“Where is Susan?” Mari asked.
“Sue?” Eva blinked. “She’s back on the ship with Min. Why?”
Mari took a breath, as if choosing her words carefully. “I was not authorized to bring Dr. Jones and Wraith Memitim to this meeting, but I was specifically asked to bring Susan.”
“‘Not authorized,’” Pink repeated, drawing out the words for emphasis. “So, what, we wait on the ship?”
“You’re welcome to visit our dining hall,” Mari replied. “We also have a lovely observation platform. For security reasons I cannot give any of you a full tour of Forge facilities.”
((Abort mission?)) Eva pinged at Pink.
((Go on,)) Pink replied. ((Be careful.))
Eva shrugged at her, and Pink sighed and gave her a dismissive gesture. “I’m staying here,” Pink said. “I’ll send Sue out.” She flipped up her eye patch to give Mari one last look, and to Eva’s surprise Mari flinched at the scrutiny from the mechanical eye.
“See you around, cupcake,” Pink said. Without another word, she turned and left.
Eva rested her hand on Vakar’s shoulder. “How about you?”
“I would like to visit the observation platform,” Vakar said.
Better than nothing, probably, since he was hoping to get information out of this place. Eva wouldn’t be surprised if he was already trying to hack into their systems. Min at least was likely stealing their q-net bandwidth by now.
Sue emerged a few minutes later, a smear of grease on one cheek and a dazed look in her eye. When she saw Mari, her pale skin flushed pink and she stared at her feet.
“Agent Virgo,” Sue said. “I’m, I mean, I know I was supposed to stay out of, you know, but—”
“It’s fine, Susan,” Mari interrupted, her all-business mask sliding firmly into place. “Come along, my superiors are waiting.”
Mari let Eva set the pace, leading them out of the docking bay into a sterile white hallway, occasional doors and plants and artwork adding texture and color. A few other people walked past as they went, mostly wearing casual civilian clothes. Some had protective gear Eva associated with laboratories, or spacesuits like Mari’s, albeit with less armor. Certainly no one was wearing uniforms with the forge plastered across the chest or back; maybe they all had secret anvil tattoos somewhere. A blue-skinned kloshian conferred with an eac about something that made the eac clack its beak in frustration, while a human and a four-armed buasyr carried boxes marked volatile from one room to another with nervous haste. Everyone looked busy, harried, but also entirely focused on whatever they were doing.
Mari stopped in front of a random door like any other. “The observation platform is here,” she said. The door opened to reveal a large room with dark, nonreflective flooring and a wall that was either entirely transparent or a huge viewscreen. It must have been on the side of the station, because the system’s red giant wasn’t visible, just the blackness of space lit by clusters of stars and galaxies near and far. It was beautiful, awe-inspiring, and not remotely what Vakar probably wanted to see.
“Thank you,” Vakar said politely, stepping inside and bending his knees back so he could kneel on the floor. At least he could hack from just about anywhere, depending on their systems.
The door closed and Mari continued to lead Eva and Sue in silence. As full of questions as Eva was, she suspected she wasn’t going to get anything out of her sister now, especially with every person they passed glaring at Eva like she’d pissed in their protein powder. Her leg was holding up, no doubt thanks to the painkillers Pink had dosed her with, but Eva was starting to regret that she hadn’t asked Mari to get her a hoverchair instead of taking this long walk. At least Sue had fixed her gravboots so they weren’t randomly sticking again.
They eventually entered an elevator, which gave Eva an annoyingly anxious flashback to the last time she’d been to Nuvesta and fought off a slew of bounty hunters, but this one was fast and quiet except for the VI announcing “forty-two” when they reached the appropriate floor.
Like the observation platform, this room was large and dark with a floor-to-ceiling view, but it showed the enormous orange-red star, its surface roiling with heat. In the center of the room was a bare metallic desk with two chairs, one behind it and one in front of it, both occupied by people Eva could barely see because of the star’s placement. She summoned up her isohelmet and shifted its color to shade her eyes.
