by M. D. Cooper
Lieutenant Grenwald stepped away from the holo and nodded to Staff Sergeant Green.
“We’re going in full powered armor with full weapons loadout, except one/one and three/three. Jansen, Tanaka, your fireteams are in scout gear with jump-jets. You’ll be our eyes and ears out there. Olsen and Chang, bring the big guns.”
The Marines nodded, and Williams could see them mentally reviewing their preparations.
“Marines, you have three hours. Assemble outside the mess at 20:00 hours. Dismissed,” Green concluded. Then he turned to Williams. “How was that, Gunny?” he asked.
Williams grunted. “You didn’t cock-up too bad. I suppose you’ll do alright.”
CRUITHNE
STELLAR DATE: 3227468 / 05.29.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: SDMS Damus, Approaching Cruithne
REGION: InnerSol, Sol Space Federation
“Hey, I thought we’d agreed you were going to wake me before we approached the cesspit of humanity.”
Rory’s voice caused Katelyn to straighten in her seat, her feet shifting off the console in front of her as she twisted to watch her sister float toward the entrance to the cramped cockpit.
Katelyn snorted. “Cesspit of humanity?” She eyed the display critically, turning the descriptor over in her head, and then shrugged. “Yeah, well, you were up late, fixing the oven in the galley, and—”
“It’s not an oven,” Rory corrected automatically, brushing her short, dark hair away as it floated into her eyes. The comment was more out of habit than anything else. Her sister’s attention was fixed on the asteroid-turned-station they were approaching.
Cruithne was technically a member of InnerSol and therefore under the jurisdiction of the Sol Space Federation, but everyone realized it for the polite fiction that it was. If you ever wanted to see the dark underbelly of Terra, this was a great place in which to do it.
Depending on who you talked to, the station was either run by an ancient mafia family or governed by a syndicate of mob bosses. Either way, it wasn’t exactly a sterling model of Terran citizenship.
The tethering system the station used to dock smaller craft would snag the Damus soon. It would provide a smooth transition from the ship’s deceleration-induced gravity to the 1g the asteroid’s rotation generated.
“Kind of odd, isn’t it? All the runs we’ve made for the resistance, and we’ve never had a stopover here.” Rory cocked her head to one side, her eyes on the holo.
Katelyn shrugged. “Roll of the dice, I guess.”
Rory’s nose wrinkled as she leant toward the display.
“Oh, come on, sis, admit it,” Katelyn jibed. “Haven’t you always wanted to hang out in a gangster’s backyard? Now you can check that one off your bucket list.”
Her sister shot her a withering look. “Let’s hope our contact is right that the TSF looks the other way where Cruithne is concerned.” She tapped her forehead. “And let’s hope these black market nanomods alter our biosigs like they’re supposed to. Or have you forgotten we’re on the TSF’s watch list?”
Katelyn smirked as she shot her sister a sardonic look. “You really think we’re going to dock and suddenly discover that the TSF actually polices this pile of junk?”
Rory sat back with a sigh, her voice turning mordant. “Wouldn’t be the first time our intel was wrong. The TSF wasn’t supposed to set off a planetbuster near Makemake either.”
Katelyn scowled as her sister lifted her chin toward the image hovering in front of them.
“What makes us so sure that their hands-off attitude toward Cruithne isn’t also a big, fat lie?”
“Shit. Way to suck the fun right out of the day, Rory.”
Katelyn’s words held no rancor, though she hated the bitter undertone that flavored Rory’s words. She understood it, but she hated what four years of corrective reconditioning in a TSF penal colony had done to her sister.
They’d been so close to success, their eight asteroids-cum-battering rams bracketing the TSF carrier perfectly, giving it no choice but to retreat or be destroyed. Katelyn recalled the choking fear she’d compartmentalized as TSF fighters began racing toward the Disker tugs at impossible speeds, bent on destroying them.
Katelyn and Rory hadn’t learned until later that their own brother had led the charge.
What would he have done, I wonder, if he’d known at the time that his sisters were piloting one of those tugs?
Fortunately—or unfortunately, for the separatist movement—the carrier had chosen that moment to unleash the unthinkable. If she hadn’t been a member of the Scattered Disk resistance movement before that, the TSF’s callous use of such a deadly weapon so close to an inhabited planet, and stars damn the consequences, would have won Katelyn over to the cause immediately afterward.
Even though the Diskers had lost that day, the TSF’s use of a planetbuster had been a boon for the resistance, with a huge influx of new recruits volunteering to sign up in the aftermath.
To her surprise, it had galvanized Rory as well. Sure, Katelyn’s sister liked to bitch and moan about pretty much every risk they took—but when push came to shove, Rory was in the thick of it, ready to get the job done, no matter what it may be.
The past five years since they’d been released from prison had been spent running supplies for the Disker resistance, slowly building up weapons caches and troops on Venus and Triton. Most of the time, the work was exceedingly dull, followed by periods of stress and worry as they waited to pick up or hand off cargo in various less-than-savory ports across the Sol System.
