Chilling Effect_A Novel

by Valerie Valdes

  On Nuvesta, she was nobody at all.

  A dytryrc came for her that cycle, wearing a hover belt with boosters and leaving a trail of slime splatters everywhere he went. He was slow for a bounty hunter, and she almost felt sorry for him.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said, climbing out of the access tunnel in the Bends where she’d been hiding. “Who are you looking for?”

  He turned so fast he overspun and had to rotate backward. “Captain Eva Innocente, formerly of La Sirena Negra?” His voice was so perky, Eva wished she could bottle it and drink it for energy.

  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

  “Ha!” His robotic arms leveled a gun at her. “The bounty is mine! At long last!”

  Eva leaned against the wall, her head swimming with fatigue. “So what am I worth now, anyway?” She yawned.

  “Enough to feed my family for a year!”

  “Wow,” she said. “Wow. Does your family eat a lot, or—”

  “Stop talking! We will go now and I will be paid!”

  And she almost did. He trained his gun on her and she raised her hands and started to walk in the direction he indicated. Glorious was a disgusting asshole, but she was tired of hiding, tired of fighting. At least this way she’d finally have some closure.

  As they moved, the people of the Bends avoided her gaze, stared when they thought she wouldn’t notice, or gave her the barest glance before getting back to whatever they were doing. She almost laughed, thinking of how worried she’d been about that first bounty hunter that showed up weeks earlier. Nobody gave half a crap. She’d made no friends here; nobody even knew her real name. She wouldn’t be missed.

  They passed into a vendor area at the edge of the sector’s docks and the crowd parted around them, humans and nonhumans alike sticking to the walls and the shop counters.

  The smell of incense, and a hint of licorice, stopped her cold.

  The dytryrc almost ran into her, eager as he was to move her along. “Do not delay our departure!” he exclaimed.

  Eva couldn’t find the source of the smell. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe she had finally lost her mind. Or . . . maybe it was a sign. A wake-up ping. Madre de dios, what an enormous cabezón she had been. Waiting for her crew to find her like a damsel in distress? That was some high-grade ridiculousness.

  Suddenly, she felt truly awake, and better: she was righteously pissed off.

  No me busques, she thought. Porque me vas a encontrar.

  She turned to face the bounty hunter. “Sorry, buddy. Looks like your big break isn’t as broken as you hoped. I wanna live.”

  Diving sideways, she rolled into an alley that looped around to a larger loading area. It would be full of boxes big and small, barrels and bulky shipping containers waiting to fly off to other worlds. Her boss might wonder what was going on, but he tended to take a hands-off approach as long as cargo wasn’t being damaged. He’d call the authorities eventually, if he felt like it. Probably he’d just watch, assuming he was paying attention at all.

  Eva wove between the containers, searching for a nook she could slip into until the bounty hunter gave up. She dodged robots and power loaders and another human snatching some shut-eye in a narrow space between boxes. He’d get squished if he didn’t watch out, she thought.

  All her running was wasted because the bounty hunter simply flew above her, skimming the tops of the containers. “Halt or I will fire at you!” he shouted.

  “Shoot me and you don’t get paid!” she yelled back.

  “Yes I will!” he said. “I still get half if you’re dead!”

  She’d been hoping he didn’t know that. Certainly none of the others had put forth much effort to take her alive. Well, it was worth a shot.

  Eva reached into her gravboot and pulled out her vibroblade, lamenting the loss of her weapons stash in that access tunnel. She was making some exceptionally poor choices this cycle. Time for one more.

  Sliding to a stop, Eva vaulted onto the top of a nearby container, keeping her eyes on the bounty hunter. He aimed and fired, but she was tracking the barrel’s movement and making sure she wasn’t in the path of the projectiles. Too late he realized she was charging, and he couldn’t react quickly enough to keep her from crashing her full weight into his slippery bulk.