“Captain Innocente, Mx. Zafone, thank you for joining us,” the figure behind the desk said in a voice that walked the line between smooth and hardass. Her hands were steepled under her chin, the soft glow of an old-fashioned commlink on her arm lighting her face from below. Kloshian, her tentacle-like hair swept back, her skin currently the blue-gray of a Terran marine mammal.
Eva inclined her head politely. “And you are?”
“Agent Elus,” she said. “I am the head of operations at this facility. My associate is Agent Miran.”
Miran was human, but his eyes had the catlike reflective sheen of implants, and neural tattoos ran down the exposed parts of his dark forearms. Probably heavier upgrades under the surface; expensive, and illegal in some places. He leaned back in his chair, ankle resting on his opposite knee, his posture as relaxed as a lion in its own den.
“Charmed,” Agent Miran said gruffly. “Let me be brief.”
“I like brief,” Eva said. “Cuéntamelo.” Sue shifted uneasily beside her, but Eva kept her attention focused on Miran.
“A number of civilian scientists escaped the destruction of the Fridge facility six months ago,” he said. “While we recovered a substantial amount of actionable data during our mission, some items were incomplete or indecipherable, so we’ve been trying to find these missing scientists to obtain their help.”
“I assume this relates to the Gate you and your Forge buddies are building out there?” Eva asked. She still wasn’t sure it was a Gate, but it was worth a shot. Sue gasped next to her, and Eva hoped that didn’t wreck the bluff entirely.
Agent Miran’s gaze twitched slightly to one side; he had looked at Mari, behind Eva’s left shoulder. Well, if he wanted to think she’d told Eva about it, let him.
“It does,” he said. “For security reasons, I can’t tell you more.”
“You were secure enough to invite us here instead of meeting at a more neutral location.”
“Consider it a show of trust,” Agent Elus said.
Or a show of their headquarters being a giant space station that would probably disappear to another system before Eva could even think of selling them out. Which she wasn’t planning to do anyway. Eva smiled and mimed zipping her lips shut.
With luck, Vakar would have plenty to tell her later anyway.
“We want to hire you to track down one of the Fridge scientists,” Miran said, leaning forward with both feet on the floor, resting his forearms on his knees. “You would be compensated appropriately, including a fuel stipend and reimbursement for travel wear and tear on your ship.”
Nice. Eva was used to soaking up those expenses herself to stay competitive. But she still didn’t trust these people, and a hell of a lot of questions came to mind right away. She settled for the most immediate one.
“Why hire me for this?” Eva asked. “You’ve had six months to send your own agents after him, with all your resources.” She glanced back at her sister standing straight-backed with her arms crossed. “Why do you think I’ll do any better?”
“And why am I here?” Sue asked. Eva resisted the urge to pinch Sue’s arm, like her mom used to do when she didn’t want Eva to talk.
Agent Elus waved her hand over her commlink and a holo image appeared above the desk. A human with wild gray hair, apparently dyed because the roots were dark. His skin was pale, ruddy at the cheeks, and his dark eyes had the hooded, sullen look of someone who hated being interrupted. He wore a white lab coat over a bright-green shirt, black-gloved hand raised as if to stop whoever was taking the picture.
“
Holy rusty buckets,” Sue said. “Josh?”
“Indeed,” Agent Elus said. “Your sibling, Joshua Zafone. He was one of the head engineers on the project whose research we require.”
“But he, he was . . .” Sue’s mouth opened and closed, and Eva could almost see her thoughts moving at light speed in a hundred different directions. The Fridge had told her Josh was a hostage, that her family had to pay a ransom to free him. “Head engineer” didn’t sound very hostage-like, no matter what language you tried it in, no matter how hard his arm had been twisted to do the work.
Eva knew how it felt, to be lied to about something like that. Mari’s presence behind her was a stark reminder. She gripped the head of her cane and made a mental note to have Pink talk to Sue about it later, in a private psych session.
“So you think Sue might know something you don’t,” Eva said. “Something that could help us find him where you failed.”
