Well, the fake name didn’t last long. She studied the pattern in the tablecloth, white like his suit. “I don’t find pleasure in harming people. Our goal is independence from both Earth governments.”
Shiro grinned. “Of course.”
She kept quiet as the waiter returned with a violet-black drink full of white globules. Her first sip hit her in the teeth like a police baton of licorice. Ack! She cringed.
“Not what you were expecting?” Shiro sipped a glass of what looked like watery milk.
“It’s… been a while. Stronger than I remember.” She cleared her throat and took a few breaths. “Our movement was started by people who had spent almost twenty years attempting their mission through peaceful means, but you know how politicians are. Unless blood spills, they ignore you.”
“So you’re committed to the cause?” He flicked at the rim of his glass.
What is this, an interview? “I’m having some doubts about the methods, but the cause I believe in.”
“What’s that old adage about omelets? Breaking a few eggs.”
She held her response as the waiter approached, trailed by orb-bots carrying plates. Two empty square dishes landed first, one in front of each of them, followed by a single large platter of raw fish in neat slices over a bed of white filaments. The waiter placed trays for soy sauce on either side and folded his arms in front of him. The floating machines whirled about the waiter before zipping away.
“Looks wonderful,” said Shiro.
I’ve eaten worse. She smiled. “Thank you.”
The waiter bowed again, and walked off.
“I’m sorry.” Shiro lowered his voice. “Someone close to you was hurt. I can see it in your eyes.”
She snagged a hunk of orange fish striated with pale lines. “My father.” Her right shoe slipped from her heel, dangling on her toes. “I was eight.”
“I offer my condolences. How did he get caught up in the Martian independence issue?”
Risa shrugged. “How should I know? He was a colonel in the UCF military. Other soldiers kicked in the door and killed him. They would’ve killed me too if he hadn’t put his body over the vent.” Prodding chopsticks flipped the hunk of fish over and over in the bath of soy sauce. “No one knows a damn thing. I was much older before I learned he wanted Mars to be free.”
Shiro finished a mouthful of shrimp and dabbed a napkin to his lips. “Curious that you spend most of your time in UCF territory then.”
“It’s not my idea. The ‘boss’ made that call. It’s not really much of a choice. ACC cities are more like prison camps. I can’t imagine having to live there.”
He thrust his lower lip out, tapping his cheek with one finger for a moment. “That would explain why your people attack them more frequently. I suppose it’s bad politics to soil one’s own bed.”
“I”―she uncrossed her legs, tired of the strange position―“I don’t doubt for one second that Mars deserves to be her own world, but I’m not so sure that killing people helps us.”
“So, the infamous Risa Black has a soft spot?” He plucked a piece of white tuna from the central plate. “Again, you keep me off balance.”
She shifted in the chair. “You requested a meeting, in person, with me. Sounds like you’re pretty interested in my soft spot.”
Shiro almost choked on his fish. Once he gathered his composure, he gestured his chopsticks at her. “You are not one to mince words. That is a trait I find most admirable. I am willing to offer my support to your cause, however, I have one small request.”
“Not happening. I’m not a pro―”
“No.” He met her withering stare without flinching. “I would never insult you in such a manner.” Joviality returned to his face. “What I ask is that your efforts remain focused on the ACC for the time being. I have numerous business interests in the UCF, and if rumor were to leak that I am entertaining an affiliation with your people, it would be ruinous. I need to see how well your group can keep secrets.”
Risa thought of Raziel. The angel. The keeper of secrets. A wide smile spread across her face as her appetite returned. “No one will know.”
istant thrumming lulled Risa into a state of restful calm. Neither awake nor asleep, she peered out from a nest made of cloth scraps and plastic trash. Her bare chest caught weak light from the ventilation slats at her right, seeming to glow in the dark as she extended her arms high and stretched. Charred doll heads rolled away as she sat up. When they had been whole and unburned, she had named them. The flames that had taken Risa’s innocence also stole their identities. She frowned at the plastic faces that used to be her ‘friends.’ A child talking to dolls was normal, a grown woman doing it would be Cat-5… Cat-6 if they believed she’d hurt someone. Everyone thought Raziel a figment of her damaged mind. Sometimes, she wondered if the dolls would start talking to her too. If they did, would she go with it or at last accept the truth that she had cracked?
