Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2)

by Pourteau, Chris

  “Captain, Taulke here.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “How fast can you get us to Mars?”

  “At top speed, we can be there in approximately eight hours, Mr. Taulke, but the ride will not be very comfortable.”

  Anthony shot a glance at Adriana, who nodded.

  “Do it,” Anthony said, his eyes still on the now-defunct MSG.

  Adriana took Anthony’s arm, her touch gentle. “Do you want to speak to Tony before we get there?”

  “No. This is an in-person conversation. But I do have a call to make before we arrive.”

  • • •

  The connection with Earth was crystal clear, making it possible for Anthony to appreciate Xi Qinlao’s beauty. She was older now, yes, but her dark hair had the rich body only obscenely expensive scalp conditioning could buy. Her skin was flush and supple.

  “Anthony Taulke, what a pleasant surprise. Prison is treating you well.” Surgically altered to the color of jade, her eyes also carried the gem’s hardness.

  “And you’re as beautiful as ever, Xi.” He leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  She nodded, letting the flattery float by.

  “I’m not in prison.”

  Xi lifted her chin. “That explains the tasteful décor behind you. I hadn’t heard anything in the news. Aren’t you afraid I’ll share your secret?”

  “Not once you know why I’ve called.”

  “Oh?” Xi quirked a painted eyebrow. “Tell me, how can I help a free man like yourself, Mr. Taulke?”

  “Anthony, please,” he insisted. “If we’re going to be business partners again, we should be on a first-name basis.”

  “Are we going to be business partners … again?”

  “It’s my hope, yes. Very soon I’ll need manufacturing services, Xi. Discreet, fast, high-quality services.”

  The woman’s thin smile stretched thinner. “In that case, you should contact—”

  “Very discreet, Xi.” Anthony hesitated. “A variant on a previous order.”

  Xi’s jade eyes grew cold. “My niece’s indiscretion, you mean. I’m not interested.”

  “Not yet, maybe. But if you’ll allow a member of your board a moment— ”

  “Former member. My niece invited you to the board, and the board stripped you of that privilege when you went to prison.” Xi gathered her wrap around her. “Anthony, you are wasting my time. I will do you the courtesy of not alerting the authorities, but don’t contact me again.”

  “What about a trade?”

  Xi Qinlao diverted the hand about to cut their connection. “You know where she is? Ming?” The woman’s eyes gleamed with sudden fury.

  Anthony shrugged. “I know more than you do.”

  It took Xi a moment to regain her composure. “I’m quite concerned about my nephew. His mother’s worried sick and my niece is not fit company for a young man of his breeding.”

  She was lying, of course, but Anthony decided to play along. He hoped his face showed the proper concern. “If I can return him to the bosom of his family, would that change your mind about an arrangement?”

  Xi’s eyes went to slits. “If you can find my nephew, then you can find Ming.”

  “My offer is for the safe return of your nephew in exchange for manufacturing services,” Anthony said.

  The two stared at each other’s image for a long time.

  “No,” she said. “My niece or nothing.” Her perfect lips tightened into a painted smile. “Call me when you have her.”

  • • •

  Staff of Isis entered orbit around Mars seven hours and forty-seven minutes later only to be intercepted by an escort.

  “Unidentified vessel, this is the corvette Revenant of the Mars Security Force. Your transponder signal is not broadcasting. State your registry or prepare to be boarded.”

  Mars Security Force?

  Anthony’s head ached from dehydration. They’d finished off Adriana’s stock of Swiss wine, and his eyes were sandy from lack of sleep.

  Corvette?

  The ship setting itself in their flight path looked like a refitted freighter. An armed, refitted freighter.

  Rail gun placements hung under the escort ship fore and aft, forcing Anthony to question his sobriety. There were no armed ships on Mars. The United Nations strictly regulated armed spacecraft to prevent an international arms race in space.

  “This is the yacht Staff of Isis , under the ownership of the Rabh Conglomerate,” the captain responded. “Since when does Mars have a security force?”

  Anthony rubbed his eyes. “Captain, if I may?”

  After a glance to Adriana, the yacht’s captain nodded.

