by Becky Black
There were other questions Wixa had failed to ask. Maiga had asked Wixa about children and Wixa had told her about Tam. But she hadn't asked Maiga if she'd had any children. And Maiga had asked about mothers, and again Wixa told her story and never asked the same question in return.
She already knew the answers.
Maiga snorted and came out of her trance. Should have known. Wixa knew everything and everybody, why should Maiga be any different from everybody else? Someone else she'd thought she could trust. How very wrong I'm getting these days.
She finished packing everything she wanted to take. Wixa could take back her gifts if she wanted them, Maiga didn't care. She put on her coat, grabbed her bag and, without a second glance, strode out of her quarters.
"You can't go." Wixa pushed away from where she'd been standing by the wall outside, arms folded, waiting. As Maiga strode off, Wixa hurried to catch up. "Maiga, please, you can't leave!"
"I think you're wrong. Take a good look. This is me, leaving."
"Look, I know you're angry."
"Well of course you know. You know everything about me don't you?" She glared at Wixa. "You've known all along."
Wixa stopped and a moment later hurried to catch up.
"Yes," she said quietly. "I knew. I recognised you the first time I saw you on the station. I couldn't believe it. I thought you were dead."
"How did you know I even existed? High Command kept everything about Ilyan off the news feeds. Suppressed it all. My name, my face was never in the public domain."
"Yeah well." Wixa shrugged. "I'm good at finding things out, you know that. I sold your friend Jadeth the information on where to find Tesla."
Now it was Maiga who stopped short. Wixa skidded to a halt and backed up.
"You sold Jadeth that information?"
"Yeah." Wixa looked confused for a moment. "But nothing in that suggested you were still alive."
"No," Maiga said, voice distant, the memories close. The moment of wild hope when she saw Jadeth. Hope that it meant all of the others were alive. Hope he had to dash a moment later. "No. I remember. He didn't know. He didn't expect to find me there."
"What do you mean you were…? You were with Tesla?" Real horror tinged Wixa's voice and Maiga spoke quickly before she jumped to the wrong conclusion.
"I was his prisoner. His payment."
Wixa looked sick. "Oh, Maiga. I'm sorry. I really didn't know. They must have kept that out of even the Intel data." She shook herself, tried a weak smile. "I guess it was a good thing I met your friend."
"Jadeth wasn't my friend." Damn, that seemed unfair, after what he'd saved her from. But true all the same. They'd never been friends.
"He did seem kind of a pain in the ass," Wixa said, nodding. "Men huh? Can't live with ‘em, can't load ‘em all into a rocket and fire it into the heart of a sun. Well, I suppose you could, be expensive…"
Maiga turned away and went on walking, making Wixa abandon her attempt at distraction, to chase after Maiga again.
"Maiga, look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. But I figured, you had your own reasons to keep it quiet and I knew it would cause you problems if it got out. Believe me; I guarded that secret as closely as you did."
"Thanks, but it doesn't matter. It's over now." They reached the lift and Maiga stopped and turned to Wixa, held out her hand. "We can say goodbye now, or you can come with me. I'm going to look for the Committee fleet. This place is over, Wixa. It's Bara's place now, it's not your home anymore."
Wixa took the offered hand and held onto it. "It doesn't have to be Bara's. Look, I'm calling in my favour here. If my information led Jadeth to free you, then you owe me one last favour."
Maiga considered this for a moment. "One last favour?"
"Just one. There are some things you need to understand." She paused and took a deep breath. "There's somebody you need to meet."
~o~
Bara rolled over in Max's bed and opened her eyes when she found herself alone.
"Max?"
He emerged from the bathroom, buttoning his shirt.
"Sorry, I have to go to work. Stay here as long as you like, if you want to sleep I mean."
Bara lay back on the pillow, stretching her arms over her head. Perhaps she would stay for a while and sleep. A proper bed, instead of a bunk. And a decent sized shower. The things a soldier dreams about.
"Where do you work, Max?"
"In a factory," he said. She saw him wince. "On an assembly line."