Raziel can’t be a delusion. Delusions don’t open doors.
She brushed auburn hair from a cherubic plastic face. The day she’d snuck back into her old home to retrieve them played through her memory. It might’ve been a week after they’d killed her father. A couple of MDF troops argued with the soldiers by the door, fighting over who had jurisdiction on the scene. No one noticed the little girl crawl in via the vents. Where would she be now if they had? Would they have killed her to finish what they started? Would they have ignored her?
Risa let the head plop back into her bedding and scowled.
Why did I bother? All these things do is remind me of a life stolen from me.
Light from Garrison’s office created a pattern of lines on the metal two feet away. Coarse fabric and smooth steel engulfed her. The ballistic stealth armor made for a serviceable but squishy pillow. As scary as it was to be out of it, her skin needed to breathe when she slept. The ductwork provided the security of an old, familiar home. Sure, she no longer had to bunk with the others. Anyone who volunteered to plant bombs got a suite on ‘Death Row.’ No one expected people in those rooms to stick around long.
Warm air drifted through the shaft, adding to the forces preventing her from moving. It had been so long since rest had come without the tax of awful dreams, she wanted to eke out a little more. Her cybernetic eyes were in sleep mode, providing no heads-up display or functions beyond normal sight. The time was anyone’s guess. She tucked her arm under her head, squeezing herself into a tighter ball, a naked babe amid a womb of unwanted junk.
A man’s face appeared in the slats. “Sir, I thought I heard something move.”
Her world turned red as a portable light found her closed eyes. She opened them, two points of violet peering out of a tangled mass of debris.
“You got a big-ass rat in your vent,” said a man.
She raised a hand to guard her eyes. “Get that light out of my face.”
Despite the fatigue in her voice, the man jumped at hearing her. He fell out of sight amid the clatter of a flashlight rolling away.
“Calm down, Kendrick. It’s Risa,” said Garrison.
Boots squeaked on the floor. “What the hell is she in there for? She’s got a private room now.”
Garrison moved past the vent, retrieving the light. “Don’t worry about it.”
She sat up in a shaft barely tall enough to permit it. After another stretch, she unrolled the flexible armor and wriggled into it. Even with a door that might be lockable, they could still find her in a room. The vents felt safer. After fastening the suit up to her jawline, she put on her boots and weapon harness. By the time she emerged from the duct, the two men had finished discussing a small hit-and-run raid on an ACC supply shipment.
Garrison dismissed Kendrick, shaking his head at Risa as she put the vent cover back. “I was wondering when you would check in. Is everything all right?”
She went to him, studying the floor. “Fine, why?”
“You usually sleep way off in the middle of deep, dark nowhere.” He put a hand on
her shoulder. “You’re in my vent like a stray cat looking for a home but afraid to come inside.”
“Up here”―she tapped her head―“I know this place is safe, but I can’t. The fire…” She looked up at him. Great running cracks split the walls of her stoicism. “I’m tired of being hunted.”
“They’ll never find you.” He gave her a brief, fatherly hug and patted her before gesturing at his terminal. “You’ll be fine. There’s no one on Mars good enough to catch you. Heck, they can’t even find this―”
Risa put a finger on his mouth. “Don’t say it.”
He tugged her arm down, grinning. “Superstitious?”
She gave him a flat look. “I talk to an angel, don’t I?” The face he made brought her to scowling. “I know it sounds crazy, but if it was all in my head, how could he tell me things I have no way of knowing?”
Garrison poked the screen as she sat on the edge of his desk. “I don’t know. How did it go with Murasame?”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought I’m Cat-6 myself. Some of the things Raziel has told me have been true, and there’s no way I could have had any of it buried in my subconscious. The warning I got with Tamashī, how do you explain that? She believes me, you know. She’s even heard of Raziel.” She sauntered over to his desk and helped herself to half a mug of his lukewarm coffee. “It went fine. He’s interested in helping us, but wants us to stop action against UCF targets for the interim.”
