I peered closely. There was a small, rolling thump inside. Something squeaked.
“Say, what’s in here anyway? Pet rocks?”
Hungry pet rocks? A mouse emerged from the tube, dropping from the small box up top. Its nose twitched left and right. Its tiny, black eyes opened wide. I don’t think dropping into an aquarium full of rocks had been on its tiny to-do list today.
Something moved under the rocks. I took a half step back and bumped into Richter. He’s quiet, he is, when he isn’t shaving.
“Like them?” he asked.
I put a little distance between me and Richter’s pal-o’-mine smile. He held the razor in his right hand. Half his face was smooth as a baby’s bottom. So, the razor was plenty sharp then. Good to know.
“What, the rocks? Or the mouse?”
I bent my right hand about thirty degrees, out of his eye line. Instinct on my part. Just verifying my springblade was tucked tight where it ought to be, in its launcher under my wrist.
Bruno held his smile and brushed past me. He lifted the aquarium’s lid, reached in, and picked up the mouse by its tail. It squirmed and squeaked.
“Nein, neither,” he said, dangling the mouse above the rocks. They shifted again, and a scaly head emerged. Grayish-brown, a body followed the tail, uncoiling. It kept coming, shedding the rocks like a second skin. It must have been two feet long, though most of it stayed hidden beneath the rocks. The snake’s eyes didn’t leave the mouse. The little bugger’s struggles became frantic. Bruno dangled it like a hypnotist’s watch.
“Black mamba,” he said, dropping the mouse. “Very dangerous.”
Bleating its terror, the mouse ran for the tube. The snake was faster. It struck, vise-gripping its jaws around its prey. The mouse’s feet pumped, hoping for purchase. The mamba dropped it, and the mouse scrambled for the tube again. Watching it was like watching gravity being turned up in the tank. The closer the mouse got to the tube, the slower its movements became. The snake struck again. This time, the mouse froze. After the mamba dropped it, the mouse twitched on the rocks, the snake’s venom flooding its system.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? A perfect killing machine,” Bruno explained, not looking at me. It was a good show in the tank. “She will not eat until the prey is fully paralyzed.”
“You can’t be too careful.”
The mouse had quit struggling. Its whiskers stopped twitching.
“That is true.” Abruptly, Bruno stood up and offered me his hand. He’d moved the razor first, I noticed. “I owe you an apology, Fischer.”
“Okay.” My hand came up on its own and accepted the handshake. I set my body weight on my back foot as we shook, ready for him to pull me in and start slicing with the razor. Old trick.
But that didn’t happen.
“Gregor brought you here,” he said, pumping my hand. “I took it personally. But he’s the boss, yes? And what, eh, the Geek Patrol as you call them—what they’re doing is too important to risk. I get that now. We work together, yes? We keep Bekah Franklin and the others safe.”
“Okay,” I said amiably. What I was thinking was how Bruno Richter would make a first-class undertaker with that thin, ghoulish grin of his. For a man who hardly used words, Richter had just unpacked a suitcase full. “I appreciate that.”
Maybe it was the snake beginning to devour the mouse, or maybe it was that, when Bruno dropped my hand, he left his sweaty DNA mixing with mine. But something about the thin man’s little speech sounded rehearsed. Maybe he’d wanted to make a good impression and actually had rehearsed it. And if he’d wanted to kill me, he’d had ample opportunity and a sharp straight razor to do it. Yet, here I stood, unmolested save for a slightly sweaty palm.
“I will finish getting dressed,” he said. He patted the tank on his way to finishing his shave. The front half of the mouse was on its way to an acid bath in the black mamba’s gut. The smug-looking snake was enjoying its dinner.
“All right,” I said. “I think I’ll walk around the station a bit more.”
Fuck you, screaming knee.
“Sounds gut.”
One last look at the show in the tank. Only the hind end of the mouse was visible now. Its tail lay limp while the mamba gulped another gullet full. I wondered what it felt like to be eaten alive, paralyzed and aware. Does the stomach acid burn when you get there? How long could you live while the enzymes broke you down? Would you feel your skin as it disintegrated? Or would you hopefully, mercifully suffocate first?
