Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  “We’ll set up a meet,” she said. “Somewhere safe — and see what he wants. Then we’ll see how much he wants. I guarantee this’ll all be cleared up within twenty-four hours and both us and this Stenner guy will leave happy.”

  “You think so?” the kid asked

  “Yep.”

  The kid wasn’t smiling along with her — in fact, he was frowning more.

  “How much did you take?” he asked.

  “Enough to pay Stenner off and make him go away.”

  The kid frowned. “There’s enough to buy someone off and there’s enough that they send someone after us who can’t be bought off, you know?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I can’t wait until we get to Luna to call my mom,” he said.

  Rosa blinked, changing gears. The kid had a way of doing that — changing subjects in the middle of a conversation — that really threw her sometimes.

  “We don’t have time for that right now,” Rosa said. “We need to meet with this Stenner guy and buy him off, then we can move on.”

  She was worried about the kid calling, too. Buying Stenner off wouldn’t do them any good if the kid’s call got traced and set some other Perigree fixer on their trail. She couldn’t buy them all off.

  “But —”

  “Luna’s safer to call from,” Rosa insisted.

  By the time they got there, they’d have another layer of distance and bureaucracy for Perigree to deal with. If the stations were independent, then Loonies were anarchic. They barely acknowledged their own leaders, much less anyone from Earth.

  “Look, kid, the first thing to do is pay Stenner off.” She paused.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Rosa said. What she’d been thinking was that it might be cheaper to pay someone to deal with Stenner a different way, rather than pay the man off directly. It wasn’t something she’d ever done before, but — well, a billion credits put her in the big time, didn’t it?

  No, she’d try to buy him off first. She could afford it.

  The club Stenner sent them to was like no “club” Rosa was used to — the live band was playing, but it was a low, melodic sort of music, not at all the hard beats and grinding dance music she’d expected. In fact, no one at all was dancing — they just sat and listened while they drank. There weren’t even any blacklights.

  Stenner had a table on the raised platform that encircled the main floor, with walls between it and the neighboring tables. The man was waiting for them when they arrived and the hostess showed them to the table.

  “Nice to see you again, Guthrie,” Stenner said.

  The man smiled and Rosa bristled, because it was the sort of smile someone gave a toddler right before they patted the kid on the head. Whatever she might think of him, and he was a bit of a dumbass sometimes, she didn’t like anyone else treating the kid that way.

  “You’ve made your point,” she said, hoping to draw Stenner’s attention to her — the kid wasn’t cut out for this sort of negotiation.

  Seymour, you see anything?

  “I am monitoring the public cameras and have seen nothing to indicate that he has other agents in the area,” Seymour said in her ear. “I have also been monitoring Mr. Frederick’s communications with the two bellmen, and they have seen nothing untoward either. Mr. Stenner has been at this table for thirty-seven minutes and has spoken to no one but the waitress.”

  Okay, keep watching.

  Her attention was diverted while that waitress arrived to take their orders. She got a beer and the kid asked for soda.

  Rosa sighed. She’d have to talk to the kid about that. There were some times you ordered a beer, even if you didn’t want to drink it. Soda just didn’t set the right tone.

  She scanned the club for their backup, but didn’t spot them.

  Frederick had come to the suite some time after she’d set up the meet with Stenner and made it clear that certain not-entirely-official resources were at their disposal. These wound up being Frederick himself, along with two burly bellmen who, Rosa suspected, did very little belling — they seemed more the sort who lurked around corners or in dimly lit rooms, waiting for someone they could knock down and kick repeatedly.

  Which is what they were doing now — the waiting part, at least. Watching Stenner from around the club and looking for anyone with him. Frederick seemed confident the men would be quite able to knock down and kick anyone Stenner had with him — or, if not, that he, Frederick, would have time to call in reinforcements.

  Rosa was really beginning to wonder what rich people did all day, considering the Waldorf offered this sort of service, even unofficially. They must be into some weird shit.

  “Have I?” Stenner asked. “Do you really understand the gravity of your situation?”

  “We’re on a free station, Stenner,” Rosa said. “You can’t take us back to Earth.”

  “Really? Maybe you should have researched your run a bit more carefully, Fuentes. The station, and Luna, where I’m sure you’re headed next, don’t deal with Earth’s governments. I’m not government — I’m Perigree Corporation, and we do business everywhere. The orbital stations, Luna, and even Mars may tell Earth’s politicians to go to hell, but they sure do like Perigree’s money — which, coincidentally, brings us to the first thing we need to talk about.” Stenner’s smile dropped. “Give it back.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  The kid started to talk, but Rosa grabbed his leg under the table and he shut up. She’d told him to let her handle it and what she planned, and he’d agreed — this was the start of the negotiations and Stenner had to think they weren’t too eager to deal, otherwise they’d have to give in to him on every point.

  “Then I’m afraid you two are going to have a very bad time of it,” Stenner said. “That’s different from just a bad time, see? You’re going to be a sort of example of what happens to people who fuck with Perigree. You can be the stubborn example or the we’re-sorry example. I really think you want to be the we’re-sorry example. It’s a lot quicker.”