Agent Miran nodded, his profile lit by the dying star. “We also suspect that should you locate Mr. Zafone, he will be more cooperative if he’s approached by his own sister instead of a stranger.”
Eva raised an eyebrow. “He got away from you once, didn’t he?”
Miran’s gaze flicked in Mari’s direction again, and Eva suppressed a smile. It was nice to know her perfect sister could fuck things up occasionally.
“Just to make sure I have this straight,” Eva said. “You want me to find Josh and bring him back here, is that it?”
“Correct,” Agent Elus said. Her skin color darkened almost imperceptibly.
“Do you have a deadline?”
“Not a fixed one, but time is of the essence.” Elus waved a hand over her commlink again and her lips parted briefly, exposing knife-sharp teeth. “We can offer you a bonus if you bring him to us within the next twenty cycles.”
That didn’t sound like a lot of time, given that Eva had no idea how to even begin looking for the guy, and that it would be two cycles just to get to the nearest Gate. But she wasn’t about to tell them that.
“I have to check with the rest of my crew before I agree to anything,” Eva said.
“So we were told,” Agent Miran said. “I assume you’ll have a response soon?”
Eva nodded. Like Mari had told her, this didn’t sound dangerous compared to the other stuff they’d been doing for the past six months. But she had no idea where Josh might be, and whether he was in the kind of trouble that called for fists and firearms.
“If we take the job, I’ll need half up front and half on delivery,” Eva said. “And my ship could use a refuel before we leave here regardless.”
“Agent Virgo will see to it,” Agent Miran said, gesturing at Mari. “She will also be your contact as the mission proceeds, should you accept our terms. We would expect status updates every three cycles at a minimum.”
“Yes, sir,” Eva said, flicking two fingers away from her forehead in a mock salute. He certainly seemed confident that she would be on board with this job. She wished he had seen Pink’s face earlier; he might not feel so great about his chances. “Anything else I need to know before I go?”
Agent Elus waved the holo image away, returning the room to its reddish darkness, and linked her hands together in front of her. “As Agent Miran indicated, we cannot give you information that might compromise our mission here. I can say this, however: what we are doing is of the utmost importance, and may help us to preserve the lives of every sentient creature in the universe. We cannot, we must not, fail.” Her shadowy expression was tense, a nearly perfect mimicry of human somberness on her kloshian features.
Eva blinked hard to keep from rolling her eyes. That was exactly the kind of self-importance she wished she could go after with a flamethrower.
“It was a pleasure to meet you at last, Captain Innocente,” Agent Miran said, returning to his relaxed cross-legged position. “And you, Mx. Zafone. Whatever your decision, we appreciate your work against The Fridge.”
Even when it fucks you over? Eva wanted to ask, but she offered him a polite smile instead. “It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said. “It’s nicer to get paid. Adiós, hasta luego.”
Mari led them out of the room, and Eva prepared for a lecture as soon as the door slid closed behind them. To her surprise, Mari didn’t say a damn thing, leading them back the way they came in the same silence as before, her own face a mask of solemnity with occasional flickers of an emotion Eva couldn’t place.
More than Agent Elus and her stirring speech about universe-saving, Mari’s silence spoke volumes. She really believed in their cause, didn’t she? But could Eva trust these people, after what they’d done? Would they happily throw her out the airlock again if it suited their purpose? And what would it mean for them to have their own private Gate, not to mention the ability to build more of them wherever they wanted? Should anyone have that power, no matter how noble their motives?
Better them than The Fridge, Eva supposed. And if she didn’t find Josh first, they might.
Eva leaned on her cane and wondered what exactly these people were getting themselves into, and whether it would be supremely unwise to get involved.
When Eva and the rest of the crew tried to discuss whether they would take the offer, Sue grew so heated that Pink sent her off to cool down. Eva understood: it was Sue’s brother on the line, and given his previous disappearance, there were painful questions to be answered. It meant coming to a decision without Sue, though, and it fell to Eva to deliver the news.
