Dana measured the distance with her eye between Porthos and the narrow walkway and judged that she could just dart in behind the Musketeer, and not lose even a second’s running time in her pursuit.
As she scampered past, though, Porthos swung her arm up and around and accidentally smacked Dana in the face. Dana’s arm whirled around automatically to slap her away, and the two became tangled in Porthos’ coat.
For the second time in only a few minutes, Dana hit the ground of the plaza, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. As she tried to scramble up and keep going, she heard a horrible ripping sound, and was smacked back down.
Her face grazed on something against the cool artificial tiles, and she lifted her head to find that several diamante studs had detached themselves from Porthos’ belt and were now embedded in her cheek and neck, burrowing themselves happily into their new home.
“Thief!” thundered Porthos, lunging at Dana. It was alarming to see quite so much cleavage bearing down upon her, and the last thing she wanted was another fight.
“Ow!” Dana replied. “Take them back, I don’t want them!” That was it, then. The pilot in the violet flight suit was long gone, and Dana wasn’t sure she even had enough anger left to confront her, not after this. Maybe Paris Satellite was trying to tell her to stay out of fights.
Paris Satellite was not subtle.
“What do you want to go thundering around like that for?” grumbled Porthos, wrenching the studs back with far more force than necessary. They made a popping sound as they came free of Dana’s skin. “What are you, twelve?”
“You hit me first,” Dana protested, and one of Porthos’ friends laughed.
“She has a point, Pol,” noted another.
Porthos leaned her heaving bosom even more threateningly towards Dana, who wondered if it had been registered as a deadly weapon. “Want a chance to hit me back, sunshine? Since you’re so keen on making friends.”
Ah, so what Paris was actually telling her was that she needed to get into more fights. Without subtlety. Wonderful.
“1600 hours, behind the Luxembourg,” Dana said with a sigh.
Porthos smiled, straightening her turban. When she relaxed, she looked like a satisfied cat. “The very thing, pet,” she said, as if they were arranging a coffee date with shoes and gossip, or whatever it was that girlfriends did together.
“Wear your second best coat,” Dana suggested and took off before the Musketeer could swipe at her. A burst of laughter followed her as she ran off up the walkway, and she was certain it wasn’t “Pol” Porthos they were laughing at.
This place made her feel like a twelve-year-old, all scraped knees and awkward elbows. She was starting to hate Paris.
It was no use running. The walkway was empty, and Dana trudged along it, keeping her eye out for her prey despite having little hope left. Other walkways branched off from this one every twenty metres or so, and the pilot from Meung could have vanished along any of those branches.
Dana stopped walking altogether and let the moving floor beneath her feet hum her forward, through the echoing tunnel. Signs suggested that this was a good direction to go in order to find lodgings, though she had no idea which hotels or boarding levels were any good, and which were likely to suck up her credit under false pretences.
She had been an idiot. A double idiot. Not only was she jobless and homeless, but now she was expected to fight two of the Royal Musketeers. Bare knuckles were too much to hope for – and she wasn’t convinced she could take either of them – no, it had to have been Duel they hinted at.
Duel, the pilot’s drug of choice. That had gone so well for her last time.
Dana’s dreams of the life she would build on Paris Satellite had been royally fucked over. At this rate, she’d be on a shuttle home with her brain bleeding out her ears by supper time.
The walkway hummed directly into another brightly lit plaza, smaller than the other, though with just as many people hanging around. Lots of pilots here too, though there was a higher percentage of civilians as they got further from the space dock. This was a recreation hub, with all manner of virtual sports and games being played out in the open.
In the centre of the plaza, a sonic fountain burst forth with light and sound. Dana felt a ping in the visitor’s stud she had been issued, and her senses flooded with options. She could play reality tennis, conduct an imaginary orchestra, or throw herself into an anti-grav well to practice her swimming strokes. Oh, look, Prince Alek’s Zero-G TeamJoust exhibition match was going to be televised live shortly, and she could hire an implant to insert herself virtually into the body of his team’s android opponents.