  Rosa laughed. It sounded forced even to her, but she needed to put on the front.

  “All right, Stenner,” she said, “you’ve scared me.” She paused while a waitress delivered their drinks. She took a sip, then leaned forward. “What’s your price?”

  Stenner laughed, and it was a lot more natural than Rosa’s.

  “You don’t have enough to make me screw over Perigree, Fuentes,” he said, “and I know how much you stole. See, I’m the guy they send to make examples of guys who pull that shit. The guy they’d send after me is worse, and I’m not stupid.”

  He chuckled again and stood.

  “Enjoy your drinks, then get back to me tomorrow. You have until checkout time at your fancy hotel — I’ll give you that, since tonight’s already paid for. Drinks are on me.” He tossed some credits on the table, then walked away a few steps before turning back to look at the kid. “You should call your mom while you still can, kid. She’s probably worried.”

  Mason tried a couple times to talk to Fuentes while they made their way back to the hotel, but her only response was to mutter under her breath. He decided to let it go until they were in private.

  Once they got there, though, Fuentes went into rush-mode, giving him no chance to ask questions.

  “Hey, Frederick?” she called even before the elevator doors were closed or the door to their suite was fully open.

  “Yes, Miss Fuentes?”

  Mason nearly jumped, wondering how the butler had managed to beat them back to the hotel. He’d supposedly followed them to their meeting to oversee their guards.

  “Just how safe are we here?”

  “The Waldorf Orbital has never lost a guest on our property, Miss Fuentes.”

  Fuentes stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Mason followed her into the suite where she shut the door softly and locked it. That surprised him — he’d been expecting her to start slamming things since it didn�
�t seem Stenner had accepted any sort of bribe.

  He stood still by the buffet while she went to the suite’s windows and stared out at the stars and sliver of Earth.

  “Fuck!” Fuentes yelled, slamming her fists into the glass.

  Curiously, that made Mason feel better. A pissed off Fuentes was normal, while a quiet one was disturbing.

  “We’re still safe here — isn’t that good?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure, ‘never lost a guest on our property’,” Fuentes kicked at the window. “That means we’re stuck here, in these rooms. I didn’t go through all this to live in another fucking cell!”

  She left the window and went to the cooler to get a beer, then grabbed the fresh bowl of shrimp and took that back to the window with her.

  “So you’re giving the money back?” Mason asked.

  “Fuck, no, I’m not giving the money back,” Fuentes said. “Didn’t you hear Stenner? He’ll still kill us, it just won’t hurt as much.”

  Mason had heard that, he’d just been hoping he misunderstood.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Fuentes stared at Earth for a few moments, chewing, then took a long pull of her beer.

  “I’m going to spread some money around and make things happen,” Fuentes said.

  Twenty-Eight

  “Seymour, get me a connection to Schena. Kid, get me another beer.”

  Rosa left the window and sat down on the couch. She drained her beer as the kid handed her a fresh one and she managed to eat three shrimp before an avatar of Schena appeared in a little box in her right eye.

  “Hey, lit —”

  “I need some names, Schena,” Rosa said, riding over the man’s greeting. She subvocalized, the way she’d talk to Seymour, so the kid couldn’t hear her. She didn’t think he’d approve of what she was going to do and didn’t need to hear his whiny crap. “Right now, in a hurry.”

  “Hmph. Not even video, little Rosa? I don’t get to see you?”

  “I’m calling on my implant, not a pickup, Schena. I’ve got a problem.”

  Schena sighed. “What names?” he asked. “There’s not much I can’t do, and I’m upset you’re not thinking of me for the job.”

  Rosa hesitated. Schena was the most connected guy she knew, but she wasn’t sure this was the sort of thing he dealt with. On the streets, if she was at home, she’d go to a local gang leader and he’d take care of the problem — but Stenner was a bigger problem than that and she didn’t know any local gangs. If there even were any on the orbital.

  “Somebody’s making trouble for me,” she said. “I need him … taken care of.”

  She could almost hear Schena frown and the delay before he responded was a lot more than could be accounted for from any transmission lag.

  “Not that kid you brought here? Jesus, Rosa, he’s just a —”

  “No, not the kid,” Rosa said. “He’s fine.” She cut a glance to where the kid in question was sitting on the other couch, frowning at her. “I’m …” She didn’t really want anyone to know where she was, but she supposed it couldn’t get any worse since Stenner was already here. “I’m on the orbital, so I need those names to be someone here or who can get here quick.”

  “The orbital?” Schena grunted. “I should have charged you more. Okay, that’s a pretty small population up there.” He paused and she could hear him frowning. “I can give you three names, I think — one of them might have moved, I’m not sure. Fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty? You’re giving me names, Schena, not doing the job!”

  “These are a special kind of name, little Rosa.” Another long pause. “Just to be sure we’re on the same page … by ‘take care of’ you mean … um, well, taken care of, right?”

  “I want this person to not make trouble for me anymore,” Rosa said. “Ever. In any way. No chance. Clear enough?”

  Schena whistled. “You’re growing up so fast. Okay, fifty.”

  “Thirty,” Rosa said automatically.