Sue sat in the cargo bay, welding gloves and mask in place, tinkering with her latest robotic creation. She had already built a mech she called Gustavo out of scraps, and had upgraded it little by little over the past six months, but she was also working on a present for Min: the kind of battle bot Min used to fight with back when Eva first met her. It took up an unreasonable amount of space, especially when it was in pieces like now, its torso open in the center of the room while its legs were over by the passenger cabin and its arms were dangling by cables from the catwalk like a creepy puppet.
The rest of the cargo bay was the domain of the cats, who ostensibly belonged to Min but actually belonged to themselves, as cats do. These cats more than most, since they were psychic and eerily intelligent. Their climate-controlled shipping container was shoved up against the plating next to the passenger cabin, but the cats themselves were napping or playing or bathing wherever the hell they wanted. Mala, their unofficial leader, stepped out of the enclosed litter box and, with a very dignified air, flopped down and began to lick her butthole profusely.
“Hey,” Eva said to Sue, prodding the bot’s helmeted head with her cane while Sue turned off the welding torch and flipped her mask back.
“Sorry I yelled,” Sue said, her pale cheeks ruddy—from the heat, or from embarrassment, or por qué no los dos?
“It’s okay. No one is mad at you.”
“Are we—”
“We’re going to find your brother, yes.”
Sue’s eyes filled with tears, which she wiped with her shoulders as soon as they fell. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“I wish people would stop preemptively thanking me for shit.” Eva sighed, swatting idly at one of the dangling arms with her cane. Candy would certainly not fall out if she hit it hard enough. Mala paused in her butt-licking to glare at Eva as if offended by the noise.
“So what now?” Sue asked.
“Now the hard part: figuring out how to track him.”
Sue shoved some wiring back into the robot’s torso, brushing away one of her little yellow bots as it tried to help. “What did Agent Virgo say?”
Eva collected her thoughts. “His last known whereabouts were Medoral, a big transit hub in a two-Gate system.”
“I know that place,” Sue said. “My family has shipped stuff through there a bunch.”
“Apparently he did a very good job with his identity switch, because he disappeared from there almost immediately.”
Sue�
��s expression hardened. “She knew where Josh was the whole time I was here, didn’t she? Agent Virgo, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Eva said. “She never mentioned anything about your brother. She might not have found him until the facility raid.”
“I guess.” Sue brightened. “Well, now that we know he got away from The Fridge, we can stop looking for him there.”
“Right.”
“It’s strange that he didn’t contact me, or my parents.” Sue’s mask fell over her face, and she shoved it back up, frowning. “Maybe he thought he was protecting us. But we’ve been making ransom payments this whole time, so I guess The Fridge assumed we didn’t know where he was.”
“Fair assumption, clearly.” One of the cats rubbed against Eva’s leg, and she reached down to scratch its head. “So if you were Josh, and you were trying to run away without anyone knowing what you were up to, what would you do?”
“Hmm.” Sue tapped the end of her welding torch against the bot’s metal torso. “I’m not sure. Steal some credit chits to buy a ticket on a transport?”
“That’s a lot of stealing,” Eva said. “I’m guessing you’ve never had to use credit chits, but the people who do, they don’t tend to have enough of them for an off-planet shuttle ride.”
“Oh, right. He must not have used any of his personal accounts, either, or The Forge would have been able to track those.”
Eva nodded, carefully sitting on the floor so she could pet the cats more easily. “They could probably even find secret accounts. They’re pretty good about that stuff.” Something Sue had said nudged her brain. “You mentioned your family ships stuff through Medoral. Would Josh have been able to use a company business account, maybe?”
“Oh, maybe!” Sue smiled hopefully, then immediately scowled. “Aw, buckets. No, no, that doesn’t work. We have accountants and stuff. Every expense gets shoved into a special category for when they do taxes. If Josh bought a shuttle ticket, someone would have noticed. I remember my parents getting alerts about suspicious activity sometimes.”
Prime Deceptions Page 3
