by M. D. Cooper
Brit gave Harm a calculating look, actually doing the math on what her salary would be—as though it mattered. Her only concern was that this last, belated freighter may no longer be headed for the original destination—which she hoped to be Heartbridge’s new base. The window might have closed.
Then again, what choice did she have. It was better than Eros forcing her to ship out on the Piercing Sword.
“I’m in,” Brit said and waved for more beer.
CHAPTER TEN
STELLAR DATE: 09.14.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Mars 1 Port Authority Terminal 983-A4
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
The maglev door slid open and Petral immediately stepped out into the crowd on the other side. Cara’s heart quailed as she lost sight of the black-haired woman. She rushed to the door and stuck her head out, forcing a woman with glowing red hair to step out of the way while saying something Cara was certain her father would not approve of. Outside, she was assaulted by the echoing rumble of the terminal, mixed with smells of people, oil, strange foods and languages.
“Uh…sorry,” Cara said to the woman as she stepped out into the crowd moving in the direction she thought Petral had gone. The terminal wasn’t as packed as it had looked from the maglev door.
Luckily Cara had the presence of mind to glance back at the closing door and note the number on the wall above it. She made herself repeat the address ten times so she would remember it, then focused her attention on finding Petral.
Cara was craning her neck to peer through the crowds when someone grabbed her wrist and jerked her toward the wall. She stumbled, making an embarrassing surprised squeaking sound, and found Petral pulling her close. The tall woman gave her an inquisitive look.
“I thought you were following me?” she asked.
Cara blinked, confused and a little nauseous from the strange sounds and smells. This place was so much busier than High Terra, or at least the parts of High Terra she could remember. Kalyke certainly hadn’t been anything like this.
“You just left,” Cara said finally. “I tried to follow you but I couldn’t see.”
“Looks like you went the right way. Good job.” Petral’s gaze moved past Cara to the people flowing by. “Look, I don’t have a lot of patience, I’ll be honest. Not just for kids. For anybody, really. I get an idea in my head and I go after it. So I’m going to need you to pay attention. Most of the time we’re here, I’m going to be on my Link, anyway. Here, turn your back to the wall so you’re looking out like me.”
Petral was half-leaning against a column next to the wall, shielding her from the view of anyone coming from the direction of the entry ports. Cara moved to stand beside her, leaning against the tiled wall. Through gaps in bodies, she made out shops further down the terminal and a few food booths which must have been the source of the sickly sweet fish smells now turning her stomach.
“I like how you figured out how to hack into the Link on Sunny Skies,” Petral said, looking at the crowd instead of Cara. Her full lips barely moved as she talked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that, to be honest with you. You’ve got this sort of…fundamental way of looking at problems.”
Cara frowned as the corner of Petral’s lips curved up in a slight smile. “I mean the way you’ve been spectrum scanning for open traffic the last two weeks. I bet if I asked you to pick the lock on a door, you’d take the pins out of the hinges. I like that. It means you can see around problems. I imagine a lifetime of watching your father bang his head against things would make you look at life that way.”
“He doesn’t bang his head against things,” Cara said.
“I mean he rushes through.” Petral raised her eyebrows. “Oh, he’s a talker. I like to listen to your dad talk, but he’s going to go in guns blazing every time. He’s the kind who will always consider sacrificing himself as a valid plan. Watch out for that.”
One side of Cara’s mind felt a thrill that this woman was talking to her in such an adult way, about her dad as if he wasn’t her dad but someone else they both knew, while another part of her wanted to tell Petral to shut up, she didn’t know what she was talking about. Petral’s arrogance was infuriating and intoxicating.
Petral’s gaze settled on something and her face grew serious. “Come on,” she said. “Stay close, I’ll be walking fast and I don’t have time to make sure you’re with me.”
Cara barely had time to nod before Petral had stepped into the crowd again, pushing her way to the far side of the corridor while Cara struggled to keep up.
They walked for what felt like an hour, following the main corridor away from the ports into a shopping district filled with strange wares. They passed a Heartbridge clinic and Petral nodded toward the smooth white entrance, making a joke about getting matching lobotomies that Cara didn’t understand right away.
Gradually the crowds thinned and they walked through what appeared to be a housing section, where one side of the corridor was lined by metal railings and the bulkheads on the other side dropped away into tiers of balconies belonging to identical apartments. Many of the balconies were hung with plants, while others displayed multicolored banners for governments or sports teams. Drones buzzed in the open space like giant flies.
Petral didn’t give Cara much time to look before they entered a series of smaller corridors that appeared to lead off into maintenance areas. The air grew colder and smelled like mold. Toward the end of the maintenance section, they passed a doorway giving off static electricity that made Cara’s skin tingle.
Pausing beside the charged opening, Petral stared into a space for a minute, apparently accessing her Link, while Cara rubbed her arms and jittered from foot to foot, trying to get the crawling sensation off her skin. Petral didn’t appear to notice.
When Petral finished her task, they ascended several metal stairways that arrived at an access door into a clean corridor full of people in uniforms that Cara recognized as that of the Mars 1 Guard. She wondered if Lieutenant Kerda had worn the same kind of uniform. Though he was Mars Protectorate SF, which was a different branch of their military—from what she understood.