  “Little Rosa, you’re out of your element up there. I’m pretty sure I’m your best chance for any name at all. Just be glad it’s not a hundred.”

  She grumbled, but Schena was right. She had no contacts of her own on the orbital, and no way to get some without leaving the Waldorf and exposing herself to Stenner — who probably had someone waiting to follow her and the kid if they did try to leave.

  Rosa tried wheedling a little bit more on principle, but Schena held firm.

  “Forty and a nip-pic,” Schena said, “but that’s my best offer — and it has to have your face in it so I know it’s yours.”

  “Ew!” Rosa pushed the bucket of shrimp away, suddenly not hungry as thoughts of what Schena would do with such a picture refused to go away. “Fine, fifty.”

  She transferred the funds and Schena sent her a file with three names and contact codes.

  Rosa stared at the info projected in front of her eye and stood up. She took the bucket of shrimp back to the buffet, not really wanting to think about food anymore. Her stomach was upset enough already, so she moved her half-empty beer back to the sideboard too, and grabbed one of the sodas the kid liked. A little carbonation might help, without the alcohol.

  She went back to the window.

  Contact the first name on the list, Seymour.

  “Yes, Miss Fuentes.”

  There was a brief wait, then a man’s voice, but no corresponding picture or avatar for the call, just a black spot in her vision where that should have been.

  “Yeah?”

  Rosa paused for a moment too long.

  “I’m busy, someone there?”

  “Hi, yeah, I got your name from —” Rosa paused. How did you go about this? Should she give Schena’s name as a reference or not?

  “No names,” the guy said. “Well, one name, but you’re new at this, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Rosa said, “I am, but —”

  “So here’s how it works,” the guy said. “You give me a name and a location, I give you a number. Half that number hits my account and then I take care of the problem, which is when the other half of the number hits my account … that last part’s pretty important. Forget that, and you become the problem. Clear?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “So give me a name and a location — Earth is extra. Shitty place.”

  Rosa took a deep breath. Was there another way out of this? She couldn’t see one. They either got Stenner off their trail completely or they spent the rest of their lives running — even a billion credits didn’t do you any good if you had to live in some hole and never spend any of it. Stenner had made it clear they were dead, so it was him or them, right?

  “He’s here on the orbital,” Rosa said. Maybe she shouldn’t have said “here”. Maybe she should have just said he was on the orbital. Now the guy knew Rosa was on the orbital too. Shit. She didn’t know how this was supposed to work. “His name’s, uh, Stenner, and he —”

  The black square of the other guy’s avatar disappeared from her vision.

  “Hello?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Rosa shut the door to her room and leaned back against it for a moment. She felt like a lot more than the station’s half-g of gravity was pulling her down and she wanted to drop to the floor and curl up in a ball for a minute, but she couldn’t. She had to get moving. The kid would close his own door and be asleep soon, she was sure.

  Her second call had gone about the same as the first. She said Stenner’s name and the guy on the other end of the line hung up. The third call had been answered with laughter — apparently word got around quick in a very small community — followed by a sober, “You’re so fucked,” before the line went dead.

  Rosa gave herself thirty seconds of feeling sorry for herself, then pushed away from the door.

  “Seymour, transfer a hun …” She paused, then nodded as she made her way across the room. “Yeah, a hundred million to the kid’s account. That should be plenty.”

  She gra
bbed one of her new suitcases, a small one with wheels, and laid it open on the bed.

  “May I ask what we’re doing, Miss Fuentes?” Seymour asked.

  “Getting out of here,” Rosa said. She eyed the suitcase. No, too much — she grabbed a backpack instead and stuffed a few practical changes of clothes in it. No extra shoes, even.

  “Is that wise?”

  “Nothing’s wise anymore, Seymour,” Rosa told the implant.

  What to wear …

  Rosa sighed and stripped off her leathers — they were just too distinctive on a small station like the orbital — and slipped on some khaki slacks and a beige blouse. She’d miss the clothes and the shoes and the leathers, but she could replace all that once she got to Mars.

  “Okay, Seymour, book me seats on the next flights to …” She pursed her lips. “Luna, New York, and Paris — hell, add some more places. Ten, yeah. Book ten flights to somewhere. No, make it a dozen. Not my name. Make up names, we’ll worry about that later.”

  The orbital wasn’t very particular about checking IDs for departing flights and left it to the destinations to make sure they wanted the traveler. She’d like to have a flight to Mars on the plan, too, but that would be asking a bit much of the travelers — who wouldn’t be her.

  “Nothing less than three hours from now, though,” she added.

  She wouldn’t be ready before then, probably.

  One last look at the bedroom, the tub, and the view of Earth.

  Rosa slid the bedroom door open and peeked out. The main suite was dimly lit, the kid must have turned the lights out before he went to his room.

  She slipped through the doorway and grabbed six beers from the cooler, along with a handful of premade sandwiches wrapped in cloth napkins. The Waldorf could bill her for stealing the linens, she supposed, or maybe they expected it.

  The provisions filled her backpack to the point that she couldn’t get the seal quite closed without shaking it a bit and the clink of beer bottles made her freeze and stare at the kid’s bedroom door.