It was a small one, indeed. Around seven and a half miles at its longest and as lumpy as a potato-tuber hybrid. Darkness and unfiltered sunlight gave the moon’s surface relief, revealing its pockmarks, scars, and vast gouges. There were several transponders attached to the surface. These transponders were what had brought Holly and her team to the small moon in the first place.
Holly held her breath as their ship, in some mysterious advanced physics and engineering, slowed upon nearing the touchdown. A low noise began suddenly, whining through the background sounds of the ship’s systems. Holly looked around, panic rising as the danger seemed to grow.
“What is that?” she whispered, clutching the hard cushion of the edge of her seat.
A calming violet hand appeared on her shoulder. She could see it in her peripheral vision.
“It is you, Holly Drake,” Odeon said. There was a song in his voice, and a slight tone of humor. “Peace. You are nervous. All will be fine.”
Trip’s gaze was also on Holly.
“Shouldn’t you be watching this landing?” There was a definite edge in Holly’s tone. No peace at all.
“The AI. If I interfere, I could ruin the landing. Olavia Apollo has it.” Trip nodded at the sleek control board. “Don’t worry.”
The first time they’d ridden with Trip, Holly had expected wood, brass, and a large steering wheel—like the space zeppelins. Not at all what she found. Instead the small space cruiser was something right out of the future. Trip barely even piloted it.
That didn’t stop the Centau from wearing a white jumpsuit with patches on the upper arms and a pair of goggles with amber tinted lenses. Right now the eye-pieces were on top of Trip’s ivory stubble-covered head as she watched the surface of the moon float toward their ship on the video image on the screen.
“What is it you want to do with the transponders?” Trip asked. She watched the video footage onscreen as they moved closer to the surface.
A knot tightened in Holly’s gut. Her stomach stretched taut. Her shoulders arched back against her seat slightly. Odeon’s hand burned through her jacket, seeming to heat up as the tension tore through her body. She wasn’t sure what she feared—crashing too hard into the unforgiving surface of the moon or their ship ripping apart and sending them all careening into the void of space, like flecks of ice off one of the un-terraformed ice moons of Ixion. The one they were about to land on was one of the few asteroid-like moons, and therefore peppered with transponders on all sides, repeating audio and video signal through the 6-moon system.
If Odeon’s hand hadn’t been there, if Odeon’s low song hadn’t been worming its way into her ears, digging deep into her brain, pirouetting across her neurons like an ancient earth-ballet dancer, soothing her like a pied-piper of lore, Holly knew that she would have been nothing more than a puddle of adrenalin, dispersed through the low-G-interior of the ship, floating around like rain drops.
She did not like space-flight.
The ship balanced, thrusters fired, a harpoon-like anchor ejected and tethered their ship to the rock and they connected with the moon in a light thud, touching down.
“There. Safe-landing.” Trip touched the control panel in a few places. Buttons clicked, sounds filled Holly’s ears. Odeon gave her shoulder a squeeze and withdrew his hand. Several sensations faded as Odeon ended his almost imperceptible song and Holly’s normal feelings returned.
She sighed. “I hate space-flight.”
“Yes. Well, you survived. Who do you have to thank?” Trip asked.
“All of you. Odeon. You, Trip. Et cetera,” Holly leaned back and touched her ear. “You ready, Charly?”
“Hell yes,” Charly said. She sounded excited. “I’ve always wanted to do this. Or something like it.”
“Because you’re insane?” Holly grinned. At least she didn’t have to do this dirty work.
“Just don’t get too cocky,” Darius said, coming in on the comm system in Holly’s ear. He was back on Kota, in the Bird’s Nest, the upstairs room at the Surge Club in the City of Jade Spires.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Charly retorted. “You wanted this done a certain way, you should be here, doing it.”
“All right, all right,” Darius said. “Just nervous.”
“No harm in that,” Charly said.
Trip interrupted. “The airlock is open, Charly. You can go out and plant your device. There are three more to do, so make it quick.”