  Anthony stepped center-camera in the middle of the bridge and faced a grizzled-looking man in a paramilitary uniform with the Taulke Industries logo on the left breast.

  “Staff of Isis , we’re looking up your registry now. Why are you running silent—”

  “On whose authority do you challenge ships in the name of my planet?” Anthony demanded.

  The corvette captain regarded him curiously. “Sir, if you’re a representative of the Rabh Conglomerate—”

  “I’m Anthony Taulke! And you work for me! Who the hell put you in charge of an armed spacecraft? ”

  The captain of the Revenant stared at the screen. “We’re here on Mr. Taulke’s orders, sir—”

  “I am Mr. Taulke!” Anthony roared back. His own words pounded his aching brain.

  “Stand by, sir.”

  Anthony consciously willed his jaw to relax, his fists to unclench.

  “You are cleared to land, sir. Pad sixteen. Sending coordinates now.”

  Pad sixteen? There were only three landing pads on Mars.

  Anthony stalked to the window, anxious to catch sight of the Taulke Atmospheric Experiment Station. When the station showed over the horizon, he had to remind himself to breathe.

  Domes. Two of them, under construction, each easily ten times the size of the experiment station.

  Anthony’s grand plan for Mars had always been terraforming. In the long term, there would be no need for domes. Mars would have its own breathable atmosphere. A fresh start for the human species. To date, the station had only needed a modest dome capable of housing a few thousand engineers and scientists while they did their work resurrecting the Red Planet as a new Earth.

  But the sight unfolding below him was not that vision. An army of large crawlers were excavating soil for the pylons to anchor the domes. And there was evidence of a subterranean mining operation digging out crisscrossing maintenance tunnels to run beneath the habitat level. Tony was creating another LUNa City.

  He shook his head. That was not the plan. Mars was not going to be an underground city like the Moon. Future citizens of Mars would live in the open air, free of pressure suits and radiation warnings. That was the dream. His dream. This … this was a commercial operation.

  The yacht banked, angling toward the landing zones. Twenty landing pads dotted the planet’s surface, and all but one was occupied. Freighters, their bellies gaping open, disgorged pallet after pallet of supplies and materiel.

  Tony had done all this in a little over six months? How was that even possible?

  The Isis settled onto its assigned pad. A team of workers hustled out to attach an atmospheric tunnel to her docking port.

  “Mr. Taulke, we’re connected to the station. Standing by to open the airlock.”

  He descended the steps, his head thudding. Putting Tony in charge of Mars had been a devil’s bargain to make Lazarus possible, a way to keep Taulke Industries alive.

  And now, Tony had made its crowning jewel, the Mars Atmospheric Project, into something else entirely. An inferior vision. A settle-for solution of manufactured domes. Anthony nodded at the tech to open the airlock.

  The young man on the other side had his father’s curly hair, dark eyes, and strong jaw. If the elder Taulke had looked in a mirror a quarter century ago, he would have s
een this reflection staring back at him. The main difference now could be found in their expressions.

  Taulke the younger smiled, a row of perfect white teeth between perfectly sculpted lips. He opened his arms wide and stepped forward.

  “Pop,” he said. “Welcome home.”

  Chapter 7

  Ming Qinlao • LUNa City, the Moon

  Ming dropped gently to the ground from the jungle of overhead pipes.

  “I love how you kids do that,” Alvin said, putting the spanner she’d tossed him in the toolbox. “Just hoist yourself up into the pipes, no ladder or nothing.”

  Ming hadn’t been showing off, merely taking another opportunity to keep her muscles from going moonsoft. She had to be ready to go home, whenever that was possible again.

  Alvin consulted his work orders. “Well, we fixed the aerator scoop, adjusted the humidity regulator, and completed calibration on the water separator. We can pack it in for the day.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t mind getting to Rodney’s school a little early to pick him up. He’s grounded. Don’t want him to be idle for too long.”

  Alvin raised an eyebrow. “Grounded? What for?”

