Snowburn

by Frost, E J

  She doesn’t need to tell me why. The Mirrormen think women are only good for one thing. They wouldn’t have negotiated directly with Kez, and she’d have had to pay more than credits for passage through their territory.

  “Any of your scars their work?” I ask quietly.

  “The one on my thigh. A gift from Dag.” She shifts slightly in my arms. “Like I said, I’m glad you’ll be with me. Let’s get going.”

  I nod and release her. Follow her when she heads back into her bedroom to finish packing her backpack-of-many-tricks. Add another name to the growing list of people I’m going to kill before this is all over.

  I don’t need as much gear as Kez. Just a change of clothes and a few more knives. Kez lounges on my bed, watching me dress. She wolf-whistles when I trade the soft pants I wore to her place for black genSkin. I grin at her as I strap on a Biosteel vest, since I figure sooner or later I’m going to get shot at during this run, and my trike jacket. Her viewie buzzes as I’m pulling on my boots and tucking knives into hidden sheaths.

  She puts her viewie on speaker and I recognize Gig’s voice.

  “I’ve found the guy you asked me to,” Gig says. “He runs a skimmer rental place, Shake ‘n’ Wake. In Golden Sands. He’s tied, so we’ve never used him.”

  “Who’s he tied to?” Kez asks.

  “The Vark Brothers,” Gig says.

  I don’t need Kez or Gig to tell me who they are, either. They style themselves neo-Bedouins, but they’re just punks in sandy clothes. Small time criminals – drugs, K-net fronts and protection, mostly. Small enough that I wasn’t worried when they hired the Marie because I figured they weren’t running anything serious enough to get me noticed.

  “They’re clients,” I grunt.

  “Really?” Kez looks up at me. “Good clients?”

  I shrug. “Good enough that if I give ‘em a call, they’ll get us in.”

  Kez grins. “Ideal.”

  “We’ll call ‘em from the Marie. Let’s go.”

  “Okay. Gig, once we take off, it’s all quiet. My vcom will be on outbound only. I won’t take any calls. If there’s an emergency, plex me on the house secure channel. I’ll try to check in when we get to the Cloudlands, if I can get an outbound signal. Okay?”

  “Aye-firmative, boss. When’s the drop?”

  “Midnight.”

  “You need a place to stay and passage back from the Cloudlands?”

  Kez scratches her chin. Looks at me. I shrug. “It’s not the worst idea.” Assuming we survive the run and that Tyng doesn’t demand his pound of flesh from Kez immediately, I wouldn’t mind having somewhere to spend the night.

  “You want to stay in the same place as last time?” Gig asks.

  “Yeah, it was nice. And they didn’t ask any questions, even when I showed up half-drowned. What was it called?”

  “The Gemini Cloud. Gimme a second . . . okay, you’re booked in. You got hard credits, right? Cloudlands won’t take a transfer from the mainland. And there’s a hover to Jielt at ten tomorrow morning. I’ve got you two seats.”

  “No problem with a one-way booking?” Kez asks.

  “They don’t care how, as long as you go,” I answer for him. The universal truth of the Cloudlands. They won’t look hard at where you’re from or where you’re headed, just as long as you leave. And have the good taste to part with some of your credits while you’re there. “Good job, kid.” I like Gig, and he has done a good job. No reason he shouldn’t know it.

  “Thanks,” Gig says. “Take care of the boss.”

  “I will,” I promise.

  Kez shakes her head. “Worry about your own end. How’s Nevie?”

  “Sleeping,” Gig answers. “Chi’s with her. She knows the dosage.”

  “Good. See you tomorrow.”

  I don’t say good-bye, or that I’ll see Gig tomorrow. I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.

  The docks aren’t that far from my place by the river. A half-hour stroll. But with Kez’s gear, it’s easier to take the trike. And it’ll be convenient to have the trike waiting at the docks for us when we get back from the run. Of course, if Kez is in the same shape she was after the last run, I’ll need a floater to get her home.

  Kez slides her hands up under my jacket and leans against my back as I power up the trike. The feeling of her against my back is better than good. It’s right. Natural. I put one of my hands over hers and press it to my stomach for a moment before I open up the throttle.

