by M. D. Cooper
After a few quick eye movements, he said, “Sent.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t listen to a lot of music, but she genuinely liked his. Plus, it would be fun knowing she’d met the singer. “Interrobang. Interesting band name.”
“It’s a punctuation mark that’s both a question mark and an exclamation point. We figure it’s indicative of the entire life experience,” he explained with a grin.
“Makes sense to me.” She bit into another slice of bread. It wasn’t warm anymore, but it was still delicious. “Care for a piece?” She gestured at the basket.
“Sure. I don’t turn down good bread.”
“No double-dipping.” She pointed at him in warning.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not a monster.” He bit into the bread. “Mmm.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
They sat, drinking and eating bread companionably. They said little, other than when he ordered another basket of bread and shared it with her. The gesture made her officially label him as a good guy.
“Well,” he said at the end of his break. “I’ve got to get back to it. But it was nice meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Good to meet you too. And you never know. I’ll definitely listen to your music.”
He flashed her a grin, then crossed the bar to the far side from where she sat. Two songs into his second set and she was enjoying the music, but she needed to have some dinner and get a good night’s rest.
Tomorrow would probably prove to be eventful.
* * * * *
None of the nearby restaurants captured her interest, and Reece decided on room service. On her way back to her quarters, she paused outside Fitzmiller’s door. Should she check on him?
Nah.
He could contact her if he wanted to. Other than that, she just needed him to make his escape.
Ten minutes later, as she ate the food that a young woman promptly delivered, Reece wondered how the escape would take place. Most likely, the tools to do so would be delivered to Fitzmiller, allowing him to get onto some prearranged flight and leave Kolanu Station far behind. Otherwise, someone would have to come and let him out. Given the brief window of opportunity, it seemed unlikely that help could arrive from elsewhere in time, so it would have to be someone already onboard who got drafted into service.
She tapped into the video feed from his room and checked it from time to time. So far, she saw nothing more than an older man puttering around the small space.
Of course, there was the possibility that he had no outside help. But she didn’t think so. If he was still in his room in the morning, she’d be in a bad spot. She’d either have to take him back to Rexcare for them to get answers out of him, or try to get the answers herself.
An indicator blipped on the right side of her vision. A tracker had gone live. She began receiving data about its location. So far the optic link hadn’t activated, but it would.
At least that part had gone according to plan.
She showered and got ready for bed. Now that she knew the tracker was in place, she could sleep. If anything significant happened in Fitzmiller’s room, she’d receive a wake-up call via her auditory implant and inlays.
All she could do now was wait for events to unfold.
She got into bed and hoped for the best.
* * * * *
A flash of light and a buzz in her ears brought Reece to immediate wakefulness.
She activated her link to Fitzmiller’s tracker as she sat up in bed.
He was on the move. She checked his location and saw that he was on his way toward the merchant docking bays. A quick calculation showed that he’d make it to the first bays in fifteen to twenty minutes.
She’d have to remember not to hold her breath. She had a lot riding on her assumptions, and if she was wrong on any of those counts, she’d be in deep trouble. Letting Fitzmiller escape was a risk. Now that the deed was done, she doubted her instincts.
She sent Trey a message to let him know that the escape was going down and instructed him to come to her room as soon as he was decent.
Without knowing what he wore to bed, she didn’t want to take any chances.
She sat on her bed, watching the tracker proceed toward the transport center. Meanwhile, she accessed the network access logs for Fitzmiller’s room. She saw two local access times, but because he’d used his overlays for the data transfer, she had no record of the details. Only a techie in the networking department of Kolanu Station would be able to get to that information.
Too bad.
She ensured that the video feeds in Fitzmiller’s room were intact, but didn’t begin reviewing them. That would require hours’ worth of staring at an old guy doing nothing in the hopes of finding a minute or two of something worthwhile.
Surveillance work was the worst.
A knock at the door forced her off the bed to answer. Trey stood in the corridor, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts. Since she wore a very similar outfit, she felt they were on equal footing.
Though, unlike him, she didn’t have a monkey on her shoulder.
“Any news?” Trey asked.
