by Sara King
Milar froze. Having spent all of his recent time convincing Tatiana she wasn’t going to die and escorting her somewhere safe, he hadn’t really thought much about his brother and father, stuck in Silver City.
“Creepy old guy,” Steffen went on. “Kept waking up despite the drugs and screaming stuff about skin. Definitely had the Wide, but they wanted him anyway.”
Milar’s heart was hammering. He remembered seeing the dismantled carrot discarded by the front door of the safe house, and his rush of goosebumps turned into icy chills.
“Sorry,” Steffen said, giving him a look of genuine sympathy.
“Where’d they take him?” Milar whispered hoarsely, already knowing the answer.
“Rath,” Steffen said.
Without another word, Milar went looking for Magali Landborn.
CHAPTER 19: Master Communicator
23rd of May, 3006
Ross Mansion
Trinoi, Trellas System, The Core
It was time.
Quad took a deep breath, refused to look at his feet, and said, “Hi, my name is Quad and I theorize that the unprotected human body is actually capable of traversing an infinite amount of space using Aashaanti Void Ring technology applied on an individual level. I actually think that such travel was standard for all important Aashaanti leaders, though they used a different frequency than any human technology we’ve yet produced. The process is simple, really. Just a matter of turning the body itself into a non-reactive, massless patch of interdimensional space, which can then be instantly shunted to whichever place you wish to go. Most people, it’s a one-time-only affair, but something that Sirius did to me as a kid made mine a lot more perm—”
“Dammit, Quad,” Cheyenne called at him from the office. “I told you to stop talking to yourself!”
Quad flinched and looked down from the mirror. “Sorry, Mom.”
“It upsets people when you talk to yourself,” Cheyenne snapped, still in the other room. “It’s unhealthy.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Then stop doing it,” Cheyenne growled, for the hundredth time that week.
“I will, Mom.”
“You said that yesterday, when I caught you talking to that robot’s head.”
That wasn’t exactly fair, Quad thought, because he had been talking to somebody. He’d been talking to Mordy, and—whenever Quad hooked up his speaker system—Mordy actually talked back. It just so happened that the last time, when his mom had stopped to eavesdrop, he had been rearranging Mordy’s internal configuration to make room for more efficient hidden weaponry. “Mordy talks back,” Quad argued. “That’s talking to somebody.” Hell, he liked talking to Mordy—once Quad had uploaded some manuals, he had even been able to speak intelligently about Aashaanti portal theory.
“You should be talking to another kid,” Cheyenne insisted. “Maybe the cook’s son…”
“Mordy’s smarter than another kid,” Quad replied. “He understands what I’m saying.” The cook’s son just wanted to talk about dinosaurs and chicken pox, one of which was boring and the other Quad was immune to anyway.
Cheyenne sighed. “Speaking of that pile of junk… Go clean up that Ferris you left in the living room. Umire Albany is due here in a few hours, and I will not have one of the most influential members of the Twelve dancing around a disemboweled robot to get to dinner.”
Quad grimaced at her mislabeling of the robot. “It’s not a Ferris,” he said. “It’s an ID-scrubbed, battle-ready Gryphon with the full long-range warfare kit and advanced targeting peripherals.” At least, it had been before Quad had started tinkering with it. Now, it had all the additional processing routines of a Ferris combined with the military firepower of an eighty-ton soldier—downsized and concentrated to conserve space, of course—plus some added bonuses of a ten-thousand-year power core and some interesting Aashaanti plasma weaponry he’d brought back from one of his latest jumps. Quad had wanted to take the robot out back later that evening to see if he could take the top off Whittlepeak Mountain from his front porch.
“Now, Quad.”
“But I’m not done with it, Mom.”
“You have ten minutes,” Cheyenne snapped.
Quad sighed and went to relocate his mess to another corner of the house. Then, before his mom could grab him to boil potatoes or set the table, he pushed himself back to the North Tear on Fortune, in the Daytona 6 Cluster.
The planet where Anna Landborn lived.
It was time.