Working for the resistance was not like the assault on the Normandy over Makemake. That had been intense, amazing, the sort of action Katelyn yearned to get into.
These days, they were pretty much doing exactly as the ship’s designation described. The ‘SDMS’ in front of the Damus’s name stood for ‘Scattered Disk Merchant Ship’; schlepping supplies from one location to another sure felt like merchant duty to her.
Katelyn’s attention was diverted back to the display as the AI controlling the tether began their docking countdown. She banished her concern over her sister, reasoning that she’d have plenty of time to worry about Rory after they were securely tucked up against the station.
Less than an hour later, grapples held the Damus moored to Cruithne’s dock, and Katelyn powered down the cockpit. Unclipping herself from the pilot’s seat, she toggled the ship’s comm. Drumming a rhythmic riff on the edge of the console, she cleared her throat, channeling the voice of the ubiquitous ship’s captain.
“Your attention, please. It is now safe to move about Cruithne.”
Rory’s avatar flipped her the bird, eliciting a quick laugh.
“Get your ass in gear, Ro. Let’s go do some spy shit.”
Jumping from her seat, she ducked into the main cabin area just as the san doors slid opened to reveal Rory. Her sister was clad in a flowing skirt with shifting, multihued swirls over a simple white bodysuit. A cute black leather jacket with colored toolwork and a metal stud design completed her ensemble.
Katelyn’s brows rose. “I thought you were worried about how dangerous this place is.”
Rory looked a bit embarrassed, but just ran her fingers through her short hair and shrugged. “I’ve spent the last hour pulling news reports on Cruithne. They say the Highspin area is working hard to polish their tarnished image, and it’s considered fairly safe these days. Besides,” she added a little defensively, “I haven’t had a chance to wear a skirt in weeks, with ship’s grav being what it is. I thought it might be fun.”
Katelyn lifted her hands up, palms out. “Not judging. But I can’t let a sister who’s younger than me by twelve minutes get the better of me in the style department.” Her face split into an impish grin. “It’s written in the bylaws, you know. Guess I’ll just have to go change. I’ll meet you at the airlock in five.”
She paused, cocking her head as she eyed her sister critically. “Hmm. Better make that ten.”
/> “What?” Rory looked down at what she was wearing. “Is it stained? It better not be ripped. I spent good creds on this!”
Her sister’s panic had Katelyn smirking. “Nah. Your skirt’s got game,” she assured Rory, shooting her a mischievous look as she turned back toward their cabin. “I might not have anything to wear that will match that, but wait’ll you see what I can do with my hair.”
Fifteen minutes later, Katelyn joined Rory beside the airlock, her red curls swept into a messy up-do, the tips coated in a nano overtone gel that shifted and shimmered in time to the bounce and movement of her hair.
Rory shook her head, a wry expression crossing her usually serious face. “Guess we’re not worried about blending in too much, are we?”
Katelyn shot her sister an incredulous look. “You spent the last hour reading up on this shithole, and you still say that? This place is known for its off-label mods and its,” she coughed, air-quoting the words, “local color. Standard shipsuits are what’ll stand out here, not the other way around.”
Rory pursed her lips and then nodded thoughtfully. Katelyn’s good mood sobered a bit when her sister twisted to check the short, modified tanto knife sheathed under the waistband of her skirt.
“Cruithne’s open carry,” she explained, smoothing her skirt back down as she caught Katelyn’s eye. “But I feel better having something that’s not…obvious.”
Katelyn nodded her understanding. “Know what you mean. Me too.”
She had her own blade, kept in a stealthed sheath that purportedly spoofed most weapons scans. But the small, 10-centimeter curved blade wasn’t her go-to weapon of choice. That was reserved for the small pulser she had hanging from a flashbang holster tucked beneath her breasts.
The pulser’s SC batt was small, but she’d modified it to deliver a single “get the hell off me” blast that’d turn an attacker’s innards into soup in the 1.3 seconds it took her to pull and fire it.
Weapons like these were dangerous in the hands of an unskilled owner, Katelyn knew. So, once they’d decided to go on missions for the Scattered Worlds, she’d signed them both up for lessons in close combat.
She’d approached her older brother Dom for basic, hand-to-hand training. A good twenty years her senior, Dom owned a dojo on Makemake. He’d opened it after his requisite stint with the SWSF had ended. Their brother had agreed, under the condition that the girls would commit to maintaining a basic level of proficiency.
Katelyn wasn’t overly fond of exercise, but she knew it was essential. Especially if she was going to engage in what her mom liked to call “skulking about for the benefit of the Scattered Worlds.”
Rory snickered and shook her head as Katelyn gave the holster a little pat. “Most dangerous rack in InnerSol, I swear.”
Katelyn grinned back. “What can I say? I like to play things close to the chest.”
Rory groaned at the pun, as Katelyn had intended. Looping her arm through Katelyn’s, she turned to face the hatch. “Let’s get out of this tin can so our adventure can begin.”
She turned to the ship’s airlock keypad while Katelyn mentally accessed the Damus’s security protocol to set its perimeter monitoring system.
