by Frost, E J
He’s dropped several bags in the corridor. He picks one up and tosses it to his sister. “Next time, hire yourself a Mule.”
“Thanks,” she says, ignoring his hostility. She kneels to unfasten one bag, checks inside, then stands and looks at me. “Do you have a place I could change?”
“Sure.” I cock a thumb at the door marked ‘Passenger Lounge.’ “’Fresher’s in there.”
“Thanks.” She slings the bag over her shoulder and pushes past her brother to the door I’ve indicated, leaving me to return her brother’s glower.
“Snow,” I say. I don’t offer him my hand.
“I know who you are. She’s been talking about you for-fucking-ever.”
Has she now? Interesting. For-fucking-ever sounds like longer than four days, even in monkey-time. She might need another spanking before we get to the truth of how long she’s been stalking me.
For-fucking-ever is also strangely gratifying. I’m not really sure what I want from Kez other than my two and a half grand and another go-round in a bed, but I like that she wants me for more than my ship and lack of hair. “These need to be stowed.” I reach for one of the bags he’s tossed on the corridor floor.
He snatches it out of my grasp. Hostile little chimp. “Just show me where.”
I gesture him into the passenger lounge. The Marie’s a cargo ship, so the passenger amenities are basic. Just one room with the passenger flight-cradles and the adjoining ‘fresher. If Kez has decided to change in the lounge instead of the toilet, we’re going to walk in on her. But presumably her brother’s seen her naked before, and I’d like to see more than I have.
Disappointingly, she’s picked the ‘fresher. I show Ape the lockers for passenger baggage and leave him to stow the bags, since the little fucker won’t let me touch them.
Kez joins me on the flight deck a few minutes later. She’s changed. No artfully ripped fishnets and tight shorts now. She’s wearing loose black fatigues studded with pockets, a black tank with detached black knit sleeves that will keep her arms warm in the cool spring night but won’t inhibit her movement, and boots with metal showing at the worn toes. She’s got her game face on. Most of the rings are gone, just a couple through each ear and a cobalt one through her nose remain. Her expression is cool and distant. She’s still wearing the kohl around her eyes, though. With the fatigues, it looks like war paint.
“Ready?” I ask her.
The detached mask immediately drops and she climbs into the co-pilot’s chair eagerly. The fatigues aren’t as form fitting as the shorts, but her ass still does interesting things to them. I could get addicted to that ass. “Yes,” she says.
“Strap in.” While she does, I flick on the ship’s intercom. “Baggage may shift during flight,” I say. “Strap in unless you want to wind up on the ceiling.”
I don’t check the monitor to see if Ape’s secured. Serves the little fucker right if he ends up plastered to the deck when I take off.
The flight to Kuus should take an hour. I open up the Marie’s big engines once we’re clear of the docks. The flight computer rapidly recalculates our landing for thirty-nine minutes. That’s more like it.
The flight’s an easy one. A straight shot up the valley. I won’t need to do anything until we reach the mountains. I flip on the automatics so I can watch Kez.
She’s looking out the viewer with the same wide-eyed wonder. I smile and she sees my expression reflected in the viewer. She turns to look at me. “You must think I’m a noob.”
I shrug. “It’s a good view.”
“It’s amazing.” She returns to it. I watch her for a few minutes, enjoying the delight that plays across her expressive face. It’s not a beautiful face in the classic sense. She doesn’t have Marin’s fine-boned features. Or even the sultry appeal of the hooker who finally broke Marin’s spell over the little monster. That woman had the fullest lips I’d ever seen, and her mouth was absolutely magical. Too bad she was so expensive. But I like Kez’s expressive face. Her eyes would be large even without the black goo. They hold all the wonder in the universe at the moment and light up her otherwise unremarkable features: longish nose accentuated by the dark blue ring through her septum, pale bow of a mouth, high cheekbones and narrow chin.
I couldn’t see her expression when she came. I make a mental note to turn her over next time. See if any of that delighted wonder lights up her face. I’m betting it does.