Petral didn’t hesitate at the door and strode right into the corridor without looking back to check if Cara had followed. Cara eased the door closed and jogged after, glancing at the people on either side, gauging if they had paid Cara and Petral any attention. A few glanced at Petral but their expressions were more hungry than studious.
A few steps behind Petral, Cara was able to watch the way the tall woman strode, both powerful and with a slight sway of her hips that drew attention to her shape. Cara had been too focused on the people and places around them to notice before. Petral was definitely moving differently than they had through the fight at Cruithne, where she had crouched and sprinted like a soldier. Now she reminded Cara of the women in vids, using their bodies to communicate to anyone open to the signal.
Without meaning to, Cara mimicked Petral’s stride, swinging her arms slightly and pointing her toes. It was hard not to swing her hips too much. She felt like she was flopping her way down the corridor. Trying to walk like Petral also made her aware of how dingy her shipsuit was compared to Petral’s close-fitting leather outfit.
The moving crowd in the corridor seemed to split for Petral as she strode toward the middle of the pathway and then walked for a while with her chin lifted, Cara hurrying behind. Petral might have been in a deep Link conversation from the way she ignored everyone around her, even as heads turned to follow her passing by.
In a few minutes, they reached a small lounge built into a corner where the corridor turned, and Petral stopped at a public terminal. She tapped the holodisplay and began manipulating menus, moving too fast for Cara to catch exactly what she was doing, although it appeared to be something related to shipping companies.
“Anyone following us?” Petral asked, still focused on the display. She was talking in a way that made her voice sound low and flat, so
only Cara could hear. Her lips barely moved.
“What?” Cara asked.
“You see anyone following us?”
“Um…” Cara moved her gaze to the lounge area where several Mars 1 Guard officers were relaxing on couches and chairs. She didn’t know if any had been there when she and Petral had walked up or not.
“Don’t bother looking now,” Petral said. “You can’t be an operator if you’re not paying attention, Cara.”
“An operator? I thought Dad called you an information broker?”
“Broker, hacker, operator, whatever. You’re already doing a bit of what I do with your spectrum scanning, whether you realize it or not. That’s why I thought you and I should spend a little time together. Now put your back to the wall and watch what’s going on like I suggested you do before. I won’t repeat myself again, Cara. I’ll simply stop talking to you.”
Cara gulped and turned to face the corridor.
“Good. Now put one foot on the wall and look like I’m boring the shit out of you. Try smiling at a few of these M1G soldiers as they walk by.”
“Won’t that get their attention?”
“Maybe. If it does, we’ll see what they say. There are some things I’d like to know about local operations at the moment, and what I can’t get from the network we might pick up from one of these idiot boys and girls hanging around.”
“Why are they idiots?”
“They were dumb enough to join the military, weren’t they?”
Cara shot Petral an angry glance but recognized the quip as an attempt to get under her skin. She dropped her retort about her parents being in the TSF. She didn’t like that she could no longer see what Petral was doing on the terminal.
A woman with two stars on her collar walked by, trailing attendants. She glanced at Cara and frowned slightly. Cara tried offering a smile but the officer kept walking. A young woman at the end of the group—armed with a projectile rifle—caught Cara’s smile and walked over without hesitation. Her hard expression didn’t indicate she was interested in idle conversation.
“You,” the M1G soldier said. “What are you doing here?”
Petral didn’t respond, leaving Cara to face the intruder. She fidgeted with hands, pushing off from the wall a step.
“We’re just using the terminal,” Cara said. Before the soldier had a chance to speak, she pushed ahead, asking, “Is that a MP-51 projectile rifle? Do you have the burst upgrade? I think fully auto is better for close-support covering fire but you’re going to sacrifice accuracy and waste ammo. Do you have self-guiding ammo?”
The soldier blinked under the barrage of Cara’s fan-girl questions. “MP-51b,” she corrected. “I’ve got burst and stabilization.”
“The TSF doesn’t even have that in their standard issue,” Cara said. She was repeating pieces of a bitch session she’d overheard while eavesdropping on a Mars Protectorate observation post.
“I’m not standard issue,” the soldier said.
Cara flinched, realizing her mistake. She’d reminded the soldier she had a special job to do.
“You’re in a secure area,” the guard said. “Show your clearance.” She nodded toward Petral, who still hadn’t turned from the terminal.
“She probably can’t hear you,” Cara said. Her face was burning. “She had to do something on the Link. I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t have one, but I think it takes all your attention, doesn’t it?”
“She can hear me,” the soldier said.
“Are you from Mars?” Cara asked. “I’ve always wanted to visit there.”
“Hey,” the soldier said, focused on Petral now. “Are you listening to me?”
Cara stole a glance at the holodisplay where a cloud of numbers floating around Petral’s index finger. She flicked between screens—which were out of Cara’s line of sight—and the numerals followed the end of her finger like smoke, flickering through different colors as symbols shifted.
