by Corey Ostman
“They’ve never been this aggressive before,” said Anna.
“Phasewave man won’t be able to get a bead on us now,” Raj said.
“And the other one? I don’t want to test Violet if we don’t have to.”
Raj looked behind them. “Can’t see.”
But they could hear it over the meadow wind. Galloping. And there was something else, a stranger sound.
“Go, Violet!” shouted Anna. The mare sidestepped skittishly and began to move ahead.
An aposti horse sailed over the verge. Its cowboy was holding the reigns with one hand and swung a bola over his head. It made a rhythmic whoomp whoomp whoomp.
“Bola!” Raj yelled.
“What?”
“A weapon! He’s over the verge!”
Anna turned Violet to the left, into a cluster of pines. Raj’s horizon shifted in the saddle as he tipped. Branches beat against his legs, green needlelike claws trying to pull him from the horse.
“Is he following us?”
“I can’t hear the bola,” said Raj. He didn’t dare turn if he wanted to keep his seat.
They broke through the pine cluster. Anna slowed the mare: Violet was heavily lathered. Raj turned around. Through the clusters of trees, a lone aposti sat on his horse. He’d stopped. There was no sign of the bola. He probably hadn’t been able to get a full swing in the close pines.
“He isn’t following,” Raj said. He sighed, sagging against Anna, thankful the saddle was large enough for both of them, grateful that she knew her way around a horse. He’d grown up mere kilometers away from Donner Ranch, but he’d never felt comfortable around the big beasts. Anna was from the domes of Mars, as far from ranch life imaginable, yet here she was clicking her tongue, guiding their mare to the right, up and over the last hillock that separated Dan Donner’s east pasture from the township.
“Try to breathe again,” Anna said after a while. “Your heart is still hammering against my back. We’re safe for today.”
“For today.”
It had become their mantra.
Raj would have to check the perimeter scans when they got back to the house. They were still being watched, for all of his precautions. When they’d moved from Bod Town to Donner Ranch, Raj had hoped for anonymity and freedom, but it had been like moving from a fish tank into a fishbowl. Fewer people, sure; no compstate. But more aposti. And this time, Raj didn’t have Tim. Tim, with his nose for troubleshooting surveillance, his ability to link fact agents and satellites into hyper awareness. Tim, with his ability to laugh at Raj’s awful jokes…
“You’re thinking about Tim,” Anna whispered, just above the sound of the mare’s trot.
“Yeah.”
Raj rested his chin on Anna’s shoulder. He suddenly wanted to be in his lab, secreted away in the root cellar beneath the Donner homestead. Raj wasn’t tired of having his arms wrapped around Anna, but he was tired of being on horseback, on display for all to see. Vulnerable.
“Could we head home a little faster?” he asked.
Raj didn’t know how Anna had instructed the horse to gallop, but the mare sped forward. They passed by a herd of cattle: the cows ignored them, but some of the ranch hands watched as they passed. One of them waved.
The Donner homestead was easy to see from a distance. It sat atop a hill surrounded by fertile grassland. A white two-story house sat next to a silver-gray barn, both desiccated by the dry Wyoming wind. A rusty weathervane in the shape of a rocket creaked atop the barn. Two tumbleweeds bumped up against an open barn door.
Dan Donner stood on the porch that wrapped around the ranch house. He gestured vigorously at them.
“Up we go, Violet.” Anna clicked her tongue. “There’s a good girl.” With gentle tugs on the reins, she guided the mare up the serpentine path toward the house.
Dan disappeared inside.
“He looked—” Anna began.
“Worried.” Raj finished, then realized the absurdity of the observation. Like Grace, Dan neither fretted nor stewed. If there was a problem, he simply tackled it—often literally.
“Annoyed,” he corrected.
“It’ll be easier if you dismount first,” Anna said, bringing the mare to a stop.
“Oh. Right.” Raj bent his right knee, swinging his leg over the horse’s spine as his left boot dropped to the ground.
“Nicely done,” Anna said. “You’re getting better.”
