” Nate held up his gold hand. “No, please. The way I see it is this. You work for Cesar Grosvenor. You are also involved in a cartel. You are extorting money from my friend’s wife. Which by inference means you are extorting money from my friend. Now, on any given day I have no problem with a little honest pirating. The universe is a bad mean place, full of bad mean people. Where I draw the line is the leave-no-witnesses part.”
“What?” said Wedge.
“No witnesses?” said Dante.
“Exactly,” said Nate, as if that explained everything.
Hope shifted her feet. “I think you’ve skipped ahead a step, Nate. I mean, I see the math. But you might want to spell it out some. Show your working.”
Nate frowned, lips moving, before he smiled again. “Sorry. I forgot you hadn’t said it out loud yet. Yeah. So once you’ve got the money, and in order to keep your positions with station security or the cartels or both, you will execute all the witnesses. Including my friend.”
“Huh,” said Dante. He looked at Wedge. “That sound right?”
“Sounds fair,” she agreed, nodding. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Nathan Chevell,” said Nate.
“Still doesn’t ring a bell,” said Wedge. “But you seem like a man of the universe. You in need of work?”
“Um,” said Hope. “I have a question. Reiko and I aren’t rich.”
“Oh,” said Dante. “That wasn’t a question, but I get you. It’s not your money we want.”
“Okay,” said Hope. “That wasn’t my question.”
“It wasn’t?” said Dante.
“No,” said Hope. “My question is this. Where is Reiko?” Because Reiko had vanished like steam on the wind, blown into a vent, to be lost in the bowels of Triton Station. The tomato vines she’d been nestled among were empty.
“Son of a bitch,” said Wedge.
“Motherfucker,” agreed Dante. He rubbed his face, hand covering his dead eye for a moment before looking at Nate. “Man. I’m sorry about this. I mean, I thought we had something going on. But here it is. Tell us where she went or we’ll kill you both.”
“Is this a part of the job interview?” said Nate.
“No,” said Wedge. “It’s—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off as Nate drew his blaster, spraying their location with blue-white fire. Plants burned, pieces of them atomizing. Water troughs exploded into steam. As near as Hope could tell, he hadn’t hit either of them. She said, “You … missed?”
“Clockwork,” he said. “You know the station. Get us the fuck out of here.”
Hope nodded, pushing through greenery like she was trailblazing in a rainforest. Nate was hot on her heels, firing the odd blast behind them as they made their escape.
• • •
The concourse was packed with people. Hope picked a stray leaf from the elbow joint in her rig, and then reached up and pulled a piece of vine from Nate’s hair. “We should be safe here,” she said. They’d exited the hydroponics area by way of a series of ladders leading up, then snared a cargo elevator up another few decks. She’d taken them to the restaurant concourse that stretched around Triton Station’s core shopping area nestled at the hubward area of Deck Six.
“We need to get to my ship,” said Nate.
“What’s on the ship?” said Hope.
“A couple fusion drives,” said Nate. “And an Endless Drive. Tech to punch the hard black. Put some space between us and them.”
“Oh,” said Hope. “No. We need to find Reiko.”
“You what?” He blinked. “Your wife sold you out.”
“No,” said Hope. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“She cut and ran,” said Nate. “The bad people, who I’ll remind you I didn’t shoot because someone told me it’s not the right thing to do, were after her. Not you, and sure as hell not me.”
“She was scared,” said Hope.
“So were you,” said Nate. “You didn’t sell your wife out.”
“I think it was the console,” said Hope.
“You what?” said Nate again, his confusion level going up a couple of points on the eyebrow scale.
“There was a virus on my console. They must have been taking funds from my project. They think Reiko is involved in it. It’s all my fault.” Hope ran a hand through pink hair. “So, I’ve got to fix this.”
Nate looked like he was chewing on a stone, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. “Let me get this right. You think your personal console — the console, mind, owned and maintained by an Engineer — had a garden-variety virus on it. That magically targeted you, the Chief Engineer of Triton Station. To conveniently siphon funds from your project. And that Reiko wasn’t involved in some way.”
Hope looked at her feet. “It wasn’t Reiko,” she said.
“Okay,” said Nate. “We need a beer.”
“We need some time to think,” said Hope.
“We could need both,” said Nate.
“First one, then the other,” said Hope. “Here’s what we’ll do.”
“Hold up,” said Nate. “You’re making the plans now?”
“I’m the Engineer,” said Hope.
• • •
The concourse’s security station was tiny. Just three people inside an office, outside of which was a waiting area. The waiting area looked like the kind of place where people sat while taking their turn to make a complaint about something station security couldn’t help with, or where lost children washed up until their parents could get around to collecting
them. Hope and Nate stood in that area, while the security team behind protective glass did their best to ignore them. Hope figured that was fair. Looking up would mean you’d have to help someone. It also meant that while there was almost certainly a bulletin out about the escaped Chief Engineer of Triton Station, this was the safest place to stand. She looked up at the cams studding the room and sighed.
“So, you want to get in there,” said Nate, nodding at the security office. “And you don’t want me to shoot anyone.”
“I don’t want you to shoot anyone,” said Hope.
“See you soon,” said Nate, walking away.
“Wait,” said Hope. “What are you going to do?”
“Not shoot anyone,” said Nate. And then he was gone, sliding into the slipstream of humanity out in the concourse, sucked away on a tidal rush.
Hope fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot. What if Nate left her here? He didn’t owe her anything. He’d gone to jail to break her out. She didn’t know why he’d do that, except that he had a busted up old ship that would be fun for someone like her to work on. But he hadn’t said anything like I’ll get you out of here if you fix my ship. Nate had just got her free, like it was what everyone would have done in his position.
Now they were free, he was gone. Maybe he didn’t want her on his ship. Maybe he didn’t want real criminals like her within a hundred light years of him. Maybe—
Her train of thought was deconstructed by the sound of blaster fire. Screaming followed, then an alarm. Hope’s practiced ear said that it was a fire alarm, and sure enough the predicted deluge of water followed. She sighed again. First the jail, then the water in hydroponics, and now more water here. Her underwear would never get dry.
The guards in the security station entered a heightened state of activity, bursting forth from the security station like wasps from a disturbed nest. Hope put her back against a wall, lowering her face as the three of them ran past, red armor glinting in the sprinkler’s rain. After they’d gone, Hope walked up to the door to the security station. Her rig’s visor lapped over her head, shutting out the rain, the internal air cycler doing some good at both freezing and drying her face. She fired up a new program, a very simple one: core the lock. One of the rig’s arms grabbed the handle of the door, another firing up a plasma cutter. The lock on this door would be complex enough she didn’t want to risk time slicing it. Instead, she got the rig to excise the locking mechanism from the door and the frame. In less than twenty seconds, the rig pulled back a piece of the door and the frame, dropping them to clatter on the metal deck at Hope’s feet.
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