McMasters snorted. “And you expect me to know what that means?”
She shook her head, more at his lousy acting than in response. “Honestly? I expect you to fuck it up while Angelica del Rio learns that you paid Sergeant Gloria Settles to murder her brother, and then shot Settles to try to keep her quiet. After you fuck it up, I expect it’s a toss-up whether you make it off the station alive. I’d flip a coin, but you might take it.”
The small station had started to fill up with black uniforms. They stared at McMasters.
“Let me guess, you’ll lead us to her?”
“Hell, no. I want my money and my property. You can fight your own fights. After all, you picked them.”
“Captain, what if she’s telling the truth?” someone muttered. “We have to rescue her.”
McMasters shook his head. “It’s an obvious trap.”
“Why?” the Miner asked. “Because you shot to kill? I’ve been wondering what you’ve been telling your people here about that.”
“That was an accident. I would never intentionally harm any of my people, and I feel horrible about it.”
“Well. For the low, low price of fifty thousand credits, you can rescue your sergeant and prove it to them.”
“Captain...”
“I’m not… I’m not paying up front. We can’t trust a word she says.”
“All right,” she said. “Fair’s fair. I’ll take the rifle up front, and payment when you find her.” She pointed at him. “Dead or alive, though – you’ve already used a lot of time.”
“I’m not arming you!”
“I’m already armed,” she said in a quiet voice. Her hand hadn’t left her sword, but suddenly they all seemed to notice it at the same time. “And I never asked for ammunition. If I wanted to kill you all, I’d have done it.”
McMasters might have had a retort, but one of his crew had quietly returned from the back room carrying the Miner’s rifle in two hands. He shoved it into McMasters’ chest without saying a word and held it there, jaw set, until his boss took it. Trembling, the security chief removed the magazine, popped the round out of the chamber, and inspected it like it might have a bayonet or spare round or nuclear weapon hidden somewhere. At last, with obvious reluctance, he put it down on the side table.
“Talk,” he said, though it took him two tries to cough it out. All eyes were on her, eleven pairs plus McMasters. She wondered briefly just how much their numbers had dwindled, and who was just injured or off-duty.
The Miner described the chamber Mary had shown her two levels below: down a cargo elevator near the water reclamation, but out the back entrance and away to a storage room that was marked “radiation hazard” on a hand-written sign with “radiation” spelled wrong.
“There a guard?” She couldn’t tell who asked that.
“Two outside,” she said. “Didn’t get a good look inside. I wasn’t exactly welcome. But there’s probably not a lot of people in the know. Del Rio’s keeping her guest well away from the casino so the rank and file don’t know she’s alive. I guess she’s afraid someone might tattle.”
McMasters let that slide. Someone had brought up the security camera feeds down there, but found them spray-painted over. They argued quietly, and she didn’t try to follow it. They were discussing who should go and who should stay, and McMasters was strenuously denying that he should personally leave the safe confines of his hidey-hole, though he didn’t quite phrase it like that.
Six of the eleven guards suited up in full battle gear for the rescue: heavy-duty stuff, the kind she’d have been glad of on a couple missions. She frowned at it, not terribly happy to see that kind of armor, but there was nothing she could do about it. They went out the back door, and she watched the empty hatch for a while, idly wondering if they were taking the path she’d suggested or one of their own.
“Well,” she said. “You know where to send the money.”
She started to take her rifle, and McMasters’ hand came down on it. “Stay a while,” he said, and didn’t sound friendly.
The remaining security personnel sat uneasily, splitting their attention between her and various video feeds around the station. Some of them paced, some kept sitting down and then standing abruptly. The feeds looked like stills.
Minutes passed, and no one spoke.
“You’ve got something else of mine,” the Miner said conversationally. Wooden-faced, McMasters wordlessly put two fingers into his breast pocket. He glanced at the little bronze coin on its stubby green silk ribbon, and set it on the table between them with a click that seemed to echo in the room.
The Miner nodded and picked it up.
“You’ve got a lot of them,” McMasters said. Not a sneer, no emotion at all, but somehow the words stung her.
A guard barreled through the door and fell to the deck on hands and knees, panting and heaving. The others jumped to their feet, and when the Miner casually reached for her rifle, McMasters snatched it away.
“Ambush!” wheezed the guard. “Pinned down.” She collapsed face-down.
“Well, shit,” the Miner said.
“You four, move!” McMasters barked. “Get them out of there!” They jumped to grab helmets and shields and were gone. He had his sidearm trained on the Miner’s face, keeping well out of sword reach. “You. I guess you think you’re clever, don’t you? You thought we’d fall for that.”
“You kind of did,” she pointed out.
The last remaining guard was in the middle of helping up the fallen one when he yelped. The fallen guard dashed for McMasters, and at the same time the Miner dropped. The shot he squeezed off hit the barricade behind her and she heard it ricochet. The fake guard knocked the gun from his hand with her left forearm, then decked him with her armored right fist.
The Miner did her part by drawing her sword and dangling the tip in front of the last guard’s face. “Let’s us two sit this one out,” she suggested.
