by Jake Elwood
"Settle down, kid. I don't like cameras either. They're almost as annoying as little two-bit hustlers."
The insult washed over him without registering, and he smiled. "You should try this place here if you're hungry." He gestured at a gaudy Mexican restaurant, so narrow that it consisted of a single row of tables pushed up against one wall. "You'll think your mouth is on fire."
Over and under the streets they went, sometimes curving around buildings where there wasn't a direct pedestrian connection. They passed the occasional Mercurian. Pacer would wave to anyone he knew, invariably someone with loud clothing and sporting dreadlocks or piercings or a flamboyant beard.
From time to time a green arrow would appear on a wall screen, but more than half of the cameras were missing or destroyed. There was graffiti here and there, usually a stylized "SD" inside of a ragged "O". "Sons of the Dawn," Pacer announced as they passed the first graffito.
Other graffiti was more artistic. Joss stopped in front of a mural of sorts, a woman's face glaring fiercely at the passing crowd. She had sooty eyebrows that made dramatic arches above her eyes, and dark hair in a halo around her head. Beside her face was a slogan, "Free Mansoor!"
"What does 'Free Mansoor' mean, Pacer?"
He stopped. "That's Mansoor," he said. "She disappeared three, four months ago. Company said she was deported for causing trouble." He scowled. "Only, she never called when she got to Mars. Her friends there never saw her. She just vanished."
He stalked down the corridor, his carefree demeanor gone. "Lots of people been disappearing. This one's Tom McReady." He pointed to a poster glued to the wall. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to scrape the paper away, but Joss could still make out the face of a middle-aged man with an easy grin. "The official story is, he bought a ticket to Earth. But his family's all here." Pacer made a half-shrug. "I know, some men run out on their families. But not Tom. You should have seen him with his kids."
The scowl faded, and he seemed to let the dark mood slide off. "Someday soon you'll see my face on one of those." He gestured at a section of wall with half a dozen more posters of men and women. He grinned. "I stir up too much shit. The Tellies gonna disappear my ass too." He puffed up my chest. "I'm too much trouble for this planet!"
They passed through another raised walkway. The walls on the far side were painted gold, and there was no more graffiti. Pacer stopped in front of an arched doorway with rolling lawns on the far side. "This is as far as I go."
"You're going to make me carry my bag from here?" Joss pretended to be alarmed.
He colored. "Sorry. They don't really let me inside the pyramid any more. There was this time I … Never mind. Here." He thrust the overnight bag at her, and she handed him a five-dollar coin.
"Thanks, lady." He waved as he headed back the way he'd come. "Remember, anything you need, it's P-A-C-E-R." He headed around a corner and disappeared.
"That boy will come to a bad end," Liz said. "Let's see what this dump is like."
An hour later, Joss sat alone in the dining room of the Hotel Caduceus, finishing off a plate of broiled goat ribs and salad. The meal was appallingly expensive, but fresh vegetables were precious throughout much of the solar system, and actual fresh meat was almost unheard of away from Earth. It was a treat too good to pass up, as was the opportunity to eat alone. She was fond of her crewmates, but the Raven was a small ship and she needed a break from constant companionship.
The dining room of a hotel gave her a rare chance to be a stranger among strangers. She was anonymous, alone without being an outcast. Too many settlements were closed, tight-knit societies. To be just another face in the crowd was soothing in subtle and profound ways.
She told herself that the long shadows outside signified evening. It was five long years since she'd been on Earth, nearly a quarter of her life, but her subconscious still looked for the traditional cues of day and night. The sun's fixed position on the horizon was disturbing, though she hated to admit it. A good spacer was supposed to be infinitely adaptable. Being on land, though, somehow made it worse. She didn't expect the light to change onboard ship, but she expected it dirtside.
"Was the meal satisfactory?"
She glanced up to find a waiter at her side. "Yes, thank you." In truth she found the goat meat a bit too strong in flavor. Sure, it was fresh, but beef that had been frozen didn't taste like it had been frozen, and at least it tasted like beef. Still, it was a change, and she wasn't going to complain.
