Ballistic

by Marko Kloos

  “Oh, yes. Papa’s loyal company muscle. I think he’ll be there forever. He’s too grumpy to die.”

  They smiled at each other across the table. He was studying her face, trying to reconcile it with its younger version just like he had done before in their Mnemosyne meeting, and he knew by the way she looked at him that she was doing the same.

  “How did you slip your leash?”

  “Slipping the leash,” Solveig said. “Funny, that’s what I always call it, too. Maybe I got it from you when I was young. When you showed me how to do the sensor hack so we could get into the kitchen at night.”

  “I had almost forgotten about that,” he said with a smile.

  “I made good use of that knowledge for years after you left,” she said. “But Cuthbert is easier to fool than Marten. Let’s just say he’s expecting me to be doing something entirely different right now and leave it at that. You don’t want to know the details.”

  “Fair enough,” Aden said. “What kind of business is Papa having you do on Acheron?”

  “Our contracts with Hanzo are running short. He sent me to get better terms for graphene composites. And use our Alon contract as leverage.”

  “And how is that working out?”

  “They don’t want to concede that we’re not coming to them as beggars anymore. But they’ll come around. It’s a seller’s market right now. And they can’t afford for us to take their Alon quota and sell it to their competitors. Which we will if they make us, even if it costs us our top graphene supplier.”

  She shook her head. Then she tapped the compad that was built into the table in front of her.

  “But I don’t want to use our time to bore you with corporate theater. Trust me, I’ve had a hard enough time staying awake through it this morning. Do you want to order some food while we’re here? It’ll look a little strange if we don’t.”

  “Sure,” he said, and looked at his own order compad, then selected one of the lunch packages. “You sound like you like that stuff just about as much as I did.”

  “The thing is that I sort of do,” she said. “It’s like a strategy board game. Once you get used to it, it’s really easy to make people commit to the moves you want them to do. The key is to let them think they had the idea first.” She laughed and covered her face with her hands for a moment. “Oh, gods. That’s exactly the obnoxious sort of thing Papa would say, isn’t it?”

  He’s had you to himself for so long, Aden thought. It would be a wonder if his ways hadn’t influenced yours at all.

  “Have you heard from Mama lately?” he asked, partly out of curiosity and partly to steer the conversation into a new direction. “I tried to follow the family news when I was in the Blackguards, but she just dropped off the Mnemosyne a few years after I left. I only read the PR release about the divorce after everything was done.”

  “I was already at boarding school,” she said. “Came home one summer, and Papa said Mama had left and gone back to Oceana. I asked her about that, later. She was a little drunk and pissed off at Papa for some reason. More pissed off than usual, I mean. She said he told her to leave and never speak to any of us again if she wanted to keep being financially secure. I never told him about that. On the chance she was telling the truth.”

  “And she moved to Hades.”

  Solveig nodded.

  “She said she wants to spend her retirement account where the gravity is always low and the drinks are always cheap.”

  They both laughed.

  “She took her old name back. Jansen,” she continued. “I can give you her node address if you want to get in touch. She still thinks you’re probably dead. Everyone did.”

  “I’m a Jansen now, too.” Aden took out his ID pass and showed it to her. She looked at the card and turned it around between her fingers.

  “Oceanian,” she said. “Just like Mama’s.”

  “It’s a fake,” he admitted. “A good fake. But a fake. I couldn’t come back and be on the same planet with Papa again.”

  She put the card down on the table between them.

  “I think I have earned the right to know why, Aden,” she said. “The reason why you left. The real reason. And Papa sure as hells won’t tell me. Not even after a bottle of his Rhodian whisky. Every other year or so, I’ll try, and he’ll shut me out for a month.”

  Their food arrived through the serving port next to the table. The automated kitchen conveyor slid two trays in front of them, both with precise arrangements of food on little plates and bowls. Aden considered her request while they each picked up their eating utensils and prepared to begin their meal.

  “Why do you think that is, Solveig?”

  His sister shrugged.

  “Knowing Papa? Because he fears it’ll make me think less of him.”

  “And what if I told you that it will? Would you still want to know?”

  “The truth is the truth,” she said without hesitation. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. Or how I might feel about it. Of course I would want to know.”

  Aden sat back and looked at his sister in silence for a few moments. She returned his gaze evenly. If he had been in her place for so long, he would have asked the same questions and given the same answers. She was an adult now, and her relationship with their father was her business. He decided that if she wanted the truth, he had no reason to keep it from her.

  “I met a girl,” he said. “I know he told you that much.”

  “He said he didn’t approve of her, and you got mad and left.”

  “That’s what he’s been telling you for all these years,” Aden said, his anger stirring in his chest.

  “More or less.”

  “How very Papa,” he said. “He never tells you the whole truth of a thing. Just the part he thinks you need to know. Told from the angle that makes him look the best.”

  He looked at his plate and shook his head.

  “Her name was Astrid. I can’t even show you an image of her because I lost all my access to Aden Ragnar’s stuff when I became Aden Robertson. But I’m sure you know how to dig around if you really want to know.”