  As we roar through my house’s gates, she slides her hand down the front of my pants.

  “Bad kitten,” I growl at her, but I doubt she can hear me over the wind and I haven’t bothered to synch the helmets’ mics, since this is just a quick trip. Her hand settles comfortably into the curve of my groin, fingertips scrunching through my pubic hair. I leave her hand there. The little monster’s tucked down my left pant leg, so she’s not going to give me a tent pole. Maybe she’s doing it to provoke me; maybe she wants the comfort of a very intimate touch. Whatever the reason, I like the feeling of her skin against mine. And I enjoy the shocked expressions of the pedestrians we pass who notice the flash of her pale wrist above my waistband.

  She removes her hand as we pull up to the dock’s security gates. The guard waves us through after a glance at Snow’s Multi. He can’t see my face under the visor of my helmet; I could be anyone. He doesn’t ask me to take the helmet off. He doesn’t even look at Kez. I’ve never thought much of the Nock security, but this is a new low. Lax security generally suits me. It suits me less when it’s guarding my ship.

  “Gimme a minute,” I tell Kez when we pull up next to the Marie. I check the ship, then leave Kez stowing her gear while I go to talk with Thea, the docking clerk.

  Thea grins when I stride into the port office. Her orange-red lipglow makes her teeth look yellow. She leans forward against the desk, so her breasts bulge out of the stylized waves of her SleekSuit. I ignore them.

  “Who’s the asshole on the gate?” I ask without preamble.

  Thea blinks at me several times. “What’s wrong, Snowy?”

  After a day with Kez, there’s something discomfiting about being called by that dead man’s name. Even more so by Thea’s ridiculous nickname. I want to reclaim my name. I want to be myself again. Throw off the guise of some two-bit backwater smuggler and reclaim the power of my real name. I was someone with who you did not fuck: soldier and survivor. Now I’m Snowy. I shrug it off. That’s not going to happen. “Who is he?”

  “His name’s Kyler. He’s new.”

  “Too new to know how to do his job. Tell him to check ID next time. Someone gets past him and fucks up my ship, it’s his ass.”

  Thea sits back in her chair and taps the display pane next to her. Her eyes flick back and forth as she reviews the dock’s security record. “Oh, great Helas. I see what you mean. I’ll tell Travis,” she says, referring to the dock’s head of security. Travis is no Sherlock himself. When I first showed up, he accepted Snow’s Multi without asking for DNA or fingerprints. Of course, a thousand hard credits in his pocket probably helped him overlook those details. This noob doesn’t even have that excuse.

  “I have a message for you,” Thea continues. She pushes the pieces of flimsy scattered across her desk around with the tip of one long, multi-colored fingernail until she finds the one she wants. She holds it out to me, pinched between those lacquered talons.

  I take the flimsy. Scan the list. Pan Henji Correctional Institute. Klein-Gerry Penal Colony. Ixes Island. Tol Seng Maximum Security Prison. Next to each hole, the dates of my incarceration. I shrug like the message is unimportant. “Thanks.”

  “Does it mean anything to you? I didn’t understand it.”

  “Yeah.” It means that someone other than Kez and the Snatchers knows who I really am. And they’re letting me know they know it. I might end up reclaiming my identity whether I want to or not. I roll the flimsy into a tube and tuck it into a pocket. “I’ll get back t
o them after this hop.” I turn away.

  “Do you want me to file a flight plan for you?” Thea calls after me. I glance back to see that she’s pushed up against the desk for another three-D display. It’s eye-catching, in the way that physical deformities sometimes are, but there’s nothing sexy about it.

  “Yeah,” I say. There’s no reason to conceal the first leg of the run. “I’m headed up the valley to Zhonnys.”

  Thea nods and sits back down at the desk, looking a little disappointed at my failure to respond to her cleavage. “Okay, I’ll take care of that for you.”

  “Thanks, Thea,” I say, putting a little sincerity into my voice. There’s nothing to be gained from alienating her, even if it would spare me the daily come-on.

