She just asked if he was okay and got him a soda when he finally started looking around again.
Mason liked that. It made him feel normal.
Rosa opened the door and there was Stenner, all hundred kilos of ugly.
She was dressed to be noticed in her purple leathers, skirt instead of pants, and hoped it might throw Stenner off a little — their plan was sketchy as hell to begin with, and they’d need all the help they could get for the guy to agree. She didn’t know what they’d do if he didn’t.
Stenner noticed her all right — the creepy bastard started at her feet and gave her a long look all the way up.
Rosa brushed the right side of her jacket back with her arm — that drew the sheer blouse tight over her front and made it very clear she wasn’t wearing a bra with this outfit. It was a studied move, and usually gave her a little thrill, but with Stenner it just creeped her out and made her want to go wash.
She liked being looked at, but there were looks and then there were looks.
The looks of appreciation she liked best — guys, or even women, who just sort of smiled a little bit, like their day had brightened or they’d seen a work of art. She liked the thought of herself as art — something to be looked at, but not touched.
The looks of desire were good too — she liked the power of knowing someone wanted her, but knew they couldn’t have her. Or tried to talk her up only to be shot down — usually … and she’d probably lower her standards after the three years in Bright Hors', if only she hadn’t been so busy the last four days and had the kid along.
Even the ones who looked like they wanted to possess her gave something. It was a challenge she shot right back at them — try and I’ll cut you. Like Schena back on Earth — creepy, but she liked knowing she’d backed him down.
Stenner didn’t look at her like any of those. He looked at her like he’d already won and the only reason he wasn’t following up was because he wanted something else from her more. It made her worry about what might come after the job — and wonder, for the first time in her life, if she hadn’t bit off more than she could chew in parading herself in front of him.
Rosa moved her arm, letting her jacket fall back into place and cover her. She stopped herself from pulling it all the way closed and crossing her arms, though.
“Since you two aren’t running, I’m guessing the answer’s yes?” Stenner asked.
Thirty-Eight
“The answer’s a maybe,” Rosa told him, not wanting to give too much at the start. “We have some questions.”
Stenner nodded. “The answer’s a yes, but I’ll hear your questions first.”
Rosa backed out of the doorway and Stenner came in. He looked around nodding some more.
“Nice place — don’t get used to it.”
Stenner went to the banquet and began loading a plate, then took a beer to a seat by the window where the kid was.
“Have a nice chat with mommy?” he asked as he sat.
The kid flushed and Rosa’s fingers itched to grab a bottle from the bar and smash it over Stenner’s head. She’d made the kid keep the call with his mom short, just long enough to confirm Stenner’s story that she had a new job and wasn’t being kept against her will.
Rosa grabbed a beer for herself and sat, noticing that Stenner’s choice of seat made it so he could stare directly at her. Rosa tucked her legs to the side and kept herself from pulling the skirt down. This had been a bad strategy with Stenner, as she was now the one thrown off her game.
“You have questions,” Stenner said.
“Yeah,” Rosa answered. “How much is this information worth?”
Stenner took a long pull on his beer.
“That’s not the way this works,” he said finally. “You’ll get paid to do a job — in this case, you get to live and I don’t take whatever you’ve already spent out of your skin before the lights go out. The details of what Perigree wants something for, or what it’s worth to them, don’t matter to you — you’ll never know and it’s better if you don’t find out.”
Rosa shook her head. “That’s not good enough. Look,” she went on, seeing Stenner’s expression change, “if we give back all the money, we’ve got nothing — and that’s bad for you too, if you want us to do a job. How are we supposed to get to the Belt, even, much less find Chhabra? We might as well walk out an airlock ourselves right now, because we won’t be able to pay the air fees on-station if we give over everything.”
Stenner looked thoughtful. “I might, assuming you haven’t spent too much on this place and your hooker outfits, be able to arrange a little more for operating expenses.”
“It needs to be more than a little.”
Stenner laughed.
“Do you want the info or not?” Rosa asked. “It has to be worth something — and I think a lot.”
“Your problem, is you think the job’s the job,” Stenner said. “That Perigree wants this info and that’s the whole thing. But it’s not. Even I don’t know what this data is, but it’s probably not the end of what Perigree’s after. More likely, this info isn’t critical, but it makes a particular deal … easier, maybe. And that deal will make another deal happen. But it’s the deal that comes after that has the payoff — so this job, the data you retrieve, is just one piece. It works best if all the pieces fall at the right time, but it’s not fucking dominoes — we can still get where we want whether you work for us or not. You’re not the only team I’ll have working this, either. So whether you get it or not, Perigree still has a chance at the data.”
“Not as good a chance, though,” Rosa said, taking a gamble. Stenner’d said her agents were good, and they hadn’t even pieced together all the code — just fragments. That meant she was better, somehow, than the team Perigree had put on recovering a billion credits. She thought that must have been a pretty good team.
“Maybe,” Stenner said. He stood and walked to the window, watching the stars like she was losing his interest, but Rosa thought it was just the opposite.