  He picked up his utensils and began to eat his lunch, just so he could give his hands something to do other than tear his napkin into progressively smaller bits under the table. She followed suit, and they ate in silence for a few moments. He had already forgotten what he’d ordered. It was a chicken dish with a sweet glaze, mercifully mild for Acheroni food.

  “We met in Arendal, when I was just out of the university. I was twenty-four; she was twenty-one. It took us all of a week together to know that we were meant for each other. I still figured we shouldn’t rush things. So we waited six months.”

  “And you brought her home and told Papa,” Solveig said. “I think I know how that one went over with him.”

  “Actually, we got married before we left for home,” he said, and he saw her do a little sympathetic wince.

  “I know. I know. I shouldn’t have gone over his head and put him in front of accomplished circumstances like that. But I figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  “Oh, no,” Solveig said.

  Aden nodded.

  “He was polite to her. But it was that icy kind of polite he does with people he loathes. You know what I mean. So we went to the guest quarters to stay for the weekend, and he had me called to the house a little while later, by myself. I figured that would be the part where he’d yell at me a little. Maybe a lot. But then he’d get over it and accept it, eventually. And he would see how good she was for me.”

  He shook his head at the memory of his own youthful naivete.

  “He told me there was no way she could have the family name. Said that she would be entitled to half of my share of Ragnar. Then he claimed that’s what she had in mind for me all along. I stood my ground. Told him she was his daughter-in-law now, whether he liked it or not. And he said, ‘We’ll just have to see about that.’”

  “He told you to an
nul the marriage,” Solveig said. “And . . . wait. You told him to go to all the hells, and then he went to her and offered her a stack of money to annul it from her end.”

  “You do know him better than anyone else,” Aden said. “She told him to keep his money. He doubled the offer. Then he tripled it. Astrid said she’d not take his money even if he sat there all night and increased his multipliers exponentially. So we left.”

  “And then what happened?”

  He hadn’t allowed the memory close to the surface of his consciousness in a long time, and when he did, it hurt as much as ever, undulled by the passage of time. He could tell from the sudden concern on Solveig’s face that he wasn’t able to keep the grief out of his own expression.

  “What happened? She died, that’s what happened.”

  She looked at him, crestfallen.

  “We went to Sandvik and got a hotel room for the night,” he continued in a soft voice. “I didn’t want to make Papa extend hospitality against his will. The next day, I sent her back to Arendal on the vactrain. Figured I should make one more gesture of goodwill and go home to see Papa by myself before I left. And her transit pod from the vactrain station in Arendal crashed into a maintenance divider on the city interchange. At a hundred kilometers per hour.”

  “Gods,” Solveig said.

  “The police said it blew both the collision avoidance sensor and the safety interlock at the same time somehow. The pod never even hit the brakes. From what I know, it usually stops a pod on the spot when either of those things are disabled. Astrid had some improbably bad luck that day.”

  “And you think Papa did it,” Solveig said slowly. “That he had your new wife killed because he didn’t want you to stay married to her.”

  “It could have been just really bad luck. People die in accidents all the time, Solveig. I know that. But ask yourself the same question I did after it happened.”

  “Could he do it,” Solveig said, her voice almost a whisper.

  “With all that you know about Papa, can you say you’re absolutely certain that he would never be able to do such a thing?”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she just looked at him, her internal turmoil evident on her face.

  “I can’t tell you how I know, but I do,” he continued. “Maybe it was the way he said, ‘We’ll just have to see about that’ when I left that night. Maybe it was the timing. Or the improbability of those safety features failing at the same time, in just the right rental pod. Maybe it’s all of those factors when you combine them.”

  He sighed and let his shoulders drop.

  “But I knew that once I had answered that question for myself, I would never be able to stand in the same room with him again without thinking about what he may have done to Astrid. And I would always be only two drinks away from a life sentence. For him or me.”

  Aden took a slow, deliberate breath and sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve been in the same room in seventeen years. I wanted this to be a pleasant thing. Not to kill all the joy in the room forever.”

  Solveig shook her head.

  “Don’t be sorry. I asked you, after all. I insisted.”

  She reached out and put her hand over his.

  “I’m glad I finally know the whole story. Because now I can understand why you would leave. I always felt that you had left me behind. That you walked away from me for no good reason. And now I don’t have to be angry with you for that anymore. And that does make me happy. Because I never want to feel anger when I think of you.”

  He felt a relief he hadn’t known he’d needed, and it was so sudden and profound that it brought tears to his eyes. He used his napkin to wipe them away, and when he looked at Solveig, he saw that she was dabbing away at her own eyes. They looked at each other and laughed, in that cathartic way people laugh when some shared grief or misery was eased a little.

  “Would you come back home?” she asked. “If Papa was not part of the equation, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Aden said. “I’ve been away for so long, I don’t even really know it anymore. But I do miss you. And sausage rolls. And good wheat ale. But mostly you.”