“Go for it, Char,” Holly said. In a strange twist of ignorance, Holly wasn’t nervous for Charly. This part of the mission was perhaps the most dangerous.
“Heading out,” Charly said.
Trip tapped buttons on the console and the video image changed to a different feed. Charly came into focus on the screen, using tiny thrusters in her suit to steer herself toward a transponder.
“You forgot to tell me which transponder you are hacking.” Trip didn’t pull her gaze away from the image on the monitor.
“They didn’t forget,” Odeon said, in his quiet tenor from behind Holly.
They. Odeon’s word choice reminded Holly that he wasn’t fully committed to the gig. “Purposely didn’t tell you,” Holly added.
“Darius?” Trip asked.
“Yes, Trip?” Darius’s deep voice answered through the comm system.
“Tell them they can trust me.”
“You can trust Trip,” Darius said, sounding like he was humorously doing as requested.
“I’m sure we can,” Holly said. “But everyone gets to know what they need to know, nothing more, nothing less. And forgive me, Trip, but you don’t need to know who we’re hacking.”
Trip made a low sound in her throat.
“You’ll get your money. Can you argue with that?” Holly asked.
“Money is good. Being on your team? Better.”
“Prove yourself. Do your job well, don’t complain, don’t pull any jerk moves, and you’ll get your chance,” Holly said, and then thought, Maybe. Trusting wasn’t Holly’s strong suit, not after the one person she had trusted with her life had tried to kill her: Graf, her former husband. Trusting the crew she’d gathered around her hadn’t been easy either, yet she’d managed and they didn’t fail her. But trusting new teammates? She wasn’t sure it was necessary. She could let Trip do some one-off jobs based on Darius’s word, however every new teammate increased the odds that someone would fail her or betray her. So she wasn’t in the market to find someone to add to her list of trusted individuals.
Trusting just wasn’t Holly’s strong suit.
Charly had reached the target transponder and had taken the device out of the pack strapped to her waist. Her actions weren’t entirely visible. Her body blocked the view of the camera.
“Switch the onscreen view to Charly’s earpiece, Trip,” Holly said. The team’s earpieces were new for this mission. They were Centau tech, and each earpiece had a built-in vid camera that through some crazy black magic (or so it seemed to Holly) allowed the crew to use the comms to see what teammates were seeing.
Trip complied and the monitor suddenly showed the image from Charly’s point-of-view. The device they were using to tap into the transponder was a palm-sized metal box, with another mini box piggy-backing on it. Charly simply had to attach the unit to the exterior of the transponder and hit a switch.
She did this. A screen lit up and Charly began turning a dial to enter a series of numbers.
“Code?” Charly’s voice came over the comms.
“Er, 5591761,” Darius said. “Hurry, you only have nine more seconds to get it in before alarms start going off.”
Charly’s breathing over the earpiece increased. Holly’s breath responded in kind.
And then suddenly calm washed through Holly.
She knew that sensation—Odeon had started his song.
“Charly,” Holly said quietly. “You got this.” Weeks ago, Holly had stopped asking Odeon to not do it. She might as well ask a human to never gossip or laugh at
a bawdy joke. It was as much a part of him as the things that made Holly, Holly.
Perspiration broke out in Holly’s palms as she watched. She ran nervous fingers through her hair and tugged on her ponytail. Four numbers left. Two numbers left.
Charly screamed.
Shit.
“Got it!” Charly gasped.
Holly sighed. “God. I thought when you screamed that something bad happened.”
“Great work,” Darius said. “Now do that on the other three.”
“Come back on board,” Holly said.
The view on the monitor showed the ship as Charly turned and moved back to the airlock. It was larger than it felt on the inside, with giant orange wings and a blue, oblong hull. Behind the ship, the pale hues of the bands of gases on the massive planet Ixion dwarfed their space cruisers.
“That always makes my heart stop,” Charly said.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Ixion,” Charly answered. “Giant. Naked. Alive with the swirling gases and the lightning.” Both Darius and Odeon responded, talking fondly of their best memories involving Ixion.