  But Eva wasn’t trying to pull him down. She grabbed at the hover belt around his waist and sliced it off with a flick of her wrist. The bounty hunter squealed and fell to the ground below, one of his robotic arms bent at an inappropriate angle under his own weight.

  To his credit, he kept trying to shoot at her with the gun, even if it was pointed straight up.

  “Knock it off,” she said. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “I will kill you first!”

  She kicked the gun away and stepped on the metal hand that had held it. “Unless you’re going to slime me to death, this is over.” She leaned in. “Where I come from, there’s a story. A miller shows up to a mill with this cat. Now, see, the cat is a real killer, and all the mice that had been living there are going bananas trying to stay away from it, but they never hear it coming. So one by one, the cat keeps picking them off.”

  “What is a cat?” the dytryrc asked.

  “Cute fuzzy thing that kills stuff. Stay with me.” Was anyone else listening? No, they were alone. “So the mice have a meeting, to decide what to do about the cat. And one old mouse stands up and he says, ‘What we need to do is put a bell on the cat, so we’ll hear it coming.’ And all the other little mice love this idea. They start talking about what kind of bell it’s going to be, what color ribbon, that kind of crap, until finally one teeny-tiny mouse stands up and says, ‘But who is going to put the bell on the cat?’” She leaned closer. “And they’re all too scared to do it, so they up and leave the mill.”

  “What’s a mill?”

  “Damn it, mijo, you’re ruining my story.” She sighed. “The point is, all the mice are too scared to bell the cat. It’s a metaphor. But me? I’m done being scared. I’m not going to bell the cat. I’m going to blow its goddamn head off.”

  The bounty hunter stared at her with his twitching eyestalks. Slowly, quietly, he whispered, “What is a bell?”

  Eva stood up and left. She didn’t know why she bothered sometimes.

  Eva’s bag was miraculously still in the access tunnel where she’d left it, so she sent up a prayer to the Virgin in thanks.

  She felt like she was thinking clearly for the first time in weeks. The bounty hunters obviously knew where she was, so there was no point in hiding. They’d keep trying to tag her until she was good and tagged. This wasn’t hide-and-seek, it was dodgeball, and it was time to start throwing shit back at the other team.

  Eva cleaned herself up in a public bathroom, splashing water on her face and scrubbing her armpits, then slipping on the spacesuit she hadn’t touched since she landed. The patrons who wandered in and out gave her pitying looks, but none of them said anything to the manager, so she finished her business and moved on. Next stop, q-net café.

  She chose one closer to the hub, despite the higher rates, because the authorities were more visible there, so a bounty hunter was less likely to try something overt. The place was run by an yf who moved among their customers slowly, like a column of water flowing through a crack. She ignored them and slid into a seat, pulling up the comm network and sending out a call to her ship on the private channel.

  No answer. Mierda. Eva rifled through various search engines looking for any reports, any mention of something happening to her crew, her ship. Nothing. Finally she went to the failsafe channels, combing through personal ads on specific dating sites looking for messages from Pink. Her paid time was almost up when she finally found something.

  LTM SPICY LATINA LOVER. IF YOU LIKE PIÑA COLADAS AND GETTIN CAUGHT IN THE RAINS OF CASIMIR IX, IF YOU’RE INTO PASTELITOS AND DUNE CAPERS AT MIDNIGHT, PING ME AND ESCAPE.

  Subtle as a hammer on a mirror, but she didn’t recognize the commlink code
. Maybe it was being rerouted? Or it wasn’t her people at all. Eva glanced at the timer on the net access and winced. Almost out. She couldn’t afford a refill, not yet. Holding her breath, she made the call.

  There was no answer, just a strange hum that started to set her teeth on edge after a few seconds. When she thought she was wasting her time, there was finally a click and a sound like breathing.

  “Pink?” she asked.

  All she heard was “Eva—” before her time ran out and the call disconnected.

  Not Pink. Vakar.

