She pushed the security station’s door open, seating herself in front of a console. The holo lit, and she checked the cams. Yep, sure enough there was a security alert out for her, although not for Nate. That was curious on account of him doing most of the shooting and other angry activities, but she pushed it aside for now. What she needed to do was convince the cam network that she wasn’t where it saw her. It had pretty good facial recognition tech. Short of slicing a part of her face off — and Hope liked her face — it would see her wherever she went, unless she had the rig’s protective visor in place. And that would look equally weird and distinctive.
The easy answer was usually the best. She ignored the security bulletin and the facial recognition codes, diving into the station’s internal schematics. Hope re-organized the station’s view of itself. She swapped decks with similar decks. Deck Six’s concourse was very like Deck Ten’s concourse, so she changed the identifiers in the system. When security saw a report from Six, the system would say it was really on Ten. Hope did this for all decks in the station, near as it made sense. It wasn’t perfect, but it would buy them a little time.
Time enough to find Reiko. Her visor lapped back into the rig.
“Hey,” said Nate, almost stopping her heart with fright.
Hope jumped, knocking a coffee cup to the floor. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” he said. He held out a pack of donuts. She took one, nibbling it suspiciously. “We good?”
“We’re good,” she said. The donut was excellent. It was still warm. “I thought you weren’t going to shoot anyone.”
“I didn’t,” he said. I shot something. There’s this place called,” and here, he checked the label on the bag, “Crispy Sugar along the way. I ordered donuts,” he shook the bag, “and then blasted their fryer. While there are now unborn donuts at risk, no humans were harmed in the event.”
“They’re good donuts,” said Hope. “This doesn’t make up for you terrifying me.”
“Fair enough,” said Nate. “Let’s get that beer, huh?”
• • •
The bar was called the Wall Parlor, and it was small and dark. There was no one in here, perhaps on account of the security incident that Nate had triggered in the concourse outside, but most likely because the service was terrible. They’d been here for five minutes without seeing a soul, so Hope had moved behind the bar herself, snaring a couple beers from a glass-fronted refrigerator. They were Core Lager, which she felt was ironic in a way she couldn’t put her finger on.
“This tastes like camel piss,” said Nate, drinking more anyway.
“Hmm,” said Hope. She hadn’t drunk hers yet, her rig’s visor over her face. She was on the network, checking out a few things. She pushed the visor back, then took a long pull from the bottle. “All my money is gone,” she said. “I don’t mean Project Redemption money. I mean, that’s vanished too. But all my money is missing. The coins Reiko and I had squirreled away for a rainy day.”
“You’ve got no money?” said Nate. He dropped a few Republic coins onto the bar top. “I guess the beers are on me then.”
“Ha,” said Hope. “There’s another thing. Someone used our accounts to buy a ticket off the station.”
“Sensible,” said Nate.
“One,” said Hope. “One ticket. Not two tickets.”
“Huh,” said Nate. “Your wife bought a ticket and ran.”
“Yes,” said Hope.
“She might just be upset at you,” said Nate. “I mean, I figure if my wife had some kind of secret life, I might have a few problems with that.”
“Two things,” said Hope. She held up a finger. “Thing the first. If Reiko had done something weird, I’d have talked to her. Like we did. At hydroponics.”
“Right,” said Nate, taking another pull of his beer and wincing. “What’s the other thing?”
“Thing the second?” Hope took a couple quick breaths. She didn’t want to say what she’d found, because it felt wrong. Like she’d made a mistake, an error in the math, one that might cause people to die. But Hope was sure she hadn’t made an error, not this time. She felt like she was going to cry, so she talked instead. “The ticket was bought yesterday morning. It was bought before I got home. It was bought before I found the virus on my console. It was bought before we went to the Cajun Station. It was bought before Cesar found our accounts emptied.”
“So your girl—”
“Is she my girl?” said Hope.
“Do you still love your wife, Hope?” Nate leaned forward, Core Lager pushed aside. “And what will you do to keep her?”