“Not yet. Waiting to see which ship he gets on. Are you packed?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Just need to change and brush my teeth and that sort of thing.” He sat on the couch, but didn’t relax into it. He sat on the edge, ready to spring back up.
Dex hopped off Trey’s shoulder and up onto the arm of the couch, making an inquisitive sound at Reece.
She scratched his head and he closed his eyes in bliss.
“Shouldn’t we have eyes on him?” Trey asked.
“It’s not entirely necessary,” Reece replied. “Are you any good at tailing someone?”
“Pretty decent, I’d say. Not that I’ve had a ton of experience. But I have perfect vision up to a thousand meters, so picking him out of a crowd across a bay is child’s play.”
“So long as you manage not to be spotted. That’s the most important thing. If he knows that we know what he’s done, all this will be for nothing. Think you can do it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
“OK, then. Catch up to him, get eyes on him, and see if he interacts with anyone. Even if it’s just to make eye contact or shake a hand. So far, he’s continued at a steady pace, so he seems to be alone. I’d like to be sure, though.” She could get the station’s security recordings later, but it might be too late to grab a possible co-conspirator.
“Got it. I’ll stay in contact with you. It’ll only take me a minute to change. Keep an open connection between us.”
“Trey, there’s no time for that, you need to get moving, now.”
Trey frowned, “Well you’re not dressed to tail someone either, why should I have been?”
“When your partner tells you to get on over the morning we expect our guy to be gone, you need to be ready,” Reece replied. “Lots of people wander around stations half dressed. Get on it.”
Trey sighed, as he rose, but stopped to pat Dex’s head on his way out. “Fine. Keep an eye on Dex. He likes to steal things.”
“What?” she demanded, but he was already gone.
She narrowed her eyes at Dex. “And what things do you steal?”
Dex tilted his head and chirped at her.
“Don’t think you can fool me by being cute,” she warned. “You’ve been outed.”
He scratched his belly.
Two minutes later, Trey checked in, his message coming over her auditory implants.
She’d dressed and was finger-coming her hair.
he answered.
She paused, frowning. What exactly did he mean by that? It sounded kind of flirtatious, which felt rather awkward.
She smiled and finished stuffing her things into her suitcase. She kept a careful eye on Dex, who had followed her into the bedroom. So far he hadn’t tried to snatch anything. Maybe Trey had said that just to mess with her.
The timer at the top right of her vision was counting down to Fitzmiller’s arrival at the series of gates that led to airlocks that led to ships heading off to other planets.
She sat on the bed, next to her suitcase, waiting anxiously. Dex hopped into her lap and she petted him absently.
What if she’d gotten it wrong?
This could all be about to blow up in her face. She’d taken a big risk on this one.
She resisted the urge to tell him yet again to make sure he wasn’t seen. She had to trust him.
She considered it for a microsecond.
She paused, kind of impressed that he knew the term.
He spoke again.
She checked the departures schedule. There was just one ship in Bay 24 departing that day.
She finished booking their flight, which made her answer oddly delayed.
Trey sighed and she was surprised that he could mindspeak a sound like that.
Twenty minutes later, Reece saw that the freighter had logged its final departure data and the bay doors opened for its departure.
At that moment, the monkey took a raisin out of her hand.
If someone had told her that having a partner meant not having to call for room service, she might have warmed up the idea a lot sooner.
Probably not, but maybe.
A VIEW TO REMEMBER
DATE: 03.26.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sophist’s Might, nearing Machete outsystem jump
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“I’m going to get spoiled. Economy class will never be the same.” Trey stretched out in the common room that adjoined four of the luxury cabins. Dex sprawled on his back next to Trey, his little chest rising up and down as he snoozed.
“Don’t get used to it,” Reece warned. “If a rusty cargo-hauler had been the next flight out to our destination, I’d have taken it. This job involves some strange extremes.”
“Don’t ruin this for me,” Trey said with his eyes closed. “I want to imagine living out the rest of my days, flying in comfort as a pampered Rexcare employee.”
Reece snorted. The sound made Dex twitch.
She remembered what Trey had said before. “Does he really steal?”