  “Marten’s weasels are still on the lookout for you. Papa says they almost caught up with you in Adrasteia.”

  Aden nodded.

  “It was when I got this job. They were doing facial recognition to find me in the crowd, at the choke point to the space station. I had to make a run for it.”

  “He’s not going to stop looking. Now that he knows you’re still alive.”

  “I have no idea why,” he said. “I can’t take over the business. Not anymore. What else does he want with me?”

  Solveig shook her head.

  “I would say he wants to make good on the mistakes he knows he has made. But I’m not sure he has the ability to self-reflect to that degree. But I can tell that something is eating at him. I see it whenever he gets drunk. But he’s always careful to button up his feelings again in front of me. Even when he’s so loaded that he can’t get off the bar stool without stumbling.”

  She checked the time and flinched.

  “Hells. I have to be back in twelve minutes, and the walk takes five. Gods, I wish we had more time.”

  They left their half-eaten meals on the table and got out of their seats. Then they shared a long hug, and for the second time today, Aden wished he could slow the clock with the force of his will.

  “I’ll be on the planet for another two weeks,” he said. “Maybe you can sneak out again.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?” she replied, seemingly on impulse.

  “What?”

  “Come with me. Tell everyone who you are. Catch a ride with us back to Gretia when we are done. We can spend all the time we want together. And we could dare Papa to do something about it. No more need to sneak.”

  He laughed at the mental image of the two of them sitting on a couch together and answering Falk’s next vidcom jointly, as if nothing had happened in the last seventeen years.

  “Tempting,” he said. “Just the look on his face would almost make it worth it. But I don’t think I’m ready yet. I can’t skip out on my new job. And I know I’m not ready for the fight that would follow. I’m not sure that he is either.”

  “If you change your mind, you have my node address,” she said. “And if there are any strings I can pull for you from afar, tell me.”

  “I need to do this without the might of Ragnar behind me,” he said. “Just to know that I can. And that I’m not like him.”

  “You’ve never been like him,” Solveig said. “I’m the one who has to keep that DNA on a chain. You have no idea how often I look into the mirror and see a shorter version of him. And then I find myself sitting in a conference room at Hanzo, realizing I want to buy the damn building just so I can raze it to the ground, because one of their people just belittled me by accident. And I know that the resemblance isn’t just in the mirror.”

  She kissed him on the cheek again and opened the door to leave before he could think of a soothing denial she would find plausible.

  “Bye, Aden,” she said as she slipped out of the capsule. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said to the void she left in the doorframe as she rushed toward the exit.

  CHAPTER 20

  DUNSTAN

  If there was a positive about being a severely crippled ship twenty minutes away from what was likely going to be the last docking maneuver of its long career, it was that Minotaur did not have to concern itself with its emissions control anymore. With most of the comms array assigned to the crew’s Mnemosyne links and personal communications, Dunstan’s vidcom connection to Rhodia’s surface was as clear and sharp as never before.

  “How long do you think the handover will take this time?” Mairi asked. Dunstan’s wife was in the kitchen of their living unit in the Caledonia-4 arcology, down on the northern half of the continent, and now well within line o
f sight of Minotaur’s comms array.

  “That’s hard to say. I haven’t come home with a damaged ship since the war. But she’s not getting passed on to another crew. We’ll be off the ship in an hour. And then it depends on how long they want to keep us for debriefing and after-action reports.”

  “You’ve already done a double patrol,” Mairi said. “The navy’s had you for six months now. I swear the girls have grown five centimeters since you left.”

  “You’re the one who keeps feeding them,” Dunstan said, and his wife rolled her eyes at the well-worn joke. She was trying to go along with his fiction that the engagement had been minor and that Minotaur had never been in real danger, but he could tell she wasn’t buying what he was selling. They had been married for fifteen years, and the five in the middle had been wartime years, when he had been away for most of the time and only seen his family on leave once a year for two weeks. He knew that she still remembered what it had been like when the battered hulls of shot-up frigates and cruisers had returned to Rhodia One on a near-daily basis, half their crews dead or wounded, a seemingly endless stream of broken ships and broken bodies.

  Once, a few years after the war, she had told him that she hadn’t slept through a single night while he was deployed, and that the first thing she had done every morning after getting up was to check the unofficial observer reports for the names of the ships that had arrived at the station while she was asleep, always looking for the name of Dunstan’s command, and being both relieved and dismayed when it didn’t show up on the list. They had gotten used to a peacetime navy again, the predictable routine of three-month patrols followed by three months onshore, with the occasional double patrol thrown in whenever the ship and personnel rosters got too thin. This felt disconcertingly like wartime again, and he knew that she felt the same because of the way the conversation had been dancing around the uncomfortable sharp edges of the subject.

  “Where are the girls, anyway? Isn’t it nine o’clock in the morning down there?” Dunstan asked.

  “Kendra is at socaball practice. Amelia is still in bed. I’m being merciful because tomorrow isn’t a school day, and because she volunteered to help me this afternoon with the food for the spouse association meeting.”