“Right,” Raj smirked, and reached up to help Anna down.
“Actually, if you could take hold of Violet. She’s a little skittish after your dismount. I think you brushed her rump on the way down.”
Raj grabbed the mare by the bridle as Anna dismounted. She tied the reins to the hitching post.
“I’ll feed and stable Violet after we find out about Dan,” Anna said.
“All right.”
They were acting so normal, Raj thought as they walked up the steps. So casual. As if they hadn’t been shot at and chased.
The screen door creaked, like it always did. Beyond the creaking was a klaxon of tech alarms that only got louder as they walked through the door.
“It’s been doing that for the last twenty minutes!”
Dan appeared as Raj’s eyes adjusted to the light, his weathered face softened by decades of laugh lines. His blue eyes were blazing in frustration.
“Twenty minutes?” said Raj.
“Yes! Fix it!”
Raj let the door swing shut, its wooden frame smacking against the doorjamb. He pushed past Dan to the comm screen, which was normally concealed behind a false wall. A flashing red dot jostled in the upper left corner of the screen, dancing to the klaxon. He tapped the angry mote, silencing it.
“I could’ve done that,” Dan grumbled.
“Always a next time,” Raj said, reviewing the data that had begun to stream from the dot.
“What is it?” said Anna, moving to his side.
“That’s Grace’s icon,” Dan said, peering at the dot. “She’s passing Mars?”
“The timestamps have been purposefully delayed by the belt network. She’s almost to Earth.”
“Delayed?” said Dan.
“To give any unwelcome parties less time to prepare,” Anna said.
Raj nodded. “But it gives us less time, too.”
“We’re closer to a solution,” said Anna softly.
“But we don’t have one yet. And you know Grace. It’s not like we could ask her to lay low in Port Casper while we figure out how to smuggle her into Cloister 11. She might last a day, or maybe a week, but eventually she’ll intercept an aposti and she won’t back down.”
“Might not even take a day. She’s known in Port Casper,” said Dan. “She should come here immediately.”
“So do we intercept her the moment she lands?” Anna asked.
“The way they’re treating mechflesh now? And Martians? Grace is safer without us there,” Raj said. “Anna and I would be picked up as soon as we left cloister.”
“I can go,” said Dan.
“Everyone in cloister would know the moment you left. You’re too well known here, Dan.” Raj considered. “We’ll have to send somebody to intercept her. Someone who’s already there, who can explain the political situation and help her find a way into Cloister 11.”
“Grace has two friends from Red Fox who would help,” said Dan. “They’re protectors with the compstate now.”
“They’d help somebody the compstate exiled?” Raj asked.
“These two? Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “They might be Grace’s friends, but protectors are among the most monitored citizens in the compstate.”
Dan frowned. “Let’s consider them backup, then. Who else do you know in Port Casper, Raj?”
Chapter 3
Grace reached behind her neck and removed the sleep squeeze. There was a click, followed by a sickening slurp as its tendrils retracted from her spine. She brought the device around and inspected the silver
y disc. It had been dormant for the past five hours, auto-deactivating after it sensed the full gravity of Earth. The squeeze had kept her muscles exercised in her sleep, first with the lower gravity of Mars, then with the nearly nonexistent gravity on Ceres. She rubbed the back of her neck, relieved to be rid of the thing.
She stowed the squeeze in her front pocket and reached into the netting above her seat, pulling down her duffel. She dreaded the next step, but her ptenda had confirmed they were on final approach to Port Casper. She needed to be ready.
And that meant disassembling and packing Tim Trouncer.
Grace stared at the PodPooch chassis resting in the seat beside her. Once again, she was struck by its emptiness. There was Tim’s outline, but his lively expressions and body language were gone. What remained was the gray mimic skin and neutral canine shape that had once housed her best friend. It was like looking at an unfinished sketch, the artist long dead. She swallowed.
