The Game of Luck

by Catherine Cerveny

  “Finally, something we agree on.”

  Tanith’s face was a study in concentration. “You need to get off the Martian Princess. We have some time yet before the ship launches, so let me consider how best to handle this. I have an agent on the ground, but I need to get him into position. When we have a plan, I will contact you again.”

  Her agent on the ground? So, she had a guy? Gods, why didn’t that even surprise me?

  “Do you trust him?”

  “I trust him as much as I trust anyone. I believe you already know him, so maybe you’ll feel as I do.”

  Wonderful. More damned secrets. “Who is it?”

  She smiled, looking a cross between embarrassed and smug. “Caleb Dekker.”

  * * *

  I spent an indeterminate amount of time trapped in my cabin, cooling my heels. The AI system allowed me to order meals from the kitchen delivered via tube service and keep myself entertained with its inane onboard broadcasting, but little else. I couldn’t contact Tanith again—once I’d clicked it, the link was gone. I was trapped with my useless implants. All I could do was fume, fret, and make elaborate plans I couldn’t hope to execute.

  Caleb Dekker. I never would have suspected him as a secret agent. Had Felipe known? I didn’t think so. Did anyone? Arkell maybe? Now I understood why my gut wanted Alexei to investigate him. I wouldn’t have had the skill set to dig into the details.

  For now, I had to be ready when word came from Tanith. That meant resting the body the lab goons had abused during my exam and focusing on my next steps. I needed to make plans that would take me past today, tomorrow, the next week, month…As far ahead as I needed to ensure my baby was safe.

  First, get off the space cruiser and back to Mars. Then, find Celeste. She could hide me, and with my Romani family so far off the grid as to be invisible, no one would find us. Approaching Lotus was dangerous. She was with Stanis, and I had no idea what reception I’d receive from the Tsarist Consortium. Once I got off the space cruiser, I had a feeling they’d want to extract payback for Alexei.

  If I could avoid the Consortium, I’d wait for Felipe to emerge from the Renew tanks. That could take weeks to months, depending on the extent of his injuries. Still, he was my best bet. He’d protect me and if he couldn’t, then I’d have to hide long-term—maybe for the rest of my life. Could I do that and still protect a family that stretched across the tri-system? I didn’t know, but I’d think of something. But the first thing I’d need to do…

  I looked down at the swelling on my right hand at the base of my thumb. The chip was a liability and had to go. I nudged the thought a step further. My implants. If I wanted to ensure I could never be found and my body was safe against sniping, there could be no more CN-net surfing for me. Not if I wanted to stay hidden. Not if I wanted to protect my baby. Could I do it? Could I cut myself off from everything like that? Turn my back on the tech, the CN-net, and go back to being a spook, unmodified and boringly human. Steely resolution filled me. Yes, I realized. I could.

  * * *

  Per my AI time check, two entire sols had passed since I’d boarded the Martian Princess. It was almost three sols since I’d left Soyuz Park. Only three sols, yet they felt like an eternity.

  I ate multiple meals, forcing down the food though I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t afford to be weak or exhausted when the call came to move. And it would come, I told myself. Tanith wouldn’t let me down. It surprised me how certain I felt. My gut had no comment on the matter, yet I knew I was on the right course. All I needed to do was wait.

  When the ping came from Tanith, it was nearly three in the morning and woke me from a disjointed, restless sleep. I had no idea how I managed to receive the ping with my implants still locked up tight, but decided I was in no position to question Tanith’s abilities. I wondered if my kidnapper could see the ping too. If so, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. Not yet, anyway.

  The ping was short and to the point. Text only, the words deleted themselves as quickly as I read them—probably so the ping couldn’t be sniped.

  “Room will be unlocked in ten minutes. You have one hour to get to the space elevator. Don’t miss it, as you will have no other opportunities. It’s been programmed to run off-schedule and the AI queenmind will think it’s a maintenance system check. It will take you to the surface. Caleb will be waiting. I’ll handle Rhys Arkell and will meet you on Mars in three months.”