The M1G soldier gripped her rifle’s sling with one hand and reached for Petral’s shoulder with the other. Just has her fingers nearly touched Petral’s leather jacket, Petral turned and gave the soldier a dazzling smile.
The soldier froze, gaping.
“Hello, there,” Petral said, voice radiating charisma. “I didn’t see you there.” She motioned toward Cara. “Were you talking to my niece? She just loves military stuff. She’s always talking about guns and ships and effective ranges or whatever. Did she ask to see your gun there? I’m sorry if she was bothering you.”
“Uh, no,” the soldier said. A blush had appeared on her cheeks and was spreading to her throat.
Petral wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Well, that’s good. Once she gets going she just won’t stop. I was trying to do some banking here but I don’t think I’m at the right kind of terminal.”
The soldier pointed down the hallway, where the high-ranking officer had gone. “The public corridor is back that way. There’s a terminal there. But be sure to check it for skimmers. It’s always getting hacked.”
Petral smiled in thanks. The other woman looked like her knees were going to buckle.
“We’ll go that way,” Petral said. “Thanks for your help. It’s so easy to get lost in here.”
“You’re, uh,” the soldier said. “You’re visiting?”
“Yes, we are,” Petral said. Without saying anything else, she turned to Cara and took her hand. “Come on, crazy girl. We’ll get out of their way. Thank you, again.”
Petral pulled Cara after her, walking past the soldier without a look back. Cara glanced back at her and found the woman watching Petral leave with a strange longing on her face. Did Petral have some kind of tech that could bring about such a response in people? Had she used it on her dad?
When they were back in the main terminal, Petral dropped her benevolent expression and shook her head.
“I didn’t get what I wanted,” she said, hunting among the faces in the passing crowd.
Petral started walking and Cara struggled to keep up.
“You gave it a passable try back there,” Petral said. “You know where you messed up?”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned the TSF,” Cara said. “I reminded her about her job.”
“You shouldn’t have asked about the weapon at all. That could be a good lead-in in some situations but you don’t have a lot of time so you have to hit the emotions fast. You’re lost, you want to be like her, whatever. You tried to save it with the question about Mars but by then she wasn’t having it. You want to grab their sympathy right away if you can. Don’t give the mark time to think about why you’re there, just how you affect them.”
“Mark?” Cara said.
“Come on, I know you’ve heard the term. Haven’t you watched any spy vids? This is basic stuff, Cara.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that woman as someone I wanted to fool.”
“Of course you were. You were trying to distract her, weren’t you?”
Petral walked so fast that Cara was nearly jogging to keep up. The tall woman’s blue eyes hunted throughout the corridor. “There’s the other terminal,” she said.
Cara couldn’t see what Petral was talking about. The corridor was full of more M1G soldiers and functionaries and everyone else looked like they were wearing some kind of uniform. Petral cut through them like a shark surrounded by multicolored fish.
Petral spent another ten minutes at the public terminal before cursing in disgust. She slapped her hands on the plas body of the holodisplay, which only made it glitch more than it had been.
“Gah,” she growled. “We’re going to have to find another place where I can work.” Petral crossed her arms and frowned at the near distance as she accessed her Link. Cara watched her face pass through several versions of irritation and anger before a clever smile finally bloomed on her lips. Her piercing blue eyes slid toward Cara.
“You ready for an adventure?” she asked.
“What kind of adventure?”
>
“You didn’t bring that pistol you’ve got, did you?”
Cara stared at Petral. “How do you know about that?”
“Because I know everything, kid.”
“No,” Cara said sheepishly, now wishing she had.
Petral shrugged. “That’s all right. But if I tell you to hit somebody, you don’t hesitate. You understand?”
“No. Why would I want to hit someone?”
“It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. You just do it when I tell you. Now come on, we’re heading to another part of this locality. A not-so-nice part.”
“Why can’t you just do whatever you’re doing through your Link?” Cara complained.
“I am,” Petral said. She reached up to push her hair behind her ears and scratch furiously at the sides of her head. “I’m doing three things at once here. Heartbridge has been scanning every port of entry on Mars One since before we arrived. I already sent the signature for the Worry’s End back to High Terra, since that would make sense if your dad was going to do the safe thing and dump you and your brother off with family or something. Your aunt lives there, doesn’t she?”
Cara nodded. “We don’t talk to her, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t know that.” Petral shook her hair out. For a second she almost looked tired. Then she composed herself and stood tall again, throwing her shoulders back.
“This way,” Petral said, stepping away from the terminal.
“So if you already made it look like the ship went back to Terra, why are you doing all this other stuff,” Cara asked.
“Because Heartbridge isn’t stupid. They’re going to be looking for other indicators that we’re here. They might just be hanging back, watching for any traffic that indicates where you’re going to go. Remember, they want that thing in your dad’s head. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to snatch it here under the Protectorate’s nose. But they might just let you get out into JC space where nobody really cares what happens to a lone freighter. That’s what I’ve been doing at the terminals—logging in as various cargo freighters that almost meet the same profile as Sunny Skies, sending false cargo off in directions that sort of make sense. I’ve also been fucking with Cal Kraft. He’s got a whole criminal record in the Protectorate now.”