"I see. That can't be very satisfying for an officer. A Lieutenant Commander."
"No," he said, with a sour expression. "I'm in line for a supervisory position though, so--hah--fingers crossed there, eh?"
Oh, so much bitterness there. So much frustration. So much that she could use.
"A man like you needs more challenges than that. Perhaps I could find something for you to do."
He looked interested, and came and sat on the bed beside her. "Like what?"
"Oh I have various little projects in progress here on the station." She sat up, pressing her bare skin against him and his arm slid around her waist. His fingers stroked the base of her spine, a gentle almost tickling caress that made her tingle all over. She whispered in his ear. "I'm sure you can make a valuable contribution to one of those projects."
He didn't ask more then, just dipped his head to kiss her. This one, she thought, this one is mine now. And, oh my, he had such possibilities!
~o~
"Why are we on this train?"
Maiga looked around the carriage of the light rail train. A quiet time of day and a section of the line where few people went, so there were few passengers. They were in a deep level of the industrial section that held only a few, usually unmanned, systems. Maintenance and repair crews were the only people that ventured here regularly.
"You know this train system is totally computer controlled," Wixa said. "No drivers."
"Yes, I know."
Wixa still hadn't explained who they were going to meet. In fact she was being generally mysterious all around. She'd better come out with an explanation soon. Maiga's gratitude only stretched so far.
"Thing is, it's a very old computer system, from several hundred years back. Oh the folks who built it were good; the control system is still solid as a rock. But, nobody knows how to reprogram it."
The train stopped at a station and the doors opened. Nobody got on or off. Wixa waved at the doors as they closed.
"That's why the doors only ever stay open for eight seconds and then close. Well, it's actually eight point one seven seconds. Nobody's managed to change even that. They also can't change which stations it stops at. So even if a station was closed down, the train would still stop there." She grinned. "They once tried to reprogram it to prevent it stopping at a closed station and the whole system broke. All they could do in the end was restore the original and let it keep on stopping at all the same places."
"Wixa, this is fascinating, I'm sure, but why the hell are you telling me this?"
"Because that's where we're going. To a station that doesn't exist anymore." She glanced up as they felt the train slow down again. "Come on." Wixa stood up and Maiga followed her, to stand by a set of doors. "When I give the word, follow me and move fast."
Maiga glanced around the carriage. Only a couple of people shared it with them. Most were aliens and ignored them. A man gave them an odd look though and spoke.
"I don't think you can get off here, ladies."
The train rushed into the station. Or what had once been a station, the platform now blocked off by a wall. As the train slowed to a halt, Maiga saw words in various languages flicker by.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ALIGHT. STATION CLOSED.
That was the gist of all of them, though the literal translation of the Klaff one came across to Maiga as something more alarming.
ONLY A FOOL WOULD LEAVE THE TRANSPORT HERE.
A VOID AWAITS YOU.
The doors opened. The wal
l, made of some kind of heavy plastic, stood before them, blocking the exit. But Wixa put out her hand and shoved on a mark, which looked like no more than a splodge of dirt. A door opened inwards, darkness beyond it. Wixa grabbed Maiga's hand and pulled her through into the darkness, as the train doors closed behind them.
Chapter 30
"Some light would be good," Wixa called out.
Maiga agreed, but didn't know why Wixa was shouting at her about it. Before she could answer, lights came on, making her raise an arm to shield her eyes. When she lowered it again, she found they were standing on a platform, inside the wall that closed it off from the trains. Dust and bits of debris lay on the ground and the metal walls had rusty brown streaks where water had leaked in.
On the back wall of the platform, in big letters and in various languages again, were the words:
NO EXIT FROM THIS STATION. BOARD NEXT TRAIN.
"They had that up until they built the wall to stop idiots getting off anyway," Wixa said.
"Why is there no exit?"
"Restructuring," Wixa explained. "They adapted this whole sector and this station ended up stuck in the middle of a lot of power systems. It's just not accessible from the outside anymore."
"So this stop exists only on the line, but not on the outside?"
"Exactly."
"Okay," Maiga said. "So why are we here?"