As the hatch opened, Rory’s face went from animated to worried in an instant. Taking a deep breath, she slung the overlarge, touristy bag she’d been carrying onto her shoulder and stepped through the little ship’s airlock.
They stood there, not moving, just staring down the empty passageway. Katelyn slanted a look at her sister, then reached out to her via Link.
Rory shot her a look out of narrowed eyes before she began moving away from the ship and down the umbilical that led to the Cruithne docks.
Katelyn followed, pinging the station’s public directory for Cruithne Customs. Moments later, a notification sprang up on her HUD providing directions to the nearby office.
She sent Rory the station’s feed as she pinged ‘Lauralee Blevins’ and her sister’s image came up.
She motioned Rory forward, turning back to secure the Damus before following her sister down to the dock.
An hour later, and several hundred credits lighter after having greased the right palms to get them cleared through customs, they walked out into Cruithne proper.
Katelyn’s first impression of the station was of a place that had been given a shiny skim-coating to hide its cracked surfaces. She had a feeling her mom would say this place was held together with nothing more than spit and baling wire.
Oddly, the impression relaxed her a bit. The separatist movement had hidden installations throughout the Scattered Worlds and Jovian space, many on platforms that had either been abandoned or had seen better days, giving Cruithne’s ramshackle appearance a sense of familiarity.
Didn’t make it any safer, though.
Rory’s mental voice intruded into Katelyn’s ruminations.
She glanced around at the busy shop-lined street and pinged the public net for a list of transportation platforms, only to come up short as she discovered Cruithne had no maglevs in this section. There were only two modes of transport: by taxi or on foot.
Shrugging mentally, she gestured for Rory to follow her as she began to walk toward what looked like some sort of central hub. In the distance, she saw small shadows swooping in and out, and wondered what kind of drones might behave in such a way.
She sensed Rory’s nervousness returning and glanced casually over at her sister. She released a relieved breath when she saw that Rory’s nervousness hadn’t translated into anything overt.
Just keep it together a little longer, big sister. We’ll be out of here and on our way to Venus by tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest.
When they reached the intersection of the two corridors that formed the hub, she saw that it had been built as a clearspan section that stretched three levels high, with bulkhead buttresses reinforcing all four of the exits that dumped into the nearby streets.
Her HUD helpfully displayed the location’s name: Night Park. Calling it a park seemed a bit of a misnomer; there was no greenspace anywhere that Katelyn could see. Now that she and Rory were here, she realized that the shadowed figures she’d seen from afar, dipping and wheeling in the air, weren’t drones; they were birds.
Colorful booths lined Night Park, and the sounds of sellers hawking their wares assailed her senses as they moved deeper into the area. Overlaid atop it all were various rasping caws and squawks, the sounds Cruithne’s feathered denizens made punctuating the murmur of human conversation with an occasional avian exclamation point.
The area had a dry fountain at its center, surprisingly fanciful for a place like Cruithne. An equestrian figure sprang from among curved, spiky leaves that reached several meters in the air. The man seated atop it seemed caught while tossing his cloak from his shoulders.
Perched on the horse’s flanks was a whimsical angel playing a flute from the wrong end. A satyr stared up at the rearing animal, hands planted on its hips and a bewildered expression on its face. Around one wrist was an ancient wristwatch.
The quirky plascrete tableau was ringed by a low wall designed to constrain the water that would ordinarily spout from orifices like the horse’s mouth and the angel’s flute, had the fountain been operational.
It was su
rrounded by a series of fenced-off trees that rose nearly a dozen meters into the air. This was the only greenery she’d seen since she’d set foot on the station, and she wondered at the omission.
Katelyn stared in fascination as the trees appeared to move like a living thing, and she spied dozens upon dozens of ravens among their branches. Interspersed among the sea of black were spots of grey. As one such spot dove from a tree’s topmost branch to alight on the head of the satyr, she realized it was a parrot.
She jerked her attention away from the parrot when she heard a snicker erupt from Rory.
“What?” she asked, one brow raised in query.
“Did you access the public net about the birds? They talk—well, sort of. Here,” she said, dropping an icon to Katelyn, “take a look. It’s a link to a forum on the PubNet entitled ‘Roasted by the Ravens’. The doc lists all the insults they’ve heard the birds say to people as they pass by.”
Rory’s eyes were alight with humor, and Katelyn felt something in her chest loosen as her sister laughed.
Spying a street vendor carving what looked like some sort of shawarma, she motioned her sister to follow. “Let’s grab something to eat and go sit on one of those benches. Maybe they’ll insult us, and you can add it to that list.”
Minutes later, they were seated, holding savory slices of chicken slathered in tahini and wrapped in a fresh pita, still warm from a small, reproduction-brick oven. Katelyn and Rory shared laughs, first over the posted comments, and then from the imprecations hurled by the birds at passersby as they munched on the flavorful treat.
Two hours later, Katelyn reluctantly stood.
Rory’s expression turned wistful, and Katelyn heard one of the ravens call out, “Sad! Sad! Secrets! Hide!”