by E J Frost
numbers in the corner of my vision grow
large enough to worry me and I remind Kez
we’re on the clock.
She climbs out of bed with a sigh. Strips
off her night-dress. Reaches her fingertips
toward the ceiling, then bends over and
touches her toes.
I check her over carefully while she
stretches. The derms have done their work.
There’s a green shadow on her lower back
where the worst bruise was, but that’s all.
She’s healed, except for the marks I put on
her last night.
She twists, stretching her sides, catches
me watching her and grins. Goes back to
stretching with a wiggle of that beautifully
bruised ass. Totally unselfconscious now.
That makes me smile as I climb out of bed.
So does the way she folds up her night-dress
and leaves it in a neat pile on the pillow. I
don’t mind sleeping at her place, but I like
the assumption she’ll be sleeping at mine.
While she showers and dresses, I make
breakfast. She bought enough sugar to rot out
all my augmented teeth. We need something a
little tart. While I’m whipping fresh citrus
juice into soyumilk, Kez emerges from the
‘fresher, hops up onto the kitchen counter and
watches me. When it’s ready, she holds out
the plates I’ve prepared with warm slices of
sweet bread. I scoop the citrus foam onto the
top. Kez garnishes it with some of the mixed
fruit salad she bought, pops open the bulbs of
self-heating susu and sets it all on the
lacquered tray we ate our dinner on. She
rolls her eyes when I add several slices of
crisp-fried auro to my plate.
“Oh, look, meat.” She grins at my grunted
responses. “Can we eat on the deck?”
“Sure.” There aren’t a ton of choices.
I’ve never bothered with a table and chairs
because Kez is the first company I’ve had. I
use the dining room as a workshop.
We eat on the hammock, with the tray
between us to avoid any temptation towards
renewed stickiness. Kez compliments my
cooking, and teases me a little more about
my need for meat with every meal, but
otherwise we’re quiet, enjoying each other’s
company and the very early morning. The sky
has just begun to gray towards pearl when
the Multi I’ve tucked into a pocket of my
fatigues buzzes.
I pull it out and show it to Kez. The code
on the display doesn’t tell me anything other
than there’s been a delivery for the Marie.
“Gotta be the rat-food arriving.” I’m not
scheduled for anything else for another two
days.
“Do we need to hurry?”
“No, it’ll have to clear security first. We
got time.”
“Good. This is too good to rush.” She
takes another bite of the bread. Washes it
down with a sip of susu. “What’s your
favorite food?”
“Hard to name just one. That rendang the
other night has to rank up there, though.”
Kez nods. “It is good, isn’t it? That’s my
favorite.”
“You ever had gesper?” I ask. She shakes
her head. “Big fish, native to Yrillo. They
roast it in a sand pit with leaves and this
special red sauce. Sweet, but spicy. Right up
your alley. When I outed Tol Seng, I hid on a
transport and had to listen to the guards talk
about it for hours. I was sittin’ in a puddle of
drool by the time we finally cleared
atmosphere.” I chuckle at the memory.
“We’re definitely gonna try some of that.”
She smiles, sharing my humor, then
watches her susu swirl around in her cup for
a moment before looking up at me again.
“You were serious about that? Going to
Yrillo after all this is over?”
“Deadly serious.” We both need some
down-time.
“I’ve never been off-planet,” Kez says
slowly. “I don’t even have a Multi.” She
nods at my pocket.
“We’ll get you one.” I guessed she’d
never been off-world when she said she’d
never been on a spaceship. “High time you
went.”
I’m rewarded with her brilliant grin,
which lights up the gray morning.
Even at dawn on a sixday, Nock’s
spaceport is bustling. A sharp contrast to
New Brunny’s sleepy start. Port workers in
their blue and yellow unis scurry between
berths, like a swarm of bees. Probably
loading for runs to the Bauz Cycler, since
that’s due to pass Kuseros today on its way
to the outer system planets. As I move
towards the office, I nod to the few workers
whose faces I recognize. I don’t know their
names, and I’ve been careful to make sure
they don’t know mine. That’s not going to
change. To everyone but Kez and her crew, I
need to remain a ghost.
Thea, unfortunately, does know my name,
or at least my pseudonym, and she greets me
with a cheerful, “Snowy!” as we walk
through the office block’s sliding doors.
Behind me, Kez muffles a snort.
Thea’s smile dims a little when she
notices Kez. “Who’s your friend?” she asks.
She doesn’t snarl, but her cheerfulness is
forced.
“This is Kez. Kez, Thea.”
Thea looks Kez up and down, decides
that Kez’s assets are inferior to hers, and
leans over her desk to emphasize the point.