Trey’s head lifted, no longer lolling along the back of the apparently wonderfully comfy couch. Reece had chosen a side chair, which had been the wrong choice. Though serviceable, it was not giving her the bliss that Dex and Trey were expressing.
“Yeah. I found a bunch of little things crammed underneath the nightstand.” Trey glanced at the monkey. “Mostly small metal items. I think he likes shiny things and was hoarding them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. How’s the bathroom training going?”
“We’re working on it. He tends to forget to begin the evac cycle.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s probably a big win, if he’s getting the other parts right.”
“Like I said, we’re working on it. I’ve started to like having him around, so I think we’ll figure it out.”
“Right. So let’s talk about Wadish. Or even the Eashira System in general. You mentioned before that you’d been there?”
“Yeah. I spent about a year in the system before heading to Machete. Looking for a place to fit in. Didn’t find it.” He shrugged.
“In a whole stellar system, you couldn’t find one place you liked?”
“I obviously didn’t go to every place that existed. I’m sure there was something somewhere I would have liked. A place I could find a job and work and hang out with decent people. But I’d heard things about Machete, and how it was more merit-based. It sounded like a good place to start over.”
She nodded. “I see. So is Eashira not much of a meritocracy?”
“You haven’t been there?”
“No. I know a bit about it, of course, and I have over a week to study up, while we’re on our way. But I’m interested in your perceptions of it.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Hm. Well, it varies from planet to planet, but the overall culture is very generational. Parents pass down money to kids, who pass it to their kids. People’s families—they call them clans—matter.”
“A class-based system,” she mused.
“Yeah. Most people will be all right to you, but some will go as cold as ice as soon as they realize you aren’t connected to anyone. But even the ones who are relatively friendly won’t go out of their way for you.”
“How do you think we could get people like that to talk to us? I’m not going to be able to intimidate people like I can in Machete, and I won’t have any connections. From the sound of it, we won’t be able to bribe anyone but the lowest classes, since everyone else will have their own money.”
“I like it,” he said. “Planning in advance how to put the squeeze on people.”
She squinted at him. “Sometimes I really don’t know what you’re saying. The words sound like they’re from a language I know but they don’t fit together.”
“Forget it,” he muttered. “I just meant that I like that you prepare ahead.”
“It’s critical if you’re going to be a fixer, or even just a bounty hunter. That’s part of why I don’t like to go outside of my sphere of influence. The less I know about a place, the less I can plan for.” The rest, of course, was that she had a fear of deep space—to say nothing of the dark layer. But so far she’d managed to hide that from him. She inte
nded to keep it hidden.
“Hmm.” He frowned thoughtfully. “If you want to convince or coerce people, the way to do it would be to have the support of someone they value. Being so clan-oriented, they tend to ally themselves very closely. So if you get one, you can likely get a whole group. The trick is getting to that one.”
“Okay. I can work with that.”
“How?”
She smiled. “Some human behaviors are the same wherever you go. People do things they don’t want others to know about. If we dig out someone’s secret, we can force them into doing what we want, and then their associates will fall into line behind them. I like it.”
“First, we’ll have to figure out what we need,” he pointed out.
“Yeah. And that will depend on what Fitzmiller does once he gets there. We’ll have to figure things out as we go along.”
“That’s why you like to have a plan, right? To compensate for all the unknowns?”
She nodded. “You’re catching on.”
“I’m a quick study. Before you know it, I’ll be snaking all the good fixer jobs out from under you.”
She laughed. Despite his earnest expression, she knew he was teasing her. “I’d be willing to let you have the outsystem jobs, and most of the off-world ones too. Be prepared for a fight if you think you can take the Akon jobs from me, though.”
He grinned. “Sounds exciting.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” She smiled, unconcerned about him taking jobs from her. He had some skills that she didn’t, but he was learning this job from her, after all, and she hardly intended to reveal all of her secrets to him.
There were some things he’d have to learn the hard way—if at all.
* * * * *
The FTL transit through the dark layer lasted just under seven days, and when they finally dumped back into normal space, Reece was all but ecstatic to see the starlit darkness outside the common room window.
As the ship decelerated into the Eashira system, destined for its first stop at a planet named Usra, she had become a hair more accustomed to the blackness surrounding them.