“Kez,” I say softly after letting her admire the view for a long while. “Want to tell me what we’re picking up?”
“Glands,” she says, without tearing her eyes away from the viewer.
“What kinda glands?”
“Adrenal, I think.”
“Fifty kilos is a lotta glands.”
“Huh?” She glances at me. “Oh, they’re in some special kind of container. It’s keeping them viable or something. It’s heavy.”
“What’re they for?” I can think of a couple of uses for adrenal glands: straight, gray and black-market.
She shrugs. “None of my business. I’m paid to get them from Kuus to New Brunny by five.”
I nod. I’m familiar with that sort of consignment. A to B with no questions asked.
“Who’s paying?”
Her eyes narrow. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t.” I give her a lazy grin as I echo her words. “I just like to know who I’m dealing with.”
She looks back out the viewer. “No one stupid enough to hire me directly.”
“Boney Zed or the Chiangles?” I ask, naming two of the better-known fronts in Nock. Snow’s been hired by each of them at various times. I was curious enough after the first hire to trace it back to one of the Vespers’ drug lords, Kison Tyng. King of the Hex-trade on Kuseros. But I never did figure out why he had Boney hire the Spinning Marie for a fairly straight transport of industrial waste. Unless he was testing me. In which case, by poking around, I failed. Which is fine by me. I got no interest in becoming part of someone’s fiefdom. Too much potential for recognition.
“Neither. A Jello Boy.”
One of the Western Colony’s many gangs of toughs. They usually stick to Hemos. Which means either they left the res to hire Kez, or she left it to hire me. “They trade in organics?” They don’t that I’ve ever heard, but maybe they’re branching out.
She snorts. “They’re not that organized.”
No, I didn’t think so. “You’re not curious?”
She turns to look at me. Big eyes narrowed. “Of course I am, but not terminally. Look, runs like this come along four or five times a year. The big fish hire me because I’m such a little fish that no one gives a shit what I do, and no one would give a shit if I disappeared. So I keep my questions to myself, do what I’m told and collect my credits. And I don’t get eaten, get it?”
Yeah, I get it. She’s a smart girl: a pragmatist and an opportunist. Like me. “What I don’t get is why you came to me.” Back to the thing that’s really bugging me.
“I told you.”
“’Cause I’m bald?” There’s got to be more to it than that. “Cause I’m a decent pilot an’ I don’t cut out when shit gets ugly?”
She looks away, out the viewer, but her gaze is fixed. I don’t think she’s looking at the pretty lights anymore. “Because it was a way in.”
Now the truth comes out.
“How long you really been watchin’ me, kitten?”
“Three months,” she sighs.
That is a long fucking time. The idea of her watching me for three months without me spotting her raises my hackles.
“We met before,” she says softly. “I’ve been waiting to see if you’d remember, but I don’t think you have. I dropped off a package that you picked up in Roysten. You were angry because I was late, which I wasn’t. I was told the drop was at one.”
Now that she says it, I do remember. I was pissed. It was my second trip for Garagenis. They’d stiffed me first time out for twenty percent because the drop w
as late, and I wasn’t going to let it happen a second time. I was in such a red haze that I’ve got no memory of who dropped the package. Only that they were late.
“You spoke to me. Your voice . . . touched me . . . here.” She presses two fingers against her belly, glances at me, flushes, and looks back out the viewer. I hide a smile since she can probably see my reflection in the screen. I know I give good voice. One of the Company hookers who gave me a nice hour when I was still in S.A.W.L. called it a ‘black velvet’ voice. I can’t remember what planet she was on or what she looked like, but I’ve always remembered that phrase.