Hope thought about that. She thought hard. Harder than she’d think about ICF containment physics, and maybe harder than she’d think about Endless buffers. “Yes,” she said. “And everything.”
“Then let’s go get your girl,” said Nate. “This beer sucks anyway.”
CHAPTER SIX
DOCKING BAY THIRTEEN was right next door to where all this weirdness started. Docking Bay Twelve was on the same deck as Thirteen, but a quarter turn of the station around. Hope couldn’t see Twelve from here, the mighty wheel of Triton Station putting it well outside view from the access corridor.
Walking in to Thirteen, Hope was struck by how many people there were. It felt like about a million, but was probably closer to two hundred. That two hundred might as well have been a million when you were trying to pick out just one of them. “I can’t see her,” said Hope. “I can’t see Reiko.” She felt tired, eyes straining as she tried to pick out that elusive black hair among the hundred different shapes, sizes, and colors of people queued to board the Marduk. The Marduk was coupled to Triton Station by way of a long docking collar, the huge bridgeliner too big by far to fit inside a standard docking bay. The people here were waiting to board.
Nate tugged on her elbow, leading them to an industrial freight loader parked to the side of the bay. It was a good ten or fifteen years old, manufactured by the Old Empire. It looked like a big, armored person, three meters tall. Big metal feet enabled it to walk, and big metal hands allowed it to grab crates or whatever else it needed to tug around. They clambered to the top of the loader to see better.
They were here because Reiko’s ticket was aboard the Marduk, which was bound for Ganymede. Hope thought someone was showing off, because you didn’t need a bridgeliner to hop between planets in-system. But the Marduk was shiny and new, no doubt from Titan, doing the rounds to show what the new Republic could build for its citizens. Hope clenched her fists, feeling frustrated at the competition between Titan and Triton, at the petty people who’d got her involved in this mess, and that she couldn’t find the one person who mattered most in all the universe.
“I see her,” said Nate. He leaned closer to Hope so he could be heard, the noise of two hundred people like a roaring river. His gold hand stretched out. “There.” Hope followed the line of his finger, seeing her wife almost aboard the Marduk, feet about to step into the docking collar proper.
“I see,” said Hope. She felt her exhaustion lift a hundred levels at least. She cupped her hands into a makeshift megaphone. “Rei-Rei!”
Reiko didn’t hear her. She was too far away, or the noise was too much. Before Hope got a chance to jump down, Nate dragged her off the loader, blaster fire raking where they’d been. They tangled on the way down, his head knocking against the metal decking with a thump, her bouncing next to him with an ooomph.
About two hundred people suddenly surged, trying to get away from the source of the blaster fire. It was like being in the middle of a swarm of stupid insects, all bumping into each other. Hope looked around the cover of the loader to where she thought the blaster fire had come from, and saw Wedge and Dante, the two Agents from the hydroponics area. Both looked murder in Hope’s direction.
Nate was still woozy from his fall. Much as Hope didn’t like randomly killing people, now would be a great time for a little help, but help was still struggling to get to his feet. Hope woke her r
ig, the visor lapping over her face. Blaster fire tore up the deck around the loader, molten metal spraying up. She paid it no mind, beads of yellow-white running off the rig without harm. The rig reached for the loader’s access panel with two arms.
No time for beauty, only time for speed. The rig tore the panel off, circuits inside exposed to view. Hope unspooled the diagnostic cable from the rear of her rig, snapping it into the loader’s access port. Her HUD came alive with telemetry as the loader tried to report the last fifteen years of activities. Not useful. Hope cleared the telemetry as Nate hunkered next to her.
“Hey,” he shouted, rubbing his head. “You doing more cool Engineer stuff?”
“I’m not an Engineer,” she said, but she wasn’t really processing that. “Where’s Reiko?”
“In the Marduk,” said Nate.
“She made it?” Hope turned visored eyes on her friend.