  Her hands curled into fists and she banged them on the table in front of her, three staccato strikes, then stood up and grabbed her bag. The yf must have heard her because they were drifting over to see what the noise was about. She brushed past and out onto the sidewalk, where the rich and important and wannabe rich and important were going about their lives, which at the moment included giving her confused or dirty looks because her grimy hair and spacesuit didn’t fit in.

  Inventory time. She had a sniper rifle, a pistol, a vibroblade, a spare set of clothes, and a burning ball of anger that was getting bigger by the minute. She needed to get some more credits so she could try that commlink code again and let her crew know where she was. Whether they would come get her was another story. Clearly they were looking for her or there wouldn’t have been that ad. Maybe they just wanted to know if she was dead so they could claim her ship free and clear.

  No, that was a shitty thing to think, even after all this time. She’d reserve judgment until she talked to them.

  So, short term, get another job and make enough money to call again. Get picked up. Apologize profusely to everyone. Then fire them so she could find her sister, no matter how long it took.

  And if Mari couldn’t be found, or if something had happened to her—if she’s dead, Eva told herself, don’t sugarcoat it—she’d go on a rage-fueled revenge binge against the comemierdas who had kidnapped her.

  The idea appealed to her way more than working off her debt to The Fridge, she had to admit, even if it was utterly outrageous.

  The worst part about the Bends was the elevators. Waiting for elevators. Waiting inside elevators. The sheer number of elevators in this place had always astonished her, especially since no one ever seemed to be using them. At least she’d be able to catch up on news reports, since some well-meaning person had decided piping them through the elevator speakers was a great way to entertain a captive audience. Unfortunately, the reports weren’t updated frequently, so the news wasn’t exactly new anymore by the time anyone heard it.

  Eva stepped into the first elevator and briefly considered taking a nap inside. It was brief because about a second later, she was sharing the elevator with a human wearing a suit that was slightly too shabby to be appropriate for the hub. The person had blue hair, purple eyes, and a pair of wrist knives that looked really sharp when they swung past Eva’s face.

  “I do not have time for this,” Eva said. She aimed her knee at their groin but they blocked it, pushing her into the back of the car, and she countered with a kick to their stomach that they all but walked into. She ducked and dodged as they tried to slice at her eyes, her neck, her stomach.

  A mellow female voice began the news brief, oblivious to the fight. “Repairs are ongoing following the Gmaarg Empire’s apparently unprovoked attack on a space station near the edge of federated space, an attack that resulted in a number of casualties—”

  The doors opened behind the bounty hunter just as Eva managed to grab their forearms and lean in for a swift headbutt that knocked them onto the floor outside the elevator, their nose broken.

  Unfortunately, another two bounty hunters were waiting, as if some signal had been sent out that now was the time to push. Maybe the dytryrc had squealed.

  Eva smacked the switch to close the doors and dropped to the ground to avoid their pistol fire, rolling sideways and wedging herself into the tiny space next to a door.

  They vaulted over the prone human, who grabbed at one of them, tripping him while the other, a kloshian, made it into the elevator.

  Eva grappled the woman into a choke hold, but the bounty hunter was wearing a spacesuit underneath and it went rigid in her grip. Eva released her and lunged at the woman’s gun, which they fought for as the elevator moved down to the next floor.

  “After years of closely monitored trade restrictions and a veil of secrecy, new leadership within the ranks of the Dalnularan order has announced the relaxing of visitation requirements as it launches a new line of specialty liquors—”

  The doors opened again, and this time they were greeted by a gaggle of children and what might have been their teacher, who stared at the fighting women and didn’t move.

  A ragged cheer started, cries from the kids of “Punch her in the face!” and “Kick her butt!” shushed by the flustered human in the prim blue uniform. Eva winked at a small boy off to one side, getting her leg in between the bounty hunter’s and dragging her to the ground, an arm locked behind her back. Finally, Eva got her leg untangled and kicked the woman in the back of her head with her gravboot, once, twice, and that fight was over.

