by Alex White
“There’s atmosphere, but it’s thin,” said Orna. “So don’t overexert yourself.”
Nilah nodded. “I won’t, love.”
“I wish I could leave Charger with you, but … once I’m out of range—”
Nilah stood on her tiptoes and kissed her girlfriend, silencing her. “You’re worrying too much. Malik will tell you if we get in trouble.”
Orna’s lips curled into a frown, a rare moment of fear. “This sucks. You’ve got to come back, all right?”
The ship shook underfoot.
“Got some storm chop,” came Aisha over the loudspeaker. “All crew strap in.”
They made their way to the crash couches, where the turbulence gave their internal gravity drives a run for their money. The Capricious rattled and bucked, and Orna’s tools banged like gongs inside their chests. And with a great thump, all motion stopped.
“Touchdown,” came Armin’s voice. “Mission crew disembark.”
Orna dragged the transit case to the cargo bay door, where she mashed the button to open the belly of the ship. Freezing wind screamed into the bay, and Nilah was glad of her frost gear for this mission.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Orna shouted over the gale.
Nilah slid her hands around Orna’s hips. “Give us a smile, darling.”
Orna gave her a weak grin, her confidence obviously fake.
Nilah kissed her once more. “That’s the spirit, love. See you in two weeks.”
She pulled up her muffler, donned her goggles, and stepped off the ship onto the ice of a night world. Behind her, Orna stared the whole time until the ramp closed. The four crew members took a knee and kept their heads down as the Capricious blasted off, rushing into the sky.
“Okay,” shouted Malik, straining to be heard. His voice was so much less soothing when he yelled. “Let’s get the station set up so you can get to the base camp.”
They toiled through the short day into the frosty night, cold digging into Nilah’s bones. She wasn’t sure how much of this she’d be able to take, and Malik was supposed to live out in it.
At long last, they got the shelter operational and strapped down with its climate system running at full. They all piled inside, taking heavy breaths of the hot, oxygen-enriched air. Nilah shucked her jacket into one of the corners, letting her arms and chest thaw out.
There was scarcely enough room inside for one person, let alone four, and they rode out the brief night in exceptionally cozy quarters. Once the sun began to warm their front door, Nilah knew it was time to leave.
“I want reports once per cycle,” said Malik. “Give me a heartbeat code, at least.”
Nilah opened the case of concealed transmitters, a set of false-teeth retainers with a TX button on the roof, then mounted one inside her mouth. They were remarkably lifelike, though they made her look a little too smiley for her tastes.
She clicked the button with her tongue and spoke. “Echo echo one two three.”
Malik tapped his comm. “We’re good.”
Nilah nodded. “Okay, then. Jeannie, Alister, what say you?”
“Just happy to be here,” said Alister. “Ready to stick the knife in these bastards.”
Jeannie’s expression was one of worry as she pulled up her face mask to shield her nose from the cold.
The twins tested their mouthpieces, and everything worked as planned. Next came the ten-kilometer hike to the base camp. Nilah and the twins slogged through the snow for hours, coming into view of the station just as another sunset troubled Hammerhead’s horizon. The building was a massive gray slab, windowless, save for a thick security door in the front.
She clicked her transmitter. “Hunter Two here. Come in Sleepy.”
“Sleepy here,” said Malik. “Go ahead.”
“We’re in sight of the base camp. Will transmit heartbeat once we’re inside.”
“Copy, Hunter Two. Good luck.”
The three of them approached the structure with hands in full view, attempting to look as nonthreatening as possible.
In the coming sunset, the ice turned the same swirling azure as the gas giant filling their sky. No one emerged from the building to greet them. No drones or autoturrets showed up, slingers ablaze. There was only the howling wind, sparkling ice, and the flat, gray slab at the base of the mountain.
What if it wasn’t a recruiting station, but an unmanned storage facility? The intelligence reports could be wrong, or outdated. Nilah’s nerves went as cold as the air when she considered the possibility of freezing to death outside those thick doors.