Everything cost credit points, and the money left over from the sale of the Buttercup wasn’t going to magically increase any time soon. She had to find lodgings, not screw about here.
Still, if the Duel burned out enough of her synapses, Dana would either be dead or in need of hospitalisation by the end of the day shift. In that case, her lack of pre-paid lodgings would be a feature, not a bug.
A cluster of Musketeers in their bright blue-and-whites lounged near the sonic fountain with a couple of fellows in Pigeon grey, laughing and chatting together. Dana felt a tug on her heart. That should be her. It was all she had ever wanted, since she was old enough to understand her mother’s madcap stories.
One for all and all for one, and all that bullshit. Everything she’d ever believed about Musketeer camaraderie was here, illustrated in blue and white.
Aramis, another of the pilots from Treville’s office, stood head and shoulders above her friends, conversing with ease. She was so graceful and clever-looking, exactly the kind of Musketeer that Dana longed to be. Unlike Porthos, Aramis had not succumbed to vanity away from her ship – her hair still remained tightly pinned on top of her head, as if she was ready to launch at a moment’s notice.
Athos was obviously a ruffian with pretensions to aristocracy – or an aristocrat with pretensions to ruffianity, Dana wasn’t sure which – and that Porthos woman was a complete preening egotist. But Aramis was the sensible one, by the looks of it. Sensible enough to broker peace between her friends and the idiot Gascon who had an appointment to duel with them in a few hours?
Dana made up her mind to try. She was no coward, but the last thing she wanted was to get in a pissing contest over her pride.
The pilot from Meung had taught her that.
As Dana approached the friendly group, she saw that Aramis had her boot firmly on a photosilk that must have fallen from the pocket of her flight suit. No one would knowingly tread on a silk like that – it risked damaging the fibres, and like everything else on Paris Satellite, a replacement would not come cheap.
That was her in.
“Hello again,” Dana said politely, stopping a little away from the group as if she had only just seen them. “We haven’t exactly been introduced, Captain Aramis. You’ve dropped something there.”
Aramis resisted Dana’s friendly overture with a chill in her voice. “You’re mistaken,” she said firmly. Her smoky eyes gave no sign that she even recognised Dana from earlier in Treville’s office.
Oh, space dung, what had Dana done now?
It was too late for her to take it back, to keep breezily walking as if she hadn’t meant to hover. One of the Pigeons gave Aramis a friendly shove, and snatched up the silk which proved to display a collection of intimate images, each fading into another, of a very attractive white woman with platinum-blonde hair. In lingerie.
“Aramis you devil,” he said, choking with laughter and waving the photosilk around to make sure everyone got a good look. “When you said you were friends with Captain Dubois, we didn’t know you meant Just Good Friends.”
Aramis sent Dana a fierce look, as sharp as a slap. “It’s not mine,” she said, grabbing the silk back. “It obviously belongs to Dubois, so I’ll give it back to her first chance I get. She won’t want you sex fiends staring at her Dyson spheres.”
“I bet yo
u’ll give it to her,” snorted the other Pigeon, and most of her friends fell about in fits of laughter.
One Musketeer, a sleek fellow with his head shaven clean, gave Aramis a dirty look. “Or I could pass it on to her husband,” he said pointedly. “Since he’s my engie.”
Marriage contracts, Dana remembered. On the outer stations, such things were treated casually, as they had been in the olden days. But Paris Satellite was the hub of ‘civilisation.’ Church opinion counted for a lot, especially since the current Regence’s rise to power. The Cardinal had supported the Regence’s claim to the solar system over that of her three brothers purely because she swore the same public commitment to righteous morality that the Regences before her had so dramatically tried and failed to maintain.
Faith, obedience and the sanctity of contracts. You could marry anyone you liked in this solar system, for as long as you liked – even aliens, if that was your kink – and when your contract ran out it was no harm, no foul. But publicly breaking a marriage contract before its time was up was enough to ruin anyone, rich or poor, Regence or Musketeer.