"Will you be staying for the music later this evening?" There was an evening of sorts. Most of Dawn City ran on a 24-hour clock. It was nearing the hour when most of the inhabitants would close their blinds and pretend the sun had set.
"We have a jazz trio in the lounge," the waiter continued. "Live musicians! They're really quite good."
Joss nodded. She was sorely tempted. Live music thrived in the spacer community. There were harmonicas and guitars and penny flutes on ships and in space stations from the sun to the frosty orbit of Pluto. Really good live music, though, was much more rare. However, she was drained from the long interrogation following so close on the heels of a harrowing space battle. "Will they be playing tomorrow?"
"Oh, yes." The waiter beamed. "Will you be staying another night?"
It was a good question, and Joss shrugged, not knowing the answer. There was no more urgency to their mission. The contraband cargo, whatever it was, was long expired. There was no point in trying to retrieve it now.
So they had time, all the time they wanted. Money, though, was another matter. Damn it, they needed that fifty grand. She sighed. She had enough money for another night in the hotel, but heaven only knew when she'd get paid again. "I don't know," she told the waiter, and stood. "That's a question for another day. Today's been all I care to handle."
She left the restaurant and paused in the lounge to take in the view. Landmark Tower was the high point in Dawn City, standing thirty glorious stories over the rest of the town, and Joss was only four stories from the top. The tower served as an anchoring point for the tremendous steelglass pyramid that dominated the center of the city.
There were nine or ten hectares covered by the pyramid, including parkland and the tallest trees on Mercury. There were actual wild birds on the grounds. None of them were visible from this height, unfortunately, but she could see the park, and the delicate curving streets of the city on the far side of the pyramid walls, and the rolling sands of Mercury stretching to the horizon beyond the city.
Weariness seemed to gather about her like a cloak as she climbed up to the hotel level, then two more flights to her room on the tower's top floor. She felt heavy, as if only the reduced gravity kept her from collapsing into a heap. She couldn't remember her room number, so she trudged along the corridor waiting for the biometric scanner to recognize her and open her door. When a door slid open she plodded inside, barely seeing the room around her as she headed for the bathroom.
Brushing her teeth revived her a bit, and she crossed to the balcony doors, telling herself she'd enjoy a bit of the view she'd paid so much for. Her room was on the shadowed side of the hotel. There were no tall buildings in Dawn City, aside from the tower. No one wanted the extra sun exposure. She sank into a plastic chair, put her feet up on the balcony railing, and looked out through the pyramid over the rooftops of the city.
A leafy treetop bristled just beyond the railing of her balcony, and she heard birds chirping in the branches. The thought of songbirds that were practically wild was intriguing, but she lacked the energy to stand up for a closer look. She'd heard rumors that the hotel was going to import a pair of squirrels from Earth, and she smiled, imagining it. What would such agile creatures be able to do in one-third of a gee?
Something scraped on the roof above her, almost as if the squirrels were already here. She turned her head, expecting to see a bird on the edge of the roof above her.
Instead, she saw a man dropping from the roof to land on the balcony beside her.
Chapter 3
Liz was sprawled on her bed in a bathrobe with her hair in a towel, watching Godzilla smash his way into a domed city on Mars, when a scream brought her leaping to her feet. She wasted a moment staring stupidly around, trying to figure out where the sound had come from. She seemed to hear it through the wall and the window at the same time.
Then she ran to the balcony, arriving just in time to see a man vanish into the room next door. Joss's room, if she remembered correctly.
Or was Joss on the other side? She could be looking at a stranger's balcony. The man could be Joss's lover. It might have been a scream of ecstasy. The sensible thing to do would be to put on clothes, go next door, and knock.
A thousand doubts flitted through Liz's mind, and she ignored them all. A frustrated fury had been growing in her ever since the first encounter with the Orbital Guard. All the helpless running, unable to do anything but flee, had chafed at her, and arrest and interrogation had made things much worse. She'd managed to get out of Planetary Security custody without feeding that pompous colonel his own data pad, but the restraint had cost her dearly.
