Snowburn

by Frost, E J

  She joins me after a few minutes, alert and freshly scrubbed. She’s pulled her dreadlocks back with a black band again. Having seen the light show and the edged monofilament she wears in her hair, I wonder what else she’s got hidden in there.

  She straps herself in to the copilot’s chair and watches our descent through the threatening clouds avidly. “New Brunny’s not such a safe place right now,” she says after several minutes. We’re still some distance from the city, but beneath the clouds, the pre-dawn sky is stained with smoke. Fires still burning from last night’s riots. Feels like I’m back on fucking Phogath.

  “Yeah, I know.” I tap one of the monitors between us, which is scanning for the signatures of anti-aircraft weapons and other deterrents to flying New Brunny’s friendly skies.

  “I don’t think the riots have reached the spaceport, though.”

  “No?” I haven’t heard anything one way or the other. But I haven’t been listening. New Brunny’s not a place I fly into regularly. “How far from the port to the drop?”

  “They’re supposed to meet us at the port. Dock 216 North.”

  I nod. I know where that is. Hell, I think I flew into it on that run I did for the Chiangles. Maybe all Kuseros’s smugglers use the same berth.

  As I’m tapping the dock number into the ship’s computer, the monitor between us beeps. I glance at it. See what I least wanted to see.

  Anti-aircraft weapon detected, it tells me. Fuck.

  “Make sure you’re strapped in,” I tell Kez. Flick on the intercom and relay the same warning to Ape. This time I check the monitor to make sure he’s heard and obeyed. Putting him on the deck during a routine takeoff is one thing. Turning him into a human pinball while I evade missiles is another.

  Ahead of us, the ground blooms. Once, twice, three times. Then a barrage of small, bright lights. Covering fire for the missiles.

  I rotate the Marie’s engines. Drop her nearly straight down. Below the missiles and covering fire. Low enough to break a few windows in the housing blocks below. Red warnings light up across the control panel; klaxons blare. I bump them off with my elbow as I fight the g-force to rotate the engines again and bring the ship back up to a minimum safe altitude.

  The tracer fire’s gone overhead, but two of the missiles are heat-seekers. The monitor flares again. ‘Acquiring,’ it tells me.

  “Yeah, acquire this.”

  I open the Marie’s powerful engines, flick on the auxiliary booster for a little extra kick, and throw the ship into a roll. The Marie doesn’t have any weapons – too conspicuous for a civvie short hopper – but she’s got speed, and some kick-ass countermeasures. When I estimate we’re over the missile emplacement, I drop a set of the countermeasures. In the rear monitor, they heat quickly to a red glow. They’ll attract the missiles, which would be hard pressed to catch the Marie at this speed anyway.

  I flip open a red latch marked ‘Emergency Only.’ Wait until we’re out of range of the blast. Tap the panel under the latch.

  Behind us, there’s a brief flare of bright white light. Then the lights on the ground wink out, in a spreading circle from where I’ve dropped the countermeasures.

  Kez, straining to look in all the monitors at once, whispers, “What was that?”

  “E.M.P.”

  “Elec-electro—”

  She probably doesn’t know what E.M.P. is, since it’s rarely used against civilians. To save her any embarrassment, I say, “Electro-magnetic pulse.”

  “I thought the cities were, you know, shielded.”

  They are. Against the constant E.M. wash off Kuseros’s binary star. But the bomb I just dropped was about a thousand times stronger. “Not from this.”

  “Wow.” She looks a little green, whether from the Marie’s rotation or because of the devastation I’ve unleashed on the ground, I don’t know. I even the ship out and survey the monitors. Most of the city’s western sprawl has gone dark. Fuckers won’t be firing anything at anyone for a while.

  I ease back on the roaring engines and turn the ship towards New Brunny’s northern docks.

  By the time we reach the dock, the clouds have delivered on their promise and rain sheets off the Marie’s flight canopy. I settle the ship onto the landing pad; stare out the rain-lashed view screen as the engines cycle down. Remember sitting in another ship, staring out another view screen into the dark, and listening to Conro gurgle his last. I should have killed that fucker twice for what he did to Marin.

