He looked around, slowly, lingering on the smartboard and its Keeper dissection notes, brushing his gaze over the haphazard deposits of materials she’d left behind, and the tablets splayed on the desk. A little smile twitched the corner of his lips.
“I bet Grippy’s up to something covert.”
“Well, look at that, a sense of humor. Now tell me this: Did you really want to be a dancer?”
The color in his cheeks was all the answer she needed. “Despite your rude comments about my feet, yes, and I was pretty damned good, too. Doesn’t pay well, though.”
She put her hand in Grippy’s extended clamp and eased herself to her feet. “Well, choreograph us a way through that station. I’m going to see about fixing my leg.”
He nodded and bent immediately to the task, fingertips dancing over the touchpad sans stylus. He used the three-finger touch method common among Icarions. She wondered if that was an affectation he’d adopted to blend in with them and, if so, why he bothered keeping up the ruse.
Holding Grippy tight, she crept to a nearby workstation, where all her tools were already laid out. She’d been sitting with her back to the door, but she chose the other side of the table this time, and told herself it was a comfort matter. It wasn’t at all so that she could keep an eye on Tomas Cepko. Or whoever he was.
CHAPTER 28
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
SEVEN DAYS OF UNCERTAINTY
Martial law gripped the planet in silence. The bright lights of Alexandria-Ada had been dimmed to a muted glow, Biran’s autocab the only sign of life on the road. If people watched his strange, privileged passage from windows, he didn’t see them. The shutters were all pulled tight. He was glad for that. He was tired of being recognized. Tired of putting on the same everything’s-going-to-be-okay smile he donned every morning he CamCast in to brief the people on the news with Callie Mera.
He did not want to think of Ada as a ghost town. Perhaps it was only holding its breath—a town on edge, a people waiting to see which way the pendulum would push them. Stay, or go. Okonkwo’s orders that the people not be informed of the decision being weighed lasted all of eight hours. Director Olver suspected Biran was the leak. Biran suspected it was Lavaux.
Biran’s cab followed the ping of Graham’s wristpad to a café crammed in the back corner of a narrow alley. The place didn’t even have a door, just a sheet of metal to pull down when they closed. Five bar stools—too close together to all be in use at once—hunkered underneath a narrow counter. Graham anchored one end, and at the other, the owner played a game on his wristpad, the steady tap-tap of his finger the only clue he was even awake.
Biran let the autocab go and sat down alongside Graham, an empty stool between them. His dad had already ordered two cups of coffee, creamy with dairy-free milk and sweetener, and pushed one toward him. It steamed.
“Long ride down just to say hello,” Graham said. He didn’t take his gaze from the curls of steam wafting up from his cup. Biran hadn’t seen his dads much since the bombardment. It’d been too hard, to always see the question in their eyes. The change in Graham was stark. Hope was such a fragile thing.
“I need your help,” Biran said into the murky mug, stirring the liquid with the tiny spoon that came with it even though it’d already been premixed. Who made those spoons, anyway? And why? Even handmade drinks were finished to your tastes before they reached a table. Biran only knew about sugar packets from old books he’d read as a kid.
“I know.” Graham receded, as if something within him had drifted beyond Biran’s reach. He gazed over his shoulder, across the road toward the sky, at the gleaming wedding ring of the Casimir Gate beyond. “Need you to promise me something, first.”
“Not sure I can.”
“Not sure you have a choice.”
“If it’s Sanda…”
“I don’t know where she is, if she is anywhere. I know where you are. Need to know where you’ll be, too. Once the bombs start falling.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I don’t care how it works. Promise me you’ll leave, son. Promise me that when those transports load up to cart us all out of here, out of Icarion’s strike range, that you’ll be on them. That you won’t stay behind because of a thin chance. That, even if you found the love of your life between now and then and they had to stay here—were chained to the damned station—that you’d load up, and move on, and have a future. Not a brainless, gory end for the sake of honor.”
“I can’t promise you that.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
“Dad!”
“That’s how it is, son. I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry, won’t ever know. But that’s how it is. Because if I give you what you want without that promise, then Sanda would hate me. Hate me straight through to my bones. And I can’t live with that. I don’t think you can, either.”
Biran took a drink, wishing it were something stronger. “I’m going through anyway.”
“Don’t lie to me, boy.”
“I’m not. They’re sending me to Atrux. Your old stomping ground.”
Graham swiveled to regard him. “You said you can’t promise me.”
Biran stirred his coffee, grateful to have something to do with his hands. Maybe that was the point of the spoons. “I can’t. The decisions are all above my head. Even as Speaker I can’t influence anything one way or another. I know where I’m going now. That may change tomorrow.”
“I give you what you want, there’s no putting that Pandora back in the box. I need you to understand that. These people—they already know who you are. And you’ll be inviting them to know you better.”
“They’re your old contacts, Dad. They can’t be that bad.”
A shadow passed across Graham’s eyes. “Some are better than others. And these are the big guns. They’ve never forgotten me. They won’t forget you, either.”
“Blackmail, you mean.” Biran’s mouth tasted bitter. “Have they ever blackmailed you?’