Holly tuned out the conversation that followed. “How much longer will this take?” she asked. She didn’t want to be immature, but the mission was taxing. It required more of her than she wanted to give, and she still wasn’t sure it would do what they expected: help them track the workings of the Shadow Coalition.
Trip turned to Holly. She smiled, revealing the standard faintly blue Centau teeth. “Depends on how quickly you can work. The ship AI estimates one hundred eighty of your Earth minutes—I converted that from Centau time for you. That’s the travel time to the other locations on this rock. Returning to Kota will take four hours.”
“Then let’s get moving. Soon as Charly’s in the airlock and it’s sealed, pull up anchor and head out.” Less time in space was always the goal for Holly.
Everything went according to plan after that. Until the last transponder location.
Holly was sincerely bored at this point. The mission was repetitive. There was little to talk about with Trip there, and Charly seemed to have the job pretty figured out. Everyone was tired. Holly was sick of feeling stressed and being trapped in the ship. Even Odeon seemed to have wilted a bit in the burden of singing his calm to Holly.
“Odeon,” Holly said.
“Yes Holly Drake?” he answered in his sing-song voice.
“Stop singing. I can handle it now,” Holly said.
Trip punched in whatever she did to control the ship and it began its landing sequence, adjusting calculations, monitoring the gravity and the uneven rotation of the small moon.
“We haven’t landed yet,” Odeon said, still singing.
“You’re tired. I’m tired. I can handle it. As soon as Charly gets this one done, I’m heading to my bunk for a nap. I brought a bottle of bubbly. I’ll drink the whole goddamn thing in celebration of this terrible mission accomplished and you can rest. For now, I really think you should ease up. You need your own sanity intact, my friend.”
He laughed while singing. “No, I don’t think so. But thank you.”
Holly sighed. Though Odeon was a Druiviin, pleasant as hell, in possession of a demeanor incapable of being ruffled, he was still stubborn as a bull rangebeast. She let the argument rest. By then, the ship had landed and anchored itself to the moon and the point was lost, anyway.
“Heading out, let’s get this mother over with,” Charly said in her low, scratchy voice. “Sick of this bitch. I mean, don’t get me wrong, being out in space, so close to death, is kind of exhilarating. But even thrills get old.”
The airlock opened. Trip switched the monitor image over to Charly’s perspective. The team watched as she moved to the transponder. “Come to mama, you baby monster you,” Charly said as she neared the device. “Got you.” She arrived and went to work.
She removed the tap from the bag and leaned over the device to lock it in.
“Gonna give this piece of shit a parasite,” Charly said. And then there was a thud over the earpiece, and suddenly the view on the monitor was falling away, spinning. The ship and the distant sun came into view. Then the surface of the moon.
“Charly?” Holly asked.
Silence.
Trip leaned forward. Odeon stopped humming. Anxiety flooded Holly.
“What happened? Trip, switch to the ship view. Quick, quick, woman,” Holly ordered, unclipping her seat restraints, sickness swirling through her gut. She feared the worst.
Holly moved to the corridor leading to the airlock, and stopped. She glanced over her shoulder. Charly was spinning away from the transponder, heading toward the ship. If Holly acted fast, she could grab her.
Holly rushed down the corridor and punched the door override. The emergency hatch doors slammed closed, sealing off the bridge where Trip was. Odeon had followed Holly.
“Don’t do this Holly Drake,” Odeon said, a tone in his voice that Holly had never heard, but it tugged at something in her gut. She ignored it. There was no time for second thoughts.
“Don’t tell me that, Odeon,” Holly cried as she grabbed a coiled up emergency restraint attached to an anchor loop of metal near the airlock hatch. “Tell me you’ve got my back. She’s going to pass the airlock. Anchor me.” She tied it around her waist and snaked it up to her wrist, slipping it between her thumb and forefinger and making a fist. She glanced at Odeon, nodded, and slapped the door override again. The exterior hatch into the airlock opened. Holly surveyed the scene as the air rushed out and pulled her with it. She fought to hold her ground, saw Charly’s falling body passing by and jumped for her.
