by M. D. Cooper
She pivoted to clock the incoming target. No, there were two. Something about them told her that they weren’t petty amateurs like these five. This pair were the cleanup crew, the ones who did the real work.
Her eyes locked on them as they moved in fast, one angling for Trey's back and the other for her. Reece took two steps to the left, reached for her pulse pistol and waited for them to get into close range.
They either didn’t see her hand slide into to her jacket, or thought they could close the distance before she drew.
No chance dickheads.
Reece drew her pulse pistol and thumbed the safety off in one fluid motion. Her first shot hit one target center mass, her second nailed the other just as Trey’s opponent hit the ground.
Trey turned to observe the two she’d dropped with the pulse pistol. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “What’s the plan now?”
“You know this place better than I do. What’s the appropriate response to this situation?”
His response was immediate. “Getting the hell out of here.”
“Then let’s do that.”
They took off running.
CARDS AND MONKEYS
DATE: 04.03.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sophist’s Might, approaching Upper Wadish
REGION: Eashira System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“Hang on,” Reece said, frowning at her cards. “Is a full spread better than a grand sweep?”
She could think of better ways to spend her time, but here she was, in the living area on their luxury ship, playing a ridiculously complicated card game.
“Nope. The other way around. But if you won the last hand with a full spread, the attack power of your kings has a plus-five effect.” Trey didn’t look up from his own cards.
Curled up in the crook of her arm as she leaned on the table lay Dex, snoozing happily. The furry little lump was really starting to grow on her. Every now and then he twitched and made a little noise, then settled down when she patted him.
Cute little bugger.
Her cards were not nearly so endearing. “This game is complicated. How can people on Wadish think this is fun?”
“They don’t. I mean, someone must have, way back, but then King Sweep became a purely social thing. An excuse to meet up with people and have a social occasion, and a way of sizing up an opponent, too. It’s kind of an art form, and people judge one another’s character on how they play.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like Wadish.”
He laughed. “You’d prefer to brawl with people in the street to get a feel for who they are?”
“Well, yeah. People don’t lie when they fight. There’s no better way of finding out who they are.”
He shook his head, smiling. “Most people would find card playing to be far more civilized.”
“I have no doubt about that. But I learned a lot more about people in this system from that one fight than I’d find out from a week of playing cards.” She sighed at the dismal collection of cards he’d dealt her.
“How’s that? You can hardly judge an entire planet, much less an entire system, on the actions of seven people.”
“No, but I learned a lot about the place they live in. That there are people like those thugs and the more dangerous people they were working for. That people don’t freak out when they see such a thing unfolding on a popular downtown street, and instead move aside and mind their own business. That law enforcement didn’t immediately arrive, or track us down afterward. It tells me a whole lot about how people think, and how they treat one another.”
He smiled. “You have a point. You might not be the mush-for-brains I thought you were, though there are other ways of learning about people than taking a risk like that.”
“Sure. But they’d take a lot longer, and might not be as accurate. Besides, where I’m from someone like me has no choice but to take risks in order to survive.”
He moved a card in his hand from the right to the left. “Probably. But are you pretending that you don’t like taking risks? That you wouldn’t do it anyway?”
He was right, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. She set her cards down. “It’s past lunchtime. Should we go see what they’re serving in the mess?”
“I rarely say no to eating.” He set his cards down and pushed them all into a messy pile, then gently picked up Dex and settled him in a corner of the couch.
As they walked to the tiny mess hall, she changed her mind about playing King Sweep. It appeared to be an excellent way of learning about people after all.
* * * * *
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Reece stared at Trey.
“Nope. Totally serious.”
But with his deadpan expression, how could she know for sure? He had to be joking.
“Fine. Show me.”
After enjoying a good dinner, they’d returned to the living area between their bedrooms and found Dex awake and glad to see them. He chittered happily, moving from Trey’s shoulder to hers and back again, as if he couldn’t decide between them.
“All right. Dex!” He turned his attention to the monkey on her shoulder.
Dex made a high-pitched squeak in response.
“Over here, buddy. Come sit.” Trey sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to him.
Dex hopped down and sat in the spot Trey had touched.
“Good job. Now lay down.”
The monkey lowered himself to his chest, then rolled onto his side.
“Good boy!” Trey praised him. “Now, come sit.”
Trey tapped himself on the right shoulder.
Dex got to his feet and hopped up, settling himself in the proffered spot.
“Good job, buddy!” Trey scratched the monkey’s head and neck, while Dex closed his eyes and chittered happily.
“That’s great for how little time you’ve had,” Reece said. “It bodes well for you keeping him long-term. How’s the bathroom training going?”
“Better.” He didn’t elaborate, which worked just fine for her. She didn’t especially want to hear the details.
“What else are you going to teach him?”