“I like that you assume there’d be something to blackmail me with,” he said, and laughed at the startled look on Biran’s face. “No. I know who I am. Never got my hands into the real black market, though I knew people who did. I moved grey goods that could get me in some hot water, I suppose. Smuggling through the gates is no laudable occupation. But I’m clean now, and have been thirty years or so. I doubt there’d be much value in their trying. Ultimately, I suppose they haven’t wanted something from me enough to risk burning the value of my contact.”
“What value could you be to them?”
Graham grimaced. “Got a daughter in the military. Got a bright boy with a star-aligned future. Ain’t me they’d be interested in, probably. But I’m a lever to pull, and these people specialize in levers. If Sanda’s out there, they’ll find her.”
“Then why haven’t you pulled that lever?”
Graham’s eyebrows shot up. “Son, I’m an honest merchant now. I don’t make the kind of money, or have access to the kind of information, that these people would require. You’re talking about, at the very least, gaining access to an evac pod that’s last known location is a battlefield between the two biggest guns in the neighborhood.
“To do that, these people have to get into space, out of orbit, and poke around an area that everyone in the system is playing tug-of-war over. There’s no way to do that without drawing attention, and they hate attention, so they’re going to have to insert someone on one side or another, or pull an asset they’ve already got in play. You’ll be paying for this for the rest of your life. And if you don’t have the money, well, with your position as Speaker…”
“They’ll find another way for me to pay.”
“Debts don’t go unpaid. Not in their world.”
“I understand. I have to do this. I can’t leave without trying everything. I just can’t.”
Graham sighed, his shoulders rounding beneath his jacket. “All right. You heard him, Luce, you’re up.”
The
elderly man minding the café glanced up from his game and blinked. “Took you long enough.”
“Had to make sure he knew what he was getting into.”
“Made us sound like brutes.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t be.”
Luce huffed and flicked off his game, spinning around so that his stool faced them.
“You?” Biran asked, bewildered.
“What’d you expect, a phone number? An email address? A clandestine alleyway where you’d meet with a shadowy figure?”
“I… didn’t really know what to expect.”
“Good, then I can’t have possibly disappointed. Now, to business before your coffees get cold. I work hard on those, you know. You want the Nazca to find Sanda Maram Greeve, correct?”
“Yes, before the exodus. I need to know what’s happened to her.”
The man tsked and wagged a finger. “No timelines. Your situation is too variable to dictate a deadline.”
“If you don’t find her before the exodus, she’ll be stranded behind with Icarion.”
“Yes, yes, and in some distant future a descendant of yours will receive confirmation we fulfilled our end of the contract and discovered her whereabouts, if that is indeed the case. It’s not like data won’t be able to get out of Icarion. It just… might take a while.”
“Without a gate, you’re talking thousands of years!”
“Pity. Though maybe faster if Icarion gets their FTL research together.” He made a face that indicated he didn’t think that very likely. “Of course, we may find her alive and well tomorrow. Or confirm her death in the next few hours. The point is, we cannot guarantee a timeline. The vagaries of the politics at the moment are irrelevant.”
“Fine. I’ll take that chance. Just find her.”
“You’re in luck. We have a few assets already in play in the Icarion landscape. Lots of interesting things for us out there right now, you understand. That little war of yours might just work in your favor. Will cost you extra, though, to tap an agent already in the field.”
“How much?”
“Extra, or total?”
“Total.”
“Ninety percent.”
“Ninety percent of what?”
“Everything, Speaker Greeve. Everything you make now, everything you ever will make until we deem the debt repaid.”
Biran swallowed. “And how will you decide when the debt is repaid?”
“Depends entirely on what this mission takes. No way to know in advance, is there? Don’t worry, though, we’ll go easy on your descendants. And the Primes will keep you in house and transportation. Might lose some weight, though.” He chuckled.
The blood drained from his face. “I’ll survive. How do I arrange the transfer?”
“We’ll manage that. You just go home and act normal, send us everything you have about the evac pod. Any information you can gather on Dralee, too. And the position of Icarion forces in the area. We have our own sources, of course, but triangulating is half of what we do.”
“And you won’t…”
“Sell the information you give us to opposition agents?” He flashed a toothy grin. “Maybe, maybe not. The Nazca aren’t a government, Greeve. We don’t have laws—or even really guidelines. We’re information brokers. You’re paying for information. The location and, if possible, recovery of your sister. Part of that price is understanding that what you give us might be used in ways you don’t like, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your order.”
“And how much to keep that information exclusive?”
“You can’t afford it. Listen, you’re already committing treason by hiring us. There aren’t shades of getting executed. Relax into it. We’ll find her, sooner or later. As long as you don’t do anything too stupid, no one will know.”
“All right,” Biran said, lightness suffusing him as he committed. “All right. Thank you.”
The old man extended his hand, and Biran shook it.
“Thank you for your patronage to the Nazca.”
CHAPTER 29
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
IN A SYSTEM FAR, FAR AWAY
Sunrise found Jules beaten down and sweating, the peachy simulated light glaring at her reproachfully through the trees of the Grotta’s only park. She couldn’t have gone home during the night. The thought of walking into their converted loft and finding Harlan up, and waiting, twisted her stomach to hell and back. So she’d spent the night walking. Stalking, more accurately. Casing known runner tracks, slinking from shadow to shadow, watching the dealers of the black markets ply their trades in the alleys.