  “Fighting at school. There was a bully in his class, and Rodney decided it was his job to do something about it. ”

  “Trying to impress a girl.” Alvin swung into the driver’s seat. “That’s a teenage boy for you.”

  The scooter lifted off. “No, I don’t think so,” Ming said. Then again, Ruben had casually mentioned a girl with red hair a few times. Ming had assumed her to be a study buddy, but it hadn’t even occurred to her that Ruben might be interested in girls. Angel, that was her name.

  “Whatever’s going on with him, I hope he grows out of it soon,” she murmured. Maybe Alvin, who’d never met Ruben, knew her brother better than she did.

  “Give him time, Mary. He’s just a boy.”

  Time was the one thing they had plenty of right now, as long as they stayed hidden. She half-listened to Alvin as he listed the next day’s work orders. When they reached her stop, Ming hopped off the scooter and waved him a quick goodbye.

  She took the steps two at a time up to the inhabited levels. It was second nature now to keep her head low and face angled away from the ever-present cameras. In the time since she’d arrived on the Moon, Ming had grown her bangs long and wore a pair of data glasses augmented with the expensive face-blurring tech celebrities employed to confuse facial rec programs. Only in the anonymity of crowds did she feel truly safe from Xi’s unlimited resources trying to find them.

  Ming stepped inside the brightly colored open doorway of the school. Children’s drawings decorated the walls of the lower grades, and a video of two girls singing a nursery rhyme played on the kiosk near the vacant front desk.

  “Hello?” she called down the hallway of eight open classroom doors. She checked the time. Classes shouldn’t be out for another twenty minutes. And yet, there was no one, child or adult, in sight. A woman with a tousled spray of brown-gray frizz poked her head out of the last door along the corridor. Ruben’s classroom.

  “Mary,” said the woman, “what a pleasant surprise.”

  “I’m here for Rodney.” Ming looked around. The hallway and the open community area were normally crawling with children of all ages after school. “Where is everyone?”

  The heavyset teacher stepped into the hallway. She wore a shapeless dress and walked with a plodding tread, even in low-gee. “Half day, remember?”

  Ming did not remember. “Did Lily pick him up, by any chance?”

  The teacher shook her head. “No, Rodney left with Angel. They were holding hands.” She winked at Ming. “Young love, you know? I remember my first kiss—”

  “Do you know where they went?” Ming interrupted.

  The woman paused, considering. “I know a bunch of kids were talking about the new sim-parlor up on level ten. They say the Mark-6 holos are really good. Didn’t your uncle tell you?”

  Ming’s heart beat faster. “Uncle?” Scenarios began to unfold in her head. All of them ended badly for Ruben.

  “Yeah, he came by about fifteen minutes ago, looking for Rodney. Big Earth muscles, seemed to still be adjusting to lunar gravity. Cute, too. Another guy, too. He was shorter—”

  “Thanks,” Ming called over her shoulder.

  She hustled through the throng of foot traffic in the main thoroughfare. Two men looking for Ruben? Not the LUNa City marshals—that bill had been cleared. Cops for hire, maybe, or Xi’s agents .

  Picking up her pace, Ming pushed aside the dark possibilities arising in her mind’s eye. The men had a fifteen-minute head start but were likely unfamiliar with the city’s layout. They’d use escalators, ask directions. All that took time.

  There was a maintenance deck between housing levels ten and eleven in this part of the city. No one went there, she could move fast. Ming headed for the nearest maintenance door and used her passcode to enter. Inside, the tunnels were deserted, and a clear lane ran between rows of machinery. As Ming started running, she pulled out her data glasses and called Lily.

  “Is Ruben with you?”

  “Well, hello to you too, dear.” Lily’s voice sounded petulant.

  “Lil, please! Is Ruben with you?”

  “No, why? Did he ditch you? Don’t worry about that marshal. I’ve got him wrapped around my—”

  Quick anger flared at Lily’s clear attempt to make her jealous.

  “Listen, Lil, listen to me very carefully. In our closet is a green go-bag. Get it and wait for me there. Stay in the apartment and lock the door. Understand?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Ming cut the connection.