Mary had flung her helmet off and was genuinely panting with the exertion of beating McMasters. She kept it up for a while, and the security chief took it.
“Stop toying and just kill me,” he managed when she stopped.
“I’m not going to kill you,” she said. “I’m done with killing. You’re going to walk out that front door, right now. You’re going to take the berth you paid for on the ore hauler’s ship. And you are never, ever going to come back.”
He sneered up at her, a stream of bloody saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth. “So I can live if I run?”
“You can live if you run.”
She took a step to the side of the office and watched him. He got unsteadily to his feet, spat a gob of blood on the deck. He looked at the front door, then jagged and dashed for the armory in the back room.
Mary and the Miner made no move to follow. The lone guard sank into a chair. They heard a shriek from the back room, and then they heard Angelica del Rio say, “Hello, Tom.”
If anything more passed between them, the two women outside couldn’t hear it. There was only a long silence, and then Angelica spoke. “He was my only brother, you son of a bitch!”
The single gunshot echoed in the small space.
Angelica came out of the back room, her small caliber pistol still in her hand. She eyed Mary and the Miner.
“We clear?” Mary said.
“You were supposed to keep him from fleeing, not invite him to.”
“I changed my mind. He’s dead anyway. Are we clear?”
“We are far from clear. Him and me, we’re clear now. You and me, Feeney and me, the light from clear will take a thousand years to reach us.”
“We can settle that now if you like,” said the Miner.
“No,” said Mary. “I’m sick of blood.”
Angelica snorted. “It’s too late for that. This story’s been told a hundred times, and it only ever ends in blood.”
“I don’t believe that. What’ll it take to be even, Angelica?”
“Surrend
er and take what’s coming to you. Both of you. All of you. I’ve put up with too much shit from the Feeney family, starting with your idiot brother putting a fucking nuclear weapon in his chest and ending with you putting a target on my brother’s back. I don’t care who pulled the trigger, you got him killed, and we’re sure as hell not even for that. This is my station now. If you want peace, leave.”
She walked past them both, head held high, right out the front door. Mary sat heavily in the desk sergeant’s chair and put her head in her hands.
EXEUNT
The dockmaster had demanded, and gotten, a hefty bribe to leave his post, yet another debit against the Miner’s dwindling bank account. Mary entered when he’d left, hefting a single duffel bag that wasn’t even full. There was something pathetic about it. Khalid was late, and if he was much later they’d have to pay off Preston again.
The Miner and Mary stood awkwardly. They’d tried a couple different conversations in the hours since Tom McMasters died. Everything turned into Mary saying thank you, and that was the last thing the Miner wanted to hear.
“There’s a theatre at Station 36,” she offered. “You should go see a play when you get there.”
“A what?”
“A play. Like a live vid.”
Mary shook her head. “What do you mean, live?”
The Miner explained the concept of a playhouse, the concept of a pre-written script that wouldn’t change every time you watched, and then discovered that she needed to explain the concept of stage actors. Like con men who just get paid for practicing the con and never actually rip anyone off.
“So,” Mary said finally. “A bunch of people you don’t know are going to do something in a dark room for a couple hours. They won’t tell you what–”
“They don’t want to spoil it,” the Miner said, feeling the conversation get away from her. “They don’t want to give too many details, but they get the general idea across.”
“–and if you fork over some cash and promise to be quiet, they’ll pretend you’re not there and let you watch.”
The Miner frowned. “How hard did you have to work to make it sound that dirty?”
“I knew someone who used to do that when she needed money.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m not trying.”
The Miner tried not to laugh, but failed.
“Hi! What are we laughing about?” Khalid bustled over to them, sagging under the weight of his various bags. “Sorry I’m late, I tried to follow your directions and got a little lost. Why all the secrecy?”
“She’s running away from home,” the Miner said, and ignored the glare that got her.
“Oh!” Khalid said. “I wanted to run away and join the circus when I was a little boy.”
“This is kind of the other way around,” the Miner said, starting to enjoy the growing death glare.
“What I want to know is,” Mary said, “why are you staying?”
That was the conversation she’d been trying to avoid. “I started something,” she said. “I have to finish it.”
“It’ll finish itself. Even if the military won’t come in now, they’re just... flailing at each other. You’ve got a ship, let’s go.”
Khalid looked uncomfortable. “I can reverse your payment if you want. That still leaves me with the down payment the other guy gave me.”
“No,” the Miner said. She’d paid the balance of a thousand credits to get Mary the berth on his ship that was supposed to be for the dead sniper, and another thousand to get him to leave immediately and quietly before the cargo finished loading, and she wasn’t about to succumb to the temptation to get that back. “She’s going with you. And you’re both going now.”
“Mick...”
“No goodbyes. Go.”
“Mick.”
“If you cry I’ll kill you.”
“Goddamnit, I wasn’t going to.”
“Good. Leave.”
Khalid edged toward the open airlock. “I think she might want us to go.”
“Genius,” the Miner said, and started walking briskly away.
“I recorded the message for Granddad,” Mary called after her. “I’ll send it when we’re away from the station. I explained and left you out of it. I think... I think he’ll leave when he gets it. I hope he will.”
