by Gwynn White
“No one knows Heliac Nine’s location.”
“Which is advantageous for you.” Angelique closed in on him, and even though it was just a holovid, her proximity was intimidating. “But who is to say your lovely strumpet didn’t steal the location from you before leaving?”
Wilmur lowered his head.
“It is an excellent thing then that you have the fastest ship in the universe.” She turned away. “Because you shall stop at Kalamatra to retrieve your whore before continuing to ensure the Batch D-65 remains safe and secure.”
“I know how to handle my women.”
“Apparently,” she said as her image flickered out of Wilmur’s field of vision, “you do not.”
Hale finally turned toward Keva. “You are so spaced.”
16
In the days it took to get to Kalamatra, Keva saw little of Dothylian. ILO gave regular reports of what the girl did, but most of it didn’t make sense. For the most part, Keva spent her time with Hale.
Keva and Hale spent days reviewing worm footage. Keva now knew Wilmur’s schedule implicitly. She knew how many times he used the bathroom, or which kind of paper he chose to wipe with, how often he bothered to wash his hands—which reminded her never to shake his hand ever again—and a multitude of other things. Wilmur was one of the most disgusting people she had ever had the misfortune of watching.
The meeting that had been so important to watch provided zero details. The only thing they now knew were the players.
Poe seemed to be the highest-ranking member of the council. Everyone deferred to her for direction. The woman was cold, calculating, and a force to be reckoned with. And the only thing Keva and Hale knew for certain, was she would soon be returning to her home world, Terra Reyher. She seemed undisturbed by the poor results of Batch D-65, whatever it was supposed to do.
Undisturbed might be the wrong word.
She didn’t seem overly fazed on whether Batch D-65 would succeed or fail. The only thing she worried about was how they were going to replace the people it would kill. Whatever this thing did, Keva was afraid to see the results.
The only thing they could guess from what they heard was that Batch D-65 did something to change engineering of humankind. The things they were talking about, were things the scientists who oversaw her pod talked about. But she’d only heard of DNA sequencing while the human was still an embryo. She’d never heard of DNA engineering after humans were full-grown adults.
What would happen to people if this re-sequenced their DNA strand? What kind of effects with would they be seeing? Would it hurt? Poe seemed to think many people would die. Keva didn’t doubt it for a minute.
None of the people around Wilmur—or Wilmur himself—mentioned the location of the upcoming test. They all seemed to know already. And it was just like the Elites, to be so distrustful of those around them they won’t even say it aloud. But their paranoia wasn’t helping Keva, and it wasn’t helping Hale in the least. The truth of the matter was, Wilmur had the faster ship. For Hale and Keva to arrive at the test site in time, they needed a head start.
They researched at a few places that might meet the criteria for testing. Somewhere out of the way, with poor communication abilities, a decent population, and no one cared about.
Hale knew about a lot of them. It was news to Keva to learn several people decided to take what few resources they had, and settle on the outposts. Searching new frontiers, looking for places where they could live in freedom. However, with freedom, came the responsibility of living with the consequences further actions. They had to deal with the resources on hand because they were cut off from the main system. Most of these places were not on shipping lanes. The only way to get to them was to take a couple of years traveling at jump speed or have a ship with slip drive.
But how many ships were out there with slip drive? Keva only knew for certain that the military had it. She had assumed the Elite did as well. Now she knew Wilmur had it. Didn’t help her. How was she going to get there?
At Kalamatra they docked at a new part of the station Hale led them to. Keva finally had something to do instead of sitting around on her ass and watching Wilmur take a piss. She could get Dothylian a new identity. The woman needed a new name anyway, and it wouldn’t be hard to change her light hair to something a little less attention-grabbing.
Dothylian waited for her at the cargo door, her shoes on. She had taken the scraps of the dress she had arrived in and had made a type of outfit out of it.
Keva had a feeling she knew what Dothylian was going for, but the only thing it was going to do was raise suspicion and draw attention toward them. “What is that?”
Dothylian smiled and held the partial skirt out around her. “Do you like it?”
Keva decided to keep her real opinion to herself, she knew she sucked at reading people’s emotions and the outfit wasn’t so bad. It just didn’t fit their current situation. “You can wear that on another day.”
Dothylian frowned. “It is too much. Is it not?”
“For what we’re doing? Yes. It is. We need to fly under the radar today, and we’re going to go through some pretty dirty areas. So, wear something you’re okay with throwing away afterward.”
“It is going to be that bad?”
It’d been a while since she’d last been in the underground areas of Kalamatra. They weren’t truly underground. There was nothing that could be considered underground on a station that had no ground. But there were back channels. Places even the military didn’t want to go. “Just save the dress for later.”
Dothylian nodded and removed the dress quickly setting it down beside the door before pulling on a pair of Keva’s pants and a shirt she had brought with her. “I don’t want to slow you down.”
“You know, for all of the Elites to be saddled with, you’re not so bad.”
“From you,” Dothylian said raising a pale eyebrow, “that is a huge compliment.”