  She smiles. “See you, Snowy.”

  I escape and make my way back to the Marie.

  Chapter 17

  Kez happily takes the co-pilot’s chair and after the routine takeoff, I flip the ship over to the automatics so I can enjoy her wide-eyed sense of wonder. I program the ship to circle Nock once so she has a good view – and even I have to admit that with the red morning light outlining the highrises and industrial slabs the grimy city is strangely beautiful – then stick to the deck all the way up the river for a low-fly over Hemos. It’s only after she’s seen both cities from the air and we’re crossing the broad valley that separates Hemos from Zhonnys that I take out the flimsy and pass it to her.

  She examines it closely and looks up at me. “I don’t—”

  “It’s a list of all the places I’ve been locked-up.”

  “Oh. Oh, fuck.” Kez rolls up the flimsy and clutches it between her fists. “Tyng.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe your sharp-dicked buddies decided that selling me out was more profitable than keeping the Deeps open.”

  Kez bends her head over the plaz tube, her dreadlocks falling to hide her face. “Hale, I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I say gently. Now that the initial shock of being outed has passed, I’ve moved on to the next thing: dealing with whoever knows. “I just want you to understand, when I take out whoever sent that, it’s for a reason.”

  I shouldn’t need to justify myself to her. But I do. At some point over the last twelve hours, it’s become important not just that I kill Tyng for her, but that she forgives me for doing it.

  “No, no, I understand.” Kez unrolls the list and reads it again. “This is, um, a lot of different prisons.”

  “Yeah.” I don’t elaborate.

  “The last one, Tol Seng. You weren’t there for very long. Twenty-two days.”

  I grunt. Thirty-one thousand, six hundred and eighty seven minutes. I counted each one, because I was sure it was going to be my last. Tol Seng may be located in B Gem, but anyone who has been inside that slam knows it’s really in the third circle of Hell.

  “Did you really escape?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I did. And I’m not goin’ back. Anyone who threatens me dies. It’s that simple, Kez.”

  “I understand,” she says.

  She doesn’t. Not really. No one who hasn’t experienced the joys of the Universal Penal System first-hand can really understand. But I don’t need her to. I just need her to forgive me when payback time finally comes ‘round.

  “As long as we’re clear.”

  She nods. “We’re clear.”

  I wait for a minute, to make sure she doesn’t have anything else to say. She doesn’t try to qualify it. Just reads the list again before handing the flimsy back to me.

  I roll it up and shove it into the flash-bag hanging off the arm-rest of my chair. Squint against the dull blue glare. Then I flick off the automatic pilot and power up the co-pilot’s console. “Time for your first flying lesson,” I say.

  Her eyes have dulled during our conversation. Now they brighten again. “Really?” she asks. Her hands gravitate towards the controls on their own accord. “I would love that.”

  “Good. Rule one. Don’t touch anything until I tell you what it does.”

  She snatches her hands back like she’s been burned and I chuckle before I start pointing out the different control pads.

  Teaching her to fly is entertaining. She’s smart and interested, which are the only important qualities in a student. We go over the controls several times and by the third time, I can see that she’s memorized them. For someone who hates authority, she likes rules. I give her the mechanics of sub-space flight as a series of rules and she internalizes them immediately. I let her have the controls for a while. She tests them out and I answer her questions as we go. The flight to Zhonnys is a straight shot, so there’s no danger of her flying us into a mountain. After she’s flown for less than an hour, I can see she’s started intuiting more complex maneuvers, mentally jumping from what I’ve shown her to what she’s seen me do during our flights together.

  I take the controls back once we reach Zhonnys, since landing requires some skill. But I’m already looking forward to our next lesson. Teaching her to fly is as gratifying as everything else I’ve done with Kez: fucking, eating, sleeping, fighting for our lives. I like spending time with her, no matter what we’re doing. The number of other people in the universe I’d say that about, I can count on one hand.

  “You picked that up fast,” I tell her. “I think you’ve got a future in that chair.”

  She grins, that wide, delighted, mischievous grin. “Do I have a future in that chair?” She points at my chair.