CHAPTER 20: Two-Faced
21st of May, 3006
Camphor
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Patrick opened his eyes to the smell of coffee, scrambled eggs, and bacon. Planet-made bacon, not the Coalition gold standard synthesized from bug protein.
“So how you doing?” a vaguely familiar woman’s voice asked from nearby.
Patrick sat up and grabbed his head. It felt heavier than usual, foggy. He couldn’t remember anything from the night before. Had he finally ditched the old fart and gotten wasted at the local pub? Squinting, he took in the homey, decidedly female room around him and mentally added ‘Got Laid?’ to his mental check-off list. Through the haze, he croaked, “Where am I?”
The woman was seated at a table beside the bed, food laid out in front of her. “You and your father are my guests in a little town called Camphor. You’re safe.”
Camphor. Patrick remembered seeing the riots in the streets of Silver City, remembered Nephyrs showing up, remembered something about Magali…
He squinted at his hostess, then blinked when he finally placed the lithe, brown-eyed beauty. Natalia Ormhurst had disappeared almost ten years ago, and everyone had assumed she’d finally run afoul of the Coalition authorities.
“Camphor?” Patrick managed, rubbing at his skull. “My head’s fuzzy. I don’t remember much of anything.” He had always secretly suspected he and Natalia would cross paths again, since his dad was constantly carving her image into carrots and screaming like the world was on fire. A lot like Anna, Wideman seemed incapable of drawing Natalia without going apeshit, so Patrick was glad he only did it when they were alone.
“Not surprising. They were using chemicals trying to flush you out.” Across the table, the woman shifted in her chair, giving him an ample view of her cleavage. “Barely got you out of Silver City alive.” Acutely aware of her leather-cupped chest, Patrick felt his face heating. Natalia Ormhurst had always struck him as some sort of Triton goddess.
Just as he remembered her from a decade ago, Natalia was dressed head to toe in black leather, her lithe curves sporting high-tech weapons that Patrick only vaguely knew the names of, her body as perfectly sculpted as a pre-Migration Mäkelä. Time didn’t seem to have aged her at all.
Patrick quickly cleared his throat and looked away, flushing with shame that he’d been eying another woman’s breasts after only just finding out his girlfriend was still alive and in the hands of a Nephyr. “Where’s Dad?” Patrick asked.
Natalia turned and gestured to a sleeping form on the cot across the room from him. “He started screaming and thrashing and shouting something about ‘too far’ and ‘have to go back’ and tractors and fire and Anna being alone in the cold and dark, so I fed him something to help him sleep.” Natalia cocked her head at Patrick. “You got any idea what that meant?”
Patrick snorted in disgust. “Dad speaks gibberish. Try sleeping next to him. At least twice a night, he’ll launch you out of bed screaming about Nephyrs at the door.” He sighed. “I’ve just learned to ignore it.”
Natalia eyed the bed. “I heard he sees the future.”
“Yeah,” Patrick scoffed. “And look at the good it’s done him.” Even then, Wideman had his mouth open, drool coalescing on his dark blue pillow.
Natalia watched his father a moment more, then grunted. “Tough life, I guess.” She glanced at Patrick. “What about you? David never told me what was up with you. Seemed like you always followed your
brother around, and when he talked about one of you, it was always about Miles.”
Patrick grimaced and got out of bed. “Miles was better with guns. David Landborn appreciated guns.”
She made a disapproving sound between her full lips. “That’s not fair, Patrick.”
“Yeah, well.” Patrick got up and went over to sit at the table with her. “You heard David’s dead?”
Natalia’s attention immediately sharpened. “What happened?”
“Geo found out he was horning in on his Yolk trade, decided to take out the competition. His thugs caught him, carved on him, then left him to die in the jungle.”
Natalia looked stricken. “You saw the body?”
Patrick thought that was an odd thing to ask, but he just shrugged. “They took some pictures of his carcass, tied to a damned tree with his guts hanging down to his knees, then sent them to Magali. He’s dead, yeah.”
“But you never saw a physical body.”
Patrick frowned at the way she pressed. “He didn’t come back. David’s not the kind of guy not to come back.”