The Miner stopped, half-turned her head, and nodded once.
“I’ll hang around a while on Station 36.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mary went into the airlock then. Khalid started to punch numbers into the airlock control, then seemed to think of something. He caught up to the Miner, smiled apologetically, and said, “Hey, I was thinking some music might cheer your friend up. Maybe a singalong? Do you know if she likes Rogers and Hammerstein?”
The Miner grinned. “Mary loves Rogers and Hammerstein. Don’t let her tell you otherwise. Have a good trip.”
ANGELICA, ALONE
Angelica sat in her darkened office, casting unfocused eyes over the video feeds coating her office walls. Most of the exterior cameras were gone. The ones that remained only escaped destruction by virtue of showing the most boring possible views of the station. The interior cameras showed view after view of the rat’s nest that was once a casino.
She replayed the audio she’d been listening to, and stopped it again after, “I recorded the message for Granddad.” She was positive that Mary hadn’t noticed the bug on her clothes. Positive that this was a genuine conversation. Positive that Mary Feeney really was on the ore hauler that had just disengaged and was wending its way out through the nav arches. But she still felt tense, and empty.
The Feeneys were occasionally smart about encryption, but that didn’t help them if Mary had been wearing a bug when she recorded her message. Three messages, in fact, the first two aborted when Mary’s voice halted or trailed off. Angelica had listened carefully for hidden meaning, for some kind of trick. She’d listened over and over.
“Hello Granddad,” came Mary Feeney’s voice. “I’m sorry that you had to find out this way that I’ve left, but I decided that it’s time to move on. I’m on an ore hauler headed for Station 36. You can’t bring me back. But if you want, you can catch up. You once told me that the good grifter’s number one rule is to know when to make your exit. I’m making mine.”
It went on from there, and Angelica lost the track of it. The word “sister” came to her mind unbidden, and she felt like all the air had gone out of her. So much had happened in barely six months. So much had happened in only the last week. Everything she’d worked for and built had come crashing down.
The old man might take a buyout. Might even just leave; word was that he’d brought his yacht back from wherever it had been. Loaded down with supplies, supposedly. Maybe stocked up autonomously on another station. The rat always did have an exit plan or five. Making peace was a fool’s game. You couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. You had to let him feel like he’d won. Let him feel triumphant, and he’d accept any defeat. She’d managed his sharp-edged ego for years; with Mary out of the picture, and none of this “pass it on to my scions” pride to overcome, she could do that much.
The old man would go. She’d clean house, pick a new security chief, and make sure the Company Rep played ball. Deal with that swordswoman once and for all. She’d be at the top, alone. Alone.
She sat in the dark and remembered the chaos of the reception. Being swept back into the casino, being caged behind steel shutters with a mix of riffraff from all sides. Realizing, frantic, that she couldn’t get ahold of Raj. Gritting her teeth to abase herself, to call Feeney, to beg if necessary, just to find out if her brother was safe. Feeney finally answering just as her panic was overwhelming her, and that son of a bitch drunkenly hooting, “Oh, it’s only Angelica, whose brother is beastly dead.” That numb feeling of shock and loss, that burn of bitter anger, swept back over her. For a moment, she drowned.
Angelica wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hand
s and drew a ragged breath. She pulled up some old editing tools. She spoke a few lines, altered them and played them back. You couldn’t teach old dogs new tricks, no, but oh, you could teach them a lesson.
NO GOOD DEED
Takata’s smiling and humming was getting on her nerves. Herrera was smiling too, sort of. He was napping in his booth and looked happy. The idea that the two of them could both be happy in the same place at the same time seemed to disprove some law of physics.
“I’ll cut you,” the Miner told Takata, but he just laughed.
“You only act tough,” he chided. “That was a good thing you did, even if it was for Mary Feeney.”
“You don’t care how that leaves things between the old man and del Rio? One of them’s going to wind up on top.”
He shrugged and pushed his broom around. His annoying little smile stayed plastered on his face. “I care, sure. But it was inevitable. Besides, if you’re still here that means you aim on finishing up this mess. Even with that busted hand of yours, I don’t fancy their chances against you. Even if they team up! Which they won’t.”
“You don’t care that Angelica offed McMasters?”
That did put a dent in his smile. “I don’t like it, but McMasters was a slimeball. We all knew it, and, well…” He made a useless gesture, then got back to sweeping. “It makes Herrera happy, and he doesn’t smile much.”
“Well, gee, it’s Christmas come early.”
He waved dismissively. “You act so tough, but if you were anywhere near as callous as you act, you wouldn’t have paid that dumbass trucker two grand.”
She scowled into her beer. “Where’d you hear that? Khalid’s mouth is too big, that was supposed to be secret.”
“What’s it matter? You did a good deed, why don’t you accept some credit for it?”
“I just wanted her out of the way. That damned girl had a talent for screwing up my plans.”
“Is that so?”
She spun in her seat to see Feeney standing in the kitchen door. He looked dapper in his suit and leaned gently on the walking stick he held in both hands. His hooded eyes were ice.
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