Kez walks over to the desk and offers her
hand to Thea. “Snow’s told me a lot about
you.”
Thea considers Kez’s hand for a second
before shaking. “None of it good, if I know
him.”
She doesn’t, but I refrain from
commenting. Kez leans on the edge of Thea’s
desk and smiles. “Actually, he says you take
really good care of him.”
Bullshit, I’ve never said anything like
that. But Thea doesn’t know that and she
beams. “I take care of all my boys.”
I bet she does. “Thea, something come in
for me?” I hold up the flashing Multi.
She nods and hands a slip of flimsy to
Kez. “Consumables, right? They’re just
clearing. I’ve scheduled them for delivery
straight to your berth.”
“Thanks. Would you file a flight plan for
me? Kuus and back.”
“Of course. Fly safe.”
“Will do. C’mon.” I hold my hand out to
Kez. She slides off Thea’s desk, takes my
hand and follows me out.
As we cross the port, Kez holds the
flimsy out in front of us. “What do these
symbols mean? I don’t recognize most of
them.”
I identify them for her. “The line at the
top, those are ship and port codes. Second
line is shipment
arrival time and who logged
it. Third line is shipment type. Each port on
Kuseros uses its own shipment codes, so
don’t bother learning those. You can always
get the ship’s computer to give you a
translation.”
Kez nods as she scans the flimsy again.
“Got it . . . Snowy.”
I elbow her. “Kitten.”
She giggles, intent on the flimsy. I get the
sense she’s memorizing the codes, even
though I told her not to bother.
“Not that I give a fuck,” I say. “But what
was that shit your sister was slinging about
you failing v-school?”
Kez hunches one shoulder. “She wasn’t
lying. I was bad at school.”
“Didn’t like it?” I put my arm around her.
She shrugs. Leans into me. “I just
couldn’t do it. I couldn’t concentrate.
Couldn’t remember things. It got better after I
went to the House. But I still had to repeat
another year. I dropped out as soon as I
could. That’s when Liv took me on full-
time.” She slides the flimsy into one of her
bag’s many pockets. “My memory’s gotten a
lot better since then.”
I reach up and ruffle her stubble. Tuck
her head onto my shoulder. “There’s nothin’
wrong with your memory. Or your brain.”
School isn’t for everyone, but that aside,
she’d lost half her family and was trying to
survive on her own. No wonder she was
distracted. I keep her tight against my side
until we reach the Marie. “In you go. You’re
flying us to Kuus, so prep the ship, Captain.
I’ll load the cargo when it gets here.”
She tilts her head to look up at me. “Does
being Captain mean I get sixty-five percent?”
“Fuck, no.” I push her up the Marie’s
ramp and swat her ass. “This is a flying
lesson. Five hundred plus expenses.”
“I paid for the paddle and the vibrator
and the lube,” she says over her shoulder.
The little monster stirs at the reminder of
what we did last night. Even that faint rumble
stings. Fuck, I’m sore. “I’ll make you buy me
a whip if you don’t get your ass in gear.”
She wiggles that saucy ass at me as she
sways up the ramp and into the ship.
I haven’t known many rat-men, and my
acquaintances haven’t been of a long
duration, but it seems to me that they don’t do
things by halves. Rat One wasn’t fucking
around when he tried to kill us, and Acker
isn’t fucking around when he sends us fifteen
crates full of food. Each crate weighs over
ten metric tons, and the fifteen of them fill
two of the Marie’s cargo holds. Even with
the funnel, it takes me a half-hour to load
them all and by the time I swing into the
pilot’s chair next to Kez, the Twins are up
and she’s polarized the viewer against their
bright morning glare.
“How many fucking rats are there in
Kuus?” I ask as I check Kez’s pre-flight,
which is perfect.
“At a guess, maybe a hundred. I don’t
know. Why?”
“Acker sent enough food for a month.”
“Is that what was taking you so long? I
thought you’d gotten lost back there.”
“Just givin’ you time to prep the ship. In
case you had to do somethin’ over.”
It takes her a moment to process, then
Kez sticks out her tongue at me, a gesture I
see reflected in the central viewer.
I smile back at her, both because I enjoy
teasing her, and because I’m pleased she
accepts my teasing for what it is. “We’re
good to go, kitten. Take her up. Make sure to
give that fucker a big kiss when you rotate
the pods.” I nod at the Starflare sitting in the
next bay, which is considerably less shiny
than it was a day ago.