  Eva rolled the limp kloshian off at the next stop and stood, retrieving her pistol and vibroblade from her duffel bag and slinging its strap across her body like a bandolier. At the next level, she would be ready. She spat a rusty-tasting gob of blood into the corner and stared at the doors.

  Someone thumped onto the top of the elevator car, and a moment later, a laser saw began cutting through the insulated metal.

  Eva felt like a protein slab in a can, waiting to be eaten. But she couldn’t fire at the person yet, because her shot wouldn’t penetrate the ceiling. She had to wait until the can was open. The hole they were carving would be too small for them to fit through, though; they were probably planning to snipe her through it, or drop in a gas canister.

  “After the recent high-profile disappearance of the Futisian ambassador’s broodmate, government representatives were once again compelled to publicly dismiss rumors of an organized crime syndicate allegedly manipulating people into engaging in illicit activities—”

  Clucking her tongue, Eva turned on her gravboots and jumped to the ceiling, next to where the hole would be, and crouched there with her short blond hair sticking straight up. Or falling, depending on your perspective.

  A chunk of ceiling dropped out. Eva caught a glimpse of an eye peering down into the elevator, which she promptly greeted with a vibroblade. The eye’s owner retreated with a shriek. She followed that by shoving her own pistol to the hole and firing in what she hoped was the person’s direction. None of the shots seemed to hit, but there was a sound like gravboots powering on, and then a thunk against the wall of the elevator shaft.

  Then, because nothing could ever be easy, the elevator doors opened again and Eva found herself face-to-upside-down-faces with about a dozen tiny pizkee. They smiled in unison like a squad of needle-toothed blue fairies and ran into the box, screaming profanities.

  But they soon found they couldn’t reach her with their knives because she was still stuck to the ceiling, holding herself about a meter and a half off the floor.

  A human couple passed the elevator and looked inside to see the band of aliens trying to form a pyramid to reach Eva. She shrugged at them as the doors closed.

  Blood was starting to pool in her head, and she spat again, then fired a warning shot at the pizkee. They apparently decided she wasn’t worth their trouble, because at the next stop they all got off, grumbling to themselves about big jobs.

  Again, Eva was alone. And mercifully, the news reports had stopped. They were so distracting.

  She turned off her gravboots and twisted to land on her feet, standing up straight and readying her weapons again. Enough was enough. She was getting off this damn joy ride to hell.

  The doors opened, and she didn’t wait to see who was on the other side. Eva launched herself out, crashing into someone taller than her, slightly wider, a
nd definitely not human.

  They both fell to the ground, Eva winding up on top, her hand already raising her vibroblade to sink it into their chest. But her eyes were slower than her other sensory organs, and she dropped her knife before the conscious part of her brain had registered whose chest she was sitting on.

  Fire. Cigarettes. A dash of cooking oil, a whiff of fart. Not the slightest hint of licorice.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she muttered, grabbing her knife and getting to her feet. She held out a hand to help Vakar up, but he stayed on the floor, facing the ceiling with his eyes closed. Around them, a few people stared, but most on this level tended to ignore violence unless it was directed at them.

  “More bounty hunters might be on their way,” she said. “We have to go.”

  He still didn’t move. She started to wonder if she’d really hurt him, but his smell hadn’t gone bad.

  “Vakar?” She nudged him with her boot.

  He opened his eyes. “So you do know who I am.”

  “Of course I do, what the hell?”

  “You said you thought I was someone else.”

  “A bounty hunter. Trying to kill me. Hence the aggressive hello, for which I apologized.”

  “Is that all you are sorry for?”

  That was a hell of a question. “No,” she said. “It certainly is not.”

  The cooking-oil smell diminished but didn’t fade entirely; he was still suspicious. Despite that, she grinned as if she hadn’t just fought her way down the elevator of death.

  “We can talk more when we’re not out in the open. Did I mention the bounty hunters?” She held out her hand to him again.

  This time he took it, and she helped him up.

  “Now,” she said, “where the hell is my ship?”