Now, at last, there was trouble. Either Joss was in danger, or Liz was going to beat someone to a pulp for disturbing her movie with a scream. Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she backed up to the far side of the balcony. Then she sprang forward, leaped up, put a foot on the railing of her balcony, and hurled herself into space.
She never would have made it in a full gee, but with Mercury's low gravity she almost overshot. She cleared the gap between balconies easily, cleared most of Joss's balcony as well, and crashed into the balcony railing on the far side. Low gravity does nothing to reduce velocity or mass, and she swore as she banged her shins on the metal bars.
A moment later she stepped into the room, pain fueling the delicious bonfire of her rage. There were two men in the room, stocky figures in padded jackets with dark goggles over their eyes and bandanas over their lower faces. They held a frantically struggling Joss between them, one man holding her arms, the other man trying to keep a grip on her ankles as she kicked.
Liz came forward, hearing a demented cackle and recognizing her own voice. All three people looked at her, and Joss kicked free of the second man as he let go of her ankles and came to meet Liz. His arm came up for a blow that never landed. Liz struck first, driving a fist into his sternum, hissing in frustration as his padded jacket absorbed most of the force of the blow.
He clubbed her across the head with his other arm. She barely felt it, letting her head snap to the side, adding the momentum to her next blow, bringing her right hand up in a hook punch to his jaw. He grunted and stumbled back, and she drove forward, slamming knees and elbows into him as fast as she could. A red haze settled over her vision, and for a time she remembered nothing but little bursts of pain against her knuckles and elbows and feet as she struck again and again.
A tremendous blow hit her shoulders and the back of her head, and she lay stunned, the haze dissipating. For a moment she couldn't breathe. The room snapped into focus, and she saw Joss looking down at her, pale and wide-eyed. What just happened? I'm on my back on the floor. She managed to inhale, sending waves of pain through her chest and back. Oh, they're going to pay for this.
Beyond Joss, the two men were hobbling onto the balcony, leaning on each other. One man left a trail of blood across the carpet. Liz tried to spring up, then grunted, which made the two men move faster. She rolled onto her side, suppressing a remarkable array of aches and pains, pushed herself onto hands and knees, and used the side of the bed to drag herself to her feet.
On the balcony a pair of feet rose past the window and disappeared. Liz lurched onto the balcony, just in time to see a length of rope vanish over the corner of the roof.
She took a deep breath, rotated her shoulders, and took stock. She was recovering quickly from the shock of hitting the floor. Her limbs were functional. The towel was gone from her hair, and the bathrobe was falling open. She tightened the robe, re-tied the belt, and squared her shoulders. I'm still in fighting shape. And I'm not done with you bastards.
She jumped, caught the edge of the roof, and swarmed upward, not worried about the men above her. She knew what broken men looked like. Those two were focused on getting away. The roof was laid out like a garden, with shrubs and flowers in square planters mixed with benches and even a fountain. There were three masked men, not two, hurrying away from her across the roof. One man looked back and gave a hoarse cry, and all three of them picked up their pace.
When they reached the far edge of the roof the three hesitated, glancing back at Liz. She charged toward them, planning how she would knock one man off the roof so she could concentrate on the other two. Then, just as she came close, the men jumped, one at a time, into space.
They're on another balcony. Or there's a section of roof a story or two down. That could work, in this gravity. I can still catch them. She ran harder, feeling the bottom of the robe whip against her thighs, the fine gravel of the pathway beneath her pricking at the soles of her feet.
She didn't stop as she neared the edge of the roof. If they could make the jump, so could she, and she wasn't going to let them increase their lead. She was two bounding leaps from the edge when she heard a mechanical whine that brought her skidding to a halt.
Except she was moving too fast to stop in time. She skidded, cursing, right up to the edge of the roof. There was a skimmer below, a wide vehicle with a cockpit and an open box, held aloft by ducted fans. She could see the three masked men in the box, staring up at her as the skimmer began to move away from the building.