"Let me show you." Wixa led the way, and Maiga saw footprints in the dust. Some of them small enough to be Wixa's, but other larger ones too. Her alert status heightened. "In here." Wixa said.
‘Here' was a door, marked in a language Maiga didn't know. Wixa pulled it open and stepped inside. For a second, Maiga hesitated and then followed her.
She stepped into a nest.
That was the first word that came to mind. A small, dim, room, with alcoves either side. One of them a bathroom, even smaller than the one on the Friss. The other held a low bed, clothes scattered on it, or hanging over rails above it. Stores, dried food mainly by the look of it, stood piled against the walls and one corner had some minimal cooking facilities. A smell of cooking, of unwashed clothes, unwashed bodies hung in the air.
In the centre of the room stood a large chair, currently turned towards the visitors and away from the part of the room that really took the attention. Banks of computer control panels and screens, dozens of screens, covered the wall, rising almost to the ceiling.
Maiga jumped back and grabbed at her knife, when what she'd thought were more grubby clothes piled on the chair suddenly sprouted limbs and a head. A man, tall and very thin, unfolded from a curled up position and rose.
He held out his hand to Maiga. A hand so pale as to be almost blue grey. His face was pale too, and lined. Maiga guessed he might be sixty. She still found that hard to tell, she'd so rarely met people that age until she came to Hollow Jimmy. His thin, grey hair fell down past his shoulders as he pushed a hood off his head.
"Captain," he said. "I am so glad to meet you at last."
Maiga didn't offer her hand. Instead she offered Wixa a glare that demanded an explanation for this bullshit.
"Maiga, this is Gry," Wixa said. "He, ah, as you see, he already knows who you are."
Maiga glanced past Gry to the screens. Most showed video feeds from all over Hollow Jimmy. Not only the human sector, but the rest too. Even--she almost gasped--the Command and Control Centre, where the station managers went about their business. Some feeds showed exterior views, the ships docked there or orbiting. The Trebuchet.
"I think Mr Gry knows who everyone on the station is." Maiga turned back to the two of them.
"Mister." Gry chuckled. "Mister. Mister. See, she says it quite naturally."
"What the hell is going on here?" Maiga demanded.
"You have found the heart of the station, young lady," Gry said. "The heart of Hollow Jimmy." He glanced at Wixa. "The feeds don't do her justice. A handsome girl. Look at the fire in those eyes. You chose well."
"Chose?" Maiga frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Gry, hush a minute," Wixa said, "Let me explain to her."
Gry nodded and sat in his chair again, folding his legs up so he sat with the soles of his bare feet pressed together, his hands holding his ankles.
"Gry is, was, an intelligence agent like me. He's been monitoring the station from down here for several years."
"And living here?" Maiga glanced around at the makeshift arrangements. A nest she'd called it in her mind. That's exactly what it was. A nest, in a cave.
"Saves on rent," Gry said, laughing. "No bills. Nobody comes here. Only Wixa."
"I help him out," Wixa said, "bring him supplies."
"Why?" Maiga asked. "What's the point of this?"
"My assignment," Gry said. "Assigned to Hollow Jimmy for intelligence gathering."
"Assignment, but…" Maiga hesitated. He couldn't know everything else and not know about Earth surely? Not know that there was nobody to assign him anymore?
"Oh of course, Captain, no longer on assignment, but to be honest, I wasn't for a long time before that. Before Earth. Wanted to take care of the place, you see. Guard it."
Maiga glanced at Wixa, frowning. How could she go along with letting him live this way? The man needed help; and not just with restocking his food supplies.
"Gry is the best at gathering Intel that the service ever had," Wixa said, her tone sincere. "He's a technical genius. He can tap into every system on the station from here, look anywhere there's a camera, hear anywhere there's a microphone."
"And that's a lot more places than even our friends the Klaff know about," Gry said. "So many old systems you see. Undocumented. Forgotten. But not by me. I know all of them. I know this station as I know my own body."