“And you want more from us,” Rosa pushed. “Not just this job — you can’t get that if we get caught by Chhabra and he kills us.”
“If you get caught, then you weren’t that good and I’m not out anything.”
“Only if we have decent chance, otherwise you’re just throwing us away.”
“Maybe.” Stenner raised his bottle to drain the last of his beer.
“We need to keep twenty million.”
Beer splattered on the window, drops and rivulets distorting the view of Earth passing by.
Stenner coughed a couple times and held his hands away from his body, fingers spread to let the beer drop from them. He set his bottle down and went to the banquet to grab a pile of napkins and wipe at himself.
Then he grabbed a fresh beer and pointed at her with the bottle.
“Spread your legs so I can see up that skirt, Fuentes — I want to see the size of the balls that came up with that number.”
“How are your other teams getting in?” Rosa asked. “How many have a decent plan?” She went on, not giving Stenner time to answer and hoping she was right. “Not one — they’ve got nothing to offer Chhabra, do they? Just some random dudes showing up at a pirate kingdom to join up and get close enough to hack his systems? Bullshit. He doesn’t need to let anyone join him now unless they bring him an advantage — a big advantage, something he doesn’t already have enough of or can’t do himself.”
“Twenty million won’t bribe your way in,” Stenner said. “We’ve tried. Chhabra has all the money he could want — he’s just having fun out there now.”
Rosa nodded. That was the impression she’d gotten from her reading and Seymour’s research. Reports of the pirate king’s asteroid kingdom sounded like a cross between the wealthiest palace and the worst kind of slum — but between the lines, she thought the kid was right. He saw what Chhabra was after. A long-term goal, and what they could offer that no one else could.
“He wants
more, he just can’t get it, so he’s settling for the power he has. I can get him what he wants.”
“And what’s that?”
“Power — real power, but legit power. Last year he sent a ship to the peace panel yakking about the Indo-Chinese border. They blew it up. After that, piracy went up over twenty percent. Why do you think that is? Why’d he send a ship to the talks?” Rosa leaned forward to emphasize her point. “He wanted a seat at the table and when they didn’t give him one he threw a fit.”
Stenner was staring at her. “Where’d you get that from? What analysis?”
“It’s ours. Mason saw it last night,” Rosa said.
Stenner looked over at the kid who just glared back. Rosa had to hand it to him, he could do a stone-cold face when he was angry — and he was still angry at Stenner.
“So how does twenty million get Chhabra what he wants?”
“It doesn’t, it makes it look like we can give him what he wants. The Belt — well, it’s not like Earth where the UNies keep things nice mostly. The Belt’s like the lowlies — everybody’s always fighting for turf. Hell, the Indo-Chinese thing could be any couple of streeter gangs fighting over a corner. Turf, power, and control — right now, Chhabra has a little of both, but he’s like … like some kid slinging hits after class. He’s got a little bit, but the big boys will shut him down if he gets too big. That’s what they did when he sent a ship to the talks. They slapped him down and told him to just be grateful they didn’t have time to squash him right then.”
Rosa got up and went to the cooler for a fresh beer. She felt Stenner watching her, but it was a different kind of look. She thought he might not even be aware of her outfit, just waiting for her to finish talking. She kind of liked that feeling too — at least it took some of the greasiness out of Stenner’s gaze.
“Chhabra’s got power, but it’s over the kids in his class. Maybe he’s got a couple other kids slinging for him — it makes him feel all big and tough, but deep down he knows he doesn’t have enough power to take on the street gangs. He needs more. On the street that’s guns and men — out in the Belt, it’s ships.”
“Chhabra has ships —”
“He’s got one frigate and a bunch of trash haulers,” Rosa interrupted. “Maybe he can take on the navies one ship at a time, but he can’t get enough good ships, fast enough, to take a real stand against them if they decide he’s too much of a nuisance.”
“So what can you do about it?” Stenner asked, and that was when Rosa knew she had him, because him asking what she could do was just like Chhabra asking what she could do — it meant she’d read the situation right — well, the kid had, but she’d presented it right — and now Stenner was primed for a solution. What she could do to fix it.
Rosa stayed silent as she went back to her chair, set her beer on the table, and leaned forward. Stenner leaned forward as well, another sign she had him.
She laid out the kid’s plan and Stenner hung on every word.
When she was done, Stenner sat back and stared out the window for a minute, then he closed his eyes. She didn’t know if he was researching something or making a call, but she stayed quiet too. She shared a quick look with the kid, but then returned her eyes to Stenner so she’d be ready when he talked.
“You can have five,” he said, “not twenty.”
“Fifteen,” Rosa said.
“Five or a bullet.”
Epilogue
Stenner left and Mason started breathing again.
He didn’t even get up and walk the Perigree guy to the door like Fuentes did, not trusting his legs to try standing.
Fuentes was a lot tougher than he was. She hadn’t balked at Stenner’s counter-offer of five million credits for their plan — Mason did some quick calculations, and it was doable, if barely.