One eyebrow went up. “Backlash?”
“He’s afraid his situation on Earth may deteriorate if he’s connected to us.” She stared at the cup for a moment of silence. “Dad?”
He looked at her, speechless.
“Do you think if we got the ACC off Mars, we could get rid of the UCF with politics?”
The chair groaned as Garrison let his weight fall into it. He continued staring at her with a mixture of sadness, alarm, and confusion.
Risa lifted her head and met his stare. “I’m sorry. I should’ve called you that a long time ago.”
Garrison lifted his eyebrow. “You wouldn’t just be trying to make me feel guilty about sending my daughter off on dangerous missions, would you?” He winked.
She bit her lower lip. “Maybe a little. What am I blowing up this time?”
Shock lasted only as long as it took him to realize the email from Denmark hovered two feet to her left on his terminal. He laughed. “A few miles southwest of Secundus lies a mostly abandoned military installation.” Garrison raised his hand. “I know what you’re going to say. This won’t bother Murasame. We have it on good authority that they’re using this installation to house a dedicated unit with the express purpose of coming after us.”
Risa gasped. “Secundus is one of the oldest cities on Mars. It’s all underground. There’s almost nothing there anymore but slums, low-wage jobs, brothels and a couple of heavy equipment plants.”
“The installation isn’t close enough to Secundus City to threaten the people, but the only way you can get under it is via the city’s air ducts. We have to knock that place out. The intelligence I’ve seen indicates at least one of the individuals involved with ordering your father’s death is there.”
Her posture collapsed into that of the broken doll. “What’s the plan?”
“Well,” said Garrison, leaning back. “First, we get you on a shuttle.”
A faceless crowd flowed around Risa on both sides. Head down, she drifted among them as invisible as one could be in plain sight. Victory Square occupied the heart of Secundus City, a seven-story-deep pit of humanity with shimmering neon walls studded with dozens of shops burrowed into the rock. Metal walkways and stairs lined four faces of the cube, full of shoppers, homeless, and anyone unlucky enough to be there.
She shot a mournful glance at those navigating the elevated walkways. We’re ants in a farm now. Keep us busy buying and consuming. Her gaze drifted to a young girl wearing strips of light in strategic places, a hologram gyrating at the door of a boutique. Watch the pretty girl dance. Don’t pay attention to the government. Risa scowled and looked down at her dusty boots. Do any of these people even want freedom? I doubt they’d know what to do with it.
A twenty-foot angel shaped from indirium had once dominated the area with its metallic grandeur. Now, layers of scrap and shipping cartons concealed its form, spaces where society’s unwanted made their nests.
Greedy faces peered out from the dark blue-grey metal, staring at the young woman keeping her head down. The weight of their appraising eyes made her feel like a mark. They would steal money or sex, or both. She let her head loll to the left and flashed an expression of detached disinterest. The violet glow in her eyes sent recognition into the thieves’ minds. Anticipatory leering became respectful nods, and they receded into the mess of plasfilm cartons and tattered tarpaulins.
No one dared cross paths with a tí-zhèn.
Risa grumbled to herself, as annoyed with her reputation as she was grateful for the protection it provided. That word repeated in her thoughts in an endless series of different voices, the street term for a person (often female) who’d been loaded up with speedware and implements of assassination. According to lore, she’d take the life of anyone who came within claw reach for offenses as trivial as looking at her. They didn’t have to know she felt guilty about killing.
She left the square, joining a line to shuffle through an MDF checkpoint as calm as any other citizen. The three MDF officers monitoring the scanners ignored her. Their flat-faced, dull crimson helmets featureless save for four tiny lenses, two at each temple. The soldiers couldn’t see her, nor could the citycams.
Raziel protects me.