“I was thinking of teaching him to freeze. You know, to stop and be still. If I could be sure he wouldn’t run off or get into trouble, he could go more places with us. I think he gets lonely when we leave him behind.”
“You could get him a friend,” Reece suggested. “A second ghost monkey, maybe.”
“Hah. No. One is plenty.”
She yawned. “I think I’ll go to bed. I want to be fresh when we arrive on Wadish.”
“Sure. See you in the morning.”
After changing into her pajamas, Reece remembered that she hadn’t checked in with Aunt Ruth since the day before. She sat up in bed and activated her overlays, interfacing with the ship’s communication system.
She selected the voice option and began her message. “Hi, Aunt Ruth. Just wanted to let you know I’m doing fine. The partner thing continues to improve. We got into a good fight last night, so that was nice. He’s got some serious moves. Between you and me, I’m not too upset to have that backing me up. He’s funny, though. I mean, yeah, he’s ha-ha funny, but he’s kind of quirky. He picked up this mouse monkey on Iagentci and has adopted him. Who does that?
“Anyway, I’m further out now, so don’t worry that my messages will be a little slower to reach you. Comm relays in this system don’t seem to prioritize outbound traffic, I bet they just dump the messages onto freighters to convey to the next system in their route. Either way, I’ll keep sending them daily. I hope you and Rio had a good day. I’ll be home before you know it.”
She dispatched the message and scooted lower in the bed so she could lie down with her head on the pillow. Only then did the vacuum of space seem to open up, threatening to swallow her into its cold nothingness.
“It’s not logical,” she told herself. “This part of space is no colder and no more unwelcoming than the space
around Akonwara. It’s all in my head.”
There was no reasoning with a phobia, though. Now separated from Trey and Dex, she felt like she’d been set adrift in the vastness of the cosmos.
Like the other nights since the Sophist’s Might made its FTL jump, sleep did not come easily.
* * * * *
A tiny hand patted Reece’s face. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at an extreme close-up of Dex’s little face.
She checked the time, still feeling tired, and was relieved to see that she had several hours of sleep still ahead of her. She’d tried sleeping in her room, but decided that the bed wasn’t comfortable. The couch in the living area had proven more conducive to sleep.
So much for never having sleeping problems—and now she had a monkey sitting on her chest.
Reece glanced around the room, but Trey wasn’t present. Maybe he’d left his door open so Dex could move around as he pleased.
She lifted the edge of her blanket, just as she did when Rio wanted to curl up with her. She didn’t really think Dex would climb in, but then he did.
Smoothing the blanket over him, she closed her eyes and drifted off once more.
* * * * *
A sense of claustrophobia woke Reece. As soon as she opened her eyes, she identified the source. A monkey was stretched across her face.
She turned her head and carefully slid Dex off. Immediately, she realized two things. First, that the lights had been turned on, and second, that Trey was standing at the far end of the sofa looking terribly amused.
She sighed, knowing she wouldn’t hear the end of this.
But Trey only asked, eyes twinkling, “Want some coffee?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” Her voice was coarse with sleep, but she felt surprisingly well-rested.
He stood, then returned with a cup. The rich smell of it called to her like a siren’s song.
She sat up, careful not to disturb Dex, and reached for it.
“How much will you pay me not to tell anyone about this?” Trey asked, sipping his own coffee.
She scowled at him and he laughed.
Dex twitched but didn’t wake.
“Man,” she said. “When he’s out, he’s out, isn’t he?”
“Seems like it. Unless you have something he’d like to eat. Then, magically, he wakes up. I think it’s his superpower.”
She snorted. “My cat Rio has a similar power.”
They sat for a few minutes, drinking their coffee companionably. When Reece felt sufficiently caffeinated, she cross-checked the ships estimated time of arrival against the current time.
“Two hours,” she noted. “Then we’ll see what Fitzmiller’s up to.”
“No problems with the tracker?” Trey asked.
“It’s live. He’s already in the planet’s atmosphere, so we’ll need to get closer for me to get details. But he’s there.”
“Or at least the tracker is,” Trey noted.
She frowned at him. “You think he’d tear his insides out just to remove it and send it to the planet to thwart us?”
“When you put it that way, no. Guess not.” He sipped his coffee.
She smirked, and they fell silent as they finished their beverages.
Careful not to disturb Dex, she stood, disposed of her cup, and stretched. A familiar sense of excitement had begun in the pit of her belly, rising up into her chest.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked Trey. “It could get wild. This is the part of a job where things can get tricky.”
“I’m on board. Let’s do this so you can go home and take care of your cat.”
She smiled. “And you can finish training your monkey.”
His forehead creased. “That sounded bad.”
“Yeah,” she admitted as she crossed the space to go back to her room so she could dress. “Pretend I said some other, much cooler thing.”
He gave her a thumbs-up. “Way ahead of you.”
Laughing, she closed the door behind her.