Holly careened out into the ice cold of space. The moon had only a fraction of an atmosphere. The chill pierced into Holly’s bones like icepicks, lodging deep inside her, overloading her senses. Black hovered at the fringes of her vision. She fended the cold off, clung tight to her awareness as she moved in Charly’s direction. Grief loomed behind her solar plexus, a keening noise, threatening to erupt from her in sorrow. Odeon had anchored himself too, hadn’t he? She suddenly questioned her very perception, her hold on reality. She’d nearly lost it in her desire to save her friend. They’d planned for every contingency—Charly had been equipped with thrusters. She had safety measures in place. What they hadn’t counted on was unresponsiveness. Being knocked out. That’s what must have happened, otherwise Charly would have answered. She had no tether, because why would she need one?
The black seeped in, covering Holly’s vision. She collided with something. The last fragments of air she’d held in her mouth like a tiny bird, precious and fragile, exploded from her. Her vision was entirely clouded, she looked out as though through a dark gray haze. She wrapped her arms around whatever she hit. It was pliable. Rough. Covered in a smooth material.
Charly, she gasped. Or thought. She couldn’t be sure what was happening anymore.
She moved slowly back against the pulling vacuum. Odeon must have been tugging on her restraint. And then blackness overwhelmed her.
She fell.
2
“A gripping story. Glad you’re ok.”
Three days after the incident on the small, unnamed transponder moon, Holly stared at the official from a chair on the far side of his stone-topped desk. She raised one eyebrow and sipped a glass of bourbon. “That’s it? I’m beginning to question this arrangement.”
He stood and went to the window overlooking the Green Jade district. He always did that when Holly threw his concern for her safety into doubt. She’d been working for him now for a month and had interrupted one cash drop, but had tried for three. The satellite transponder tap was supposed to give them a better read on the movements of the Shadow Coalition.
“We’re already getting more information about the Shadow Coalition’s drops. Nothing solid yet, but it will mean that you could potentially have two to three drops to bust per week.”
“So my near-death in the near-vacuum of space was nearly worth it?”
He turned to look at her, one thumb under a suspender, a tumbler of the same honey-brown liquid Holly was sipping in his other hand. He always looked like a pompous ass when he did that with his suspenders. “I’ll be honest, Holly, it was a reckless decision, but I understand it. Neither of us want a casualty on your hands.”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Holly blinked.
He cocked his head to one side. “Don’t start with me.”
“A casualty? On my hands? Casualty,” she repeated. She took one big swig of her bourbon, finishing it off. “That’s a safe word. Distant. It puts some nice padding between you and the death of one of my friends. As well as your choice of pronoun: your. Me. Mine. Holly’s hands.”
He pulled back his desk chair and sat down again, placing his drink on his desk. “Here we go.”
“Also, if my rescue had failed,” she continued, ignoring his comment, “you’d have two deaths on your hands. Anyway, my reckless decision was the right decision given the moment. And I’d do it again, because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Charly had died on that stupid moon, planting your stupid transponder taps.” Holly placed the empty glass on the end table near her hand. She put it down a little harder than she’d meant to and the ice clinked loudly and the sound of the glass colliding with the table rang through the room. The official sighed and shook his head.
“I should stop letting you have drinks in my office.”
“Yes, when will you learn?”
“You’re invited to turn down a drink any time you like.”
“I usually don’t.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She flashed a glare at him. Sometimes she didn’t like him at all. She reminded herself that she was here for two reasons: the children and the money.
And . . . sometimes he wasn’t so bad, honestly, even though he regularly pissed her off. Plus she knew his dirty secret: his son had been kidnapped because the official had been dirty. For a minute. When he changed his stripes, the Shadow Coalition hit him where it hurt. Blackmailed him. Took his boy, tried to manipulate him.
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