“Sure, she made it,” said Nate, ducking as blaster fire scored another hit on the loader. “Jesus! Hope, I don’t mind saying, but I really want to kill these guys.”
“One second,” said Hope.
“I can kill them in a second?”
“No,” said Hope, as the loader sprang to life, arms reaching up in an automatic self-check. She cleared that routine — no time no time no time — and gave it the image of the ‘packages’ she needed: Wedge and Dante.
The rig chirped, the loader grumbled in response, and Hope undocked the cable. The loader lurched off towards the two Agents, Hope and Nate scurrying in its lee as it walked. The agents kept firing at the loader, or them. One unlucky passenger for the Marduk was caught in the crossfire, her body turned into flaming meat pieces. Plasma raked the loader, but Hope wasn’t too worried about this. The loader was built to work in high-risk environments. Ablative shielding buckled and shed, but there was plenty more where that came from.
The loader made it to the Wedge-Dante power combo, the front of it glowing yellow from the plasma impacts. It reached for the Agents, selecting Dante first, like someone might pick a choice chocolate from a tray. Dante was so surprised he didn’t even scream. The agent struggled in the loader’s grip, but it looked about as productive as trying to move a planet with one hand.
Wedge saw the shape of the dance to come and turned on her heel. She made it three paces before the loader’s other hand grabbed her. She yelled defiance at it, raising her blaster and firing. Which wasn’t very smart, because plasma was very hot, and she was very close to the loader. Hope was astonished, because even the most inept person had to have noticed the glowing hot surface of the loader, courtesy of those same plasma blasts.
As Wedge’s shot hit the loader, metal and very hot, very energetic excited matter sprayed back at her. Wedge screamed as her hair singed, fragments of metal burning into her skin. Dante screamed along too, yelling things like you idiot and are you trying to kill us. They kept on in this vein as the loader walked them out of the docking bay.
Nate stood at her side, blaster held low like he wasn’t sure what he should be doing with it. “That was something else,” he said.
“But Reiko’s gone,” said Hope. “I saved two people who wanted to kill me and my wife left forever.”
“I guess that’s not great,” said Nate. “But it’s not forever. Where did you send the loader?”
“Maintenance,” said Hope, not really focusing on that. She looked at the Marduk’s docking collar, now empty of people, airlock shut, the great ship locked down tight.
“Hope,” said Nate. He waited until she looked at him. “I figure that you might need a ride somewhere.”
“Ganymede,” said Hope. The docking bay was mostly empty of humans now, aside from the dead ones. Hope tried not to look. It was easier to focus on what to do next. “I can’t ask you to take me to Ganymede. But I need to go there, all the same.”
“I was born on Ganymede,” said Nate, strolling towards the docking bay’s door. “I am feeling a little homesick. I figure we need to get off Triton Station anyway. That asshole Cesar will be putting one and one together soon enough. And if he doesn’t, Natsumi will.”
Hope hurried to catch up. “Thank you,” she said.
What neither of them saw, because the Marduk’s airlock was shut, was Reiko Crous-Povilaitis on the other side, hammering her fists to be let out. She’d been driven in here by a torrent of people, the doors sealing under emergency protocol. Reiko struck the hard metal until her fists bled, trying to get back to her wife. But she couldn’t get out. As Hope walked away with Nathan Chevell, Reiko felt murder growing in her heart.
• • •
Docking Bay Twelve still had the Tyche resting on the deck. It also had Cesar and Natsumi with twenty of Cesar’s red-armored goons. They had plasma weapons leveled at them, and when Nate and Hope wheeled around to exit the bay, another twenty goons closed off their escape route.
They wheeled right back around, Nate smiling. “Natsumi,” he said.
“Fuck off, Chevell,” she said. “This isn’t about you. This is about that criminal at your side.”
“I see,” said Nate. “Look, I have to know. What’s your malfunction, Natsumi?”
Natsumi blinked at him. “What did you just say?”