  I flick off the main engines. Bring her down to stand-by. I’m not sure what’s waiting in the dark, but I want to be able to leave quickly if it turns out to be unfriendly.

  I run through the pre-flight, so there’s nothing I need to do other than power up the engines and release the landing clamps. As I’m finishing the pre-flight, I focus on the chrono in my eye. Zero-four-forty. Still a little time to kill.

  “You ready?” I ask Kez.

  She’s been watching my preparations attentively. Like she’s trying to memorize what I’m doing. At my question, she shakes herself, then nods.

  “Thinking about trying her yourself?” I flick the flight controls over to the co-pilot’s console. The display in front of her lights up.

  She snorts. “I’d fly into the nearest mountain.”

  At least she recognizes her limitations. No false bravado. I admire that about her. “You could learn.”

  She turns in the copilot’s chair so she’s on her side. Props her chin on her fist. Watches my face with those hugely dilated kitten eyes the same way she watched me prep the ship. “You could teach me.”

  “Flying lessons are expensive.”

  “How much?” she counters.

  “Five hundred hard a lesson. Thirty minutes. Plus expenses.”

  “Expenses?”

  “Fuel. Handcuffs. Paddles. They add up.”

  She gives me that mischievous grin. “Guess I’d better save my credits. Where did you learn to fly?”

  “Long time ago.” I shrug.

  “I didn’t ask when, I asked where.”

  Tenacious kitten. “Dacondier system.”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  Killing civvies. “I was with S.A.W.L. You know what that is?”

  She nods. “Space Marines, right?”

  Close enough. “Yeah, long time ago.” I reach under my chair, tug out the cool-tray and pull out two plaz bulbs. Toss one to her. “More fluids for you.”

  Kez opens the bulb and takes a drink. It’s just water, but it’s decent quality water. Not the desalinated shit she’s probably used to. And it tastes, mmm, it tastes like water always tastes when you’re thirsty: like life itself.

  “This is worth a lot,” she says. “Especially here.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re drinkin’ my whole cut for this run.”

  She turns onto her back. Wriggles down in the chair and sips her water. “We didn’t discuss expenses.”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Well, there’s fluids.” She jiggles her bulb so the remaining water sloshes. “But I figure you owe me a liter, so this makes us even.”

  “That water’s more expensive than your blood.”

  “That’s probably true.” She giggles. “Okay, so I owe you for the water. How much?”

  “At least another forty minutes.”

  “Throw in Ralph and we have a deal.”

  “Ralph’s mine. No deal.”

  She pouts. Wets her lips with another sip of water and gives me a long, sidelong glance through her lashes. “You could share Ralph with me.”

  “Whaddo you want, joint custody?”

  “Equal Ralph time.” She wriggles in the seat, stretches her legs out in front of her. I bet inside the boots, she’s curling her toes. “And a massage. Does Ralph give good massages?”

  “He’s all paws.” Actually, I give pretty good massage, or so I’ve been told. I haven’t had the opportunity to practice this decade, though. “Sides, you owe me, remember?
”

  “I reciprocate. And I’m not all paws.”

  “Forty minutes, Ralph time and reciprocal massage, huh? That’s all you’re offering me for this fine water?” I lift my bulb and pretend to scrutinize it.

  “And a shower. Forty minutes, Ralph time, reciprocal massage and a shower. And we might as well eat, too. Those noodles you got the other night were good. Forty minutes, Ralph time, reciprocal massage, a shower and noodles.”

  Sounds like a date. “That all?”

  “At your place. I didn’t get to see inside.”

  “Forty minutes, Ralph time, reciprocal massage, a shower and noodles at my place. Sounds light to me.”

  She sighs. “Sounds amazing to me. When does payback begin?”

  “You gotta make the drop first.”

  She makes a disgruntled noise and settles deeper into the chair. “I could send Ape. But they’d probably stiff him.”

  “You want something done right, gotta do it yourself.”