  Shit. Ten minutes! Meet me on Mars? Gods, did Tanith plan on coming here? My ten-sol-old fetus had more power than I realized.

  I hopped off the bed and pulled myself together, putting on the hideous navy pantsuit and sensible shoes. Then I stood to wait by the door, bouncing on my toes with nervous energy, and never more ready for anything in my life.

  When the door opened, I didn’t hesitate and stepped into the hall. It took everything in me to act like I had the right to be there rather than prowl like a criminal, never mind that the halls were empty. The ship would be filling up with passengers, so the possibility existed that I might run into other people. However, at four in the morning Mars time, the corridor was empty.

  I had an hour to get to the elevator. I’d already worked out how long it would take me to get off the ship, through Destiny, and to the elevator deployment ramp. An hour would be cutting it close, but if I hurried, I’d have time to spare.

  Yet rather than beetling my ass to the space elevator the minute my cabin door opened, I decided now was the perfect time to detour back to the ship’s medical facility.

  It was on the other side of the ship, but I knew the route. Yet when I tried to follow that route, my gut pulled me in another direction. I swore under my breath but followed the impulse and dove down another hallway. I rounded a corner, waited, and was rewarded with the sound of two men talking casually as they strolled by. Only when they were out of earshot did I feel the urge to move. I let out a deep breath, then resumed my original heading. The luck gene was in a generous mood today.

  After two more close calls where luck saved my ass, I made it to medical. The door opened and I stepped inside. Medical was empty—thanks again, luck gene—and I breathed a sigh of relief. I searched through the drawers, looking for something I could use to cut out the citizenship chip. I settled on a wicked-looking scalpel with a razor-sharp blade. The chip was in my right hand, so I’d have to dig for it with my left. Me being a righty made things tricky and I prayed to the gods who looked after idiots that I didn’t cut too deep.

  I let out a deep breath, steeled myself, and went for it. The scalpel sank into my palm with surprising ease. I didn’t even feel the pain as it sliced the skin, though it occurred to me I should have used a numbing spray first. Still, I had the chip out and flicked onto a nearby table in seconds. I also bled in a way that was faintly shocking. I pressed a wad of gauze to my hand to stem the flow before I traumatized the hell out of myself. Then I dug through a few more drawers and found skin renewal patches and cleaning antiseptic. I took care of business with brisk efficiency, knowing this was the easy part. The next step would be brutal. Brutal, but necessary. I’d psyched myself up and knew I’d never been more ready in my life, but that didn’t make the task any less daunting. No thinking. Only acting.

  Time to cut out my implants, embrace my heritage, and be the spook my family raised me to be.

  I realized quickly I’d have to do this by feel rather than sight. While I located several mirrors that let me see myself from multiple angles, I couldn’t get the setup how I wanted. It was impossible to line the mirrors up so I could see what I was doing. What if I cut too deep and bled to death? Was it possible to damage my spinal cord if I cut wrong? I couldn’t see how a tiny little incision would cause much harm, but I’d need to be careful.

  I lined up my tools—antiseptic, numbing spray, scalpel, gauze, skin renewal patches, and useless mirrors. I removed my pantsuit, shivering in the chilly, brightly lit room, and swiped my hair out of my way. Feeling with my fingers and hold
ing up a mirror, I found the tiny bump at the base of my spine. I figured it would be the easier of the two.

  Wrong. Not easy. Or not as easy as my palm had been. The numbing spray helped. But I had to dig and search for it in a way I hadn’t with the citizenship chip. It was an older, smaller implant, making it more difficult to locate. The bleeding wasn’t as bad as expected, but I still felt faint when I saw the bright red liquid. It was made worse by the trickle I felt rolling down my backside, inner thigh, and saw drip on the antiseptic white floor.

  By the time I picked out the implant in its nanoglass tube and flicked it alongside the chip, nausea churned in my stomach. The thin clear filaments that had kept it anchored in place were red and dripped with clotted blood. The whole thing created a macabre, spiderlike image that would give me nightmares for months. When I realized I’d started hyperventilating just looking at it, I fought to bring my breathing back to normal. Passing out now was the last thing I needed. I had to stay strong. Had to keep going.