  It felt like she’d run across half of LUNa City before finally spotting the marker for the sim-parlor’s neighborhood. She cracked the door and peered into the corridor, then slipped into the stream of passing residents.

  Level 10 on a Friday evening always had a festive feel. Philby’s Fun House, the sim-parlor, sat nestled among the shops, restaurants, gambling houses, and bordellos along one of the busiest recreational corridors in LUNa City. The entrance to the sim-parlor was a sea of people, all hoping for a chance to escape the dull reality of lunar life with a half hour’s distraction.

  Ming kept her head down, edging through the scrum of people lining up for Philby’s Mark 6 holos, closet-sized VR pods where singles or couples could dial up whatever fantasy they desired. Bodies jostled against her as she pushed her way through the crowd to the front desk.

  The young man behind the counter handed her a personal access data device.

  “Sign in, please. The wait’s two hours and change—”

  “I’m looking for my brother,” she said, pushing the padd away. “He came in here with a girl, red hair, maybe an hour ago.”

  “Are you kidding? Look at this crowd.” He looked past her, anxious to help a paying customer instead.

  Ming reached out and snagged his hand, pressing paper scrip into his palm.

  “I want to speak to the manager. There’s an underage boy here. Think how that will play with the marshals.” In fact, she had no idea how it would play with them. On the lunar frontier, morality was a fluid concept.

  The clerk eyed the crumpled cash. He flipped up a divider and Ming walked through, customers grousing behind her. She followed him into a narrow hallway.

  The manager sat behind an array of two dozen displays showing interior views of the holo pods. Ming had a fleeting glimpse of pumping buttocks and flailing legs scored by a soundtrack of grunting and gasping before the man minimized the display wall. She hoped that was not Ruben and Angel.

  “I’m here for my little brother. He’s underage. Help me find him quickly and I’ll be on my way.”

  The manager nodded at the clerk to go and raised his palms in surrender. “Look, we guarantee privacy to our customers. I can’t just let you look at anyone’s holo—”

  Ming punched him in the face with the heel of her palm. Once, sh
arp and hard. Then, with her Earth-strong muscles, she pulled him out of his chair.

  “Ow! Jesus!” The man’s voice had an echoing, nasal quality now. “I think you broke my nose!”

  “Let’s keep it to just that body part,” she said. “Find my brother. He came in with a redheaded girl, both about fourteen.”

  He held his nose as he scrolled through the thumbnails of the live feeds.

  “There!” he said, stabbing a bloody finger at the wallscreen. “Is that him?”

  Ruben and Angel were sitting on a fallen tree in a woodland park, surrounded by ferns and mature oaks with Spanish moss hanging from them. A horse grazed in the background, and birds flitted in the lower tree branches. Ruben had one arm wrapped around Angel’s shoulder. Her red hair flowed down her back like a river of shimmering silk. They were locked in a teenager’s awkward, passionate kiss.

  “Pod seven,” the manager said. “That way.” He pointed to the sliding door on the wall.

  Ming stepped into a hallway that ran between Philby’s two rows of holo pods. Quickly locating pod 7, she disregarded the red occupancy light and jerked the door open. The 3-D VR projection fooled her depth perception, and there was a moment of disorientation .

  The two teens broke apart immediately, Angel gasping. Ruben rose and moved in front of her.

  “We need to go,” Ming said. “Now.”

  Ruben shook his head, his eyes wide.

  Ming reached for her brother. “We need to go!”

  It took Ming a split second to realize he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking over her shoulder. And she missed the fear in his eyes.

  Two hands clamped onto her shoulders.

  “Ming Qinlao, you’re coming with me.” The voice was deep and menacing.

  Years of training with Ito paid off in instinct. She stepped backward, set her feet, and head-butted her attacker’s face with the back of her skull. Her right elbow slammed into his gut, then she jackhammered a fist into his groin.

  Butt, gut, and nuts. Ito’s go-to sequence for an attack from behind.

  The grip on her shoulder loosened and Ming spun into a kick that swept his feet out from under him. He crashed into the side of the pod, the idyllic image around them glitching from the impact. She pistoned kicks to the side of his head until he stopped moving.