CORNERING PREY
DATE: 04.04.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sophist’s Might, approaching Upper Wadish
REGION: Eashira System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
Reece scowled at the holodisplay in their cabin as the ship made its final docking maneuvers with Upper Wadish—the station atop the planet’s space elevator.
“It looks like he’s still on the move.”
Trey fed Dex a nut and nodded. “Looks like. I bet he’s headed to Istanba—or somewhere close.”
“What makes you think that?” Reece asked Trey, looking back to see Dex climb from Trey’s shoulder to the top of his head.
Trey gestured at the tracker’s log data that sat on the right side of the holodisplay. “According to the pings, he came down the beanstalk—”
“Beanstalk?” Reece interrupted.
“Yeah, you know, the old story about Jack and the beanstalk…magical beans that created a stalk so high it went above the clouds?”
“Is that a real story? Were drugs involved in writing it?”
Trey shrugged. “How should I know? It’s got to be at least a thousand years old. Anyway, given how far he’s made it since he hit the surface, plus the maglev schedules, he’s on a train for Istanba.”
Reece pulled up the information on the city. It was middling in size, with a population of four million people. Trey was right about the maglev. The main line terminated there, with a few splinter lines radiating out into the countryside. None went anywhere terribly interesting.
“OK, Istanba is a pretty good guess.”
“Not a guess,” Trey said while pulling Dex off his head. “I’m deducing here.”
Reece shook her head. “Sure, so we’ll just have to book some maglev passages as well and trail after him.”
“You know,” Trey began hesitantly. “As much as I hate planetary re-entry in a shuttle, that would probably be a hell of a lot faster.”
“I already checked,” Reece replied. “There aren’t any shuttles from here to Istanba.”
“No, but there’s one from Kara Station.” Trey brought up the station’s details and shuttle times on the holo. “And there’s a transport leaving from Upper Wadish to Kara thirty minutes after we dock.”
Reece looked at the timing. “And a shuttle down from Kara four hours later. Nice work, Trey. That shaves a whole day off this trek.”
Trey gave her a wink. “I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”
* * * * *
They made it to the shuttle to Kara Station just as the attendants were getting ready to close the doors. Reece ignored their dirty looks as she and Trey rushed onto the vessel and collapsed into their seats.
Dex gave out a squeal, and she leaned down and peered into the monkey’s carrier on the seat between her and Trey. “Doing okay in there, pal?”
The small creature’s little face edged forward so he could peer out the cage-like opening. His eyes were big and sad.
“Once we get to the station, you can get out of there,” Reece told the monkey. It would be just a short layover on Kara Station, but at least Dex would have the chance to escape the carrier for a while.
Dex remained sad-eyed.
“Poor guy.” Trey pressed his lips together, looking sympathetic. “It’s kind of complicated to have him along like this. I can’t just crash some supervillain’s lab while holding an animal carrier.”
She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t. But the place is probably less supervillain and more corporation.”
“You think he’s taking the research to a rival company?”
She shrugged. “I think money is always the first thing to look at. It’s one of the universe’s biggest motivators. But Fitzmiller’s motivation remains an unknown. We have to consider all possibilities.” She tilted her head to one side. “What do you think? You’ve been on this job as long as I have.”
“I think he’s determined to do something. He’s put a lot of effort
into it, and taken a lot of risk. Whatever his end game is, it matters to him. Based on his background, I don’t see money as a driving force, unless something came up that he suddenly needed money for. But he’s lived a modest lifestyle, with no apparent desire for great wealth.”
Reece nodded slowly. “Good reasoning. So that branches off into two different thought trees. On one branch is the possibility that he does need money for something. A family member who’s in trouble maybe. Someone blackmailing him. An expensive medical treatment he might need. Each of those things presents something different to research. Then there’s the other branch, where his actions have nothing to do with money. What would that be, then? What would matter to him enough to do all this?”
“Science?” he guessed. “Some kind of massive recognition for his work? Or maybe it’s a philanthropic desire to serve humankind?”
“You’re thinking like a fixer,” she said approvingly. “He doesn’t have a background for philanthropy, but it’s always possible. Sometimes people in advancing years develop a sudden desire to make their mark on humanity, to give their life meaning.”
“Do you have a gut instinct about what he’s up to?” he asked.
“Nope. Not this time. There’s just not enough information. But reasoning out the possibilities puts you in the right frame of mind to look for clues to either rule a possibility out, or make one look more likely.”
He slanted her a teasing look. “You sure you want to tell me all this? What if we go into competition for jobs?”
She smirked at him. “I could tell you everything I know and I’d still be better. And I’ve barely told you anything. I think my employment is safe.”
“You just keep thinking that,” he deadpanned. “That’s how I’ll get you.”
When they arrived at Kara Station, Trey booked himself a slot in a nap room. Not that he needed a nap, it was so that Dex could get out of his carrier without running off across the terminal.