Richter’s eyes found mine in the mirror’s angle again. As he brought the razor up to finish guillotining, he jerked his head up in a manly, half salute between colleagues. Then flashed his toothy, mortician’s smile.
Made me wonder if his victims died paralyzed and aware too.
• • •
With Richter’s penchant for murder by poison still on my mind, I took the lift to the station’s second level. That’s where all the fun stuff is. A promenade of small shops, shuttered and deserted, of course. A bar patterned after a German bierhaus, likely my new best friend’s second home. Then there was the fitness section. Jesus, they even had an Olympic-sized swimming pool! Gregor took care of his people, made sure they had the good life. I knew without looking too closely there’d also be an upscale brothel or two somewhere on the promenade. Gregor knew how to keep his geeks happy and loyal.
Grunting—a loud sound of human effort in the otherwise silence.
Someone was working hard at something next door to the pool. I walked along and found a small sign that read Gymnasium. Inside, the guy named Tripp sat at a machine trying to add more muscle to his girlish figure. I’d noticed him arguing with Franklin on more than one occasion. He seemed harmless, but so do rocks until a snake crawls out from under them.
I walked up behind him, quiet as a mouse.
“How’s it going?” I said.
The weights dropped with a loud, metallic clang. It boomed around the deserted gym.
“Oh, hey,” he said, like his mom had just walked in and the bedcovers weren’t high enough to hide the sin. There was a sign on the wall telling weightlifters to be careful with the equipment. Maybe that was the source of his sheepish look. Tripp hopped off the machine and grabbed a towel to wipe his face. His hair was plastered down. He’d been there a while.
“Nervous about something?” I said. He looked it.
“What? No. You just surprised me is all.” He must have really wanted to clean up, cuz his towel got a lot wetter pretty fast. He mopped his arm pits. It took a few passes to do the job. I’d gotten close enough to smell the sharp, sour scent of sweat coming off him. Tripp smelled like fear.
“It’s okay if you’re nervous,” I said, and meant it. “Times are sketchy. Nervous is fear’s way of keeping you on your toes.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Figured you were headed for bed when we all left the War Room.”
Tripp walked to a rack and stretched the towel over it to dry. He made sure its two halves hung symmetrically over the metal bar, each side the length of the other.
Geeks are like that. Meticulous. Anal.
“I always work out before bedtime,” he said as he eyed the towel. He sounded more impressed with his efforts than I was. A hot, sharp sting of pain arced randomly across my knee. I told it to fuck off again.
“That’s a healthy thing,” I said. “I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“Think I’m gonna turn in myself,” I said. “Long night.”
“Yeah, okay.” Tripp walked past me. “This whole thing—it’s just one long night, isn’t it?”
Since it sounded rhetorical, I let the question go. We took the lift together back up to the Habitat Level. The towel absorbed Tripp’s sweat but left that sour scent, wafting up from his underarms. It reminded me of the feral smell in Richter’s quarters.
Tripp tossed me a goodnight as he unlocked his quarters. I went to my own, hoping for a decent night’s rest for a change.
/>
Snakes and pits. Somehow I knew that’s what would fill my dreams tonight, boy-o.
Snakes and pits.
Chapter 18
Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Freedom’s Herald
Carl Braxton had failed to keep his promise.
Fulfilling it now hinged on taking Rabh Regency Station, he’d said. Once that was done, Braxton pledged—for whatever that was worth—then and only then Kwazi could execute Telemachus live on The Real Story.
“It’ll play great with the masses,” Braxton assured him. “The Hero of Mars exacting justice on the puppet master who once pulled his strings, who murdered those closest to him. It’ll be the most popular vid of the revolution.”
And yet, still they waited—for someone Cassandra was dispatching from the inner system. A leader to take the conn of the Freedom’s Herald and prosecute the assault on the station for the camerabots. To Kwazi, it was just one more delay on the way to obtaining justice for Amy. And Aika and Beren.