  I curl my lip at her. “Don’t get ideas above your station.”

  She laughs, then says earnestly, “I love flying.”

  “You’d get plenty chances as my co-pilot. I’ve got no shortage of business.” I’m more than busy enough as it is, but there’s a lot of work I turn away because of the flying-time limits on a solo pilot. I could take those runs if Kez was my co-pilot.

  She’s silent for a moment, and I wonder if I’ve misread her enthusiasm. When I glance at her, she’s watching me, big eyes wide. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You do it all the time,” she snorts. “Seriously, Hale, are you teasing me?”

  “Not this time.”

  “You’d let me be your co-pilot?”

  “Yeah, you gotta earn your keep somehow.” I chuckle at her outraged huff. “’Sides, I’ve always wanted to fuck in zero-gee. Havin’ you along will definitely cut down on the boredom factor.”

  “You are such a prick.”

  “Seriously, any time you want, you got a place in that chair.”

  She scratches at her dreads, which I know is a sign of uncertainty with her. “Would it be, um . . . like partners?”

  “Yeah, if you want.” As soon as she says it, I like the idea. It’s a natural fit, her business and mine. Gig could take over scheduling logistics for me. I like the idea of being one step removed from the people who want to hire the Marie. Added anonymity. And I like the idea of being involved with Kez on a daily basis for something more than sex.

  “Sixty-forty?” she asks.

  “Yeah, in my favor.”

  She taps her fingertips on the armrest of her chair. She’s gone into negotiation mode. “I have more people to take care of.”

  “High overheads on your side of the business?” I shrug. “Not my problem.”

  “You really are a prick.”

  I chuckle. “Bad Kitten Land and Air. Sixty-forty on the money, in your favor.” I don’t need the extra money, particularly not if I can take longer runs with Kez co-piloting. They always pay better. “Fifty-fifty on business decisions, and I get final veto.” My kitten does not get to outvote me.

  “Deal,” she breathes.

  “’Course, we gotta live through this first.”

  I can see her smile reflected in the front viewer. “Well, that’s a big incentive.”

  “Yeah.” It’s a pretty big incentive for me, too. Living free is all I’ve wanted since I landed in that first hole on Henji. But being on my own, bein
g left alone, is less and less satisfying, particularly since meeting Kez. I want more. How much, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time around the messier parts of Kez’s life. But having her in mine feels just about right.

  Dock Eleven B is a commercial dock. Mixed passengers and cargo. No one gives us a second glance as Kez and I leave the Marie on an open landing platform and make our way across a series of catwalks to the grimy green sphere of the dock. Of course, they can’t see anything beyond the reflective suits we’re wearing. Zhonnys, like much of the Western Colony’s central valley, is heavily irradiated: the by-product of the dirty reactors the original colonists used to power Kuseros’s terraforming. You don’t drink the water in Zhonnys, or eat anything grown in its soil, or go outside without an atmosphere suit. Not unless you want to grow gills or a third eye.

  Unfortunate side-effects aside, Zhonnys is the perfect place to hide, since most of its inhabitants wear atmosphere suits everywhere but their private quarters. When I first scouted Kuseros, I considered setting up shop in Zhonnys. The exceptionally lax security in Nock City persuaded me to base my operations there instead, but the impression of Zhonnys as a good hidey-hole stuck with me. Which probably means whatever we’re collecting in Zhonnys has been hiding, and wants to stay that way. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be anything friendly.

  The dock is heavily shielded. Anti-radiation gel coats every exterior surface. Dust from the nearby desert and patches of the black radiotropic fungus that’s the only flora native to Zhonnys since Colonization make the dock look like an olive that’s rolled across a dirty floor. There are no windows. A pair of airlocks for doors. Fucking fortress.

  We wait at the outer door with a couple other anonymously-suited travelers. The airlock cycles with an asthmatic wheeze. No security check. Yeah, I could get used to Zhonnys. Too bad it lacks the one thing that really interests me on Kuseros.

  I turn to my one in a billion, wait until the decontaminant spray stops hissing, and say, “Any idea who we’re meeting?”