“Damn.” Natalia shook her head. “Just can’t see David dying like that.”
“Wasn’t pretty,” Patrick agreed. He reached for his fork and started in on the breakfast she’d offered him, trying to avoid consciously thinking about the odd knowledge that he and this woman were going to hook up sexually, if his father’s vegetables were any indication. “So what happened to you?” he offered. “I haven’t seen you in like a decade.”
Natalia groaned and leaned back in her chair, giving him an excellent view of leather-clad breasts. “I had a bad run. Got hijacked by pirates, had to escape in a pod. Lost my ship, all the Yolk, everything. Got picked up by a Coalition freighter that took me back to the Core. He knew what I was—only an idiot wouldn’t—but the captain never said a word of it to anybody. Could’ve just dumped me on Aladia, but he actually hung around long enough to help me get hooked up as a first mate on a ship headed back to Fortune.”
Patrick grimaced, trying not to think about how sexy the woman across the table was to him. “Sounds like you got lucky.”
Natalia shrugged. “I don’t think the coalers are as bad as David made them out to be.” She leaned forward, brushing the table with what would have been her areolas had they not been protected by leather. “I mean, the Coalition beat the Tritons. Do you realize what kind of shitstorm we’d be in if they hadn’t formed that alliance?”
Patrick just shook his head, barely remembering the years of listening to Landborn’s tirades on the evils of the Coalition. It was hard to think with her this close, smelling her floral perfume, and the seam of his crotch was tightening accordingly. Still, he realized he had to say something or she was going to start comparing him to his drooling idiot of a father. “It wasn’t the Coalition that beat the Tritons. The Coalition was formed after the Tritons got their asses handed to them, and the Encompate kicked the ones who did beat them out of the Core. You listen to David, the heroes of the Triton Wars ended up penniless, living in squalor, given nothing for their troubles but empty promises and death threats from politicians that now found them inconvenient.”
Natalia sighed. “Yeah, well. David’s always been a little butthurt about that.”
“What was up with him?” Patrick demanded, finally able to get a straight answer from someone who had known his adoptive father for decades. “The guy was a fanatic. Always talking about how evil the Tritons and their robots were. But that was, what, like two hundred and fifty years ago?”
“Thereabouts,” Natalia said. “The Wars began in 2741. Last one ended when Emperor Xi was defeated 2862.” Her face twisted as her eyes grew distant. “A hundred and twenty one years of hell. Giu Xi almost succeeded in turning humanity into a race of machines.”
Patrick squinted at her. Was everyone David Landborn associated with a history buff? She’d almost sounded as passionate about it as David…almost like she’d been there. Patrick shook himself. “Yeah, but we beat them over a century ago. The way he talks, you’d think he actually fought the Tritons.”
Natalia gave a wistful little grin. “He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him.” And Natalia had known him longer than anyone, if the reminiscing-over-cards they often did into the late hours of the night was any indication, after Patrick and Milar had been sent to bed.
“Was,” Patrick muttered, glancing down at his plate again. “Fucking Geo needs to get what’s coming to him.”
“Oh, I agree,” Natalia replied. “Nasty piece of work, that one. Nobody’s got the balls to do it, though—he holds the whole damn planet together.”
“Yeah,” Patrick growled, “I mean, Geo’s got his hands in so many pies around here I don’t think the Coalition would take him out even if they figured out who he was.”
“Oh, they know who he is,” Natalia told him. “Just like they knew who David was. But they didn’t really see David as much of a threat—more of a bitter old hermit waving his gun around in the woods. Geo, well…” She made a face. “Geo’s getting out of control. He’s made so much money on Yolk in the last forty years that he’s actually started buying off contracted Coalition pilots to smuggle Yolk for him.”
“Like Runaway Joel,” Patrick agreed.
“Nah, Joel and he were buddies in the Coalition, back in the day,” Natalia said dismissively. “I’m talking about just flat-out buying whole squadrons. Seven or eight Bouncer pods, boom, missing in the night, all having taken their ships over to Geo to start running Yolk. Almost all his new smugglers are Coalition deserters, now, and this far from home, there’s not much the Coalition can do about it. It’s getting maybe half the Yolk being produced on Fortune. The rest is going to the Core on smuggler ships, to be sold to the populace. Regular people, Patrick. People who want it to, say, stop a migraine or because they need to meet a deadline.”