“So glad you’re figuring that out.” Keva walked towards the door. “Because I’m not here to hurt you, but I’m not going to coddle you either.”
“I realize that.” Dothylian jogged to catch up. “I’ll take care of myself.”
Keva looked out across the docks, enjoying the view she always did. The spire of Kalamatra stretched far above and dangled way below her. Moored ships and space cascaded out around her.
“Oh, my goodness. Keva, what happens if we fall off?”
Keva glanced behind her and saw Dothylian looking over the edge of the dock.
“Some force field would catch us should we fall, yes?”
There were, but Keva wasn’t about to test it. “Yes, the gravity fields will protect you if you fall off. But I have no idea when it was tested last. So, don’t try it.”
Dothylian looked up her mouth open. She turned in a slow spiral as she walked to catch up to Keva. “This is incredible.”
Keva hadn’t thought about how the space station worked since she was a kid. “You enjoy science, don’t you?”
Dothylian smiled. “I do.”
Finally, something to talk to Dothylian about. “Well, I happen to know a lot about Kalamatra. What do you want to hear about?”
“Is there a star housed inside the station or is that a bit of Black yarn?” Dothylian stopped gaping and moved to walk beside Keva.
Keva kept her eyes open for any security moving towards them. She had told Dothylian to mark her face to throw off facial scans, and the woman had. She’d placed three solid black dots along her right cheekbone, fashionable but perfect for throwing off the scans. Keva went a bit more extreme. She’d put a large triangle hanging from the corner of each of her eyes. The tagging would confuse the visual scans on the gnats and the autoscans. But if someone paid attention to the images, those little marks weren’t going to do a whole lot to protect them.
“No, that would be impossible. The station is run by a giant fusion core, the heart of a star, but not a star itself.”.” For all Keva had to pay a
ttention to security, she also had to pay attention to Dothylian. Keva was the one who dragged her all the way out here. She did owe the woman something. “And do you know this station is the weakest point in the known universe?”
“I’ve heard rumors and a few theories. Why do you say that?”
“Well,” Keva said as they entered onto the main concourse, “for one, fusion reactors are highly unstable. To create the energy necessary, they essentially compressed a real star and stuffed it inside a box. But no matter how much we think we can control the universe through science, nature wants to be free..”
“So, it wouldn’t take much to disrupt the reactor is what you’re saying.”
“Exactly.” Keva guided them towards the back wall and then turned toward left. Hale had managed to get them passage to the lowest docking levels he could. The corridors here were narrower and fewer people used them. The few people, dressed in black and kept their heads down. None of them had fancy clothes or black stained hands, these were the average invisible spacers who lived and worked on the station.
“What is wrong with her fingers?” Dothylian asked quietly.
Keva walked slowly and tilted her head to the side so that Dothylian would have an easier time hearing her low tone. “These are the people who work in the underground. They work close to the star, and what you’re seeing is some of the remnants of what the reactor’s process leaves behind.”
“What you mean?”
Keva found what she was looking for. A hole in the wall. There were scarves, vendor carts, and several other things set up to keep the entrance away from the prying eyes of the surrounding cameras. She ducked through the wall and stepped into a tight hallway.
People littered the hallway. They slept here when their homes filled with too much radiation. They looked at Keva and Dothylian as they walked by, but didn’t say anything to either woman.
“Put your finger against the wall.”
Dothylian looked at her in askance, but she did his Keva directed. She held up her pointer finger for Keva to see. “This is what’s all over their hands?”
“Yes.”
“Is this radioactive?”
“Did you want the truth?”
Dothylian rubbed her finger on her pants. “Now, I understand what you mean when you said to bring clothes I was okay with throwing away.”
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“I get that.” Dothylian moved around a young family, moving even with Keva. “This is the reason why you are so hard, isn’t it?”
Keva frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, this.” Dothylian gestured to the people around them. “You are trying to prepare me for this. You are attempting to get me to understand the stark reality of this new life.”
“I was trying.”
“Are we going to survive this?”
Well, that was the plan. “We’re going to give it a shot.” But Keva couldn’t provide any promises. “Do you see these people?”
“Yes. I am seeing these people.”
Keva saw by Dothylian’s expression that she finally saw the people around them as if seeing the world for the first time. “This is the reason why we need to find as much information on Batch D-65 as we can as soon as possible. No one fights for these people. They get the worst of every situation, even made to live right next to the core.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Do you see the people sitting here now? They’re here because their homes are so full of radiation, they can’t go back. There is nowhere else to go. The air is killing them.”
“And there’s nowhere else for them to go?”
“Where else would they be able to go? They would need a ship. Ships cost money. And the people who put these people here, ensure they never get the kind of money that would allow them to leave. Who would replace them? How would the work get done? Those in power are ruthless.”
Dothylian didn’t have anything to say immediately.
“Well, let’s see what we can find out.”
17
Keva pointed at the surveillance camera in the upper corner of the tunnel. “Do you see that?”