  A quick time check told me I’d wasted five minutes trying not to puke. Gods, why hadn’t I built in time for puking? How stupid of me. With trembling hands, I cleaned myself up and applied the skin renewal patch. On to the next one.

  More blood dripped on the floor and I swore. The sight had my stomach roiling again and I had to sit on the exam table to steady myself—and got blood all over everything in the process. My mental prep failed me. There was no way I could cut out the second implant. Could I leave it in and only worry about being partially sniped? Then I thought about the baby, about Alexei—no, not him—and knew I couldn’t. I had to survive. Had to save my baby. Cutting out an implant was nothing.

  So it was back to work, picking at the second implant. This one wasn’t as easy—not that the other two were. Even though I poked gingerly at my neck, my incision was the bloodiest of the three and I had to lie down, light-headed when I saw the sheer amount of blood on my fingers. And it hurt too. I’d gone sparingly with the numbing spray as I wanted some feeling in my neck. I had a fear I’d hack right down to the bone and cut my head off—ridiculous, but I couldn’t push the image out of my mind.

  With much wincing, whimpering, and swearing, I dug out the second spidery implant and dropped it beside the other two. My hands had gone from trembling to violent shaking as I applied the skin renewal patch and tried to clean up the blood, turning everything into a smeared red mess.

  I got dressed again and left the lab. While I wouldn’t say I was exactly dizzy or nauseated from my medical side trip, I may have pushed myself beyond my comfort zone. I hadn’t thought about practicalities like blood loss or keeping things clean. There was blood under my nails and in the skin around my knuckles. It was also smeared down my back and thighs, dry and flakey. The skin renewal patches and numbing spray were working as they should, but I’d rushed through everything else with careless haste.

  A final time check showed I’d spent almost twenty minutes in medical—time I couldn’t afford. I had to hustle or be left behind.

  I navigated the corridors of the Martian Princess until I reached the main reception area. From there, I would need to access the gangway to get off the ship and back into Space Station Destiny. The reception area was deserted. Perfect. However, as I crept through the open, dimly lit space that served as the meeting point for all star cruiser passengers, it occurred to me I had a problem: How the hell was I supposed to get the door open?

  I stood there in front of the door in that shadowed, empty room leading to the gangway and swore with quiet but furious intensity. The door was a mass of steel and bolts, held in place with enough locking seals to make breaking out nothing short of a miracle. While being a spook made me invisible to the onboard AI scans, I knew there had to be other security measures in place—One Gov hooahs, sensors, maybe even patrol dogs. I couldn’t stand there all night, waiting for the next round of passengers to board, and hope to slip out unnoticed in the chaos. I was bound to get caught. Hell, it was inevitable. And, I reminded myself, I only had thirty minutes to get to the elevator. Twiddling my thumbs and dithering like an idiot wouldn’t save me.

  I continued swearing for a few more precious minutes when I heard the first series of locking seals click open. A second, third, then a whole sequence of clicks. Next, the sucking sound of air escaping through an open seal.

  I watched with nothing short of amazement as the door swung wide to reveal Caleb Dekker. The hell? He wore an incredible amount of stealth gear, as if he planned on doing some advanced-degree breaking and entering. When he saw me standing there waiting for him, he blinked. We reflected our mutual amazement back at each other.

  “Ms. Sevigny, I presume?” he said once he’d recovered.

  “You presume correctly. Can we get out of here, because I’m in a hell of a hurry to get off this ship.”

  “Of course,” he said, as if this had all been part of some genius master plan. Then he added, “Didn’t think it would be this easy to get to you. Today must be my lucky sol.”

  I shrugged and took my first steps off the ship and to freedom. Lucky sol, huh? He had no idea.

  “In my experience, good luck is relative. Just get me out of here and someplace safe.”

  “You got it. Let’s jet.”