Kez wasn’t kidding about the drop-off. I
hover the ship over a hole that looks like it
descends to the planet’s fucking core. I’ve
never heard of this pit and looking down into
the drop, I can see why no one uses it. The
pit walls are sheer. They widen out slightly
near the top, and there’s a shadow at the
bottom of the pit that suggests a bulge in the
crumbling rock. The pit’s shaped like a flask.
No wonder the govvies abandoned it. The
whole thing looks on the verge of collapse.
I flick my eyes across the readings from
the Marie’s sensors. She’s designed for
space, but she’s got a cortex scanner. It tells
me that the ground is a mix of calcite and
Bresford stone, a decorative native rock so
soft you can carve it with a knife. Definitely
not the ideal place to land.
“Can you see anything down there?” I ask
Kez. I can’t see anything in the shadow, but
the cat’s eye doesn’t do much for me when
I’m looking from bright light into shadow,
and my kitten has good eyes.
She shakes her head.
“Let’s hope this doesn’t drop a ton of
rock onto the rats’ heads.” Better them than
us, though. I rotate the Marie’s secondary
engines and point them at the walls of the pit.
Give a quick thrust that bounces us up a
hundred meters into the clouds. A plume of
dust rises out of the pit.
“Fuck,” Kez says. I hear her swallow
hard. I take a deep breath to settle my own
stomach and drop us down slow while I
watch the infrared scan. The blast from the
engines has triggered some minor rock-fall,
but I don’t see any serious cave-ins.
“Here we go,” I tell Kez. I take it slow,
easing us down into the pit. Ready with the
secondary thrusters to bounce us out if any
big rocks start falling on us. The engines kick
up more dust as we lower into the pit,
leaving me relying on the infrared to
maneuver. A nerve-rattling pinging begins on
the canopy overhead. I flick down the
shutters to protect the viewscreens. If the
infrared goes, I’ll be flying blind, but I’ve
got her lined up nice and tight now, and
better a blind drop than a cracked
viewscreen. Those fuckers are expensive to
repair.
A proximity alert pops up on the central
display a moment before I expect it to and I
ease off on the controls just a fraction.
Nerves making me tweak the juice. I take
another deep breath, tap the landing cushion,
and settle the Marie onto the uneven floor of
the pit.
Kez begins to unstrap herself, but I hold
out a hand. “Give it a moment. She’s self-
leveling.”
The ship, and the fluid in my inner ear,
rock. Almost worse than our bounce into the
clouds. I wait until the ship and my stomach
are both good and level before
I flick off the
flight harness.
Kez climbs out of the co-pilot’s chair
slowly. She’s gone an interesting shade of
green. Her mouth is compressed to a tight
line.
“If you’re gonna puke, use the passenger
‘fresher,” I tell her. There’s a fresher in the
cockpit, but it’s built into a wall of
instrumentation. It takes a couple of minutes
to unfold and is a bitch to clean.
She scowls at me. “I’m not going to
puke.”
I chuckle. I love how easy she is to tease.
“You gonna play meet-and-greet with your
friend Diamond while I unload?”
“He’s not my favorite person.” She
suddenly brightens. “The rats seem to like
you. How about you shake paw while I
unload? It didn’t look that hard.”
I sling my arm around her shoulders. Rub
my fingertips over the slick neopoly covering
her triceps. She’s wearing another of her
black tops, this one with longer sleeves since
today is cooler than yesterday, over a pair of
leggings snug enough to show off the
musculature of those runner’s legs, patterned
with an abstract pattern of interlocking
circles. Each circle is burned out so her pale
skin shows through. I like the way she
dresses. And I love that she dressed today
especially for me. “Only thing you should be
doin’ in that outfit is dancing ‘round a pole.”
“Are you saying I look like a stripper?”
I tilt my head. “Maybe a vloop dancer.”
She kicks me in the ankle. “How would
you feel about dancing around on a bunch of
broken toes?”
“Ow.” I give her a retaliatory nip on the
ear, pinkly exposed now that she’s lost her
hair. “C’mon, let’s go meet your furry little
friends.”
But there’s no one to meet us. Just a
utilitarian gray container, spattered with dust
and dented by a few falling rocks, sitting at
the mouth of a tunnel that leads out of the
otherwise empty pit. I pull Kez up at the
bottom of the Marie’s ramp and wait for
several long seconds, watching and listening.
There’s nothing but the occasional rattle of
falling stone. After I’m sure there’s nothing
lurking in the shadows, I release Kez and
start unslinging the cargo funnel.
“Aren’t you going to check the box?” Kez
asks.
“Naw, load it up.” If the rats have fucked
us, they’ve fucked us. There’s no one around
to confront, and I’m not venturing into their