“You weren’t great wearing the Black, but I figured that was just you jockeying for promotion. I didn’t pay it no mind back then. But now, you’ve got an Engineer in your sites. A young one, far too young to have fallen in with organized crime on a station as new to her as the Republic is to its rule.”
“She owes gambling money,” said Cesar.
Nate laughed. “No Engineer I’ve ever met gambles, Cesar. They know the math.”
“Blackjack,” said Hope.
“Not now,” said Nate. “Anyway, you can’t have her.”
“Says who?” said Cesar.
“She’s my Engineer,” said Nate. “For the Tyche. Good Engineers are hard to find. And she’s shipping out under my protection.”
“I am?” said Hope. “I mean, I am. Yes. That sounds good.”
“Your protection,” said Natsumi. She looked from Nate to Hope, and then to the Tyche, silent to the side. Then she made a show of looking at the forty troopers. “Are you insane, Chevell?”
“I don’t think so,” said Nate, then keyed his comm. “You get that, Helm?”
El’s voice came back nice and clear. “Copied and noted. Tyche’s crew roster updated by plus one. Former Engineer Baedeker, now under ship protection.”
Natsumi leaned back, laughing. Hope thought she made a good show of it, even pausing to wipe a faux tear from her eye. “You’re going to die, Chevell.”
“Nate,” said Hope, leaning closer to him. “You don’t need to do this.” She didn’t want him to die. Not on her account.
“Me?” said Nate. “I’m not going to do anything.”
“Sensible,” said Cesar.
“But if you make a move, let me tell you, you’ve got a surprise coming,” said Nate. “I can always tell the ones that were in the war or beside the war.”
“What does that mean?” said Hope.
“It means that the Tyche is used to people trying to kill her crew,” said Nate.
“Enough,” said Natsumi. “Kill him and capture her.”
As Cesar’s goons readied weapons, safeties off, Hope saw something marvelous. A sleeping goddess, waking in fury. The Tyche’s PDCs came out of their housings lightning fast, red light lazing around the interior of the docking bay as targets were acquired. Nate grabbed Hope, dragging her to the ground — again! — As Cesar’s troops rained plasma on their previous standing position.
Before the goons could adjust their aim, the Tyche roared in defiance. Tungsten sprayed from the PDCs with the sound of the heavens breaking. Hope screamed. She covered her ears, but it did nothing to lessen the noise.
Which lasted for no more than two seconds, before the Tyche’s PDCs spun down, no targets remaining. The only thing left in the docking bay were smoking body parts and red
mist, dragged about by the air cyclers. A decompression alarm sounded and Hope could see why. In her anger, the Tyche had holed the station’s hull. The big doors leading back to the station ground shut with a rumble and scrape of metal.
“Come on!” shouted Nate. Or at least that’s what Hope thought he shouted, because she was deafened after the PDC fire. Nate half-ran, half-dragged Hope behind him up the Tyche’s ramp. Hope scrambled to keep her feet, red wet misting her face, making her cough. She thought she might be sick. The air was already pulling at her hair as the docking bay decompressed.
Inside the Tyche’s cargo bay, Hope saw crates stacked and lashed, an old but comfortable interior, with a ladder leading to an upper deck. Nate slammed a hand on the airlock controls. The Tyche sealed them in with a hiss, Hope’s ear’s popping.
“Helm?” said Nate. “Ganymede.”
“Copy that, Cap,” said El’s voice on the comm. “Best get strapped in.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HARD BLACK didn’t feel so bad with the Tyche’s hull around her, but Hope couldn’t stop missing Reiko. Her chest ached. She couldn’t believe her wife had left. And she definitely couldn’t believe that Reiko was involved with some cartel. It was all a mix-up, and they’d sort it out once they hit Ganymede.
Nate had showed her to Engineering. Hope poked around, noted the hundred little things that didn’t work as they should, and got to work. It was the least she could do, what with them ferrying her to Ganymede.
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