All of it had felt hollow to her. Pointless, desperate. A little kingdom full of tiny monarchies. Struggling for just a taste of power, a sliver of respect, a drop of recognition. They were her people. The representatives of the culture that’d borne her up into some semblance of adulthood. And she hated them. Loathed them. Saw herself in every petty deal and hustle and wondered just how any of it could matter so much to them. How it had ever mattered so much to her.
Nothing of value was done in the back ways of the Grotta. People struggled to live and find relevance and were beaten back down and died, telling themselves that it was worth it, somehow. That they’d garnered respect and power in their short, volatile lives, but it was all a lie. The lives of the Grotta were a lie.
Maybe you could claw your way up. Get your own place. Start a little business. Maybe you could make your life just the tiniest bit more comfortable. But you were still here, still pushed to the fringes and forgotten by anyone and anything that mattered. And on the edge, you were vulnerable—so, so vulnerable—to being pushed off it. To falling back down. Miss a payment. Miss a meal. Healthcare was free and nutriblocks were plenty, but what kind of life was that when all your citizen’s income went to debts you’d built on the back of wraith and pain?
What did it matter, the hole you carved for yourself in the world, once you’d left it? No legacy of the Grotta would last. Harlan wanted her to accept that. To keep her head down. To fulfill her duty to her crew, to her people and her culture. To hustle and hope and never, never break status. Never shift the structure.
Fuck that. Fuck everything about that.
The door to Harlan’s lair had been left unlocked. Nox, probably, too drunk to remember to lock up after himself. Again. She pushed the door open, preparing for a fight.
The fight had long since been lost.
She’d walked into the wrong house. That was the only explanation. The only thing that made any sense. Because the people who lived in this building were dead. And the crew—Harlan and Lolla and Nox—they couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t.
She drifted into the room, already a ghost—she should be a ghost, should be crushed beneath the rubble of their lives with the others—and searched, searched with her gaze for some semblance that this was wrong. That it was the wraith mother playing tricks on her mind.
The couch—a stained grey-brown thing they’d found on the street—lay tipped, its cushions spilled across the floor, their innards ripped out in great cottony puffs of filling. Their dishware—a mishmash of patterns and materials—riddled the floor in a mosaic of detritus. Cabinets torn open. Doors left dangling from single hinges. Drawers yanked wide, gaping from their rightful places like panting tongues.
Home. This was her home as much as she sometimes hated it. And home was meant to be inviolable. Somehow, the hanging drawers were worse than the blood.
But the blood was there. Waiting for her to see it though she tried so hard not to.
It was bright, still. In most places. Weathered around the edges where oxidation had set in, drying out the vital fluid into flaky rust. So: not old. She’d seen a lot of blood in her time, knew what it looked like. How it aged. There was a lot. Too much for one person, but there’d been three living here, and who knows how they made the intruders bleed. So enough for death—the silence screamed death—but maybe not enough for everyone’s death. Her hand moved to her
stunner, realizing far too late that the silence might mean she was being watched.
She dropped to a crouch behind a tipped-over chair, circling the far wall of the ripped-apart living room. Across the room, the door leading to their sleeping cubbies had been torn open just like all the others. The lights beyond had been killed, but the edge of some kind of fabric poked out from under the bottom of the dangling door, its end frayed and torn. Something about that fabric tickled at her memory, but her mind was so choked with fear she couldn’t figure it out. Wasn’t her blanket—it was too smooth, like a plastic composite. Like a wristpad band.
She slunk her way around to the door and shined her stunner light down the hall. All the bedding had been ripped out, tossed into mangled heaps on the floor. Bits of clothing and jewelry studded the fabric piles like torches in the dark. The guts of electronics crushed under heel or smashed against the wall—divots bit into the plaster in flaky cracks—sprinkled the top like a dusting of something that should be lovely. Sparkling sugar on a cake, snow on a frosty field. This wasn’t a raid. This wasn’t burglary or theft. Everything of value had been smashed or tossed, but not taken. This was a slaughter. And a message. A message for her, maybe, written in the blood of those she loved.
Bile seared the inside of her throat and she choked it down. Forced herself to move, to step into that hallway. Wasn’t anyone in the living room alive or dead, so if anyone was waiting for her it was here. Which made sense. The crew would have been asleep in their beds when the strike came. Maybe… Maybe they wouldn’t have felt a thing.
She nudged the wristpad on the ground with her toe, turning it around to get a better look. It had been ripped off, the fabric—tough enough to withstand knife strikes—shredded like so much paper. The design around the edge of the smashed-in screen, a smattering of dots of varying sizes placed just so to represent each successful op, indicated the pad was Harlan’s.
Shouldn’t have been on the ground like that. Shouldn’t have been torn up, cast aside. That bit of normalcy turned to madness twisted in her chest like a knife. Some part of her thought she should pick it up, bring it back to him. Get it repaired and everything would be okay.
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