The large passage exiting the courtyard narrowed to a two-lane street. Some fool on Earth many generations ago planned for the use of cars here. She shook her head, laughing at the thought of it. Too many people walked on the path designed for vehicles, too many storefronts encroached into the road. Maybe in Arcadia, the aboveground jewel of UCF Mars, driving wasn’t such a ludicrous idea. That city resembled the ones on Earth: huge, rotten on the inside, and controlled by a tiny fraction of the population who had no connection to the rest of it. Elysium City started off like Primus, mostly underground, but terraforming and atmosphere fields caught up to the construction, and it spread over the surface as well.
Several streets and a side alley later, the air filled with the mixed fragrances of silt, salt, and broth, emanating from a noodle bar carved out of the wall. The bomb maker wanted to meet in the open this time. How did Garrison talk Denmark into leaving Primus? Holographic Chinese characters flickered and danced over an awning, tinting most of the one-lane passage in shades of blue and green. She drifted among the unending crowd on her way closer. Hot, steamy air washed over her face as she settled into one of six stools facing the counter.
A young Asian girl, perhaps ten years old, busied herself wrapping a huge sheet of handmade dumplings. At the sight of Risa’s approach, she flashed a big smile and bounced up to the counter. She had the pure white skin of a Marsborn, as did the older man working the wok behind her. Smears of various sauces, some in recognizable handprints, painted her well-worn smock. The girl seemed exhausted, but happy at the same time. An old man in the back, grandfather perhaps, yelled rapid words at her in another language. The word ‘Chinese/Mandarin’ appeared at the bottom of Risa’s vision, next to a prompt: ‘Translate?’ A swipe of her eyes pushed it away to the side. The girl gave Risa an expectant look and waited all of two seconds before giggling.
“Morning, lady. You are hungry, yes?”
How many people will die before we are free? She looks so innocent. She has no idea who I am. Hungry? No, not really. “Number four, please.”
The girl darted away from the counter and grabbed an empty bowl from a stack as tall as she was. She made her way along a shelf, selecting various ingredients from several bins as she moved to the right: pinkish-white lumps, scallions, noodles, bok choy, a pinch of dry seasoning, and a few ladl
es of broth. The younger of the two men muttered something and patted her on the head when she passed and vanished into the back end of the kitchen. Two minutes later, they exchanged smiles as the girl returned through a cloud of fishy steam. She set down the bowl and gestured at the transaction reader embedded in the counter.
“You want any drink?” The girl tilted her head.
“Iced green tea, please.” Risa fished out her NetMini.
The girl stood on tiptoe and poked her finger at a holographic panel full of Chinese characters and pictures of soup bowls. After three beeps, she pointed at the mini and scampered to a cooler cabinet a few meters away. Risa ran her device over the reader and it chirped. She took a moment to add a tip of twenty credits on a fourteen-credit meal and tucked the device back in its pouch on her weapons harness.
Risa gathered the provided chopsticks and teased at the surface, dragging noodles around while watching the unidentifiable lumps inflate back into shrimp.
An enormous man in a long coat emerged from the crowd and more leaned on the stool to Risa’s left than sat on it. The girl greeted the new arrival, who ordered beef noodles.
After a minute of stirring her almost-shrimp, she made eye contact via his reflection on the drink cabinet’s glass door. A series of buckles along the left edge of his black coat seemed ready to burst at any moment from the mass of muscles beneath them. Tiny, round sunglasses hid his eyes, and his brush-cut of white hair tinted azure in the light of the sign above them. Krause looks different in the light. Not as old.
“I didn’t really expect he would show up.” Risa gathered noodles on her chopsticks.
“Mmm.” Krause paid for his food and took two huge mouthfuls.
Risa shuddered. Hers was still too hot to do anything but take tentative bites before dropping the food back into the broth. He smiled as two clear udon noodles slithered through his lips and vanished.
“My employer is concerned at the sudden absence of your associate.”
“He had another commitment.” Risa leaned forward on her elbows, still stirring the soup. “I was worried a meeting out in the open might’ve been a set up. Guess that makes us even.”
Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1) Page 14