For an awful second she stood teetering on the edge of the roof, her arms waving madly for balance. She felt herself beginning to fall and tucked in her feet, twisting in the air, reaching a frantic hand for the edge of the roof. Her hand caught, she swung, her body thumped against the side of the building, and she stretched her other hand upward, scrabbling for a grip.
She couldn't quite reach. Terror filled her, sweat sprang out on her skin, and the edge of the roof became slick under her fingers. Moaning under her breath, she clawed at the side of the hotel with her right hand, watching as her fingertips curled over the top of the roof, then slipped away. Again and again she strained upward, and with each desperate stretch her left hand slid a little lower. There was a terrible moment when she knew she was going to fall, and she squeezed her eyes shut, pouring every ounce of willpower she possessed into making her left hand hold on.
The corner of the rooftop scraped against her wrist, then the heel of her hand, then her palm. Her fingers were still curled over the top of the roof, but they slid down, one awful centimeter at a time. Then, with a suddenness that shocked her, she fell free.
I'm going to die. There was just enough time for the thought to flash through her mind before she hit a hard plastic surface. She landed on her back, her arms splaying wide, her feet scrabbling for purchase, and the wall of the hotel seemed to sink. She was rising.
She twisted around, trying not to jeopardize her grip on the smooth surface beneath her, and found herself staring through the tinted windshield of the skimmer's cab into the face of a young woman. Liz had a quick impression of an oval face and pale blonde hair, the woman ignoring Liz completely, frowning in concentration as she worked the controls of the skimmer.
The skimmer trembled, Liz felt her hand slip, and she pressed herself flat on her back, holding her breath. The steelglass top of the pyramid was just above her, almost close enough to touch, and then the hood of the skimmer tilted forward. She screamed as she started to slide. The tilt increased, and she dropped.
She fell a meter or so, and landed on hands and knees on the roof of the hotel.
Her head whipped around, just in time to see the skimmer level off and back away. She could make out the hotel logo on the hood. The skimmer dropped, she scrambled up, and she stepped to the edge of the roof in time to see it land far below. Three men climbed out of the box, a
fourth figure emerged from the cab, and all four of them hurried to an opening at the base of the pyramid. A moment later they were gone.
Joss sat in a chair in the corner of her hotel room, sipping tea and watching a medic apply an astonishing amount of spray-gauze and antiseptic to Liz's body. The warm cup in her fingers and the aroma of the tea soothed her, kept her grounded, kept her from falling to pieces and sobbing on the floor. The walls on either side gave her a sense of security that even the four policemen in the room couldn't match. The fight was over, the attackers long gone, but her heart still thumped like she was running a marathon. She wasn't sure how much more she could take in the way of stress and shocks.
There were two uniformed police technicians taking blood samples and scanning every surface of the room, and a pair of detectives in tailored suits who pecked at data pads and asked a lot of questions. Joss had told them her story. At least, she thought she had. The interview had passed in a blur. It was only a few minutes ago, and she could barely remember it.
"I found a tooth," announced one of the technicians. He wore a dark blue uniform with "Dawn City Police" stenciled on the chest. He gave Liz a speculative glance. "Bring help if you ever need to arrest that one."
Liz inclined her head in acknowledgement of the compliment.
The two technicians closed their cases, conferred briefly with the detectives, and left. Joss closed her eyes, focusing on the scent of chamomile drifting up from her cup. They'll be gone soon. I can be alone soon.
"There," said the medic, "that should do it. You can take off the dressings this time tomorrow." He closed his case and stood. "Actually, you won't be able to help yourself. They'll itch like crazy. In the meantime, drink plenty of fluids and try to avoid strenuous exercise."
Liz nodded absently as the medic left. She looked weary but strangely relaxed, despite having half her face covered in beige gauze. Her hands were a mess, covered from her wrists to the middle knuckles of each finger. Both elbows were liberally coated in gauze, along with one knee and both feet. Additional bits of dressing showed here and there on her neck, legs, and arms. She still wore her bathrobe, and she heaved herself to her feet with obvious effort. "I'm going to go dress."