“You brushed my arm,” Kez continues. “When you were taking the package off me. I could feel . . . how strong you are. I tried to talk to you, but you said you were running late. I didn’t even get your first name. You left and I felt . . . I don’t know. I felt like I’d missed something. Something important. Then a couple of days later I saw you again. It was from a distance. At the Nock port. I realized your ship must be berthed there. I tried to find you through the Nets, but I couldn’t get past your ship’s security. You don’t seem to have any avatars. So I thought I’d try a flesh-meet. For a while I went to the bars near the port, hoping to bump into you. But you were never there. So one night I waited and followed you. I kept thinking you’d stop somewhere and I’d be able to go up to you, ask if I could buy you a drink. But you never stopped. After that, it was like a game. Whenever I was near the port I’d see if I could catch sight of you. If it was near the end of your shift, I’d follow you. God, that doesn’t sound right . . . I haven’t been stalking you. It wasn’t like that.”
Which is good to hear, ‘cause it sounds exactly like that. But there’s something about the earnestness with which she relates her little tale, and her evident embarrassment, that moves it out of the realm of the psychotic. Even out of the realm of the hackle-raising. It’s . . . cute.
“Kez—” I begin.
“I just wanted a way in,” she rushes on. Trying to justify herself. “Some—” She waves her hand between us. “Connection. So you wouldn’t walk away again.”
I let the silence hang for a moment. Make sure she’s really done. When I hear her take a shaky breath, I say, “Whaddo you think so far?”
“Wha—” She wipes her face quickly. “What do you mean?”
“You musta thought about what it’d be like. Bein’ with me. Whaddo you think so far?”
She gives me a shy grin. And a hot pink blush. “Nothing like what I expected.”
“Still battin’ a thousand?”
“Yes.” She waves a finger at the front screen. “Maybe a million.”
Still not knocked back by anything, not even spilling her borderline psycho secret. I like her fearlessness. “Anythin’ else you want to tell me before we land?”
She shrugs. “The pickup’s at midnight. First point of contact’s about two klicks from the Kuus dock, but I may have to go somewhere else to collect the box. It depends. Either way, I should be back by one. If I’m not, something’s wrong. I’ll signal you if you give me the ship code.” She tugs the touch screen on her wrist around and poises a finger over it.
“SM2662.” I wait while she types it into her little viewie. “But you won’t need to call me.”
“I won’t? Um, do you want to monitor me or something?”
“No, I’m comin’ with you.”
Chapter 3
Her brother objects, vociferously, when Kez tells him I’ll be accompanying them to the pickup. He drops the bag he was lifting out of a storage compartment and crosses his arms over his chest. “He’ll fuck everything up. The Snatchers don’t know him. What’re you gonna tell them?”
Kez winces at the dropped bag and collects it carefully from the floor. I take it from her and pull the other bag out of the compartment to save it from Ape’s tender ministrations. “The same thing I’m going to tell them about you,” she says. “That you’re with me. You’ve been up here, what, Ape, twice? In four years?”
“That’s twice more than him.”
“Actually, I come up every couple weeks,” I remark, slinging the second bag over my back and settling the strap across my chest. I’ve got a regular haul from Kuus to the Orbitals, but I’ve never strayed outside the port before. “And you won’t get back into the port without me. Curfew.”
Kez’s eyes snap up to mine. “Curfew?”
“Yeah. They began lock-down a coupla weeks ago. After some water rioters broke in and damaged the tether.”
Kez shakes her head. “Damn.”
“Long as you’re with me, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
She gives me one of those mischievous grins. “Then we’d better not lose you in the tunnels. Ape, stop whining and get the boards out. We’ve only got fifteen minutes.”
The ‘boards’ are a pair of float boards. Once we’re off the ship, Kez and her brother flick on the boards’ neg cells and toss them into the air, where they hover a half-meter off the ground. Ape jumps onto his with more agility than I expect, given his size. The board bursts into a rainbow of light. Trailing haylon streamers, he does a circle around me and Kez, then grabs a sensor projecting off one of the Marie’s ailerons and flips himself into a somersault, one hand holding the edge of his board, the other dragging one of the gear bags.
The sensor bends with a squeal of metal.
Ape lands a few feet away, flips the float board over between his feet and gives me a cocky monkey grin.
I reach up and straighten the sensor. “Hope you enjoy a bumpy ride to New Brunny,” I say.
