by Kali Wallace
He opened the door, and I hurried to say, “Wait. One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Can I, um, can I ask a favor? A personal favor,” I clarified. When he only waited, looking at me expectantly, I went on, “It’s my family. My parents and brother on Earth. I don’t know what they’re going to hear, it will probably be all lies, but could you . . . Not officially, I know that, but could you just let them know I’m okay?”
A few seconds passed. I couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll contact them,” van Arendonk said. “Don’t do anything stupid, Marley. You’re in a bigger pile of shit than you can dig out of.”
Later that day, after I returned to my cell, the guards brought in another prisoner. He was a white man, middle-aged, with the twitchy, hyperactive manner of somebody coming down from a dose of stimulants. They put him into the cell directly across from mine. He shouted for water as soon as he was in the cell, shouted for food when the guard brought water, shouted for a blanket, shouted for a fan, shouted to be let the fuck out of there, did they know who he was, his lawyers would not like this, let him the fuck out.
I was doing my best to ignore him, but I couldn’t help but notice that he looked somewhat familiar. I tried to get a good look without being obvious about it. He was pacing in his cell, one wall to the other, shaking his head and muttering to himself—then he stopped abruptly and stared at me. His eyes narrowed. He frowned.
I stared right back. I wondered if I’d ever investigated him. Confiscated his devices, ruined his blackmail gig, found his secret porn feed, something that would have pissed him off and given him a reason to remember me.
He said, “Hey. Who did your work? That is fine work.” He whistled.
That’s when I remembered where I’d seen him before. He was the Ceres surgeon who had started doing black market biohacks after losing his license, the one who had practically lobotomized the kid with the bleeding eyes. I had passed his file to Jackson before leaving for Nimue, but I hadn’t expected anything to come of it. His last known location had been aboard a cargo ship heading away from Hygiea.
“How the fuck did you get caught?” I asked.
He laughed, surprised, stopped his pacing to lean against the glass wall. “Shit, man, I have the worst damn luck. I was headed to Badenia, yeah? On legitimate medical business! There’s a fucking hospital there!” He shouted these words toward the camera in his cell. “But we’re half a day out when the captain turns us the fuck around. I guess the station’s off-limits now. Piece-of-shit ship brought me right back here. The OSD was on my ass before I’d even unstrapped from my bunk.”
Badenia, where Parthenope had a shipyard and a major hospital. There were five thousand people living on that rock; it was Parthenope’s second-largest station. It had been second on Mary Ping’s target list. I suddenly felt nauseated and cold all over. Surely van Arendonk would have told me if something terrible had happened. He would have told me.
“What happened to Badenia?” I asked, barely able to force the question out.
“What?” The man blinked. “Nothing. Corporate shit. Carrington Ming revoked their joint management agreement for the shipyard, and they run the port administration, so that stopped traffic. A bunch of other companies are making noise about doing the same. They aren’t saying why, but a buddy of mine says he’s heard everybody’s stopped issuing liability bonds for Parthenope-chartered ships and, guess the fuck what, I was on one of those. It’s about to get real fucking crowded here, if they keep sending everybody back. Hey.” His voice turned incredulous. He paced again a few steps before stopping. “Hey, it’s not that funny. I didn’t get my due fucking process!”
I didn’t mean to laugh. It just came right up, without my permission, a giggle caught somewhere between mirthful and hysterical. There had not been a tragedy on Badenia. This was not a replay of the horror on Aeolia. Because, after all, there was no need for anything so dramatic.
I understood now why Parthenope so badly wanted to find Vanguard. It knew the worst of their secrets. And it had no reason to keep them to itself.
All Vanguard had to do was leak key pieces of information. Hints of Mary Ping’s and Parthenope’s plans. Details of Parthenope’s ongoing fraud. The names of everybody who had not known they were participating in a treaty violation. Vanguard was clever. It would know what to say, and who to say it to, what seeds to plant that would lead reporters and lawyers and OSA regulators to dig up the rest. I didn’t know exactly what information it had access to, and maybe the full scale of what Parthenope had planned was not public yet, but I would have happily wagered a month’s wages on the outer systems news media needing only a day or two to put together the big picture.
Van Arendonk was right. They were going to ask for my help. I ignored the butcher doc’s ramblings to lie down on the floor again. I stared at the ceiling and smiled and thought about all the different ways I would tell them to go fuck themselves.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing and editing a book when the world is falling apart around us is not a particularly easy thing to do, but it helps to have a friend who understands just how outrageous of a clusterfuck the whole writing and publishing process can be. I want to thank Audrey Coulthurst for going above and beyond what a friend should ever be asked to do in the service of fictional space murders. Without her thoughtful editing, patient hand-holding, tireless cheerleading, and honest commiseration, this book would be nothing more than a messy collection of half-formed scenes and bad ideas. I desperately needed the support, and she provided it with exactly the right amount of creative cussing.
Thank you as well to Leah Thomas, Lynnea Fleming, Matthew Slote, and Pat Russo, who formed my pandemic sanity pod and kept things from getting too terribly bleak when the days blended together and time lost all meaning.
I also want to thank all of my readers, and that means every one of you, from those of you who picked this book up on a whim to those who have followed me as I’ve jumped wildly from genre to genre over the past few years. You are literally everything that makes this crazy endeavor worthwhile. Thank you.
Photo © 2015 by Jessica Hilt
Kali Wallace studied geology and earned a PhD in geophysics before she realized she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds more than she liked researching the real one. She is the author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels for adults, teens, and children, as well as a number of short stories and essays. After spending most of her life in Colorado, she now lives in southern California.
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