A public commitment to making divorce all but impossible could not help but create an excessive rise in adultery – that stood to reason. But the political climate right now meant that what went on behind closed doors was enough to get you fired, publicly humiliated, or even arrested, if you were careless enough to be caught.
Dana had just outed two complete strangers as adulterers. So much for not making today any worse.
“Don’t worry,” Aramis said, her hands stiffly in her pockets. “I’ll take care of it. Discreetly.”
Her friends cuffed her around the shoulders, continuing to give her a hard time, but Aramis arched her neck at them and laughed it off, teasing them back about their own scandals.
Dana tried to sneak away, agonised with embarrassment. How was she supposed to know that the silk would cause so much trouble? She should never have left Gascon Station. There was no welcome for her among the Musketeers, not in the way had craved since she was a kid sitting on her Mama’s knee, listening to stories about madcap adventures and eternal friendship.
She did not belong here. Treville had made it clear there was no place for her. Why couldn’t she get it into her own thick skull?
Dana tensed as she heard sudden boot steps behind her and then an arm hooked painfully around her neck.
“Well, that was a fine little scene,” Aramis whispered, smiling through her teeth as if she and Dana were genuine BFFs. Her arm, which might look casually friendly to anyone else, squeezed tighter. “Who sent you after me, baby doll?”
“I’m so sorry,” Dana whispered back, unable even to pretend she was not miserable. “I didn’t think.”
“Thinking was most definitely absent,” said Aramis, flicking Dana in the ear with one beautifully manicured fingernail. “Next time you see someone blatantly trying to hide evidence with their boot, how about you leave them to it? Unless you’ve got an arrest warrant for me. Have you an arrest warrant? You have to tell me if I ask you directly.”
“No!” Dana insisted, shocked at the very idea.
“Not a Pigeon, then. Or one of the Cardinal’s Hammers?”
“I don’t work for anyone yet, I -” Dana paused. “Hammers?”
“Sure, Sabres in the air, Hammers on the ground. Blunt instruments, all. The Cardinal has eyes everywhere, and wouldn’t she just love to secure an arrest warrant for a Musketeer. We’re loyal to the royal family above and beyond, you understand.” Aramis blinked, and gazed directly into Dana’s eyes as if she was searching for the answers of the universe.
Dana stared back, unblinking and miserable. She had no anger left. She had a horrible feeling that she might cry for the first time since she was twelve years old.
“All right,” Aramis said after a moment. “I believe you. Just an idiot kid, then. Fresh off the shuttle?”
“I’m from Gascon Station,” Dana said sullenly.
“Gascon? Oh Lord, isn’t that somewhere near Freedom? I didn’t think anyone lived out that far.” Aramis shook her head, and the arm around Dana’s shoulder relaxed into a less threatening gesture. Almost a hug. “Right, then. You’re new, and you’re stumbling around like a kitten on absinthe. I get it. I sympathise. Sadly, I have a moral obligation to do something about you.”
Dana closed her eyes and groaned. She could see where this was going.
Aramis was still talking, her voice musical and as lovely as the rest of her. “You think we don’t see baby dolls like you every other week, prancing off the shuttle all bright-eyed and innocent, thinking the only way to get ahead is to take a Musketeer scalp? We live and die on our reputations, and you have just taken the reputation of one of the finest pilots in our fleet and dragged it through the mud.”
“I’m sorry,” Dana burst out. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
Aramis rolled her eyes. “Not me, you dingbat. Captain Dubois, one of the finest pilots and most indescribably beautiful women in the history of Paris Satellite. Who is in no way my secret girlfriend.” She released Dana, and patted her on the head. “I’m going to have to fight you.”
“Somehow I thought you might,” sighed Dana. This was how the day was to play out, then. No escaping her fate.
“I know an excellent and secluded little place, behind the Luxembourg on Level 5. Do you know it?”