When they were a hundred meters out, and night darkened the horizon, yellow warning flashers went off all over the front of the building. Servomotors on the thick warehouse door groaned, and it shook free the crust of ice. The open portal yawned before them, spilling white light across the ground, and Nilah doubled her speed. As cold as the day might be, the night was so much worse, and its frigid shadow fell across her back.
At last, they struggled inside, huffing. A half-dozen slingers leveled upon them, the clink of slides and bolts filling their ears. Nilah and the twins raised their hands and straightened up, looking over the assembled guards.
These weren’t professional soldiers by any stretch. Their fire discipline was weak, and the closest one held her slinger so poorly that Nilah could have snatched it from her if she wanted. They wore plain gray work clothes, but had no patches on their uniforms or other identifying marks.
“Names,” one of them barked.
“Hope,” said Nilah. “Hope Aven.”
“I’m Moira Connelly,” said Jeannie, “and this is my brother, David.”
The guard’s finger wrapped around the trigger. Nilah hoped this amateur didn’t blow her face off. “Why are you here?”
“Because we have a destiny,” Nilah answered, parroting some of the Children’s garbage she’d read.
“Handles?” asked the guard. She lowered her slinger, but the others didn’t follow suit.
Nilah blinked. “What?”
“What do you call yourselves on the Link?”
There hadn’t been enough time to build up any credibility in the various Link communities. Nilah’s heart slammed at the request; she wished they’d orchestrated a better presence online.
There was nothing to be done for it. She’d just have to disguise herself with confidence and swagger.
“You know the difference between those losers on the Link and us?” asked Nilah, grinning. “We’ve made it here and they haven’t, chum. We’re not casuals. The Link is for pretenders.”
“Check the database. Run their faces,” said the lead guard, and one of her soldiers in the rear hustled away.
“Database?” Nilah asked.
“Of unwelcome faces,” said the guard. “Pray you’re not in it.”
Tense minutes passed. Nilah glanced about at her surroundings. The walls were bare, save for the rivets and bolts, and the occasional control panel. Just around the corner, she spied a row of cots, as well as some curious onlookers, similarly dressed in drab gray uniforms.
The runner returned.
“They’re clear,” he muttered to the point woman.
The lead guard smiled. “Looks like you fared better than the last group.”
Nilah quirked her lips. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Couple of Taitutian intel folks never made it home.”
She forced herself to smile. They had a database of agents. Was it only Taitu, or were other governments compromised? Had they already taken out the double agent?
One of the guards holstered her slinger and fetched a few handheld devices from a nearby cabinet, passing them out to two others in the group. A flick of their thumbs later, buzzing filled the air.
The lead guard grinned. “Time for a shave, Children.”
At least Nilah wouldn’t have bangs anymore.
Boots stepped off the Capricious and into the urmurex maze of Mercandatta Station. Black streets striped the gla
ss landscape, and even in the exhaust of the docks, the whole place carried the overly crisp scent of too-filtered air. They’d arrived at lunchtime, and suited people filed through the walkways like waddles of penguins.
Maslin Durand was a shady fellow, which meant he needed a shady series of bank accounts and a far shadier deposit box. There was nowhere better to store secrets than the Intergalactic Fiduciary Bank, the home of the unsigned fund. IGF was the de facto standard for everything from corporate crime to organized crime, but Boots could scarcely tell from the ultra-clean urban sprawl before her.
She already hated this place.
The Taitutians hadn’t been able to get into Maslin’s vault, despite their intel, because breaking in would constitute government-sponsored espionage, and the IGF was no joke. They’d come hard with tariffs, blockades, seizures, and account freezes. The Capricious, on the other hand, had no governmental concerns. If they were caught, they’d probably be executed instead of setting off a pan-galactic conflict.
“Get a move on,” said Orna, coming abreast of her. “I want to get off this hulk and back to Hammerhead.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Boots.