His eyes glowed as he spoke, a tremor in his voice. He reached for a panel and caressed the edge of it. He thinks he's part of it, Maiga saw at once. Like a spider in the middle of its web. The web may not be an actual part of its body, yet it seemed connected to it. An extension of its body. Did Gry feel the same about the station? Or was it something different? He'd said she'd found the heart of the station and she'd thought he meant this room, but what if he meant himself? What if he saw himself as one of the station's systems? A component.
"There are some places there are no cameras," Gry went on. He giggled, a high pitched sound that made Maiga nervous. "But I have an alternative." He pointed at a screen, the image not static, but moving. A station corridor, but low, near the ground, people's feet and ankles flashing by.
"Oh, don't tell me." Maiga moaned the words. He had to be kidding. "That's Glyph isn't it?"
"I have access to his visual and auditory systems," Gry confirmed. "Amazing the places a cat can go."
So Glyph's curiosity had a more biological origin than she'd thought. Not its own mind, but Gry's.
"Okay," Maiga said, after a moment's thought. "This is all very fascinating for lovers of the insane, but what the hell does it have to do with me? Wixa, why did you want me to meet Gry before I left?"
Wixa and Gry exchanged looks for a while, nodding and eyebrow raising.
"It's time she knew," Gry said. "Things are happening. We can't wait much longer."
"Right." Wixa folded her arms across her chest, looked at Maiga. "After the destruction of Earth we knew Hollow Jimmy would attract humans, because it's a safe haven now. But we knew that would bring trouble too. That it would change the nature of the human community. We wanted to protect that community."
"We didn't know exactly what the trouble would be," Gry said. "We didn't foresee the problems that mad pirate bitch would bring with her. But she's the biggest threat. She's scheming."
"I know that," Maiga said. You didn't have to have a mysterious lair monitoring the whole station to know that.
"And worse. Her activities outside, her piracy, is pissing the aliens off big time," Wixa said. "The Big Four have protested officially to the Klaff about her being allowed to use this station to sell her stolen goods."<
br />
Maiga glanced at the screens showing the station managers' command centre. Gry saw everything. Knew everything.
"They've asked for her to be banned from the station," Gry said. "The Klaff don't normally do that, you know what they are like about free trade. So they've refused so far, but the pressure is building. Some people think a blockade is a possibility." His pale hands clasped each other in a convulsive grip. "If it goes further than that, if the Big Four break the treaties that keep all military vehicles out of this sector of space, if they attack the station, then it's over for us here. Over. Won't let that be. Won't let…" He was breathing hard now and Wixa put a hand on his shoulder.
"We needed someone who could lead the humans," Wixa said. "Unite them, or at least oppose the ones who threatened our way of life here. And we chose you."
"You chose me? Why?" She couldn't understand it. They wanted to protect the lifers from the flood of drifties, yet chose Maiga? Was Maiga not a driftie herself?
"You're trained to lead," Wixa said. "I'm not. My job was always in the shadows, not in the light."
"But there are higher ranking humans than me living on the station. There's a damn general and couple of admirals!"
"But you have something else," Wixa said. "Something different that they don't have."
"Me?" She still didn't get it. "Are you saying I'm special in some way? Why the hell do you think that?"
"Because Ilyan did."
Gry nodded at Wixa's words, took her hand. "You were the one who made the choice, my dear. You were right. It has taken a while, but I think she is ready now."
Ready? All Maiga was ready to do was to run away. Nothing here had changed her mind. They had made a mistake in choosing her. She had no interest in leading the humans, in taking power. And she didn't have the knack. She didn't have the charisma a leader needed. Ilyan had it, she'd seen it almost hypnotise people. Bara had it too, Maiga had to admit that. But Maiga was just ornery and inclined to be impatient with people. That didn't draw anyone in; it pushed them away.
Yet, she had started to enjoy her life on the station. Her quarters had started to feel like a real home. That thought made her stop for a moment and frown at Wixa. All those gifts she'd brought to decorate the place. She'd been trying to make Maiga see it as home. And no wonder she got so mad when she thought Maiga was messing up her relationship with Chervaz. She thought that he tied Maiga to the station too.