The way she said it, it sounded like Natalia thought that was somehow a bad thing, which immediately made Patrick’s hackles rise. “The Coalition shouldn’t be hoarding it for the elite and the military. That’s corruption, right there. Somebody’s gotta get it to normal people.
“Yolk,” Natalia said, her voice going cold, “isn’t something we fully understand, and I can tell you right now, humans shouldn’t be touching it. It’s an abomination. We weren’t even supposed to be on this damned planet. It was a preserve. We were supposed to be protecting them.”
Patrick’s first impulse was to argue, but, seeing her face, he realized she was probably willing to argue about it. Still, the last part confused him. “Protecting who?”
Natalia quickly made a dismissive gesture. “Never mind. It’s in the past, and greed got the better of us. As soon as the smugglers got a foothold, there was no going back. Now they’re out there attacking themselves, no longer satisfied with the scraps—they want whole shiploads, and they don’t care if it’s Coalition or colonist they leave drifting in the Black once they’ve got what they want.”
That was news to Patrick. There was an unspoken agreement between smugglers and colonists that serious acts of piracy would only be carried out against government ships and facilities—effectively only stealing from those hundreds of billions of sheltered Core denizens who could afford to lose it. “Don’t they usually only go after Coalition ships? I mean, the Code…”
Natalia rolled her eyes. “The Code.” She snorted. “The Code only applies if anyone else can see you do it.” She gestured disgustedly at the sky. “You get out there, alone in the Void, and nobody gives a shit about the Code.”
He supposed that was true. He ate his eggs in silence, thinking what it must’ve been like to be attacked by her own kind.
“Where is Milar?” Natalia asked. “I would’ve thought he’d come get you, once your girlfriend threw all of Silver City into an uproar.”
“I’m not sure she’s still my girlfriend,” Patrick muttered, glaring at his plate, still seeing the Nephyr she’d been clinging to.
�
��Oh?” Natalia looked confused. “But I was told—”
“Anna and Milar broke us up.” Patrick dropped his fork back to his plate, suddenly not feeling very hungry. “Didn’t like the idea of us getting hitched and moving off planet.” He felt himself subconsciously fisting his hands. “Both of us wanted to get away from David and his military crap. We were gonna find a homestead and raise a family.”
“David isn’t an easy man to live with,” Natalia said, like she knew.
“How would you know,” Patrick muttered bitterly, knowing he was lashing out, but not caring.
“I married him,” Natalia said. Then, when Patrick’s head jerked up, she shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
In almost twenty years, Patrick couldn’t remember David ever mentioning anyone but Siella. Giving her a curious frown, he said, “Must’ve been.”
Natalia smiled. “Sometimes, ex-wives just aren’t something people like to talk about.” She gave him a knowing look. “Kind of like ex-girlfriends that way.”
Immediately, Patrick tensed. He hadn’t really thought of Magali as an ‘ex’ yet. As far as he was concerned, the only reason she was clinging to that Nephyr right now was because an unfortunate set of events had parted them before it was time. He told her so.
“Oh really?” Natalia raised a brow. “That’s not what it looked like on those newscasts. Hell, Pat, she’s holding onto him so tight she’s basically humping his leg.”
Patrick reddened, his fists tightening. “I know she loved me. We were going to have kids.”
Natalia raised her brows. “Let me tell you from experience, Pat, a girl wanting kids doesn’t necessarily mean she’s in love.” She glanced around them, gesturing broadly. “In a place like this, sometimes it’s as simple as wanting a way off planet, to some different life on a different world.”
Patrick scoffed, but uncertainty immediately began eating at him. It burned, remembering that image of her leaning on her lover in Silver City as the crowd chanted around them. Natalia was right—it hadn’t been the image of a woman in terror or distancing herself in any way. She’d been clinging to him.