  “Ugh, I know.” She finishes the water. Stretches. “Don’t I just know?” She climbs out of her chair. “Snow, if you’re not doing anything . . . would you come with me? You are a hellofa backup.”

  Remembering another woman who asked me to brave monsters in the dark with her, I give Kez a slow smile. “Sure. That’s extra, though.” At the rate we’re going, she’s going to owe me several hours of fucking. Which is just fine with me.

  She grins. Looks like it’s fine with her, too.

  Chapter 6

  We find her brother sleeping. Kez shakes her head at him and says, “He can sleep through anything. Always could, even when we were kids.”

  Kez is a fairly deep sleeper herself, but I don’t mention that since she may not even be aware that she slept on top of me for two hours. She’s not wrong about how deep her brother sleeps, though. We don’t make any effort at silence while we unload the box. Ape remains blissfully unconscious, snoring a little. Once the float machines are reattached, the box bobs along behind me like a tug on its tether.

  The ramp lowers us into sheeting rain. I’ve landed in VTOL mode, so the Marie’s perched less than thirty meters from the dock. But it’s a wet thirty meters. I could run it, but I don’t think Kez is up to running. Even walking, she lags behind me. In the overhang of the dock, I wait for her. Dock 216 is dark. Empty. Waiting for the first cargo of the day. Some of the distant docks show signs of life: light, smoke, floaters arriving, workers in the blue and yellow coveralls of Kuseros Colonial Administration moving around. But not Dock 216.

  “Looks like we’re early,” I tell Kez as she joins me in looking through the tall plaz windows into the dark building. No movement inside. And no obvious way in.

  “They gave me a passkey.” She unslings her backpack, rummages through it and comes up with a small square of yellow plaz. She pushes it into a slot in the side of the building. One of the tall windows uncouples from the others with a pneumatic hiss, pulls back a meter and slides to the side. The building exhales a stale breath, redolent of fried food and time spent fruitlessly waiting.

  Although Kez’s passkey opens the building, it doesn’t turn the lights on. The rainy dawn doesn’t do much to light the building and once we walk through the few meters of filtered grey light let in by the windows, we’re standing in the dark.

  My cat’s eye lets me see deeper into the building. Some crates stacked in an area outlined with florescent yellow paint on the permacrete floor. A row of uncomfortable-looking metal chairs bolted to the far wall. Standing sentinel next to the chairs, a battered recycler. Probably the source of the greasy smell. Typically, it’s off, no lights blinking. Those soyu strips are feeling like a long time ago.

  Reddish light flares beside me and I glance at its source. Kez twists another of her dreads and it glows green. Once she has several beads lit, she shakes her hair back and looks around. “What time is it?” she asks.

  “Don’t you got a clock in that hair? Seems like you got everything else.”

  She snorts. “No.”

  “Five to five.” I translate it into civvie time for her.

  “Damn. They should be here by now.”

  “Problem?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not yet. They may just be late. No everyone has Penny’s thing about punctuality.” She gives me a faint grin.

  Since it looks like we’re gonna be waiting a while, I evaluate the options for a place to sit. The metal chairs are the worst option. The floor looks softer. But it’s the crates within their yellow line that look the most promising. I step over the line slowly. It doesn’t look wired, but you never know. No alarms blare. I test a couple of the crates with my hand. The foam-core ain’t sturdy enough to bear my weight, but the metal crates feel fine. I climb onto one of them, hold my hand out for Kez and help her up beside me. I lean back gingerly. The foam-core doesn’t shift: strong enough to lean against. I let my legs dangle over the side of the crate and relax.

  After a minute of wriggling around, Kez gets herself settled. She scoots close to me. “May I?” She nods at my shoulder.

  “Sure.”

  She settles against my side, head on my shoulder. I curve my arm around her. Rest my hand on her hip. She feels warm, soft and very, very natural against me.

  “Comfy?”

  She sighs. “Yes.” She lies against me quietly for a few moments. I spend the time enjoying her warmth and weight, the clean soap smell of her hair. And the silence. I like Kez. She’s not too noisy, but even her relative lack of yap can wear on me after so many years of solitude.