Dothylian shrugged. “We have those on Terra Qar as well.”
“I know you do, and there you can walk by not caring about them.”
“I’m trying to figure out where you’re going with this.”
“Here,” Keva turned her face away while walking past it, “we must pretend we belong, and avoid all cameras at all times. This means making sure we keep in mind where they are in any room we enter.”
Dothylian narrowed her eyes. “If that’s working, then why aren’t there security details moving these people away? I wouldn’t think this would be a practical place for a camera.”
“You’re right.” Keva stepped over the legs of a man passed out, his face prematurely wrinkled and splotchy under his red beard. “It’s a dummy camera, but you don’t know which are working and which aren’t. Treat any camera you see like it’s a loaded weapon.”
“Why are you teaching me this?”
“Because your face is all over the place. Now, we’re going to get you a new ident chip, but that doesn’t change your face. And the marks on your face are only going to help throw off an initial facial scan. It won’t do anything for a full facial scan because those scan things like facial structure. Skin tags and marks won’t fool that.”
Dothylian walked behind Keva in silence. It would have been easier—a lot easier—to go through the Commons, hop into the lifts, and step onto the eighty-eighth floor. And when Dothylian had a new chip, that’s exactly how they were going to leave.
Keva grasped the bottom rung of a low-hanging ladder and sighed. They had a lot of floors to climb. “Have you thought of a new name?”
“Odelle used to call me Lily.”
“Well, you can’t use that name.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s known.”
“Only Odelle used to call me that.”
“And, trust me, someone is aware of that and is going to look for any new Lilys popping up. It’s an odd name.”
“It’s not that odd,” Dothylian said under her breath.
They walked up the ramp leading to the eighty-eighth floor. It hadn’t been all ladders, thankfully.
“So, besides that?” Keva stepped around a family huddled around a fire-cup. It didn’t look like they had much more than water in their small can. “Anything else?”
“No. But I have thought of a few names for the ship.”
That was helpful at least. They needed a new name before they took off. In whatever direction they went. Keva was little frustrated they still didn’t have a production location of Batch D-65 or where they planned to test it.
“I was thinking Magna Intellectus.”
Keva sighed and stepped off the ramp into the back hallway of the eighty-eighth floor, a fact she knew thanks to the sign at the top. “No.”
“But you don’t even know what it means.”
“It’s a huge name for a small ship, Dot.”
Dothylian released a short breath. “I thought you were going to let me name it after Eddqin. I just lost him.” Her voice broke, but she managed to bring it back.
Keva had to give the woman her due. She’d experienced probably the worst day of her life, and she hadn’t crumpled. At least, she moved when Keva needed her to. At the end of the day, that’s what mattered.
“You can give me ideas. I don't know what we’re going to call it, but if we pick something like that, it’ll be a red flag. No one knows what Magna Intellectus even means.” Keva did because she’d learned some Latin, a dead language that refused to die. Powerful knowledge. It wasn’t a bad name, but not for that ship, and she didn’t need a giant neon sign that said, “Spy lives here.”
“Okay. What about Carpe Noctis?”
Keva scratched her lip, studying the doors on her right as she walked. There weren’t any brightly lit signs on th
is side, but there were symbols scratched through the layer of radiation dust. “I like it and will consider it. What else?”
“Ignotum?”
“What does that even mean?” Keva had meant her offer to let the woman name the ship, but with these names, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. She couldn’t name the ship something in Latin.
“The Unknown. Okay. What about Ex Nihilo?”
“Find something in Universium. Okay?” Keva found the backdoor to the Jiggling Donkey.
“From Nothing.”
Keva paused her hand on the handle and held up a finger. “That one isn’t bad.”
Dothylian raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. I’m not. Look, Dot, we’ve gotta find something that blends in. Ex Nihilo doesn’t do that.” Though the meaning was appropriate.
“Keva,” Fallow said, startled. He jerked as they stepped through the door, a crate of glass bottles in his hands. “I—” He glanced at Dothylian and back at Keva. “You brought company.”
Keva nodded slowly. “I couldn’t get word to you. We’re flying under the radar.”
He narrowed his blue-lined eyes. “Tell me what I’m thinking isn’t true.”
Keva wasn’t quite sure what he might be thinking. “That would depend.”
Fallow set the crate down and advanced on her, hands on his blue silk swathed hips. “You broke onto Terra Qar, threatened the life of one of the highest-ranking Elites, and then kidnapped a woman?”
Keva narrowed her eyes and replayed that. “Well, yes. I did go to Terra Qar, and I didn’t get the chance to threaten anyone’s life, but I did save a woman.” She ducked her head, looking at him through her eyelashes. “By bringing her with me.”
“And now she’s here. In my bar.”
Keva clamped her lips shut and spread her hands as she shrugged. “We need a new identity?”
Fallow threw his hands in the air and dropped them, slapping them against his thighs in exasperation. “I’m Fallow, owner of this little bar.” He extended his hand.