“Hey, Jabari, did you hear me?”
Braxton’s curtness brought Kwazi back to the briefing. The captain had been especially touchy since he’d endured Adriana Rabh’s tongue lashing on the bridge. The SSR had managed to keep her from broadcasting her defiance beyond the Jovian system, but it’d taken a while to cut the feed locally. Braxton’s humiliation had played dozens of times over the local network. The Callistans, it seemed, took their Viking virtue of loyalty damned seriously. The Real Story had lit up with pro-Rabh, pro-Company sentiment. Braxton’s inability to quash the playback and control the narrative had convinced Cassandra that someone else needed to bring the Regent of Callisto to heel. A general had already been on the way—all the way from Mars, in fact—to take charge of the situation. Now, they’d learned since the PR debacle, she was to lead the assault on Rabh Regency Station in Braxton’s place.
“Jabari!”
Kwazi forced himself to pay attention. Others were looking at him.
“Sorry,” Kwazi said. He wasn’t, not really. He was glad to see Braxton humbled, especially after his failure to keep his promise. “Could you please repeat that?”
“I asked if you had any questions about the assault plan,” Braxton said. Each word was grudgingly given, a babysitter’s frustration with a problem child. Kwazi was becoming aware that that’s how his recruiter to the cause saw him—as a burden to bear. Braxton held up a hand. “But now that you’re paying attention, I’ll repeat. Just … once. For everyone’s benefit.”
Braxton reset the 3D model on display in the middle of the room. Callisto hung in the center, its orbital ring circling from top to bottom. On one side of the moon hung the Freedom’s Herald. On the other, separated and in orbit of Callisto, was Rabh Regency Station, no longer a part of the ring itself.
“It was clever, making the station detachable,” Braxton said with frank respect. “A safety measure, no doubt, in case something devastating ever happened to the ring. But their thrusters are for shit. They can keep themselves in orbit and conduct minor positional adjustments, but that’s about it. That station’s made to sit and wait for rescue. No Frater Drive for interplanetary travel. We can fly rings around them in the Herald.”
Braxton was rewarded with a titter of appreciation for the pun.
“Her point defense cannons,” he continued, “that’s another story, now. They can shred small ships before they get close enough to do any damage. They’d heavily damage the Herald too before we could board. So that’s why we’re sending in the shuttles. The one we crashed into the ring a few weeks ago? Testing the concept. Now we’re gonna fly every shuttle in the barn into Rabh’s station. Even the ones the PDCs shred—some of them anyway—their momentum will carry them through. They’ll slam into that hull, create breaches—a mass-scale version of what happened with the ring. Our strike teams will aim for Engineering, Rabh’s safe room in the penthouse, and Environmental Control, in that priority.”
He paused. A hand went up.
“Yes?”
“How will we hold the station after the attack?” a woman asked. “Won’t the structural integrity be so compromised that—”
“We’re not going to hold the station,” Braxton said. “That’s not the point. The point is to kill Adriana Rabh. And capture us doing it on camera. Then, blow up the station. And capture us doing that, too.”
A muttering of approval and some trepidation passed around the team leaders. Braxton let it die a natural death. He returned his gaze to Kwazi.
“Any questions?”
“No, Captain,” Kwazi answered, his words as Spartan in emotion as Braxton’s own had been. “I have no questions.”
“Attention on deck!”
Someone blew a bosun’s whistle, an old naval tradition calling the crew to attention when a ship’s captain entered. Kwazi and the others sitting down stood up quickly. Everyone in the room snapped to attention.
A woman who resembled Cassandra to a remarkable degree strode in, flanked by two guards. Her dark hair was tied in a tight knot behind her head. Sheathed on each hip was a dagger, their silver blades gleaming against her black SSR uniform. She walked calmly to the front of the room without a single acknowledgment of the Soldiers she passed. Her stride projected authority; her demeanor, command.