He tried to take a drink, his mouth was dry, but his hand was shaking too much to raise the soda and he put it back on the table.
The shaking had started after Fuentes agreed to five million and Stenner’d smiled. The guy’s smile was just … scary. That and he’d told Fuentes to transfer the rest of the money back right then while he sat there. Once that was done, they’d have no more hold over Stenner and Perigree — this whole job offer thing could be a scam to get the money back.
Fuentes had stared at Stenner for a long time, Mason thought, then they’d both nodded at the same time and he figured she’d transferred the money. A second later an alert showed in his vision that his personal account had a zero balance — she’d even been able to grab back the hundred, hundred and one million she’d given him.
That made him wonder how she’d done it, the account being in his name and all — and wonder what sorts of agents Fuentes might have attached to his explant.
That worry was minor compared to what Stenner would do now that he had the money though.
Mason had some hope for the future when the man hadn’t drawn a gun to shoot them right there, he’d just stood up and headed for the door.
“Let me know when you have the data,” he told Fuentes.
A new alert popped up in his vision, making him jump. There was now a joint account at Mars First, him and Fuentes, with a balance of five million credits.
Fuentes shut the door behind Stenner, keying all the locks, then came back to sit down.
“Well, we’re still alive,” she said.
“That’s good, right?” Mason asked.
“If it’s a scam, he wouldn’t kill us here. He’d have his men do it later when we leave.”
Mason swallowed hard, so he couldn’t even be sure his mom was safe at this point.
“I think it’s legit, though,” Fuentes said.
“Why?”
“Too elaborate for someone like Stenner. He’d just take a knife to us if we weren’t useful to him some other way.”
Fuentes drained her beer and set the empty bottle carefully on the table. She stood and went to the buffet.
“I paid the bill here through checkout tomorrow before I sent Stenner the money,” she said, filling two champagne buckets with ice and beer, then balancing a whole chocolate cake on top of a bowl of shrimp. “I’m going to take a bath.”
Mason swallowed hard and stopped her before she got to her room. “So what’s next?”
“We work for Perigree now,” Fuentes said, her face twisting in disgust. “I hate that. I still want those fuckers to pay.” She took a deep breath. “But I guess that’ll have to come later. A long con — no goats.”
Mason didn’t know what that meant, but figured Fuentes was the expert on conning people.
“At least we’re not on the run for the moment. So right now we head for Luna,” Fuentes said. “Get what we need, then on to the Belt and con Stenner’s data away from a space pirate.”
“Then what?”
“Figure out how to screw Perigree over good and run like hell again,” she said, then sighed. “We need to get better at that.”
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Running Start, I hope you enjoyed it and it will come along on more of Rosa’s and Mason’s (and Seymour’s) story in the Dark Runs books to come.
If you did enjoy this and would like to help support the series, the best thing you can do is leave a review at Amazon, Goodreads, or even your personal blog — reviews help other readers determine if a series is to their liking and authors, especially indy authors, rely on such word of mouth to get our books in front of new readers.
You can also join my email mailing list at www.jasutherlandbooks.com/list. The list receives no more than one or two emails a month, with updates on my next books, as well as recommendations of other authors you might like. You’ll also receive some free short works in the Alexis Carew series — my space opera with a very Age of Sail feel to it.
Both the Carew series and my newer Dark Artifice series (written as Richard Grantham) usually have some historical information that I relay in the Author’s Note, but Trade Runs isn’t even a semi-historical
novel or inspired by any historical events, so I can’t …
Oh, wait …
In 2009, Judge Mark Ciavarella was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison for receiving over $2.2-million from a for-profit prison company as a “finder’s fee” and then setting about filling the place up. His decisions about who should be sent to a juvenile prison included a fourteen-year old girl who created a satirical Myspace page about her vice-principal, a twelve-year old boy who cursed at another student’s mother, and over twenty-four hundred others whose convictions were subsequently overturned and expunged.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html
The story was covered extensively in the documentary and book Kids for Cash (https://www.amazon.com/Kids-Cash-Thousands-Children-Kickback-ebook).
It would be foolish to think that Ciavarella was the only one to see a profit in this sort of thing then – or that there’s no one doing the same thing now, only keeping it quieter.
Any time there’s money involved, especially big money, the economic incentives and unintended consequences should be carefully examined and considered. A for-profit prison system creates the most basic economic system of supply-and-demand, with prisoners, human beings, as the product.
J.A. Sutherland
Orlando, Florida
January 17, 2019
Acknowledgments
I’d like to acknowledge some great readers who’ve gone above and beyond in their support of my work.
First, Mark Gutis, who’s been taking each new book in the Alexis Carew series and updating a sort of character bible with details on each character, origin, and interactions. I’ve used it frequently to refresh my memory as I write later books.
There’s also an anonymous reader, or readers, who made a comprehensive TV Tropes page for the Carew series. I had no idea …
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