“I think I can find my way,” said Dana. “I’m free at 1700 hours.” In a manner of speaking.
“Excellent. Good chat.” Aramis gave her a mighty thump on the back with surprising strength. “Nothing personal, baby doll. But, well. You pissed me off.”
There was a lot of that going around.
5
The Mending of Athos
The Luxembourg on Level 5 turned out to be a Church of All. Dana had not expected that. Was it seemly to take brawling drugs and play at duels with brain-altering spaceship games so close to a house of God?
Then again, the Musketeers were up for all manner of other vices and sins, why not add sacrilege into the mix?
The Luxembourg was a lavish installation compared to the cathedral booths Dana had seen down on the main shopping plazas: a pure white structure behind a storage bay, with bright plexi-glass windows which flicked through a rotation of holy images: the solarnauts, star fields and other images from early astro-travel. There were no pointed roofs or gables in space station architecture, but the windows told you this was a place of worship.
The tourist visa stud in her collar sparked into life as Dana approached the church, informing her that if she registered her palm print at the door, the church would present her with her own personalised religious imagery, based on past preferences.
For a moment, feeling lost and far from home, Dana considered it. But she was about to take part in a highly illegal ritual, so now was not the time to be leaving a trail of her presence on Paris Satellite.
Later, there could be absolution, and comfort. For now, she had to keep alert and be ready to run if there was trouble.
Trouble other than three Musketeers waiting to burn her synapses out, obviously.
Dana had assumed the spot behind the Luxembourg that all three Musketeers were so keen to use for duelling purposes would be a spare storage space, or some other generic empty room with metal walls. Instead, she found that the corridor behind the church opened out into a meadow.
Grass. Trees. Sky. Tiny fucking daisies bursting up out of the alarming greenness of it all.
Possibly the brain damage had kicked in before she even took the dose of Duel?
But no, as Dana walked across the soft, spongy grass, she spotted the bleeding edges of the scenery. The colour degenerated into random pixels here and there, making an occasional ragged flaw in an otherwise perfect design. This meadow was Artifice all the way, the same technology they used to make churchgoers feel that they were stepping into the sacred building of their choice.
Everything about satellite or station life came
down to two things: conservation of space, and the sanity of residents. Artifice helped with both, though as each generation passed, it became less and less necessary to mimic dirt-side conventions with any degree of accuracy.
When humans first came to live among the stars, they had very conventional ideas about what they needed to retain their sense of cultural identity: the romanticisation of grass and sky, for example. The first artificial environments had been too accurate; literal uncanny valleys that made the station residents feel more homesick than ever. Fantastical and creative artificial environments became popular precisely because they weren’t a pale imitation of “home.’
Dana had never before walked across an Artifice environment that was trying so hard to look planet-authentic. The rec ground that ran across the top of the power plant in the centre of Gascon Station had been hacked by generations of teenagers, so the sky was a multi-coloured jumble of graffiti tags and dirty jokes, and the ground only replicated grass during the annual Locals vs. Incomers cricket match. The rest of the time it displayed random artistry, as far as you could get from a plain old-fashioned dirtside landscape.
No one ever wanted to replicate an image of the planet of Freedom with its ice and rock and engineering installations. Dana had, however, lost her virginity in an underwater simulation of the ocean world of Truth, so she did understand something of the planetary appeal, if only as a novelty.
Perhaps Paris was different. This was the Honour and Valour end of the solar system. There might be more residents here who craved white bobbly clouds in a clear blue sky, and grass.
This meadow had to be a Valour simulation – from what Dana had heard, that terraformed planet was obsessed with recreating imaginary histories from the olden days of Honour, the planet of origin, in the days before the Warming turned even the northern hemisphere into a place of desert and bushland and dry creek beds. No one had lived on Valour further back than than eight generations, so it seemed unlikely that it would have genuine stone circles – did that make this Artifice meadow a simulation of a simulation? Or another example of humans kidding themselves they belonged anywhere but the stars?
Musketeer Space Page 4