“And there she is,” Braxton mumbled under his breath. “Mother’s little helper.”
Kwazi liked her already.
“My name is Elinda Kisaan,” she said, clasping her hands behind her back and facing the assembled SSR troops. “I am Cassandra’s hand for this operation.” She turned to Braxton. “Your captain is to be commended for securing this ship with relatively little bloodshed. We must remember—most of those we fight are held in bondage by the Syndicate Corporation. They are our brothers and sisters awaiting liberation. Loss of life must be kept to a minimum. When possible.”
Sidling a glance at Braxton, Kwazi heard him release a breath. Kisaan’s public praise had let him save face with his men. That was something, at least.
“We launch our attack in an hour,” Kisaan finished. “Be ready.” She walked toward the door as briskly as she’d entered. The team leaders snapped to attention again as she passed. “Captain Braxton,” she called over her shoulder, “accompany me.”
Kwazi watched them go. “I have an hour,” he said as Braxton picked up his briefing PADD. “I’d like to see Amy.”
The captain stared after Kisaan. His eyes were hard. His cheek, rippling.
“Tell the bitch hello for me,” he said before following their new commander.
• • •
Kwazi leaned against the wall of his tight quarters. He was tired. Physically, emotionally. Spiritually, if that was even a thing.
Seeing Milani again, and knowing what Helena Telemachus had done to her… He should go see her, he thought. Milani must be afraid to be caught in the middle of all this. Terrified. He should go see her and prove to her that the SSR wasn’t the enemy, that SynCorp needed to pass into history. The Company used people like a natural resource. Mined the sweat from their bodies. Extracted their talents like precious metals and profited from them. Raised crops of workers for Earth’s farming communes and the asteroid platforms in the Belt that supplied the inner system’s insatiable need for raw materials.
He shook his head, tired of the heavy thoughts inside it. Kwazi wanted Dreamscape. He wanted Amy. He had less than an hour until the attack on Adriana Rabh’s stronghold. Not enough time. Never enough time. But it was all the time he had.
He opened his sceye, but before he could engage the program, an incoming call flashed red on his retina. Braxton, probably. Another fucking briefing?
Kwazi ignored it and pressed the capital-D on the display to launch Dreamscape.
Nothing happened.
His sceye flashed red.
Malfunction, he thought. He tried to activate it again with his gaze, but the program refused to start.
What the fuck?
His sceye flashed red.
“All right, all right!” he said, anxious to get off the call and find a tech to fix his sceye. No, he needed to see her. Get whatever this was over with, so he could get back to Amy.
“Hello, Kwazi.”
He blinked, Dreamscape all but forgotten.
“H—hello.”
Cassandra stared back at him from her office atop the former UN building. It was the same angle as always from the camera. A long shot, with her mother’s head on its pike next to Cassandra’s throne. Gravity and time, the two universal constants, had been unkind to Elise Kisaan. Her tongue was black, bloating from a slack jaw. The whites of her eyes were rheumy, surrounding vacant pupils. Rats could have nested in her hair.
Mercifully, the camerabot zoomed in on Cassandra. Her face was beautiful in its symmetrical reflection of her mother’s. Her golden eyes sparkled. Her thick, black hair fell around her shoulders like the mane of a lioness. Like the lustrous crown of a conqueror.
“I know the operation is happening soon. I won’t keep you.”
It was somehow ludicrous that the most powerful woman in the solar system valued his time. It made Kwazi uncomfortable.
“Elinda has arrived, yes?” she said.
He had the feeling she was filling out the conversation. Laying the convivial groundwork for something else.
“Yes,” he said. “We attack the station shortly.”
Cassandra acknowledged the information. Kwazi was quite certain it was an operational detail she’d already known.
“Your help in taking the … in securing the Freedom’s Herald was essential,” she said. Again, that feeling she was reading a social script crept up on him. “When you and the others burst into that room and took Helena Telemachus hostage … well, it’s still the most popular thing on The Real Story. If you don’t count the manhunt on the Moon.”
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