  “Snow,” she says. I knew it was too good to last. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got some stuff out of your recycler. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.” The Marie’s passenger recycler doesn’t have much of a selection, but all of it is nutritious, and some of it is tasty. I’m curious to see what she picked. “Don’t think this gets you out of buying noodles.”

  “Am I buying?” she asks innocently, as she rummages in her backpack. She pulls out several packets and spreads them across our laps. Protein jerky, dehydrated pineapple and four packets of green tea yokan. Kitten has a sweet tooth. “I don’t think I said I was buying.”

  “You’re definitely buying. You leave anything in my recycler?” Looks like she’s cleaned me out.

  “The tortillas. Who eats carrot and onion flavored tortillas?”

  I don’t like them either. That’s why they’re in the passenger recycler. “They were cheap.”

  She offers me one of the packets of jerky. “Cheap and nasty.”

  “I see you keepin’ all the good stuff to yourself. Gimme some yokan.”

  She pouts but hands me a packet of the sweet, green cubes. Shifts her leg a little so the rest of the yokan packets end up in her lap. Minx. I poke her in the hip. “Share, or I’ll take your toys away.”

  She picks up one of the yokan packets with the tips of her fingers and grudgingly drops it in my lap. I chuckle.

  We eat in companionable silence for several minutes. When she finishes, she leans against me with a satisfied sigh. I shift her closer to my side while I finish a packet of pineapple rings.

  She lets her head loll across my shoulder. “I could use some Ralph time right now,” she says.

  “Close your eyes. I’ll wake you when they come.”

  She looks up at me sleepily. The hollows beneath her eyes are so deep I could fit my thumbs into them. “Who’s going to wake you?”

  “I don’t fall asleep in strange places.”

  “Just with strange women.”

  “You’re not all that strange.”

  She grins. Closes her eyes. “Will you talk me to sleep?”

  “Ralph’s the strong, silent type.”

  “Please,” she whispers. “Just a little?”

  “Whaddo you want to talk about?”

  “Anything. Tell me where you’re from.”

  “Dunno. First place I really re
member is the orphanage on Paggen, Ep Indi.”

  “You’re an orphan?” She rubs her cheek against my shoulder. “Me and Ape are orphans, too.”

  I figured when she said she’d been on her own since she was eleven. “What happened?”

  “Our mother was a Hexer. She never said who our father was. Or fathers, more likely. She was all over the place. Hex killed her when I was eight, but she’d been up and down the coldspiral for a long time. I hadn’t seen her in months. We lived with our Granna on and off from the time Ape was born. When I was ten, Granna had a stroke. They said she couldn’t take care of us. So we were put in care.”

  “Someone try to fuck you?” I know from personal experience that’s why most of the girls run.

  She shakes her head, grinding it a little into my shoulder. “Mister and Miz Muro weren’t bad people. They did okay by Ape. They were just very strict. I’ve never done strict all that well.” She shrugs. Rebellious kitten. “They wouldn’t let me go to Granna’s funeral. So I ran away.”

  “You lived on the streets? From the time you were eleven?” I don’t smell any bullshit, but she can’t be telling the truth. Girls that young don’t survive on the streets. Not with their souls intact. At least, not the streets I’ve walked.

  “I got lucky. After a couple of days, I was so hungry that I tried to steal some food from a street stall. I wasn’t any good at it. Granna always said stealing was a sin, so I’d never tried it before. The girl running the stall caught me. Instead of turning me over to the C.P., she gave me some food and took me home with her. She lived in a . . . I don’t know what you’d call it. We just called it the House. There were a lot of girls there. Only girls. They all lived together. They had jobs. Supported each other. One of them took me on as her apprentice. Livvy. She was a runner. She taught me. I lived with them until I was seventeen.”

  “Why didn’t you stay?”

  She grins at me. “I like boys.”

  “Ah.” Lucky for me. “Those kinds of girls.”