“Ape!” Kez hisses at her brother. “I’m so sorry, Mister Snow.”
I control a grin. Hearing her call me that is too funny. “S’okay. Let’s go.”
Kez mounts up with less fanfare than the orangutan and locks her left heel into a depression in the board. She reaches a hand back to me. “You can ride with me.”
I shake my head. “I’ll keep up. Lead the way.”
“You—” Kez begins, but stops at my expression. She shrugs. “Okay.”
She leans forward and sets off towards the dock exit. I sling the bags I’m carrying across my shoulders and start off after her. I jog at first, until I warm up, then open my stride and run, easily keeping pace with her board.
She glances at me several times as I run beside her through the quiet streets. The first klick disappears under my boots. I’m getting nice and warm now, hitting my stride, swinging over, under and around any obstacles that Kez floats over. All those hours training with the parkour master when I was a grunt coming back to me. Endorphins surge through my body, telling me I could run forever. I begin to outpace her float board.
With a determined hum from her board’s neg cells, she passes me, turns by pulling the front of her board up sharply with one hand, and circles around me. Getting bolder, that mischievous grin lighting her face, she catches my shoulder on the next pass and uses me as a pivot as she twists around me. I hold out my hand. She grabs it and I swing her around, using our combined momentum to lift her above my head. She tucks into a crouch, holding the edge of the board with one hand, and when I release her, executes a forward somersault in mid-air and zooms off ahead of me, laughing delightedly.
I push on and catch up with her as she pulls up in front of a subway entrance. Ape’s already several steps down into the subway. He’s slung his board into a harness on his back and as Kez dismounts, he takes her board and tucks it into his harness. He gives me a short nod as I join them. Kez smiles hugely at me. “You run really well.”
I shrug. There are some advantages to being a Mod. “You board really well.” I nod at her board.
“You’d make a good runner.” She tilts her head to the side and gives me a long, evaluating look. Ape snorts, sounding very much like his namesake.
“He’s too big.”
“So are you. He’s fast. Faster than Duncan, I bet.”
“Better not let Dunk hear you say that,” Ape retorts. “C’mon, we’re late
.”
Kez nods and follows him a step down into the stairwell. Then she pauses, and turns back for me. She holds out her hand, and I take it.
Ape glances back, sees our joined hands and groans. “Fuck me, Kez. He’s like an old man.”
“Butt out,” she says, but there’s no heat to it. Her patience with her little brother seems infinite. “Hit the lights. They know we’re coming.”
Her brother squeezes a couple of the nylar bands that circle his bicep. They begin to glow, yellow light seeping across the dirty, broken tiles of the station floor. Kez reaches into her hair with her free hand, does something to a couple of her dreads, and nylar beads woven through the fuzzy strands begin to glow: bright white, green and dull red. With the nimbus of light around her head, she looks like an angel.
“Sorry, I didn’t bring any for you,” she says. I shrug. I don’t need her lights; if anything, they fuck with my night vision. I lengthen my stride so I’m a step ahead of her and her halo.
Between her light and the cat’s eye in my retinas the chop-doc implanted, I can see as well as if it was daylight. I can see that the station is weirdly empty. The streets above are still populated, if sparsely. When we begin passing closed for construction signs, I understand why.
We reach a set of arches next to an attendant’s station, currently dark and unmanned. The ticket machines are lit up, though. Typical that the only thing working would be the way the govvies take your credits.
Ape starts through one of the arches, only to be pulled up by his sister’s sharp admonition.
“Wait for me to buy the tickets!”
“It’s fucking shut, Kez. Who’s gonna stop me?” He jumps through the arch and stands on the far side with his hands up in the air. “Oh, oh, don’t shoot me!”
“Don’t be an ass! You need to observe the rules with the Downers. No entry without a ticket.” She unslings her backpack, pulls out a credit wand and plugs it into one of the ticket machines. It dutifully spits out three plaz tickets. She hands one to me and carries two to the archway her brother has just breached.