Then she opened her duffel, pulling out her phasewave and clamping the holster to her belt. She wouldn’t need it in port, but it was the expected mark of a protector. She removed a small dermal dot from its case and attached it behind her ear. She’d need to listen to protector comm chatter once—
Dammit. Just do it.
Grace closed her eyes and felt the soft mimic skin. If Tim were alive, he would wriggle at her touch, but it was just a kind of fabric now. She let her fingers slowly move up his front right leg, stopping where it met the torso. There was a joint beneath the surface. She pressed her thumb and index finger on either side of the joint and pinched. Click. Tim’s leg detached from his body.
Grace opened her eyes. Mimic fabric at the joint had peeled away, and the leg dangled lifelessly in her hand. She shuddered and hastily put the leg inside the empty Faraday bag inside her duffel, then repeated the ghastly process for the remaining legs. She tried her best not to look at what she was doing.
When just the head and torso were left, she turned the body around so that she wouldn’t see Tim’s face. She gripped the neck where it met the shoulders and pressed hard into the mimic fur. She felt a click beneath the fabric and rotated the head to the left, wincing as the head detached. No pause, no thought. The head went into the bag. Then she stuffed the torso in, her palms damp and hands shaking, and zipped the duffel shut.
Grace pressed the bag into the seat beside her and sat back down, her legs trembling.
“You ok?” Taisia’s voice came via the ship’s comm. “Your vital signs just blipped at me.”
Grace remembered the sensors in the armrests and folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m fine.”
“Good. We land in four minutes.”
Grace looked up. The viewport showed them crossing over the low hills to the east of Port Casper. The city dominated the horizon, towering buildings of blue and green and red. The cruiser banked, and she saw that her old apartment building, the Frawley, now sported a twin. Nearer to the spaceport rose the glimmering Italitech-Bransen building, where she had first worked as a protector, and where many of the actions that resulted in Tim’s death had started.
The cruiser banked further as they descended, the world outside tipping until Taisia brought the craft on glide slope and final approach to the spaceport. Soon they were passing over its launch pads. When they got to pad FOUR, the Waltz dropped. Thrusters went silent as they touched down.
Home.
Grace tapped her ptenda and brought it close to her mouth.
“Dad, we’ve just landed. I’m going straight to the Freer Diner. I’ll contact you when I know more. Please tell Raj and Anna that we’re fine and we’ll see you soon.” We. Tim and I. “I love you,” she ended, a lump in her throat.
She verified the capsule encryption and sent her message. It was just past dawn, so Dad would be out with the cattle. He probably wouldn’t see the message until he returned home for lunch. By that time, she hoped to be ensconced at the Freer Diner, where she could risk a scrambled vid connection. Now, more than ever, she needed to see familiar faces.
Grace glanced up as the cockpit door opened.
“Why do you still sit? I thought you would already be outside,” Taisia said. She walked over to the exterior hatch and tapped its green access panel. With a hiss and a rumble it opened to a gleaming Wyoming morning.
“Welcome to Port Casper!” she said with a wry smile.
Grace inhaled. It wasn’t quite the dry, sweet crispness of her family ranch, but it was close enough. Much better than the manufactured space air she’d never gotten used to. She stood and hoisted the duffel over her left shoulder. A few tentative steps proved her body hadn’t forgotten standard gravity, though it felt strange not to have to think about rebounding, or having to use her arms to move.
“Buy you breakfast at the Freer?” Grace asked, starting down the gangplank. She took two steps down before she stopped and looked back. Taisia wasn’t following.
“Taisia?”
The pilot shook her head.
“We made certain, Protector, you arrive incognito. When you pass through spaceport security, they will know Grace Donner has returned. You will have few moments to blend into crowd and vanish.” Taisia touched the bulkhead. “I just got my own ship. I am a roider. You understand?”
Grace didn’t want to lose Taisia, not yet. Her dry humor and calm presence after Tim died kept her moving toward her goal, toward saving him. But it was wrong to ask her to risk more than she had. Taisia was visibly altered: her upgraded eyelids and hydraulic limbs would be unwelcome in Port Casper. She would be safer the sooner she could leave the port.