Orna touched her circlet. “Charger is on guard duty. Zipper as well.”
Cargo pilots always hated being called zipperjocks, but Aisha seemed to relish the title. Boots couldn’t figure her out. “Wish she’d had surgery, too. Could use the help. Boss and Prince will be fine.”
She wouldn’t use their names—had to assume there would be some microphones around the station.
“Nah. Pilot always needs to keep the ship hot.”
“Ain’t like we’re going in there shooting, I guess.”
They started down the pathway toward the great sprawl of corporate obelisks. The lower levels of the banking buildings were reserved for shops, and when Boots peered into the windows, she saw some of the top brands from all over the galaxy. Each outlet was like its own little world, consummately boutique and bespoke. They were the sort of places that sold exactly twelve items, each of which were displayed like works of art. Boots guessed they were similarly priced. Periodically, one of the shopkeeps would emerge into the thoroughfare to flag down a person.
“What’s that about?” grumbled Orna.
“High-value targets,” said Boots, jerking her head toward the corner of the nearest building. “Look at all the lenses around here. Ten to one odds: if we had our old faces, these salespeople would be all over us.”
“Good riddance, then.”
“Your new face is a good look for you, by the way, even if it makes you look like a child.”
Orna snorted. “Yeah, my girl liked it. You ought to keep the brown hair.”
“No way. I’ll end up pinching it when I snap on my fishbowl.” Boots mimed locking her flight-suit helmet into place.
They passed block after block, checking the signs as they went: One-A, One-B, Two-A, Two-B. Before long, Boots’s legs were aching. Farmwork on Hopper’s Hope had gotten her in better shape, but not by much. Their disguises were uncomfortable—the sort of clothes these stuck-up business folks would wear—and they did little to make the walk more pleasant. At least Mercandatta was chilly, so Boots could wear long sleeves and gloves to cover her arm. The metal prosthesis would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb: a shiny, silver sore thumb.
“Which block was it again?” Boots asked, trying not to sound winded.
“Maslin’s vault is in Twenty-Six-D,” said Orna.
“Let’s grab a ride,” said Boots, stopping before one of the Hansom Consoles and keying in their destination. It calculated the fare: 153 argents.
“That’s robbery,” said Orna.
“Everyone here is rich as hell,” said Boots. “That’s the price. I bet you’re going to love signing the refuel receipt, Miss Quartermaster.”
“I say we rebuild the jump dump and skip out on the bill.”
“You can do that?”
“I mean, technically,” said Orna. “But it’s not a good idea. It’d almost certainly split the ship in half.”
Boots ordered the taxi, and the service was quick. A sleek black flier touched down before them, its doors sliding open in total silence. The inside was unlike any cab Boots had ever taken, with calfskin seats and flamewood inlays. The console in the center of the cabin silently pulsed, awaiting payment before any service would be rendered. Boots pulled out her paragon crystal and twisted one of the facets until it was set to her unsigned account. The crystal flashed an acknowledgment, and she tapped it to the cash pad.
“Lucky you’ve got that thing,” Orna said as the doors hissed closed behind her. “No glyphs to identify you.”
Yeah. Lucky.
“I’ll be expecting a reimbursement,” grunted Boots, stashing it back in her pocket.
Boots was glad they’d flown to Twenty-Six-D. The roads of the Vault District were wider than those near the spaceport, to accommodate the numerous transport trucks. Though the vehicles were the same boring black as most of the other cars, they sported deadly autoturrets on top, and the pedestrians gave them a wide berth. The bank buildings went from being glass structures with inviting lobbies full of exotic textures to plain concrete or urmurex bunkers, hardened against all sorts of external attacks.
“What if we could do something to trigger a vault change for Maslin’s stuff? If we could catch the contents in transit,” Orna began, “I think Charger could take one of those armored cars out.”