  22

  With Caleb leading the way, we prowled through the space station much faster than I could on my own. He steered us through the labyrinthine maze of corridors and passageways with a practiced ease. It seemed suspicious, but given my current frame of mind, everything seemed suspicious. Caleb was a secret agent. He probably had all sorts of secret agent tricks, like using elaborate station-mapping software to get us where we needed to be—if something like that existed.

  The space station was quiet. Only the hum of the machinery that kept the station running could be heard—a lulling, relaxing white noise that could put you to sleep if you listened long enough. The cavernous halls were partially lit to conserve energy and keep the station on a diurnal cycle. The space elevator delivered almost everything needed to support life in space around Mars, but full lighting wouldn’t power back on until 8:00 a.m. Only then, provided this was a sol it was scheduled to run, would the elevator resume the planet-side hauls that brought passengers and goods bound for Earth, one of Mars’s four moons, or the asteroid mines. There would also be station maintenance supplies and One Gov off-site station workers reporting for shift change.

  We made it to the elevator deployment ramp without incident and hid in an alcove a short distance away. There was no one in sight but the two of us. I shivered but couldn’t tell if it was from nerves, the chill from the cool, dry station air, or both. Around us were closed shop stalls and empty guard posts, all positioned at a T-intersection where the corridors branched out to other sections of the space station. A large e-map display loomed to our left, offering an overview of the docking bays. Its lights were as muted as the tunnels around us, as if society had gone dark and lost interest in keeping any sort of order. Only neglect remained. It was almost terrifying—this eerie, foreboding, living silence. It was easy to believe we were the only two people in the entire tri-system.

  Even my gut was silent, as if reserving judgment on how safe we were. The elevator was due to arrive in a few minutes by Caleb’s calculations. We’d made excellent time and now had a bit of breathing room before the dash onto the elevator. The plan itself was simple—wait for the elevator to arrive and we’d duck inside, all in a one-minute window. The elevator would descend and we’d be on the surface in a little over two hours.

  “You okay?” Caleb asked in a quiet voice. He took in my bedraggled and bloody appearance, as if seeing my sorry state for the first time.

  “I hit a few rough patches, but I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve been missing almost three sols. Want to talk about what happened?”

  “Nope,” I said, and gave him a level look that dared him to question me.

  Wisely, he nodded and said nothing.

  “How
did you and Tanith manage to pull this escape together?” I asked a few minutes later. “Taking over the space elevator is a big deal.”

  “Your grandmother is a major power player on Earth. She knows people who know people, and they get things done. I’m just a cog in the machine.”

  “How long have you worked for Tanith? Has she sent you on other secret missions?”

  Caleb gave me a measured look. “A few years, off and on. The rest, I’m not prepared to discuss with you. Just trust me when I say I know how to do the job I was brought here for.”

  That shut me up. I wasn’t in the right mind-set for idle chitchat, nervous or otherwise. But there was a niggling feeling in my gut—one that would require investigating. For now, it was a curious bite, but I knew the feeling would grow. I’d go half out of my mind if I didn’t explore it.

  We heard and felt the elevator arrive before we saw it. The whole space station rattled as the elevator thudded into its restraints and locked into place. I cringed at the vibration in the metal plating beneath my feet. Would someone investigate? Would they catch us hiding out in plain sight? But no one came. No alarms sounded. No lights flashed. Nothing.

  “It may be an unscheduled maintenance event, but it’s logged in the AI queenmind routine,” Caleb murmured, correctly interpreting my body language. “So long as everything follows the normal maintenance protocols, no one’s going to question it.”

  I nodded, wishing I had his confidence. Then again, as a secret agent, maybe he had an augmented MH Factor that calmed him down. He seemed to coast on a level of chill self-assurance I’d never be able to emulate.

  A few minutes later, the station’s massive silver-toned metal door slid open with a hiss of air. The space elevator door opened as well—smaller, less imposing-looking, its locking mechanism not as complex. It had an easy-to-use manual override, though I wasn’t sure how I knew that. Probably a random bit of trivia I’d picked up along the way, mostly because I’d once tried to wrestle open the doors of the space elevator on Earth—with zero success, I might add.