“I understand,” said Grace. “But I want to thank you for all you’ve done. Tim and I couldn’t have made it home without you.” She adjusted her shoulder strap. “You’ll be ok?”
Taisia gave Grace a sly grin. “I am like cat. Always land on feet.” She glanced at the duffel. “Unlike dog.”
Grace nodded, taking the grim roider humor in stride. She stepped back up to Taisia and hugged her. “I won’t forget you. Come by Donner Ranch if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”
“I will. I like beef. Now go, Protector.”
Grace saluted Taisia and marched down the gangplank. The gravel crunched under her feet as she strode away from the Waltz. When she was twenty meters away, she heard its thrusters fire. She turned as the ship hovered and then flew to the east. The engines of the cruiser blazed brighter than the sun as it gained altitude and passed through low billowing clouds, into the Wyoming sky. On her way to a cargo pickup, no doubt, and then back to the asteroid belt.
“Goodbye, Taisia,” she said.
Time to bounce. Grace marched west toward the spaceport terminal, scanning for other protectors or port security, both of whom could take an unhealthy interest in her or her duffel. But the port was quieter than she’d ever seen it. There were just two cruisers on the pads, both unloading cargo containers. No crowds at all. She half expected a tumbleweed to roll by.
The spaceport terminal reflected the morning sun across its silvery glass exterior. Here she finally met with other passengers waiting to be processed through security. Many of these people had probably been en route for months, and had just been awakened from cold sleep. They looked hollow-eyed and grungy as they staggered to the booths, a contrast to the gleaming architecture.
Grace didn’t feel grungy. She’d washed her face, wore her favorite oxblood-red jumper. Her phasewave, Marty, gleamed in his holster at her side. She was happy to be back on Earth, eager to get Tim into Raj’s hands. Hopeful, for the first time since she’d awakened.
“Locals to the right, lunars and belters to the left.”
She tried to locate the command. There he was—a compstate security official dressed in mimic green. Grace stood in the local line, mainly because it was moving fastest.
“Protector? You don’t need to stand in line. You can go directly through the scan.”
Damn. She was hoping to remain incognito for a while long
er. She avoided eye contact with the young officer, pretending to be more tired than she felt.
“If you send me your credentials, you can be on your way.”
Grace nodded and tapped her ptenda, keeping her head down. The clock starts now, she thought. If anybody is monitoring the port, they’ll know I’m back.
The officer read aloud from his ptenda. “Donner, Grace, 0016-Alpha, Wyoming Cloister Eleven, Waiver, Red Fox Academy, Italitech-Bransen.” He smiled at her. “Welcome home. You can take the red buggy over there.” He pointed to an open two-seat mover.
Grace would have preferred to walk, but doing as she was told was a good way to avoid additional scrutiny. She climbed onto the buggy and put her duffel in the passenger seat. The electric motor whirred and she moved through the terminal, past grumbling lines of people, toward the final security checkpoint.
The checkpoint was a standard electromagnetic scan. Should the contents of the duffel concern anybody, she had devised a story of industrial parts. But if they followed standard protocol, a protector’s personal property would never be scanned. It was one of the few perks of being cloisterfolk, along with a penchant for weapons and a love for honest food. Her stomach grumbled. Steak and eggs are only a few kilometers away.
As she expected, security officers on either side immediately waved her permission to go through. Grace began to navigate through the scan, keeping a moderate pace. Nothing to see here, officers, just another protector.
A klaxon squealed, red lights pulsated, and the electric motor of her buggy died, pitching her forward against the yoke. Security officers swarmed toward her.
“Step away from the vehicle!”
Damn. Grace reached over for her duffel as she moved to dismount.
“Leave the bag!”
The shout came from behind. As far as Grace could see, there were only compstate officers rushing toward her, no protectors. Officers might have lempsticks, but with her training, they were only a painful annoyance. It hadn’t escalated yet. If it did, she’d have only a few minutes before protectors arrived on the scene. She needed to reassure, not fight.