“Yeah, but those slingers look pretty scary. Besides, I’d bet you a cab fare that the other trucks would swarm us. This whole place is probably a hive of drones. We need a way to get in, get whatever is in Durand’s box, and get out.”
The cab settled onto the ground across from a set of luxury apartments. It had to be strange living next to a fortress, but then living on Mercandatta was probably odd all around. The pair hopped out and made their way into the lobby of Vault Storage Twenty-Six-D.
Inside, they found a lone desk, its duraplast surface faintly aglow, underlighting a smiling IGF employee. The fellow was thin and well-groomed, not a speck of dust tainting the jet-black of his suit. He stood and walked around the desk, each step clicking on the marble floor with a dancer’s gait.
“Welcome,” he called to them. “The Hansom Console told me you’d be coming, but they didn’t provide a name, so you have me at a disadvantage. I’m John.”
“The cab company called you?” asked Orna, obvious annoyance in her features. “Is everything around here networked?”
John laughed, his voice obnoxiously polished. “More or less. All of the businesses on Mercandatta are wholly owned subsidiaries of Intergalactic Fiduciary.”
“Bad security,” said Orna. “Sprawling networks are stupid. I don’t want to find out that I lost all my crap because your vault was hacked through the cab company.”
He gave a vigorous shake of his head, and Boots wondered if IGF fed their employees drugs to keep them so chipper. “Oh, no, miss. All of our defenses are air-gapped for each building, and the alerts network is its own pipeline.”
“We want to rent a box,” said Boots, “and we’d like to know what’s involved.”
John’s smile melted into theatrical concern. “Oh, so you don’t have one yet? Well, that’s a simple matter, really. You’ll need to visit our main office in the Hub. I can bring another flier around for you, and—”
Boots cut him off. “What, you can’t rent it to us here?”
“Well, it’s not impossible, but it’s not standard, either,” he replied, folding his hands behind his back. “Normally, our clientele is assigned to a vault from the main office. This is a special vault, so I’ll need a good reason to initiate your lease from here.”
“We’re looking at a rental property across the street, John. We’ll be accessing this box on a fairly regular basis, and we don’t want to walk far.”
His smile returned. “I see. I see. And what sorts of items will we be storing in this box?”
Orna scoffed. “Sorry, John, but that’s kind of the point of a secret box.”
“Ah. I need to make you aware that we can’t store any magical items at this location.” A touch of nervousness showed through his veneer of customer service. They’d taken him off his script and made unorthodox requests. And they hadn’t given names or occupations, which seemed to bother him immensely.
“I’m Elsie, by the way,” said Boots, extending a hand to him. “And this is my partner, Bertha.”
Orna was already scowling, so she couldn’t scowl any harder at the name.
“Elsie, Bertha,” said John. “It’s a pleasure, and I think we can come to an acceptable arrangement. Would you like a tour of the vault, perhaps? I have a demo vault that I can show you.”
“We’d love that,” said Orna. “Got to know if our crap is going to be safe.”
“Excellent!” John clicked his heels and spun, striding back to his desk and fetching an oversized brass key with a long red tassel. It was the sort of key someone with an Origin fetish might use: obviously ceremonial. He looked to both of them. “If you’ll follow me.”
They went with him toward the blank back wall: a marble edifice with no adornments, save for a golden keyhole. John placed the key inside, and a ripple of glowing energy passed through the veins of the rock. A chime filled the lobby, and the marble soundlessly parted, a perfect seam opening inside it. The hall that opened was at least two meters long, and the pair of stone slabs had to weigh many tons.
“First off,” said John, “this may look like marble, but it’s actually regraded, magic-resistant urmurex. Even if a first-rate lithomancer could get past our dispersers, they wouldn’t be able to push this out of the way.”
“What about folks with the porter’s mark?” asked Boots. “They could just jump inside.”
John shook his head no. “If this doorway is closed, and someone pops into the room beyond, I’d pity that person. I’ll spare you the gory details, but we have a number of automated countermeasures.”
